So, who said that youth didn’t have any talent? 
Congratulations and glad tidings to everyone – Ramadhan Mubarak, Ramadhan Kareem! May Allah bless this wonderful month for us, allow us all to get closer to Him, and let us not leave it except that we have been forgiven for our many sins, Ameen!
September 12, 2007 at 10:37 pm
ameeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!
and assalamu alaikum!
Ramadhan Mubarak to you and all here!
September 12, 2007 at 11:00 pm
nice. who made that?
September 13, 2007 at 12:12 am
Ameen!!!
September 13, 2007 at 10:37 am
Ramadan Mubarak to everyone.
September 13, 2007 at 11:30 am
Ramadhan Mubarak to Everyone…
September 13, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Ramadan 1428 / 2007
To our Muslim brothers and sisters everywhere:
All praise and thanks be to the one God whom we all worship, who has called you to worship Him after the manner of al-Islam, and us to worship Him according to the gospel of Jesus, whom both faith traditions hail as the Messiah: it is our deep wish that God strengthen you in your devotion to God, your love of God, and your trust in God during this month of Ramadan, and that everything that you do for His sake may be pleasing to Him.
We have joined you in keeping the fast of Ramadan this year, as a freewill offering to God accompanying our prayer for peace, justice, and a spirit of love to grow among the peoples of the Abrahamic religions. It is our desire that all over the world, if God so wills, Muslim, Jew and Christian can learn to stand together in brotherhood in the sight of their Creator, and encourage one another in faithfulness and good deeds. But we are mourning many of the deeds of our government and our people, as they continue to involve themselves in the affairs of Islamic peoples, and the lives of Muslim detainees held at United States facilities, without sufficiently caring or understanding what they are doing to the people whose lives they affect. To our sorrow, we see many American Christians trusting, supporting, and following policy-makers whose guiding principle seems to be “let us do evil, that good may come of it,” as if they did not know that our own scripture explicitly condemns it (Romans 3:8). In repenting our own complicity in this, we hope to lead our brother and sister Christians into repentance.
Our power to make the world’s leaders humble themselves, question their own behavior, and let their hearts be turned, seems very small. And yet we draw hope from our certainty that we are listened to by the true Ruler of this world, the Turner of Hearts, who sees everything and holds all power. This month we curb our natural appetites during daylight hours to be more mindful of the One to whom we must return, the Highest, our Helper. We perceive, sadly, that many American Christians lack understanding of what it means to be a Muslim. How better to change that than for some of us to join the Muslim world in its Ramadan fast? We also hope that such self-restraint as we gain from the fast might help restore a spirit of self-restraint to the worldly culture of the industrialized nations, in however small a way, for on our learning self-restraint now seems to depend the saving of the world from ruin.
Advised by Jesus himself to fast privately and without open display (Matthew 6:16-18), we make ourselves available for responses to this communication but without identifying ourselves individually by name. May God comfort you, sustain you in hope, and bestow on you every blessing.
Ramadan Fasters of Christ
christsfasters@aol.com
September 13, 2007 at 2:49 pm
RAMADAN MUBARAK TO ALL.
September 14, 2007 at 8:13 pm
I googled “ramadan Fasters of Christ” and found this website:
http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news1104/ramadan.html
It pissed me off
September 14, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Concentrate your energy on Ibaadah. Leave everything to Allah (swt); He is the giver of justice and hardship; and all will be judged by Him in this World and in the hereafter.
Pray for the Ummah, your family and yourself.
May Allah (swt) protect and bless the Ummah during this sacred Month and beyond.
Ameen.
September 15, 2007 at 2:13 am
strange we never see swear words on the blog until ramadan….
September 16, 2007 at 12:46 pm
AS
When is the PG website going to be up and running?
September 17, 2007 at 6:32 pm
Ameen.. Very interesting Caricature.. May God help us to keep who we are in ramadan, during year too..
September 17, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Wa ‘alaykum salam wa rahmatullah
Hopefully the PG site and forum will be ready for after Ramadhan insha’allah.
AE
September 18, 2007 at 1:10 pm
How Mecca Uprising Helped
Give Birth to al Qaeda
New Book Documents U.S. Participation
In 1979 Mosque Siege
September 18, 2007; Page A8
The wave of Islamist violence that culminated in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks can be traced to a sunny November morning almost 28 years ago. Then, hundreds of Islamist radicals from several countries seized at gunpoint Islam’s holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque of Mecca, with nearly 100,000 pilgrims inside.
This first-ever operation of global jihad — an inspiration to al Qaeda’s future outrages — sought to spark a world-wide clash of civilizations and restore the glory of Islam. As the rebels turned the mosque’s minarets into sniper nests, Saudi Arabia’s shaken royal family imposed a near-total news blackout, and sent in the troops.
The siege lasted two weeks. Crushing the rebels, who were led by Saudi preacher Juhayman al Uteybi, required the use of artillery, heavy armor and poison gas — as well as assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency and French commandos. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people paid with their lives.
Osama bin Laden — whose family had constructed much of the mosque — has cited the bloodbath as a major reason for turning against the House of Saud. A new book by Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov tells the story of this drama, and of the world-wide upheaval it presaged.
The excerpt below shows how Americans were involved from the first days of the crisis — on both sides of the barricades.
When the shooting began at dawn on Nov. 20, 1979, American diplomats stationed in Jiddah picked up the first signs of trouble from anxious Danish and British legations. The European diplomats had found themselves unable to communicate with their capitals: Saudi Arabia’s King Khaled, eager to keep the news of unthinkable violence in the sacred mosque secret, had just cut off all of Saudi Arabia’s phone links with the outside world.
Intrigued, political officer Mark Hambley, a rare Arabic speaker among American diplomats in Saudi Arabia, began making inquiries of his own. Saudi contacts in a position to know were either impossible to track down or proffered highly implausible answers. “There’s nothing going on in Mecca,” said one. “It’s just a training exercise,” assured another. “There is a typhoid outbreak,” went the most imaginative reply.
In different circumstances, an American diplomat or CIA agent would have hopped into a car and driven to the scene of reported unrest, just one hour’s ride away. But, though tantalizingly close, Mecca is a forbidden ground for non-Muslims. And, in 1979, neither the CIA station nor the American embassy in Saudi Arabia employed any Muslims who possessed the required security clearances and could be entrusted with such a mission.
MORE
• See the declassified documents cited in the excerpt.As a frustrated Mr. Hambley kept scouring for tidbits of news from the holy city, his phone rang. The man on the other end of the line had an unfamiliar voice, and he spoke with an American accent. “I know you, you don’t know me,” he said. “I have information of great interest.”
Whatever he knew was too sensitive to be discussed on an open phone line probably tapped by Saudi intelligence. The caller, however, was ready to meet a short time later, at Jiddah’s Sands Hotel. Mr. Hambley rushed to meet him.
Once the diplomat entered the lobby, the mystery caller started out by establishing his bona fides — as Mr. Hambley’s distant cousin.
After a stint flying UH-1 “Huey” choppers in Vietnam, the cousin — drawn by Saudi Arabia’s lucrative expatriate pay — had moved to the kingdom and now piloted the heavy twin-rotor Chinook helicopters for the Saudi Civil Defense. He had been told through the family grapevine that Mr. Hambley was also posted in the kingdom. Now, he told the startled diplomat, it seemed like a good time to establish contact.
He and fellow American pilots of the Civil Defense had been roused that morning at 6:30, at the helicopter wing’s Jiddah base. The urgent order was to fly to Mecca and to pick up two Saudi intelligence officers for a reconnaissance sortie. The Chinook reached the Grand Mosque by 9 a.m., the pilot said. The shrine clearly seemed to be under control of a rebel group. On the second overflight at around 11:45 a.m., as the Chinook approached the northeast corner of the mosque, three rifle shots were fired by the rebels — who would improve their aim with every such overflight. The aircraft surged skyward, performing evasive maneuvers.
The pilot had brought several photographs from the battle scene. This was evidently not a typhoid outbreak, Mr. Hambley realized. He held in his hands a piece of intelligence that would provide American policy makers with reliable information about the drama at Islam’s holiest shrine. The pilot, who would repeatedly come under fire and ferry wounded troops in following days, agreed to provide daily updates that were forwarded to Washington through classified cables.
* * *
What American pilots flying in Mecca didn’t know at the time is that the gunmen who fired at them from below included America’s own citizens, converted to a violent brand of uncompromising Islam.
Saudi Arabia has been reaching out to the African-American community ever since Malcolm X went on a hajj to Mecca in 1964, abandoning the Nation of Islam for more mainstream Muslim faith. In the late 1970s, hundreds of black radicals — including some former Black Panthers — flocked to Saudi-funded Islamic academies in the U.S., and in the kingdom itself. A handful followed Juhayman al Uteybi into the Grand Mosque in November 1979, putting to use the skills of urban guerrilla warfare that they had learned at home.
Almost a week into the battle for the Grand Mosque, the Saudi army’s American-made M-113 armored-personnel carriers pushed deeper and deeper into the shrine. That’s when one of the African-American converts remembered a recipe from “The Anarchist Cookbook,” fellow rebels recall. Pilgrims had abandoned hundreds of glass bottles by the holy spring of Zam Zam under the mosque. The American convert taught how to turn them into Molotov cocktails.
As one of the Saudi M-113s tried to drive in through blasted-out gates, its antenna got stuck in the frame. Rebels who lurked nearby seized their opportunity. Thrusting rolled carpets into the threads of the armored-personnel carrier, they locked the vehicle in place. Then, as fellow rebels recall, one of the Americans jumped on the roof. Igniting the fuse, he opened the hatch and threw a flaming Molotov cocktail inside. Seconds later, the insides of the APC turned into a blazing oven: The unlucky crew was carbonized in a flash of fire. Gunmen rejoiced with a powerful cry of “Allahu Akbar.”
The American Embassy became aware of such participation in the Mecca uprising by at least two African-American converts only on Dec. 8, 1979, four days after Saudi security forces finally overran the sacred compound. This embarrassing information had been kept under wraps by the American and Saudi governments alike.
On Dec. 30, 1979, U.S. Ambassador John C. West met with Interior Minister Prince Nayef to discuss American security help in the Mecca affair and to inquire about the fate of the two Americans. One of them, Prince Nayef replied according to Mr. West’s diary, was “definitely a terrorist” — and no longer alive. The second American was still under investigation. “I believe that means a head will be lopped, but that’s the best we can do,” Ambassador West jotted down dryly.
At a follow-up meeting with the American ambassador, on Jan. 19, 1980, Prince Nayef — who still serves as Saudi Arabia’s interior minister today — mentioned again that the second American suspect remained in custody. Ambassador West was surprised. “I thought he had been hanged last week,” the envoy wrote that day, in his diary’s last entry on the issue.
In fact, most of the adult male rebels caught in the mosque were executed, either in public beheadings in January 1980, or in secret in following months. But, according to American officials deployed in Saudi Arabia at the time, the second prisoner was spared the executioner’s sword. After a debriefing by U.S. officials, he was allowed to return home to the U.S., a free citizen once again. After all, one former diplomat recalls, he had broken no U.S. law.
• Adapted from “The Siege of Mecca,” by Yaroslav Trofimov. Copyright 2007, by Mr. Trofimov. Published by Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc. Used by permission.
September 19, 2007 at 4:51 am
Ramadhan Mubarak!!!