Ka’b bin Malik (radi Allahu anhu) reported: “I saw the Messenger of Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) licking his three fingers after eating.” [Sahih Muslim, #5296]

Thus, the best way of eating is that shown by the Messenger of Allah (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) which was eating with his three fingers.

Here is also the affirmation of licking one’s fingers after finishing a meal, and not during it. Another hadith encouraging licking one’s fingers states: “You do not know in which portion the blessing lies.” [Sahih Muslim, #5300] Therefore, to obtain the full benefit from the meal we should lick our fingers after the last morsel.

Also when eating, it if from the Sunnah to eat with the right hand for the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “If one of you eats, he should eat with his right hand. And if he drinks something, he should drink with his right hand. For indeed, Satan eats and drinks with his left hand.” [Sahîh Muslim (2020)]

Praise be to Allah.

Should this occasion truly be celebrated? This is a question that arises every single year upon the advent of the Islamic month of Rabi' al-awwal. The almost self-evident counter question here would be, did the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) himself ever celebrate his birthday? Did his Companions (may Allah be pleased with them all) ever celebrate it? Are there any reports of this Ummah’s pious predecessors (the Salaf) ever having celebrated it? The answer is an obvious and resounding NO, thus providing a huge problem for those who wish to take this day as a day of ‘Eid alongside the two ‘Eids as legislated in the pure prophetic Sunnah.

There is nothing in the Quran to say that we should celebrate the Mawlid or birthday of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him). The Prophet himself (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) did not do this or command anyone to do it, either during his lifetime or after his death. Indeed, he told them not to exaggerate about him as the Christians had exaggerated about Jesus (upon whom be peace). He (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “Do not exaggerate about me as the Christians exaggerated about the son of Maryam. I am only a slave, so say, ‘The slave of Allah and His Messenger.’” (Reported by al-Bukhaari).

What has been reported is that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) made the day of his birth a day of worship, which is different to celebration. He was asked about fasting on Mondays, and he said: “That is the day on which I was born and the day on which I was entrusted with the Mission or when I was first given Revelation.” (Reported by Muslim, al-Nisaa’i and Abu Dawood).

Moreover, we know that the Sahabah (may Allah be pleased with them) were the people who loved the Prophet most.

Was it reported that Abu Bakr, who was the closest of people to him and the one who loved him the most, celebrated the birthday of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)?

Was it reported that ‘Umar, who ruled for twelve years, or ‘Uthmaan, did this?

Was it reported that ‘Ali, his relative and foster son, did this?

Was it reported that any of the Sahabah did this?

No, by Allah! Is it because they were not aware of its importance, or did they not truly love the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)? No one would say such a thing except one who has gone astray and is leading others astray.

Did any of the imaams – Abu Haneefah, Maalik, al-Shaafi’i, Ahmad, al-Hasan al-Basri, Ibn Seereen – do this or command others to do it or say that it was good?

By Allah, no!

It was not even mentioned during the first and best three centuries. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said in a saheeh hadeeth: “The best of mankind are my generation (or my century), then those who come after them, then those who come after them. Then there will come a people who will not care if their testimony comes before their oath or vice versa (i.e., they will not take such matter seriously).” (Reported by al-Bukhaari, Muslim and al-Tirmidhi).

The celebration of the Prophet’s birthday appeared many centuries later, when many of the features of true religion had vanished and bid’ah had become widespread.

Thus this celebration became a sign of one’s love for the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)? But can it be possible that the Sahabah, the Imaams and the people of the best three centuries were unaware of it, and it was only those who came later who were aware of its importance?!

What the Quran tells us is that love of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is demonstrated by following the guidance he brought. Allah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“Say (O Muhammad): ‘If you (really) love Allah, then follow me, Allah will love you and forgive you your sins. And Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

Say: ‘Obey Allah and the Messenger.’ But if they turn away, then Allah does not like the disbelievers.” [Surah Ali ‘Imran 3:31-32]

The first aayah explains that love is just a claim, but the proof of sincerity is following what the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) brought. The second aayah reaffirms the importance and necessity of obeying Allah and His Messenger. Hence Allah ended the aayah with a very stern warning in which those who refuse to obey are described as kaafirs, and Allah does not love the disbelievers.

We ask Allah to keep us safe from that. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) told us of the danger of not obeying him, and the danger of adding to what he brought. The celebration of Mawlid or his birthday is indeed an addition to what he brought – as all the scholars agree. He  (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “The best of speech is the Book of Allah, and the best of guidance is the guidance of Muhammad. The most evil of things are those which are newly-invented (in religion), and every innovation is a going astray.” (Reported by Muslim and al-Nisaa’i).

We ask Allah to protect us from bid’ah and to bless us by helping us to follow. Allah knows best. May Allah bless our Prophet Muhammad.

Photo Courtesy : http://www.islamicposters.co.uk/

“We were of the most disgraced of people, and Allah granted us honor with this Islam. Now, whenever we seek honor in other than that which Allah honored us with, Allah shall disgrace us (once again).”  — ‘Umar b. al-Khattab

“Black people in America can never be Muslim,” he said to me as I stood next to his desk. I stared at my teacher with an expression that must have conveyed very little of what I felt right then. I didn’t know what to say. I studied his eyes, slightly enlarged by the thick glasses he wore. The deep olive of his Arab complexion was nearly the same as my American brown. We even shared the same hair texture—though my hair was covered right then.

But, even so, to an outsider looking in, he could have easily been my father. And given that he was the only Muslim teacher I had at the high school, I should have at least shared with him the commonality of “brother and sister” in Islam. But that, I knew, was impossible to this man. He was Arab. I was American—and “Black” at that. He wanted to make sure I understood this impossibility. I did.

I continued standing where I was only because I was waiting for my teacher to mention the reason he had called me to his desk. The other students were at their seats working, some looking up curiously every now and then, wondering what it was our teacher wanted from me. Naturally, like most students would, they imagined I’d gotten myself in trouble somehow, and they didn’t want to miss the action. I waited only because I didn’t want to miss his point.

The teacher’s matter-of-fact expression as he blinked back at me confused me only momentarily. I hesitated for only a second after the realization, mostly out of respect, and I made an effort not to display disdain for my elder as I excused myself and returned to my seat. But it was impossible for me to concentrate after that. I was genuinely perplexed.

…

“In life,” my father told us once, “you’ll meet many people who’ll say al-salamu ‘alaykum, but they’re not really Muslim.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t mean they’re not Muslims to Allah. I mean they’re not living Islam. They have no idea what this religion means.”

I thought of my Arab teacher.

“Beauty is in carrying yourself like a Muslim,” my parents would say. “Beauty is in living Islam.”

…

I stood browsing the shelves of the modest store—“the Sooq”—adjacent to the prayer area of the Islamic center I liked to attend in suburban Washington, D.C. I did a double take before picking up the small box. I stared at it a moment longer, realizing my eyes hadn’t been mistaken at all. The skin-bleaching cream—manufactured in a Muslim country—did indeed say what I thought it said.

The solution to pollution.

Next to this tagline was the image of two faces, one brown (incidentally very close to my own skin tone) and the other white—the “before” and “after” of this product. Disgusted, I returned the box to the shelf and left.

…

“And here we have a black woman,” the Muslim lecturer told the audience, his voice rising to reflect the sincerity of his message as he shared the famous hadith about the black woman afflicted with seizures, a story he hoped would encourage his Muslim sisters to take ḥijāb more seriously, “a black woman who wanted to guard her modesty. So she asked the Prophet, ṣallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, to invoke Allah so that she wouldn’t become uncovered. Sisters, this was a black woman…”

…

“My father would never let me marry a Black man,” my friend from Trinidad told me as we chatted one day. She laughed and shook her head. I couldn’t help noticing that her skin was a much richer brown than my own. “He told me, ‘You can marry whoever you want, but don’t ever marry a Black man.’”

…

“I must admit,” a sister from Somalia said after meeting me for the first time. We were at a book event for my novels held at an Islamic convention. “I’m really surprised you’re Black.” As we talked, she apologized for her prejudice: She had been unable to fathom that such “well-written” books could come from a Black American. Later at the same convention, a fellow American said something similar—but in different words. “And she’s really intelligent,” he said as he introduced me to his wife. His voice was between disbelief and awe. I smiled as I reached out to shake the hand of a woman who studied me with a sense of uncertainty that strangely mirrored her husband’s shock at my brain’s capacity. I read the question in her eyes. Really? Are you sure?

I could say that these experiences scarred me for life, that I went home in tears, and that these people’s bigotry incited within me that horrible inferiority complex due to my “Blackness” and my utter inability to be accepted not only by “White America” but also by the “real” Muslims of the world.

But I won’t. That would be dishonest. Truth is, I felt sorry for these people.

When I was still in high school, I would come home and recount such stories to my younger sister, and like myself at the time, she would become perplexed. And to be really honest, we would even laugh at times—not with the quiet, hesitant giggle most appropriate for our “lowly” status, but with the thunderous throw-your-head-back laugh that makes your stomach hurt and tears sting your eyes. This was how we dealt with much of the bigotry we witnessed in life.

Perhaps I am an exception. I can’t be sure. But I didn’t reach adulthood thinking I was less than anyone else. I didn’t shrink in the face of those deemed above me—whether Muslim or non-Muslim—and demurely accept their “superior” status. Quite frankly, I didn’t know they had one. Yes, I knew about those suffering from a tragic sense of insecurity, which made it necessary for them to release “statistics” about others’ intellectual abilities (or lack thereof) or call a student to their desk to say she couldn’t be Muslim.

Or to believe, perhaps, that those who aren’t Black are actually inferior. But, alhamdulillah, I didn’t go through any of that.

Yes, in childhood, I was mistreated—by non-Muslims mostly due to my Islam and brown skin and by Muslims mostly due to my “lack of Islam” because of my brown skin. And yes, it hurt. And yes, I cried from time to time. And no, I didn’t always feel confident in my Muslim headscarf and brown skin. And, naturally, I didn’t reach adulthood without insecurities (if such a thing is possible).

But, by Allah’s mercy, I also didn’t reach adulthood insecure. My self-image and self-esteem centered around one thing: my Islam. So when I picked up a “Muslim” magazine and happened upon the matrimonial section, it didn’t even occur to me that I should feel slighted or offended when I read dozens of ads by men looking for “fair” wives. I had a good laugh. And my sister did too.

…

“I’m Whiter than You”

I flipped back to the page of Al-Jumuah Magazine I had just seen. For a moment I just stared at the title. I couldn’t imagine what the article would be about. If there was a turning point in my youthful naivete, reading this article was probably it—though I was a wife and mother at the time I came across this piece.

To the author’s credit, the article was well-written and reflective. She was a White American who had accepted Islam and, due to her (apparently) being the recipient of superfluous praise for her appearance, she wished to let us know the downside of having white skin—sunburns and the like.

What was life-changing about this for me was two-fold: that the author had been inspired to write it in the first place and, what’s more, that a reputable Muslim magazine had seen value in printing it.

I sat still for quite some time. I wasn’t hurt. I wasn’t indignant. I was… confounded.

And concerned.

…

When I was in high school, a local radio show held a citywide essay contest, and contestants were to write about the hero in their lives. The winning piece would be read live from the Indianapolis radio station and broadcast for all the city to hear. As I contemplated whom I would write about, many personalities crossed my mind. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks… But in the end, I chose my father. And, to my surprise, I won.

I stood before the microphone as the radio host looked on, and I shared with the world my honest testimony of what I felt right then— that my father was my hero in life. It wasn’t because he was a well-known community activist or because I’d grown accustomed to seeing his name in the newspaper or his face on television. It wasn’t even because he was the spiritual advisor to the famous boxer Mike Tyson. It was because, despite the many obstacles he faced in life and despite his being a rather ordinary man, he managed to instill in me, as well as my siblings, a love for the lives that Allah gave us. And never once did he make me or my siblings believe that our worth (or beauty) could be measured by— or limited to— our bodies or skin.

In a word, he taught us… truth. Today, I find it truly heartbreaking that of the more than one billion Muslims in the world, so few of them could say the same of their parents.

…

Unfortunately, in today’s world, Muslims — whether “fair” or “dark”, Arab or non-Arab, Black or White — seek honor in lifestyles and values that are far removed from Islam.

“Is it honor you seek among them? Nay, all honor is with Allah.” [Quran (Surah Al-Nisa’, 4:139)]

While in truth, we should seek honor in only one lifestyle:

That of being slaves.

Not to our country, skin color, tribe, or family name. And not even to our “victim status” as oppressed people of the world.

But to Allah, our Creator. Who has given us Islam.

If we don’t seek honor through this religion, we will continue to live in humiliation and make utter fools of ourselves. Not only through revealing our tragic colonial mentality in racist comments, ridiculous matrimonial ads, and bizarre articles in magazines. But through our sullied souls when we die and meet Allah.

For to our Creator, there is but one measure of human beauty and worth: Being Allah’s slaves on earth. And these superior slaves are not distinguished due to their bodies or skin. But due to their pure hearts and righteous deeds…

And through having in their breasts not even a grain of pride when they are buried in the dirt from which they were created.

So as we take pride in the color (or lack thereof) of our fleshy dirt,

Tell me, O child of Adam…

Are you amongst these honored slaves?

[Umm Zakiyyah is the internationally acclaimed author of the If I Should Speak trilogy and the novels Realities of Submission and Hearts We Lost. To learn more about the author, visit themuslimauthor.com or join her Facebook page.]

Commentary from Riyadh as Saliheen: “Water should be drunk in three breaths, that is one should breathe three times outside the drinking vessel one is drinking from. This habit has a salutary impact one one’s character and helps one avoid doing things in haste.”

Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم said: “Do not drink in one gulp like a camel, but in two or three (gulps). Mention the Name of Allah (i.e. say Bismillah) when you start drinking and praise Him (i.e. say alhamdolillah) after you have finished (drinking).” [at-Tirmidhi]

Commentary: This hadith too, prohibits us from drinking water in a single breath. It is preferable to say Bismillah everytime we drink and alhamdolillah everytime we stop drinking.

It’s always a joy when Allah blesses you with a child. Children bring great happiness, but also trials and responsibilities. One of the very first duties you have toward your new child, besides physical care and love, is to give your child a meaningful Muslim name.

It’s narrated from Abu Darda’ (may Allah be pleased with him) that The Prophet (peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) said: “On the Day of Resurrection you will be called by your names and by your father’s names, so give yourselves good names.” [Abu Dawud: Book 41, Hadith 4930]

When choosing a name for a boy, Muslims have several choices. It is recommended to name a boy in a way that indicates service to God, by using ‘Abd in front of one of God’s Names. Other possibilities include the names of Prophets (peace and blessing of Allah be upon them), names of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad (may Allah be pleased with them), or other male names which have a good meaning. There are also some categories of names which are prohibited to use for Muslim children.

It’s narrated from Abu Wahb al-Jushami (may Allah be pleased with him) that The Prophet (peace and blessing of Allah be upon him) said: “Call yourselves by the names of the Prophets. The names dearest to Allah are Abdullah and AbdurRahman, the truest are Harith and Hammam, and the worst are Harb and Murrah.” [Abu Dawud: Book 41, Hadith 4932]

Note:
* Abdullah means Servant of Allah
* AbdurRahman means Servant of the Beneficent
* Harith means Ploughman, cultivator
* Hammam means A great man, a chief, a hero
* Harb means War
* Murrah means Bitter

Source : iloveAllaah.com

1,455,590 Iraqis killed
Two million widows, five million orphans
A quarter of the population lives in extreme poverty

US President Barack Obama described the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq as “extraordinary achievement” and “mission accomplished”. The reality however, is that the withdrawal is a shameful defeat for America.

Obama is leaving behind thousands of armed private US contractors and the potential for violence is real. According to some reports the withdrawal was to clear the Iraqi airspace for Israel to launch a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The question is what was America’s mission in Iraq and what did they accomplish? Iraq, a land where many great ancient civilisations such as Mesopotamia, Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria flourished between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers for more than 7,000 years, has been ruthlessly raped and ravaged for more than a century by the European colonial powers, especially Britain followed by the United States, to loot its oil wealth.

Following the US engineered Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraqis were subjected to untold misery and hardships with more than one-third of the population exposed to malnutrition, epidemics, and miscarriages and declining life expectancy. The UN sanctions killed more than 500,000 children.

False pretence

It was under this circumstance that President George Bush Jr invaded Iraq in March 2003 under the false pretext of eliminating the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. According to US media reports, Bush and his team of neo cons had planned a regime change in Iraq even before assuming office. Ex-UN weapons inspector Hans Blix described this as an ‘illegal’ war.

The American forces indiscriminately bombed Iraqi cities with unprecedented intensity and within days the war battered people were once again deprived of water, electricity, medicine, food and even shelter. Day in and day out, the skies over Iraq rained bombs which shook the earth and relegated once thriving cities into bloody human abattoirs. Child survivors, many of them maimed for life, remained haunted by the nightmare of the gruesome catastrophe. Screaming in fear and panic, they simply could not comprehend why they were being subjected to such horror and heartlessness.

Gang rape

Then there emerged shocking pictures of American troops’ gang-raping Iraqi women. These hapless women were forcibly dragged out of their homes, screaming in terror, stripped naked and gang-raped by the very people who had ostensibly been there to protect them. Nonetheless, such criminal depravity had been committed by so-called civilised uniformed personnel representing the most powerful military nation on earth.

Among the victims, were ordinary housewives, mothers and daughters – all brought up in a decently conservative society and whose religious traditions have always valued feminine purity as a prerequisite for a happily wedded life. Did the Americans who perpetrated these appalling crimes ever stop to wonder that their victims were the same kind of women as their mothers and sisters at home?

Arbitrary arrest and torture

Hundreds of thousands of innocent men and women were arbitrarily arrested and subjected to the most sadistic and savage forms of torture, which brought swift condemnation from all over the world.

The US forces used the most vicious interrogation techniques including hooding, stripping detainees naked, subjecting them to extremes of heat, cold, noise and light, and depriving them of sleep – in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

This heartless routine that included infliction of pain, discomfort and humiliation has expanded in all too many cases into vicious beatings, sexual degradation, sodomy, electrocution, near drowning, and near asphyxiation. Several detainees had died under questionable circumstances while in incarceration.

Damning photos

Obviously, these bestial crimes were kept under wraps until Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a series of expose articles illustrated by damning photos of the torture by US military police of prisoners in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib near Baghdad.

It all started with a few disturbing pictures of naked prisoners piled on top of each other, others hooded and wired with electrodes. The photographs included images of a hooded prisoner with wires fixed to his body, nude inmates piled in a human pyramid – a lewd type of Karma Sutra circus where the performers were forced into simulating mass sexual techniques. The harrowing pictures also showed a dog savagely attacking a prisoner and other inmates being forced to masturbate or simulate sex with each other.

The destruction of Iraq had been so meticulously planned, embracing every aspect that one of their main aims was to physically eliminate academics, professionals and other intellectuals from the society for generations to come. Around May 2003, there were reports that Israel’s secret service Mossad arrived with a list of names and addresses of professionals such as university lecturers, professors, scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers and other intellectuals, and went from house to house, killing them in their sleep. In many cases, they used sharp weapons to cut the throats of husbands in the presence of wives who were killed later.

Mercilessly slaughtered

American forces looted museums and robbed more than 17,000 very valuable historic artefacts. They armed Shiites and Sunnis and provoked civil war. According to many reports, 2,000 doctors killed and 5,500 academics and intellectuals assassinated or imprisoned.

Besides massacring innocent civilians, the US troops mercilessly slaughtered Iraqi soldiers who had surrendered, but unfortunately, for the world, no one will know exactly how many Iraqis perished in this carnage. They even burnt birth, marriage, death, land, company, industrial and vehicle registration offices and all other such places to create chaos.

In Fallujah, a city of 300,000 people, the American forces dropped even cluster bombs and used phosphorous weapons that caused severe burns in the military’s most intense urban fighting since the days of Vietnam. Within ten days Fallujah had been laid waste, a hell on earth of shattered bodies and destroyed buildings while the city entered history as the place where US imperialism carried out a crime of immense proportions. The head of Turkey’s Parliamentary Human Rights Committee said this genocide surpassed those of Pharaoh, Hitler and Mussolini.

Banned substance

An eyewitness account stated that US forces used artillery barrages, air strikes with 2,000-pound bombs and air-to-surface missiles together with volleys of tank fire. Homes, apartment buildings and nearly half of the city’s 120 mosques have been destroyed or severely damaged. Human corpses, bloated and rotting, littering the streets where they fell were gnawed at by starving dogs while parents were forced to watch their wounded children die and then bury their bodies in their gardens. They not only shot women and old men in the streets but also shot anyone who tried to retrieve their bodies.

Later reports emerged of the US military using banned napalm, poison gas and other outlawed weapons to kill innocent civilians. Hundreds of “melted” bodies proved that the napalm gas had been used. Residents said “Americans used everything – tanks, artillery, infantry, poisonous gas and other non-conventional weapons to raze Fallujah to the ground. They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces fell from the air with long tails of smoke behind them. Pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt the skin even when water was thrown on the burns. Phosphorous weapons as well as napalm are known to cause such effects and people suffered so much from these. There has been nothing like the attack on Fallujah since the Nazi invasion and occupation of much of the European continent— the shelling and bombing of Warsaw in September 1939 and the terror bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940. All the talk about precision bombing in Iraq is dust thrown in the public’s eyes.

American deaths

Bush dispatched harmless young American soldiers, with their full lives ahead of them, to kill Iraqis and in the process, around 4,500 Americans, were killed and around 30,000 young American men, some married with families, returned home maimed, burnt, mentally crippled and destined to suffer for the rest of their lives.

Besides the pain of being physically disabled, the conscience of these young men, burning inside their minds, were also haunted by the ghosts of the innocent Iraqis they killed, tortured, maimed and raped. Haunted by the blood they spilled and all that they did and saw in Iraq – burnt out corpses of innocent Iraqis and their loved ones, screams of the suffering, cries of limbless children, weeping widows and fatherless daughters, they scream in sleepless nights in different corners of America.

While they will have to live with this agony for the rest of their lives, what about the pathetic plight of the mothers, wives and children and other loved ones who need to put up with the agony of these young American men for the rest of their Lives?

During this, darkest of dark hour the helpless Iraqis expected their Arab brothers to protect them. Instead, Egypt stood fully behind Bush and Blair while Saudi Arabia supplied the American troops with petrol and airport facilities to bomb the Iraqis.

Traumatised population

Today the entire Iraqi population remains traumatised and the obscene images of crimes cry out to the Heavens for vengeance. Iraq’s infrastructure is in ruins. There is lawlessness everywhere with sectarian thugs and gangs funded by America and its puppet regime virtually running the show, driving terror among people already subjected to unbearable sufferings.

Iraq today is a country of two million widows (10 percent of Iraq’s female population) and five million orphans many of whom are homeless and living in streets. Almost a third of Iraq’s children suffer from malnutrition. Some 70 per cent of Iraqi girls no longer go to school. Medical services, once the best in the region, do not meet minimum standards.
The poverty rate has risen from 15 percent before the war and occupation to 55 percent today, with a quarter of the population living in extreme poverty. More than two and half million Iraqis, 20,000 of them doctors, are in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, four million Iraqis are refugees in their own country while more than half the population suffer from starvation. Iraqi society and infrastructure have been destroyed, drinking water polluted, power supply disrupted while schools, hospitals and other places are all in shambles.

According to website Information Clearing House, the number of people killed up to Monday 19 December 2011 include 1,455,590 Iraqis, and 4,801 Americans. The latter is described as US Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) in America’s War On Iraq.

The wars cost US taxpayers an estimated $4 trillion, – $80 billion a year over a period of 50 years. This comes at a time when around 65 million Americans survive on food stamps.

Why no war crime charges?

The often-raised question is: why has the international community, which prosecuted Slobodan Milosevic, and issued arrest warrant on Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir for war crimes, not brought war crime charges against George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others for their crimes against humanity in Iraq?

These are the great democracies and their elected leaders who preach human rights and blackmail smaller nations.

Is this what Obama described as “mission accomplished” and “extraordinary achievement”? George Bush invaded Iraq to fulfill the 2500 year old Jewish dream to destroy Iraq. Who benefitted by this medieval style barbarity? Certainly not the innocent American people but Jewish lobbies, weapons industry, oil companies, banking and finance sector and other corporate conglomerates who constitute what is now being described as the One Per Cent of American society.

The irony is that these crimes were committed with the shameful collaboration of Arab dictators in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. It is this very same America preaching human rights and accusing others of war crimes.

—
Latheef Farook is a senior journalist who, after working for almost ten years in the Ceylon Daily News and the Ceylon Observer, led a group of journalists to Dubai in 1979 to relaunch Gulf News. He returned home after a quarter century working in the Gulf and is now based in Colombo.