The Facebook Fatwa

 

Source: Gulf News
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A fatwa or a religious decree, passed by a prominent Muslim cleric branding the use of Facebook as un-Islamic, has caused a stir among the loggers onto the popular social networking website and other Muslim clergy.  In the fatwa, Shaikh Abdul Hameed Al Attrash, an ex-official at Al Azhar, said the Facebook is a tool of harm and time-wasting.  Al Azhar's Islamic Research Academy has refuted reports that its fatwa committee issued a ruling against the social network.
"The committee hasn't issued any decrees regarding Facebook," said Shaikh Sa'eed Amer, head of the academy's fatwa, or religious-edict, committee. "We haven't even had any inquiries about the religious legitimacy of using it or not."
"Such fatwas give a very bad impression about Islam and Muslims," said Hussain Abdul Azeem, a commerce school post-graduate. "I use the Facebook to communicate with my friends worldwide and learn about the latest news. Do I really commit a sin as the one who issued the fatwa claimed?" he told Gulf News.
In the fatwa, the latest in a series of controversial fatwas in this predominantly Muslim country, Shaikh Abdul Hameed Al Attrash, a former official at Al Azhar, said Facebook is a tool of harm and time-wasting, and its users are sinners. Al Azhar is the Sunni Muslim world's influential seat of learning.
"The Facebook and other networking sites could result in the proliferation of illicit affairs," Al Attrash was quoted as saying by media.
"Surfing such websites makes it easier to develop forbidden relations with others ... While one spouse is away, the other turns to chatting online, thus wasting time and falls into the trap of illicit affairs. This is an instrument that destroys family and violates Sharia (Islamic law)."
He based his opinion on the findings of a recent study released by the state-run National Centre for Criminological and Sociological Studies, which showed that one in five Egyptian men, who divorced their spouses, had affairs through the internet.
"Generalisation is against logic as anything can be good or bad depending on how one uses it," said Abdul Halim Qader, a Muslim scholar from Al Azhar.
"One can use a glass to drink water or alcohol. By the same vein, Facebook can be a useful or harmful tool of communication. It all depends on how you handle it," he told Gulf News. "Accordingly, one cannot pass a conclusive ban on it."
A recent torrent of controversial fatwas, popularised by an explosion of Islamic satellite TV stations, have triggered calls to restrict their issuance and punish those who are not qualified to make such edicts.
In May 2007, Al Azhar University, Egypt's leading governmental Islamic seminary sacked a professor after decreeing on a TV talk show that it is permissible for women to breastfeed their male colleagues at workplace as a way around segregation of women and men at work.
According to his fatwa, if a woman fed a male colleague "directly from her breast" at least five times, they would establish a family bond and thus would not violate Islamic Sharia by being together at work.

Irish connection in Dubai Hamas murder

Source: The Herald (Ireland) 5th February 2010
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Members of a hit squad who killed a top Hamas military commander used Irish passports to enter and leave Dubai, it's been claimed. The suspected Israeli hit team, including at least one woman, entered the United Arab Emirates using Irish documents, police authorities said.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh (50), held responsible by Israel for the abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, died in mysterious circumstances on January 20 in a Dubai hotel room. A Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman told the Herald today: "We are aware of the media reports and we are in contact with authorities locally to try and determine the truth of the reports." Al-Mabhouh was said to have been shocked with an electric weapon held to his legs and then suffocated or poisoned.
Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel for the killing, but Israeli news media claimed al-Mabhouh had many enemies and could have been killed by other Arab factions.
Up to seven people were said to have been involved in al-Mabhouh's killing, four of whom used Irish passports to enter Dubai and who later fled to a "European country" after the killing, according to police sources in Dubai.
Extradited
Declining to reveal their identities, an official said UAE security personnel were co-ordinating with Interpol to have them extradited.
Al-Mabhouh had been out for most of the day and returned to his room only after 9pm, police said. Pathologists were said to have determined the cause of death as asphyxiation, probably with a pillow found near the body and stained with blood. A room cleaner found his body the next day.
He had travelled to Dubai under another name. The victim was said to have been in charge of weapons procurement for Hamas and was on a mission in Dubai.
His brother said it was not the first attempt on his life. Six months ago, he was rushed to hospital in Dubai in a coma and treated for poisoning.
Mr Mabhouh's funeral was held in Damascus, where he had lived for 20 years with his wife and children.
In 1986, US officials, including Oliver North, reportedly used Irish passports to travel to Iran to offer missiles for hostages. The passports were said to be real but the identities written into the documents were fake.

Gulf Bike Festival, Dubai

Death in Dubai: whodunnit?

Source: Sydney Morning Herald. The writer, Jason Koutsoukis, is the SMH's Middle East correspondent.
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Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's death in Dubai had all the hallmarks of a hit by the Jewish state's spy agency, writes Jason Koutsoukis in Jerusalem.
The Hamas gunrunner Mahmoud al-Mabhouh arrived in Dubai on an Emirates flight from Syria at 3pm on January 19.
The Dubai police chief, Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, said Mabhouh checked into his room at the Al Bustan Rotana Hotel about 4pm. After depositing some documents in the hotel safe, Mabhouh went out for dinner, arriving back at his room by 9pm.
Police believe that shortly after, the usually security-conscious Mabhouh, who routinely blocked the doors to his hotel rooms with heavy furniture, opened his door to a woman.
Hours later Mabhouh, 49, was dead, believed poisoned by a mystery drug that at first led investigators to think he had suffered a heart attack.
Dubai police believe that the suspects, at least seven people carrying European passports, were out of the country before Mabhouh's body was discovered by hotel housekeeping staff at midday on January 20.
Later that day, Hamas officials in Damascus went so far as to put out a statement saying that Mabhouh had died of natural causes.
Nearly 10 days later, autopsy blood results returned from France suggested otherwise.
In the ever-suspicious world of Middle Eastern intrigue, Mabhouh's death had all the hallmarks of an assassination by Israel's national intelligence agency, Mossad.
Israel certainly did not lack motive.
In 1989, Mabhouh was part of a team of Palestinian resistance fighters who kidnapped and killed two Israeli soldiers stationed in the Gaza Strip.
Israel either killed or arrested most of those believed responsible for the deaths, but Mabhouh got away.
Eventually arriving in the Syrian capital, where Hamas had been allowed to establish its political headquarters, Mabhouh rose through the ranks to become the movement's liaison with its main weapons supplier, Tehran, responsible for co-ordinating the movement of weapons from Iran to Gaza.
In November the chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Major-General Amos Yadlin, appeared before the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee.
Yadlin said Hamas had just test-fired a rocket with a range of 60 kilometres, within range of Israel's business and financial capital, Tel Aviv, a rocket that he said had been supplied by Iran.
At Mabhouh's funeral in Damascus, 10 days after his death, the Hamas leader, Khaled Meshal, vowed revenge against Israel.
''You have assassinated an enormous man who bravely killed some of your soldiers, but this is a passing joy,'' Meshal said. ''I tell you, Zionists, do not be joyous. You killed him, but his sons will fight you.''
In September 1997, Meshal was himself the target of a bungled Mossad assassination attempt in the Jordanian capital of Amman that bears some resemblance to the way Mabhouh was killed. Meshal was getting out of his car when a man posing as a Canadian tourist approached him and squirted something in his ear.
At first, Meshal seemed fine. It was not until hours later, as he slipped in and out of consciousness, that doctors realised that he had been injected with a powerful painkiller that was shutting down his respiratory system.
Luckily for Meshal, his bodyguard had seized one of the attackers, whom local police were able to tie to Mossad. King Hussein of Jordan pressured Israel's then prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads Israel again today, to hand over the antidote.
Since the 1960s, when Mossad captured the leading Nazi Adolf Eichman, Israel has been accused by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hezbollah of involvement in the assassination of their organisations' leaders. Israel has never responded to the accusations.
''The one part of this story that suggests Israel had something to do with it is that Mabhouh was injected with something,'' says a former Israeli security operative who spoke to the Herald this week.
Asking that only his first name be used, Itamar, who is the managing director of a specialist security consultancy, said he neither would, nor could, confirm Israel's involvement.
''But the method is indicative. Very clean and quiet, and it enabled the team to exit the country well before the body was discovered,'' he said.
The parts of the story that did not add up, Itamar said, were suggestions that Mabhouh had been tortured with an electrical device, and then possibly strangled.
''I don't think a highly trained Israeli team would bother with this simply because it would take up too much time,'' Itamar said.
So if not Israel, who?
A report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week said many people across the Arab world wanted Mabhouh dead.
''Unofficially, Hamas has conceded that quite a few parties had an interest in taking out Mabhouh, who had become central to the Iran-Gaza Strip axis,'' the report said, without saying who those parties might be.
Whether or not Israel was involved, proving it will be near impossible. ''Dubai police say they have the identities of seven suspects,'' Itamar said.
''Why haven't they been released? They say they have hotel security footage of people entering Mabhouh's room. Why have we not seen it?
''The answer is because any information or photographs, or security footage they have, it doesn't tell us anything.''
SUSPECTED MOSSAD ASSASSINATIONS
Zuheir Mohsen: The Palestinian leader of a pro-Syrian faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation was shot in the head on July 15, 1979, as he returned to his flat in Cannes, France.
Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir, more commonly known as Abu Jihad: A high ranking member of the PLO faction Fatah, he was shot multiple times in front of his wife and children near his home in Tunisia.
Fathi Shikaki: Founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, he was shot multiple times on October 26, 1995 in front of the Diplomat Hotel in Sliema, Malta.
Imad Mughniyeh: Liaison officer between the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and its main ally, Iran, Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus on February 12, 2008, when the headrest of a car he was in exploded.
Mohammed Suleiman: A Syrian general and adviser to the President, Bashar al-Assad, and an intermediary between the Syrian government, Hezbollah and Iran. He was shot in the head on August 1, 2008, on a beach near the Syrian city of Tartous.

Expat workers pose threat to our existence - Minister

Source: Gulf News
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Speaking at the 15th Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR) annual conference in the capital, Dr Majeed Al Alawi, Bahrain's Minister of Labour, said, "No one would ever believe that the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, which employ 17 million foreign workers, have more than one million unemployed citizens."
Expatriates who come to the Gulf region for jobs on time-bound assignments never leave, and pose a threat to "our existence", a Bahraini minister warned on Tuesday.
Speaking at the 15th Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR) annual conference in the capital, Dr Majeed Al Alawi, Bahrain's Minister of Labour, said, "No one would ever believe that the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, which employ 17 million foreign workers, have more than one million unemployed citizens."
He added that "this influx of foreigners poses a threat to our existence," citing the situation in Singapore and the Maldives, "where foreign workers had been brought on temporary contracts and are now ruling these countries."
Dr Al Alawi, who is driving labour reforms in Bahrain, said the economic crisis has caused 50 per cent of projects in the Gulf to come to a halt. "But this has not been accompanied by a decline in the numbers of foreign workers.
"He who thinks this foreign manpower in the region comes for completing a project and leaves once it is completed is wrong. They come to stay. They buy and sell in their market created on our lands but accommodate no Arabs."
Dr Al Alawi, who was an opposition activist living in exile in London, returned home after the Bahraini ruler declared an amnesty for opposition figures in 1999.
On national identity, he said: "This way countries were lost and we, in the Gulf, are facing the same threat. If this is not happening now, it will happen in the next generation."
Another aspect of the crisis, he said is that the construction sector, which only contributes 8 per cent to the GDP, but accommodates 40 per cent of the foreign workforce.
Dr Al Alawi has advocated ending the sponsorship system and allowing free movement of expatriate workers between jobs in the GCC countries.

Dubai Police and Hamas refute Israeli claims

Source: Gulf News 3 Feb 2010
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Chief of Dubai Police and Hamas officials on Tuesday made light of an Israeli press report pointing fingers at Arab parties, and not Israelis, for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai two weeks ago.
"As usual, they are lying," Lt General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Chief of Dubai Police, told Gulf News when reached for his comment on a report published by the Haaretz newspaper.
Hamas officials, also, accused the Israeli media of deception and "covering their crime", a reference to the killing of senior Hamas military commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in his hotel room.
Claims
According to the report published by Haaretz, preliminary investigation conducted by Hamas "suggests that the assassination …. was likely carried out by agents of an Arab government, and not by Israel's Mossad spy agency".
The paper went on to claim: "A Hamas source told Haaretz on Monday that Al Mabhouh was wanted by authorities in both Jordan and Egypt, where he previously spent a year in prison."
Hamas officials, however, stressed that no official from the resistance group would give such statements to an Israeli newspaper. Osama Hamdan, Hamas spokesperson in Beirut, said: "This is fabrication… They [Israelis] are aiming to create problem."
Investigations ongoing
Musheer Al Masri, a Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, too, scoffed at the Israeli report. He explained that "investigations were not completed until this moment".
Investigations into the assassination, however, had come a long way and would hopefully be completed in the near future, he said.
Lt Gen Dahi, meanwhile, asserted that investigations into the case are being conducted "in authentic, technical and scientific way".
In a statement carried by WAM, he observed: "Anyone attempting to pass unseen behind our backs, and gets involved in matters that are considered as crimes by the law should protect their own backs."
He added: "This goes for whoever enters the country whether they are from Hamas, Mossad or any other intelligence service."
Dubai Police have not excluded any possible angle in the killing but indicated that the crime points to Mossad involvement.
Few details have emerged so far about the assassination as well as the purpose of Al Mabhouh's visit to Dubai. Haaretz said he had left the hotel "between 4.30 pm and 5.00 pm for a meeting" and that "Hamas claims to know the identity of his Dubai contact".
Hamas officials, however, remained tight-lipped.
"It is difficult for me to give information on this issue in particular," Hamdan replied to a question on Al Mabhouh's visit to Dubai.
"This is a sensitive issue, and is related to the [ongoing] investigations. We are keen that nothing will come out of our side that will distort them [investigations]," he explained.

Show me the money!

An article about one of several/many (depends who you ask) UK companies owed money in Dubai.  There are also similar reports related to the Burj Khalifa (Samsung) and the Dubai Metro (Mitsubishi).
Source: ArabianBusiness.com
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A UK engineering firm says it is owed $14.9m in Dubai.  Hyder Consulting said it was chasing $14.9m owed to it in Dubai. British engineering firm Hyder Consulting said on Tuesday that it was on track to beat profit forecasts in its full-year results, despite still being owed GBP9.4m ($14.9m) by Dubai clients.
The consultancy, which earns 70 percent of its revenue outside the UK, said it has scaled back its work in Dubai, but retained a strong order book in the broader Gulf region.
In an interim statement, the firm said it was “working hard to collect outstanding receivables in Dubai” and that its debt and work in progress now amounts to £9.4m across a number of clients.
A consortium of British firms last year claimed to be owed some $600m in outstanding payments from state-backed firms in Dubai.
The company, which advised on Dubai’s Burj Khalifa project, said it was poised to report full year revenue and operating profit “slightly ahead” of market expectations, after absorbing operating costs of around GBP3m.
Operating profits for the Middle East region were down on the previous period, the company said, a result of the decline in work in Dubai following the real estate crash.
In the Asia Pacific region, operating profits were substantially ahead of the previous period, bolstered by strong sales in the transport and property sectors, Hyder said.
However, results from Europe were well below the prior year, partly due to redundancy costs, the company said.