Archive for May 1st, 2021
Why this rich culture still untouchable to investigation?
Mind you that Ignorance(Jahiliya) period mentioned in Islamic rhetorics meant period of the people still Not believing in the monotheistic religions
Posted on April 2, 2010
- In: biographies/books | Book Review | cities/geography | death/ terminally ill/ massacres, genocide | Essays | Events/Cultural/Educational/Arts | Islam/Muslim/Islamic world | political Artical | religion/history | social articles | women
Islam calendar starts in 622 AC, the date the Prophet Muhammad fled to Medina (Yathreb) from Mecca.
The past or before date zero, or the culture and tradition of pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula, has been practically untouched by researchers and Islamic investigators. though countless wonderful poems of that period are published and even much richer than poems written after that period.
The period prior to 622 or year one of “Hegire” is lumped as the period of ignorance (Jahiliyya) by Muslims.
The Arab World still teaches pre-Islamic poetry and poets; it is mostly through these poems that the “Arabs” emulated the vocabulary and were acquainted with the very rich parts of pre-Islamic culture, traditions, and customs.
Fact is, you cannot understand Islam without the contexts that pressured the prophet Muhammad to compromise with the multitude of tribes allied to Byzantium and Persia empires.
We can claim that a curtain (hijab) has descended on pre-Islamic period simultaneously with the veil that descended on women after the Prophet death.
Thus, women were banished from political power and dealing with political affairs in public, two decades after Muhammad’s death. In these first 3 decades, the beloved youngest wife Aisha of Muhammad was the most learned in Islamic laws and the context in which they were voiced.
Aisha taught many generations of women on their Rights and how to dictate themselves the marriage contracts…and the society followed in these “liberal” new customs of free meetings and gathering, free discussions and poetic jousts…and newer fashions among the women.
And Aisha confronted many faked and false Hadiths (stories of the Prophet behavior and activities) until her death at the age of around 60.
This is no coincidence that Islam after Muhammad’s death had made the connection between pulling a curtain on the Jahiliyya period and the veiling of women in society; removing women from the public political landscape.
During Jahiliyya, each Arabic tribe worshiped idols made of wood or stone; there were many Jewish and “heretic” Christian-Jew sects (as labeled by Christian Orthodox Byzantine Empire) in Arabia and in Mecca.
The 3 most potent and powerful idols were female idols such as Al Uzza, Manat, and Al Lat. Although the tribes made their yearly pilgrimage to Mecca where the Kaaba contained over 360 idols, this pilgrimage was mainly for doing commerce and enjoying the weeklong festivities and debauchery.
The main pilgrimage (hajj) for the powerful tribes was to their preferred idols in other locations and towns.
The pragmatic nomads in the Arabian Peninsula and the neighboring deserts have created idols commensurate to their individualistic needs to vent their frustrations with periodic sacrifices, including “handicapped” babies of both genders.
During Muhammad’s time, baby girls were mostly the sacrificial human kind by poor families, especially in periods of great food distress.
Since violence, revenge, and frequent wars “razzias” against other clans were the norm for looting of animals, camels, and slave girls… powerful female goddesses were purchased and erected for pilgrimage as scapegoats to the tribes’ violent activities.
Thus, female goddesses represented violence, symbol that violence and revenge are the mark of female behavior and dark spirit.
For example, goddess Manat (death) was the oldest idol and was worshiped by the tribes of Aws and Khazraj that inhabited the region of Yathreb, later called Medina (the first Islam City-State). The original meaning of Manat is taken from a Semitic root meaning “counting of the days of life” that connote death (manya).
The temple of Manat was a natural rock (sakhra) on the coast between Mecca and Yathreb; the two tribes considered that the pilgrimage was not complete until they stopped at the temple of Manat where they shaved their head and offered sacrifices. Manat was a powerful goddess dictator (taghia) and swords were deposited in her temple.
The Prophet gave his nephew Ali bin Abi Taleb the two swords in the temple after it was demolished; one of the sword was called Zulfiqar.
Representatives of the tribes of Aws and Khazradj had extended permission to Muhammad, after three years of negotiation, to settle in Yathreb with his converts after the tribes of Mecca decided to chase them out.
The other female goddess was Al Lat and was worshiped in Taif, a region on the eastern shores facing Persia. The main tribe of Taif, the Banu Thaqif, erected square walls around the rock of Al Lat. Most desert tribes, all the way to Palmyra in northern Syria, worshiped this goddess.
Al Lat had all the attributes of goddess Athena wearing battle helmet, breastplate, armor, and holding a lance. Banu Thaqif was one of the latest tribes to submit to Allah because Muhammad failed at several expeditions to enter Taif.
Actually, it was Taif that was the preferred destination to Muhammad when he decided to flee Mecca but he was chased out of Taif after his failed negotiation to settle there.
The third most powerful “taghia” goddess was Al Uzza (dignity, physical force and power); the most powerful tribe of Quraich in Mecca consecrated her.
Al Uzza was the most violent divine warrior and was represented in the form of a tree or three acacias trees and located way up north in Nakhla as Shamiya on the way to Iraq’s caravans.
The temple of Al Uzza was equipped with a slaughtering alter (manhar) called “ghabghab”. General Khaled bin Al Walid was ordered to destroy the temple of Al Uzza in 630 after Muhammad entered Mecca peacefully as the victor.
General Al Walid was the Quraish leader who defeated Muhammad’s troops in the battle of Uhud; this failed campaign of the Prophet generated 3 years of civil unrest in the City-State of Medina and most of the verses that abridged female equal rights that were previously gained in the first four years.
Note: About ten years after Muhammad’s death, the Arabic Islamic Empire had extended vastly.
The governor Abu Mussa al Ach3ari wrote to the second caliph Omar bin Al Khattab: “You sent me several letters that were not dated.” Omar assembled a council to set up a calendar.
A few opted to using the Byzantium calendar, others the Persian calendar, but the majority recognized that a calendar means power and wanted an Arabic/Islamic calendar.
The discussions led to adopting the date of the Prophet’s immigration to Medina in 622 AC as Date Zero. Omar had said: “this is the year that divided truth from falsehood.”
Islam lunar calendar is of 354 days and started with the month of “Muharram”; the pre-Islamic particular month that prohibited wars and revenge among clans.
In pre-Islam, the tribes used to add one month on the third year for calibration with their commercial dealings. Muhammad forbid to add this month; thus, the Islamic calendar is one year ahead for every 33 Christian years since the year 622.
Reviewing Private properties concept
Posted by: adonis49 on: May 1, 2021
Can Capitalism be reformed? Part 2
Posted on September 25, 2010
This part will discuss ownership of private land properties in capitalist systems and the practical political and legal reforms needed if change is to be effective.
In the first part I wrote:
One: Capitalism is based on four foundations:
1. Private property of means of production;
2. free exchange (products, services…);
3. open free market for commerce; and
4. availability of a vast pool of people willing to work for slave salary.
The main driving force is that the owner of the means of production (the bank, the partners, the shareholder, or the family) should earn as much as the total salary that all workers receive in the business.
Consequently, an employee is hired when the owner can generate profit, at least as equal to the total salary of the hired worker.
Two: The foundations of capitalism have proven Not to function except within strong State institutions, which are almost totally controlled by the capitalist elite classes, especially the Old Money classes that generated the wealth in previous slave working system.
The judicial system obeys laws decreed by parliaments that are dominated by the richest and political “aristocracy” classes, and the executive branch is intrinsically dominated by these classes, directly and indirectly.
This whole political system is called “capitalist democracy” where people have the illusion of electing their representatives for a duration.
After election, people are to behave as spectators: Any serious disturbances are crushed in the name of Law and Order.
Three: The previous article described Communist economic systems (Russia and China) and then, capitalism in Western European social-democratic States.
Four: The one foundation that all economic systems of developed States share is free global trade; which means the liberty to exploiting the developing countries in natural resources and cheap labor.
The developed States are allowed to subsidize their agriculture, but the developing nations are not to do it and they cannot, even if they witness the need to do it .
The developed States are to flood the markets of developing countries with affordable products with No “legal rights” for the developing nations to increasing import taxes in order to safeguarding their own meager means of productions.
The developed States (colonial powers) can find financial resources at low-interest rates (at 3%, even if they accumulated far higher sovereign debts than the poorer States), but not the developing nations( at least over 7% interest rates on loans
In return for blatant exploitation, the developed States agree “voluntarily” to setting aside a small fraction of their GNP to developing the infrastructures in the poorer States; mainly, self-serving their interests to improving and facilitating exploitation and transport of raw materials efficiently.
Five: All “international” institutions such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Commerce Trades are dominated by the US, China, and a few European States. Thus, transparency and access to timely information and intelligence are practically denied the developing nations.
Six: Financial institutions (banks, insurance companies…) are the real owner of means of production in capitalist systems. They own 30% of the total wealth of a nation and represent only 1% of the population. This is NOT acceptable.
Fact is, financial institutions generate three times more money than the combined tax collected by the government. This is NOT acceptable.
Any reforms should first target the level of profit that financial institutions are permitted to generate. “Effective” interest rates should be lowered accordingly and tougher regulations imposed of these behemoths.
Small community banks with excellent transparency in decision process and lending policies should be the norm.
The current status of multinational financial institutions is generating abnormal profit with no risks whatsoever.
The aristocratic political family class (representing less than 10% of the population and hoarding more than 20% of the nation’s wealth or what is called “Old Money”) is the main beneficiary of the current capitalist system dominated by the financial barons.
Seven: If capitalism needs salaried people, it must secure the fundamental right to work, a wide range of jobs that satisfy varied opportunity, access to affordable education, safe workplace, universal health coverage, caring for the elderly, and justice for people who worked most of their life for a comfortable retreat.
Has capitalism satisfied the basic needs of its workforce?
Eight: States should start taxing according to the number of employees hired and net revenue (not based on financial sheet profit): These two criteria are the most objective representative of net profit and easy to investigate.
This gimmick of taxing on “net profit” is an accounting fraud that is not objective or fair.
Companies relocating their factories or main business for cheaper workers must be taxed according to the original “national wages” of the workers.
Companies substituting workers for robots should be taxed according to the number of workers substituted.
States will be able to subsidize unemployed people until they find jobs and be imaginative enough to opening up newer job opportunities.
Nine: There is a trend for owners with strong ethics and moral values to including employees as shareholders and participating in management decisions: These companies are doing very well and not suffering from financial crashes.
Institutions and companies for profit are amoral and do not deal in ethical conducts. Ethics and morality are individual characteristics: the more such individuals gather in groups to reclaim fairness and justice in actions the more institutions will be reminded of what is best for society.
Land and private property are the basis for the emergence of the “bourgeois and merchant” classes and which initiated the major leap forward into creating wealth.
This system of private ownership lead to the abolition of feudalism and absolute monarchical powers that were backed by the clergy.
The structure of private ownership of land and properties materially weakened nobility and clergy and eventually displaced them.
Private ownership of land and properties are Not currently economically essential for capitalist system to function properly: Enterprises can lease properties and resume their business as usual.
It is the political ideology behind private properties that is the culprit. Private property ownership remains as a reminder that aristocracy image of power must not vanish in order to retain political power in “democratic” political system.
Ownership of land and real estates must be legally abolished in order to have a serious chance for political reforms. Land should be owned by communities and regulated by community councils.
Land and real estates should only be leased and never owned by individuals or enterprises. Why?
First, inheritance of private real estates and money is the main reason for the existence of aristocratic lineage in wealth and politics. The inheritance mentality encourages sustaining ancient beliefs that the aristocratic class is better fit to rule, guide, and lead simply because this class created the system that perpetuates its interests and egoistic power.
Second, land and properties leasing laws prevent inheritance problems and its successions of hate, suffering, and legal procedures.
Land and real estates should be leased for a period No longer than 30 years and never renewed for any member of the family in order to dissuade political inheritance of images and statuses.
Leases can be extended for three years under particular circumstances. For example, father, mother, and grandparents have the right to die in their property and not experience humiliation and exacerbation at old age. I guess children will make sure that their folks remain at home and not be sent to specialized rest homes in order to enjoying a free location.
Third, leases on unused properties or uninhabited could be canceled. Consequently, homes will be properly maintained and the homeless people will have the availability of shelter in unoccupied properties. Families with crippled or handicapped children will have priority for occupying uninhabited properties.
Fourth, leased land and real estates offer greater opportunities for the newer generations to different life-style in habitat, sustainable energy, and better community life.
Fifth, enterprises may be allowed to renew the lease for specific duration as long as the nature of the business did not change or will not change after the renewal. For example, transforming from a manufacturer to real estates development is Not acceptable.
The third part of this series of articles will develop on election processes and laws reforms that would shift the odds for the middle class and lower classes to acceded to legislative and executive positions.
Note: You may read about the Real Estates bubble that won’t burst and is converging to another financial crisis in https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2010/10/24/obama-praying-mantra-next-f-crash-not-on-my-watch/
Adonis Diaries 