Mission & Justice

Ezzeddine Ebrahim; 25/9/08

Islam is a religion that addresses the issues of all people from both sexes and all ages. It tackles the issues related to each group and worship. This encouraged some scholars to compile books that contain the different rules for various sectors of society, such as women, the elderly and children. All these rules were earlier found in books of jurisprudence, but were not classified as per the subject.

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Bassam Za’za’; 22/9/08

An Emirati housewife (of Indian origin) and a Pakistani electrician have been charged with polygamy and forging their marriage contract. Under Sharia law, a woman cannot have two husbands at one time. According to records, the 35-year-old woman left her Emirati husband’s house here and eloped with the 42-year-old Pakistani to his country where they claimed she was unmarried and entered into a marriage contract.

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Mohammed Abdu Yamani; 19/9/08
Fasting is a unique moral and spiritual characteristic of Islam. It does not mean just abstaining completely from food, drink, sex and smoking from the break of dawn till sunset during the whole month of Ramadan. Fasting is meant to teach us essential values such as patience, sacrifice and humility. Ramadan is a great month in which Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) received the first verses of the Holy Qur’an through revelation. The first battle of Islam against the infidels took place in Ramadan. It is a pity that some young Muslims do not know the holiness of this month. They turn it into a month of sleeping and laziness. Some of them spend the whole night playing cards or watching TV. They go to bed after sunrise and sometimes miss noon or afternoon prayers, which is a great sin.

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M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan; 19/9/08

Saudi Arabia is in the process of recruiting 2,000 Filipino nurses and has announced 1,000 scholarships for Saudi girls in a move to address the shortage of specialist nursing staff. More than 10,000 nurses are urgently required to make up for the shortfall and this move by the Ministry of Health (MOH) will help train Saudi nurses with the aim to cut dependence on foreign nursing staff. “A number of seats for Saudi women have also been reserved in premier health institutions in Jordan, Australia, the US, Britain and Bahrain, to enable them to pursue specialist nursing training,” said Dr. Munira Al-Osaimi, MOH’s director general of nursing, here yesterday. The MOH, which is seeking to increase the number of Saudis in the nursing sector to 60 percent within the next five years, is also offering advance training.

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Julia Medew; 18/9/08

Australia must act to prevent HIV epidemics in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in Papua New Guinea, from worsening and creeping onto its shores, the head of the Red Cross global HIV program says. Dr Bernard Gardiner, an Australian based in the Red Cross’ Geneva headquarters, said a recent cluster of infections among heterosexual Australian men who had visited PNG, reinforced why Australia could not be complacent about neighbouring epidemics. “Australia cannot sit back and wait for this to become a big problem,” he said. “It’s a really dangerous notion for Australia to treat itself as though it is somehow wrapped in cotton wool and protected from the reality of the global HIV epidemic. It isn’t. As a rich country, we need to play our part.”

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Yoav Stern; 18/9/08

“Instead of it being a month of abstinence, asceticism and breaking the fast with dates, it has turned into a month of cooking, fat paunches and frying. The month of Ramadan is the month of sycophantism, hypocrisy and lies, the month of squandering and appetite, a month of slavery for women.” These words were written around a month ago by Ala Hlehl, the editor in chief of the Balad party newspaper Fasal al-Makal. They forced him to resign and provoked a stormy debate about freedom of expression in Arab society. Hlehl, a playwright and translator, is one of the most prominent artists in Israeli Arab society, an important Balad activist. He is considered loyal to the party’s founder Azmi Bishara, and is well known for his courageous stands.

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17/9/08

An overwhelming 96 per cent of Muslim Arabs are observing the Ramadan fast, 89 per cent view Ramadan as a yearly lesson in self-restraint and discipline, and 71 per cent believe the holy month allows them to feel a sense of solidarity and brotherhood with fellow Muslims. However, as restaurants and hotels region-wide tout their special Ramadan iftar and suhur promotions, a big majority (67 per cent) also feels that Ramadan is becoming a bit too commercial. These were among the findings of an extensive region-wide survey conducted by Maktoob Research on the attitudes and perceptions of the faithful vis-à-vis Ramadan traditions and practices. The survey, conducted during the month of August, just prior to the beginning of the holy month, canvassed the opinions of 6,128 adult Muslims from across the Arab world. Announcing the findings, Tamara Deprez, Director of Maktoob Research, said: “The study throws light on what Ramadan means today to followers of Islam, and how they perceive the customs and practices associated with the holy month. The survey’s findings show that despite the pace of modern life and the changes in people’s lifestyle, the Arab world retains its spiritual essence and remains largely tradition-bound where matters of faith are concerned - more so during the holy month of Ramadan.”

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Adam Cresswell; 17/9/08

Clusters of heterosexual men are becoming infected with HIV while on business or holiday trips to Papua New Guinea and Southeast Asian countries, where epidemics are raging unchecked. The trend has been detected among miners and other workers based in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and has some experts concerned it could provide the virus with a route into the mainstream population. As new national figures to be released today show numbers of new HIV infections overall continuing to increase nationally, doctors attending a Perth conference yesterday revealed six Queensland businessmen had been diagnosed with HIV in the past year after liaisons with women in PNG. Cairns Sexual Health service director Darren Russell said the main concern was not knowing how many other cases were yet to be diagnosed.

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Written by: Sanjay V. Gathia, Regional Information Advocacy officer with inputs from country offices.
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Diakonia: PO Box 49, Sanampao Post Office, Bangkok 10406, Thailand, Jesuit Refugees Service; 16/9/08

De facto refugees: “Catholic social teaching applies the expression de facto refugee to “all persons persecuted because of race, religion, membership in social or political groups; to the victims of armed conflicts, erroneous economic policy or natural disasters; and for humanitarian reasons to internally displaced persons, that is, civilians who are forcibly uprooted from their homes by the same type of violence as refugees but who do not cross national frontiers”. -A The “silent Tsunami” is how the current food crisis been labeled with the globally noted price rise in the food grains which is reaching above the purchasing power of the poor people and in some cases resulting in food riots in some countries. Some countries are responding by imposing food grain export restrictions in order to keep their own local population and quell any social unrest.

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Peter Alford; 15/9/08

For Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Yasuo Fukuda’s sudden, ignominious resignation has produced probably the best range of prime ministerial alternatives in many years, including the first female leadership candidate on the conservative side of Japanese politics. But it may be all too late. The party that has governed Japan for all but 30 months of the past 53 years has lost its footing and is slithering towards disintegration. Failure in the early general election expected to closely follow the vote for party president, bringing with it the prime minister’s post, would probably tear apart the party. However, the man most likely to succeed, Taro Aso, or the woman who just might upset his run, former environment minister and national security adviser Yuriko Koike, would return a sense of purpose and even, temporarily, optimism to the LDP.

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