From: http://www.prisonplanet.com/
Karzai pardons criminals: WikiLeaks
By Claire Truscott (AFP) – 18 hours ago
KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the release of numerous dangerous criminals and drug traffickers detained by US-led coalition forces, leaked American diplomatic cables revealed Tuesday.
American officials said they had repeatedly rebuked the president and Afghan attorney general Muhammad Ishaq Alko for authorising the release of detainees over a three-year period.
"Both authorize the release of detainees pre-trial and allow dangerous individuals to go free or re-enter the battlefield without ever facing an Afghan court," said a cable dated August 2009 and classified as "secret" by then-US deputy ambassador to Afghanistan Francis Ricciardone.
"Despite our complaints and expressions of concern to the GIRoA (Afghan government), pre-trial releases continue," it said.
Internet whistleblower WikiLeaks has begun releasing a quarter of a million confidential US diplomatic cables, detailing embarrassing and inflammatory episodes in what the White House called a "reckless and dangerous action".
In the August 2009 cable, American officials said that since 2007, 150 of the 629 detainees transferred from coalition to Afghan custody had been released without trial.
It said Karzai had pardoned five border policemen in April 2009 who were caught with 124 kilograms (273 pounds) of heroin in their police vehicle and had been sentenced to terms of 16 to 18 years in prison.
They were pardoned "on the grounds that they were distantly related to two individuals who had been martyred during the civil war," the cable noted.
The document said Karzai also intervened in a narcotics case involving the son of a wealthy businessman and one of his supporters.
The president ordered a second investigation "without any constitutional authority" it said, which found the defendant had been framed.
The latest cable strikes at the heart of Western fears that high-level corruption within the Afghan government and judiciary is undermining the nine-year war against the Taliban.
Last week the attorney general, a key ally of the president, was accused of playing politics over a criminal probe into the country's fraud-marred parliamentary elections that were held in September.
The probe has queried the disqualification of 24 poll candidates by the country's top electoral body.
Election results released last week are said to have weakened support for the president, who has allies among those disqualified.
The president's office and attorney-general's office were not immediately available for comment over the latest disclosure.
On Monday, Afghanistan said its relations with the United States would not be affected by earlier leaked cables portraying Karzai as weak and paranoid, and his brother as a corrupt drugs baron.
US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, has condemned the WikiLeaks' release and reiterated American commitment "to building and strengthening a long-term partnership with the Afghan people and the Afghan government".
"Our shared goals do not change based on the release of purported diplomatic reporting from the past," Eikenberry said.
More »
Blogger Comment:
Karazi should pardon criminals since he is a criminal and his family. Sorry to the Arab tyrants not to be mentioned in the above piece. I will give you a place here: you guys are criminals and your days are counted.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Justice and Equity in the Qur’an
From: www.daralislam.org
Dr. Mohammad Shafi (First written for Dar al Islam Teachers’ Institutes Alumni News Letter, Fall 2000)
Printer friendly version
“We sent aforetime our apostles with Clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance (of right and wrong), that men may stand forth in justice ”. Surah Al Hadid (57), Aayah 25.
The major themes of the Qur’an include God-consciousness, fairness, equity, justice, equality and balance in all our dealings. It stresses the doing of what is right because it is the truth and The Truth represents one of the ninety-nine “beautiful names” of God. As a reflection of His attributes of Al-’Adl (The Just One) and Al-Muqsit (The Upholder of Equity), we are urged to establish justice and deal with all in a manner that assures equity, fairness and balance and safeguards the rights, property, honor and dignity of all people. God assures us that even though He is All-Powerful and none can challenge His Authority, He deals with all with truth, kindness, justice, and the rights of none will be transgressed on the Day of Judgment.
The narrow dictionary equivalents for Justice and Equity are the words Insaaf, ‘Adl and Qist. The first of these, Insaaf, is commonly used in the meaning of Justice in Persian, Urdu, Turkish and other Muslim languages that have borrowed heavily from Arabic. But the word Insaaf has its root in the concept of dividing equally in halves. This is not always Just or Equitable. The Qur’an, therefore, does not use this word in the sense of Justice or Equity. The words ‘Adl and Qist are more comprehensive, represent two of God’s ninety-nine Beautiful Names and are extensively used in the Qur’an. The words ‘Adl and Qist, in their various forms, are used in the Qur’an about twenty seven times each.
The root meanings of the word ‘Adl include the sense of Justice, Equity, Fairness, Non-Discrimination, Counter-Balance, to Rectify, Put in Order, Even-ness, Proportion and the like. When Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said “help the oppressor and the oppressed”, he was stressing this same concept. The Companions responded that they understood what “helping the oppressed” meant, but what did he mean by “helping the oppressor”? He replied, “by preventing the oppressor from oppressing others”. The root meanings of the word Qist include Equity, Fairness, Justice, Fair Distribution, Correctness, Balance, and Scale.
Below are some examples of the use of these two words in the Qur’an. The examples are the English rendering of the Aayat by Yusuf Ali. The reader must refer to the original Arabic for the exact Arabic words and the real flavor of the profound depth of the meaning.
1. Surah Al Ma’idah (5), Aayah 9, says
O you who believe! Stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just; that is next to piety; and fear God. For God is well acquainted with all that ye do.
2. God says in Surah Al Nisa’ (4), Aayah 135:
O you who believe! Stand firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor; for God can best protect both. Follow not the lust (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily God is well acquainted with all that ye do.
3. According to Surah As shu`araa’ (26), Aayat 181-184, Prophet Shu`aib tells his people:
Give just measure, and cause no loss (to others by fraud). And weigh with scales true and upright. And withhold not things justly due to men, nor do evil in the land, working mischief. And fear Him Who created you and (Who created) the generations before (you).
Read Surah Al A`raf (7), Aayat 83-93 for more on Prophet Shu`aib and his people.
4. Surah Al Nahl (16), Aayah 90 says:
God commands justice, the doing of good and liberality to kith and kin, and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you that ye may receive admonition.
5. God says, in the formal plural, in Surah Al Anbia’ (21), Aayah 47:
We shall set up scales of justice for the day of Judgment, so that not a soul will be dealt with unjustly in the least. And if there be (no more than) the weight of a mustard seed, we will bring it (to account); and enough are We to take account.
6. God instructs Prophet Muhammad, in Surah Al Shurah (42), Aayah 15:
Now then, for that (reason), call (them to the Faith), and stand steadfast, as thou art commanded, nor follow thou their vain desires; but say “I believe in the Book which God has sent down; and I am commanded to judge justly between you. God is our Lord and your Lord; for us (is the responsibility for) our deeds, and for you for your deeds. There is no contention between us and you. God will bring us together, and to Him is (our) final goal”.
7. Surah AlHadeed (57), Ayah 25 says, in part
We sent aforetime our apostles with Clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance (of right and wrong), that men may stand forth in justice.
Back To Notes on Qur'an and Hadith
Dr. Mohammad Shafi (First written for Dar al Islam Teachers’ Institutes Alumni News Letter, Fall 2000)
Printer friendly version
“We sent aforetime our apostles with Clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance (of right and wrong), that men may stand forth in justice ”. Surah Al Hadid (57), Aayah 25.
The major themes of the Qur’an include God-consciousness, fairness, equity, justice, equality and balance in all our dealings. It stresses the doing of what is right because it is the truth and The Truth represents one of the ninety-nine “beautiful names” of God. As a reflection of His attributes of Al-’Adl (The Just One) and Al-Muqsit (The Upholder of Equity), we are urged to establish justice and deal with all in a manner that assures equity, fairness and balance and safeguards the rights, property, honor and dignity of all people. God assures us that even though He is All-Powerful and none can challenge His Authority, He deals with all with truth, kindness, justice, and the rights of none will be transgressed on the Day of Judgment.
The narrow dictionary equivalents for Justice and Equity are the words Insaaf, ‘Adl and Qist. The first of these, Insaaf, is commonly used in the meaning of Justice in Persian, Urdu, Turkish and other Muslim languages that have borrowed heavily from Arabic. But the word Insaaf has its root in the concept of dividing equally in halves. This is not always Just or Equitable. The Qur’an, therefore, does not use this word in the sense of Justice or Equity. The words ‘Adl and Qist are more comprehensive, represent two of God’s ninety-nine Beautiful Names and are extensively used in the Qur’an. The words ‘Adl and Qist, in their various forms, are used in the Qur’an about twenty seven times each.
The root meanings of the word ‘Adl include the sense of Justice, Equity, Fairness, Non-Discrimination, Counter-Balance, to Rectify, Put in Order, Even-ness, Proportion and the like. When Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said “help the oppressor and the oppressed”, he was stressing this same concept. The Companions responded that they understood what “helping the oppressed” meant, but what did he mean by “helping the oppressor”? He replied, “by preventing the oppressor from oppressing others”. The root meanings of the word Qist include Equity, Fairness, Justice, Fair Distribution, Correctness, Balance, and Scale.
Below are some examples of the use of these two words in the Qur’an. The examples are the English rendering of the Aayat by Yusuf Ali. The reader must refer to the original Arabic for the exact Arabic words and the real flavor of the profound depth of the meaning.
1. Surah Al Ma’idah (5), Aayah 9, says
O you who believe! Stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just; that is next to piety; and fear God. For God is well acquainted with all that ye do.
2. God says in Surah Al Nisa’ (4), Aayah 135:
O you who believe! Stand firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor; for God can best protect both. Follow not the lust (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily God is well acquainted with all that ye do.
3. According to Surah As shu`araa’ (26), Aayat 181-184, Prophet Shu`aib tells his people:
Give just measure, and cause no loss (to others by fraud). And weigh with scales true and upright. And withhold not things justly due to men, nor do evil in the land, working mischief. And fear Him Who created you and (Who created) the generations before (you).
Read Surah Al A`raf (7), Aayat 83-93 for more on Prophet Shu`aib and his people.
4. Surah Al Nahl (16), Aayah 90 says:
God commands justice, the doing of good and liberality to kith and kin, and He forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion: He instructs you that ye may receive admonition.
5. God says, in the formal plural, in Surah Al Anbia’ (21), Aayah 47:
We shall set up scales of justice for the day of Judgment, so that not a soul will be dealt with unjustly in the least. And if there be (no more than) the weight of a mustard seed, we will bring it (to account); and enough are We to take account.
6. God instructs Prophet Muhammad, in Surah Al Shurah (42), Aayah 15:
Now then, for that (reason), call (them to the Faith), and stand steadfast, as thou art commanded, nor follow thou their vain desires; but say “I believe in the Book which God has sent down; and I am commanded to judge justly between you. God is our Lord and your Lord; for us (is the responsibility for) our deeds, and for you for your deeds. There is no contention between us and you. God will bring us together, and to Him is (our) final goal”.
7. Surah AlHadeed (57), Ayah 25 says, in part
We sent aforetime our apostles with Clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance (of right and wrong), that men may stand forth in justice.
Back To Notes on Qur'an and Hadith
What Does Islam Teach About Justice? Neither love nor hatred can be allowed to compromise justice.
From: http://www.soundvision.com/info/peace/justice.asp
Neither love nor hatred can be allowed to compromise justice.By Khalid BaigThere is one word that captures the essence of all Islamic laws and all Islamic teachings; one word that describes the overriding value that permeates all Islamic values. Justice. The Qur'an says: "We sent aforetime our messengers with clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance, that men may stand forth in Justice." [Al-Hadeed 57:25].
The sole purpose of sending the prophets was to establish Justice in the world and end injustice. Broadly speaking, doing justice means giving everyone his due. But this simple statement camouflages all the complexities of life in their myriad and ever-changing relations; all the temptations; all the apprehensions and concerns; all the conflicts and dilemmas. To guide the people, Allah sent down the prophets with clear signs, the Book, and the Balance. The Book contains the revelations that spell out what's fair and unfair or right and wrong. The Balance refers to our ability to measure and calculate so we can follow the path shown by the Book and explained by the Prophets.
Together these sources taught us what are the rights of Allah, of other people, and of our own persons on us and how to balance them. A life lived in obedience to Allah, then, is a continuous balancing act, both individually and collectively.Under normal circumstances many people can be just. But Islam commands its followers to be just even in the face of strong conflicting emotions. In dealing with other human beings, two major impediments to justice are love and hatred. See how the Qur'an teaches us to overcome the first impediment when we are dealing with our closest relatives or even ourselves. "O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do." [An-Nisa 4:35]
Here is the resolution from the Qur'an of the perennial conflict between self-interest and justice. Be just, even if it is against your narrowly defined self-interest or of those very close to you. Ignorant people think they are protecting their self-interest by being unjust to others. Their decision to be just or unjust may be based on a cold calculation of self-interest. But real faith in Allah elevates one beyond that narrow-mindedness. These verses remind us that the real protector of interests of all people is also Allah and He will protect us when we follow His command to be just. The justice demanded by Islam permits no favoritism.The other equally potent impediment is hatred. Here again Qur'an commands: "O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to Piety: and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do." [Al-Maidah 5:8]In other words you cannot do injustice even when you are dealing with the enemy. The natural, uneducated, and uncivilized tendency is to treat the enemy as less than a human being; one who has no rights and deserves no justice or fairness. It was as true in the pre-Islamic tribal jahilya (based on ignorance) society as it is today. See how Islam directly curbs it. It is a command to the believers, with a reminder that Allah is watching you, that enmity of others cannot be used as an excuse for committing injustices against them.Justice does require retribution and Islam does call for, "an eye for an eye." But it does not mean an innocent eye for an innocent eye; it means the eye of the perpetrator for the eye of the victim. It is amazing how those who call the latter as barbaric, actually rally for the former when a real crisis develops.Fourteen hundred years ago these commands created a society where rich and poor, friend and foe, Muslim and non-Muslim, the ruler and the ruled, were all treated equally and all of them could count on receiving justice. The qazis (judges) were independent and no one, including the khalifah was above the law. If a dispute arose between the Khalifah and an ordinary person, both had to appear in court and provide their evidence. Islamic history is full of stories of this justice that filled the earth wherever Muslims ruled in their golden era.Even during their period of decline, we find sporadic incidents that are just unparalleled. One example from recent history may suffice here. During the British Rule in India, once a dispute arose between Hindus and Muslims over a piece of land. Hindus claimed it belonged to a temple while Muslims claimed it to be mosque. Emotions were high on both sides and the possibility of a riot was real. The English judge could not find any means of ascertaining the truth. It was one group's words against the other's. Finally the Judge asked both groups if they could trust the testimony of any person. They could. It was a particular Muslim imam (religious leader) who was known for his piety. The person was requested to come to the court as a witness in a very charged atmosphere, with the entire community urging him to help them win the case through his testimony. His testimony was brief. "The Hindus are right," he said. "The Muslim case is baseless." He had not betrayed the community. He had once more affirmed its unflinching commitment to truth and justice above all else.That is the justice the world needs today."Allah doth command you to render back your Trusts to those to whom they are due; and when ye judge between man and man, that ye judge with justice: verily how excellent is the teaching which He gives you! For Allah is He Who hears and sees all things." [An-Nisa 4:58]
Taken from Al-Balagh online newsmagazine with permission.
Neither love nor hatred can be allowed to compromise justice.By Khalid BaigThere is one word that captures the essence of all Islamic laws and all Islamic teachings; one word that describes the overriding value that permeates all Islamic values. Justice. The Qur'an says: "We sent aforetime our messengers with clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance, that men may stand forth in Justice." [Al-Hadeed 57:25].
The sole purpose of sending the prophets was to establish Justice in the world and end injustice. Broadly speaking, doing justice means giving everyone his due. But this simple statement camouflages all the complexities of life in their myriad and ever-changing relations; all the temptations; all the apprehensions and concerns; all the conflicts and dilemmas. To guide the people, Allah sent down the prophets with clear signs, the Book, and the Balance. The Book contains the revelations that spell out what's fair and unfair or right and wrong. The Balance refers to our ability to measure and calculate so we can follow the path shown by the Book and explained by the Prophets.
Together these sources taught us what are the rights of Allah, of other people, and of our own persons on us and how to balance them. A life lived in obedience to Allah, then, is a continuous balancing act, both individually and collectively.Under normal circumstances many people can be just. But Islam commands its followers to be just even in the face of strong conflicting emotions. In dealing with other human beings, two major impediments to justice are love and hatred. See how the Qur'an teaches us to overcome the first impediment when we are dealing with our closest relatives or even ourselves. "O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do." [An-Nisa 4:35]
Here is the resolution from the Qur'an of the perennial conflict between self-interest and justice. Be just, even if it is against your narrowly defined self-interest or of those very close to you. Ignorant people think they are protecting their self-interest by being unjust to others. Their decision to be just or unjust may be based on a cold calculation of self-interest. But real faith in Allah elevates one beyond that narrow-mindedness. These verses remind us that the real protector of interests of all people is also Allah and He will protect us when we follow His command to be just. The justice demanded by Islam permits no favoritism.The other equally potent impediment is hatred. Here again Qur'an commands: "O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to Piety: and fear Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do." [Al-Maidah 5:8]In other words you cannot do injustice even when you are dealing with the enemy. The natural, uneducated, and uncivilized tendency is to treat the enemy as less than a human being; one who has no rights and deserves no justice or fairness. It was as true in the pre-Islamic tribal jahilya (based on ignorance) society as it is today. See how Islam directly curbs it. It is a command to the believers, with a reminder that Allah is watching you, that enmity of others cannot be used as an excuse for committing injustices against them.Justice does require retribution and Islam does call for, "an eye for an eye." But it does not mean an innocent eye for an innocent eye; it means the eye of the perpetrator for the eye of the victim. It is amazing how those who call the latter as barbaric, actually rally for the former when a real crisis develops.Fourteen hundred years ago these commands created a society where rich and poor, friend and foe, Muslim and non-Muslim, the ruler and the ruled, were all treated equally and all of them could count on receiving justice. The qazis (judges) were independent and no one, including the khalifah was above the law. If a dispute arose between the Khalifah and an ordinary person, both had to appear in court and provide their evidence. Islamic history is full of stories of this justice that filled the earth wherever Muslims ruled in their golden era.Even during their period of decline, we find sporadic incidents that are just unparalleled. One example from recent history may suffice here. During the British Rule in India, once a dispute arose between Hindus and Muslims over a piece of land. Hindus claimed it belonged to a temple while Muslims claimed it to be mosque. Emotions were high on both sides and the possibility of a riot was real. The English judge could not find any means of ascertaining the truth. It was one group's words against the other's. Finally the Judge asked both groups if they could trust the testimony of any person. They could. It was a particular Muslim imam (religious leader) who was known for his piety. The person was requested to come to the court as a witness in a very charged atmosphere, with the entire community urging him to help them win the case through his testimony. His testimony was brief. "The Hindus are right," he said. "The Muslim case is baseless." He had not betrayed the community. He had once more affirmed its unflinching commitment to truth and justice above all else.That is the justice the world needs today."Allah doth command you to render back your Trusts to those to whom they are due; and when ye judge between man and man, that ye judge with justice: verily how excellent is the teaching which He gives you! For Allah is He Who hears and sees all things." [An-Nisa 4:58]
Taken from Al-Balagh online newsmagazine with permission.
Humans, As God's Caliphs on Earth
From: http://www.aljazeerah.info/Islamic%20Editorials/2010/May/Humans,%20As%20God's%20Caliphs%20on%20Earth%20By%20Hassan%20Ali%20El-Najjar.htm
By Hassan Ali El-Najjar
4 Jumada Al-Thaniya, 1431, May 18, 2010
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
I seek refuge with God from the stoned Shaitan (Satan)
In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
Introduction
A necessary background for this article can be found in the author’s article Creation and Evolution in the Holy Qur'an [i] which tells the Quran story of how God created life on Earth, let it evolve, and intervened to improve his creation.
Thus, this article is a continuation of the topic of creation and evolution but with focus on human beings, as they represent the climax of the stages of creation, fashioning in the right proportions, walking upright on two, and imaging them in the best of images. As God felt that He taught Adam enough, He decided to make him His successor on Earth. He brought him to a contest with the angels to show them that human beings are worth His decision of making them His successors on Earth. The story of Adam is addressed in another article at the following link:
Adam's Contest With the Angels, and Getting Out of Paradise
The verses related to the topics of these three articles, like the rest of the verses of the Holy Qur’an, are very concise and each word has a specific meaning within a certain context but it may have other meanings in other contexts. That is why the translation from Arabic is not enough. It has to be complimented with facts from the sciences, particularly from Anthropology and Biology in this case, as well as with interpretations of prominent Islamic scholars, such as Al-Tabari (Died in 310 Hijria), Al-Qurtubi (Died in 671 Hijria), Bin Katheer (Died in 774 Hijria), and Al-Siyouti (849-911 Hijria, 1445-1505). [ii]
Though he consulted with various translations and interpretations, the translation of the meanings of the Quranic verses as well as the interpretations related to them in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.
***
A Brief Background
The following five verses give a brief background about the first article, Creation and Evolution in the Holy Qur'an which tells the Quran story of how God created life on Earth, let it evolve, and intervened to improve his creation.
The verses tell us that Allah, praise to Him, began the creation of life, including humans out of clay, but He kept improving his creation, fashioning it with the right proportions, leading humans to walk uprightly (on two), and imaging them in the best image.
Verse 11 of Surat Al-‘Araf (Chapter 7) clearly states that Allah, praise to Him, created humans (in plural), fashioned them in the image He wanted, then He said to the angels to prostrate to Adam, the top of His human creation.
Verse 59 of Surat Al-‘Imarn (Chapter 3), states that both of Jesus Christ and Adam (peace be upon them) were alike in that they were created of the Earth soil. We know for sure that Jesus Christ was created in his mother’s womb, which means that the verse is referring to the first creation of life on Earth, out of clay (which is water and soil together). The verse tells us that this also applies to the creation of Adam.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الَّذِي أَحْسَنَ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقَهُ وَبَدَأَ خَلْقَ الإنْسَانِ مِنْ طِين (السجدة ، 32: 7).
(Allah is He) who has made everything He created better, and He began the creation of the human (being) out of clay (Al-Sajda, 32: 7).
الَّذِي خَلَقَكَ فَسَوَّاكَ فَعَدَلَكَ (الإنفطار ، 82: 7).
It is He Who created you, fashioned you perfectly, and made you with the right proportions (straightened you up), to walk in an upright position (Al-Infitar, 82: 7).
فِي أَيِّ صُورَةٍ مَّا شَاء رَكَّبَكَ (الإنفطار ، 82: 8).
In whatever form (image) He willed, He put you together (assembled you) (Al-Infitar, 82: 8).
وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَاكُمْ ثُمَّ صَوَّرْنَاكُمْ ثُمَّ قُلْنَا لِلْمَلآئِكَةِ اسْجُدُواْ لآدَمَ فَسَجَدُواْ إِلاَّ إِبْلِيسَ لَمْ يَكُن مِّنَ السَّاجِدِينَ (الأعراف ، 7: 11).
And We created you (humans, in plural form), then fashioned you (made you in the image you are, also addressing humans in plural form), then said to the angels: Prostrate to Adam! And they prostrated, all except Iblis (another name for Satan), who was not of those who made prostration (Al-A'araf, 7: 11).
إِنَّ مَثَلَ عِيسَىٰ عِندَ اللَّـهِ كَمَثَلِ آدَمَ ۖ خَلَقَهُ مِن تُرَابٍ ثُمَّ قَالَ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ (آل عمران ، 3: 69).
The example of ‘Eissa (Jesus) for Allah is as that of Adam. He created him from the earth soil, then said to him: "Be". And he was (Al-'Imran, 3: 69).
***
Meaning of Human Caliphate on Earth
The starting point in this article is the word “khalifa”, or caliph, which is mentioned in Verse 30 of Surat Al-Baqara (Chapter 2 of the Holy Quran). The root of the word is the Arabic verb “khalafa,” which means ”came after or succeeded.” However, several derivatives of the verb are used in many other verses, as listed below.
The caliph (Al-Khalifa) is the ruler who comes after, or succeeds another. The main meaning is that Allah, praise to Him, has chosen humans to be His successors, or caliphs, on Earth, ruling it according to His Law )Shari’a), and on His behalf.
Muslims used the word to describe the second head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with him, referring to him as the Caliph of the Prophet, or his successor, as the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, was the first head of the Islamic State. Then, Muslims continued describing their rulers as such until the end of World War I, at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Ottoman Caliphate was defeated by Western empires and was replaced by the Turkish secular state.
Another related meaning to the word “Khalifa” or “caliph” is that Allah, praise to Him, has willed that humans shall succeed each other in ruling the Earth, century after century, until He inherits this planet and all that is on it.
Honor, But Responsibility
God’s decision, or mandate, to make humans His successors, caliphs, on Earth is a great honor to them, but it is a grave responsibility at the same time. It is true that they lived up to God’s expectations in many centuries and stages of their history. However, they failed in many other occasions and times. They did injustice to themselves and to the planet they have been entrusted to care about.
The very characteristics of success that humans possess could be used in bad ways, as a result of following Satan and his wicked ways, which took humans away from the right path of God.
Verse 72 of Surat Al-Ahzab (Chapter 33 of the Holy Quran) tells us that the Heavens, the Earth, and the Mountains (as solid and strong as they are) could not carry God’s mandate and the responsibility associated with it. However, humans were happy to carry it, or accept it, out of ignorance about the burdens of the responsibility associated with God’s mandate for them to become His successors on Earth.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
إِنَّا عَرَضْنَا الْأَمَانَةَ عَلَى السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَالْجِبَالِ فَأَبَيْنَ أَن يَحْمِلْنَهَا وَأَشْفَقْنَ مِنْهَا وَحَمَلَهَا الْإِنسَانُ ۖ إِنَّهُ كَانَ ظَلُومًا جَهُولًا (الأحزاب ، 33: 72).
We offered the trust (of succession, caliphate) to the heavens and the Earth and the mountains, but they refused to undertake it, and were afraid of it. And (but) the human (being) undertook it (because) he was unjust (to himself) and ignorant (of the consequences of his undertaking) (Al-A'hzab, 33: 72).
God’s Mandate: Verse 30 of Surat Al-Baqara
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
وَإِذۡ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلۡمَلَـٰٓٮِٕكَةِ إِنِّى جَاعِلٌ۬ فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ خَلِيفَةً۬ۖ قَالُوٓاْ أَتَجۡعَلُ فِيہَا مَن يُفۡسِدُ فِيہَا وَيَسۡفِكُ ٱلدِّمَآءَ وَنَحۡنُ نُسَبِّحُ بِحَمۡدِكَ وَنُقَدِّسُ لَكَۖ قَالَ إِنِّىٓ أَعۡلَمُ مَا لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ (البَقَرَة ، 2: 30).
And when your Lord said to the angels: I am making a caliph on the Earth. They said: Are You making therein one who corrupts it and sheds blood, while we hymn Your praise and sanctify You? He said: Surely I know that which you do not know (Al-Baqara, 2: 30).
In explaining the meaning of this verse, Al-Siyouti mentioned that Allah decided to make Adam as His caliph, successor, on Earth, to succeed Him in implementing His rules.
Al-Tabari used the same explanation, mentioning a narration by the Companions Ibn Massa’aud and Ibn Abbas. However, he added, as Ibn Katheer did, saying that the meaning of caliphate is the succession of a century of people by another.
Al-Qurtubi was clear in that the caliphate, or succession, is that of Adam succeeding God, praise to Him, on Earth. He cited Ibn Massa’aud and Ibn Abbas in saying that Adam, peace to him, was God’s caliph in implementing His rules and commands, because he was a Messenger of God, as the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, told the Companion Abi Dher, may Allah be pleased with him.
Thus, the word “caliph” can also be interpreted as “representative,” meaning that God, praise to Him, entrusted human beings to be his representatives on Planet Earth, implementing His rules and observing His commands.
God’s trust in his human creation to be His representatives on Earth was based on His knowledge of them as capable to receive His trust. Among the characteristics that made humans trustworthy of God’s mandate for them to be His caliphs were their ability to learn, to choose, and to build.
Human Ability to Learn
Allah, praise to Him, made humans His caliphs on Earth, after they proved to Him their ability to learn, to accumulate knowledge, to process that knowledge, to make rules and laws on the basis of their knowledge, and to make use of what they have learned.
Allah, praise to Him, facilitated for humans to learn by making Earth abundant in food and resources and protected it from harmful cosmic effects. He surrounded it with several layers of atmospheres as protection and made its distance from the Sun ideal for life to flourish and progress. Thus, humans have enjoyed peaceful and comfortable conditions in most regions of Earth, which freed them to learn.
The Compassionate never left His creation alone or lonely to despair. He would intervene to improve His creation with fashioning in the right proportions and best imaging. He also instructed them to learn, use their knowledge for their benefit, and guided them to how they can achieve that.
God’s first word to humans was: “Read.” This was the first word, the Senior Angel, Jibril (Gabriel), peace to him, told to the Prophet Muhammed, peace and blessings of God be upon him. He actually repeated it three times to confirm its importance to humanity, as stated in the first five verses of Surat Al-‘Alaq.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ ﴿١﴾ خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ ﴿٢﴾ اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ ﴿٣﴾ الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ ﴿٤﴾ عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ ﴿٥﴾ (العلق ، 96: 1-5).
Read! In the name of your Lord, Who created, (1) Created the human (being), out of an alaqa (leech-like embryo), (2) Read! And your Lord is the Most Bountiful, (3) He Who taught with the pen, (4) taught the human (being) that which he did not know (Al-‘Alaq, 96: 1-5).
There are many verses, which deal with learning, knowledge, and science in the Holy Quran. These are cited in about twelve pages in the Quran Index. [iii]
Here are some examples of these verses. When we look at them, we find that Allah, praise to Him, states that He and His senior angel, Jibril, peace to him, are involved in teaching humans. The teaching happens directly, as in the case of Jibril and the Messengers of God, and indirectly by facilitating learning to the average person, as in the case of the scribe (See verse 2: 282 below).
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الرَّحْمَـٰنُ ﴿١﴾ عَلَّمَ الْقُرْآنَ ﴿٢﴾ خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ ﴿٣﴾ عَلَّمَهُ الْبَيَانَ ﴿٤﴾ (الرَّحْمَـٰن ، 55: 1-4).
The Most Merciful, (1) has taught the Qur'an, (2) created the human (being), (3) taught him speech (Al-Rahman, 55: 1-4)
فَاذْكُرُوا اللَّـهَ كَمَا عَلَّمَكُم مَّا لَمْ تَكُونُوا تَعْلَمُونَ (البقرة ، 2: 239).
Remember Allah, as He has taught you that which you did not know (Al-Baqara, 2: 239).
إِنْ هُوَ إِلَّا وَحْيٌ يُوحَىٰ ﴿٤﴾ عَلَّمَهُ شَدِيدُ الْقُوَىٰ ﴿٥﴾ - (النجم ، 53: 4-5).
It is an inspiration sent down (to him),(4) taught by one mighty in power (Jibril) (Al-Najm, 53: 4-5).
وَلَا يَأْبَ كَاتِبٌ أَن يَكْتُبَ كَمَا عَلَّمَهُ اللَّـهُ (البقرة ، 2: 282).
A scribe should not refuse to write as Allah has taught him (Al-Baqara, 2: 282).
Human Freedom of Choice
God’s trust in His human creation to be His representatives on Earth was also based on His knowledge of them as being capable to choose between right and wrong. Unlike angels, who are obedient to their Creator by creation (Al-Tahreem, 66: 6), humans have the characteristic of choice between obedience or disobedience, making their own decisions.
لَا يَعْصُونَ اللَّه مَا أَمَرَهُمْ وَيَفْعَلُونَ مَا يُؤْمَرُونَ (التَّحْرِيم ، 66: 6).
They (angels) do not disobey Allah in what He commands them, but do what they are commanded (Al-Tahreem, 66: 6).
Allah, praise to Him, wanted to enjoy seeing his human creation obey Him and observe His commands by choice. When He told His angels that He would make human His caliphs on Earth, they were surprised because of their knowledge of human corruption and violence (blood-shedding). But Allah, praise to Him, answered them saying He knew what they did not know, as stated in 2:30.
He knew that as some humans may choose to corrupt and shed blood, others will choose to obey His commands and do good to themselves, to others, and to their Planet.
Humans are born with this characteristic of being able to identify what’s right and what’s wrong. They are also born with the ability to choose which of the two paths they are going to follow. This freedom of choice is inherent, not learned. It’s part of the original DNA software inscribed by the Creator and blown into the fetus in its mother’s womb, as the verses tell us, as well as we are told by a well-known and strong Hadith by Prophet Muhammed, peace and blessings of God be upon him.[iv]
Verse 3: 76 states that the human being is guided to the path of choice, which will show if he or she will be grateful to the Creator who guided him or her, or a disbeliever who won’t recognize this great blessing.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
إِنَّا هَدَيْنَاهُ السَّبِيلَ إِمَّا شَاكِرًا وَإِمَّا كَفُورًا (الإنسان ، 76: 3).
We guided him (the human being) to the path (of choice, to see if he chooses to be) grateful or disbelieving (Al-Insan, 76: 3).
Verse 89: 10 is bluntly direct in stating that Allah has guided the human being to identify the two paths of right and wrong or good and evil. Then, He left him or her there to choose with free will which path to follow.
أَلَمْ نَجْعَل لَّهُ عَيْنَيْنِ ﴿٨﴾ وَلِسَانًا وَشَفَتَيْنِ ﴿٩﴾ وَهَدَيْنَاهُ النَّجْدَيْنِ ﴿١٠﴾ - (البلد ، 89: 8-10).
Have We not made for him two eyes? (8) And a tongue, and two lips? (9) And guided him to the two paths (to choose from)? (Al-Balad, 89: 8-10).
Verse 91: 8 states that Allah, praise to Him, has inspired the human self to know the paths of disobedience and piety. He praised those who keep the self pure and warn those who corrupt it. [v]
وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا ﴿٧﴾ فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا ﴿٨﴾ قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن زَكَّاهَا ﴿٩﴾ وَقَدْ خَابَ مَن دَسَّاهَا
(الشمس ، 91: 7-10).
By the (human) self, and how He fashioned it, (7) by inspiring it to (to know the paths of) disobedience and piety. (8) Truly, whoever keeps it pure will succeed, (9) And whoever corrupts it will fail (10) (Al-Shams, 91: 7-10).
Human Tendency to Construct
God’s trust in His creation of human beings to be His representatives on Earth was further based on His knowledge of them as being capable to build, or construct. He expected human beings to be creative in continuously improving their conditions on Earth, reaching the stage of civilization, as Ibn Khaldoun described it, using the Quranic meaning of ‘Amarah (construction or civilization). [vi]
Verse 30: 9 is an invitation for humans to excavate the previous civilization to learn lessons from. It’s a direct reference to the human tendency of construction.
There is no doubt that construction benefited from the other two human characteristics of learning and choice. The three qualities interacted with each other producing this wonderful human phenomenon, which has pleased God, Who did bet on to do so, and to be thus, in front of His angels.
Here are three verses in which the reference to human construction is used.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
وَإِلَىٰ ثَمُودَ أَخَاهُمْ صَالِحًا ۚ قَالَ يَا قَوْمِ اعْبُدُوا اللَّـهَ مَا لَكُم مِّنْ إِلَـٰهٍ غَيْرُهُ ۖ هُوَ أَنشَأَكُم مِّنَ الْأَرْضِ وَاسْتَعْمَرَكُمْ فِيهَا (هود ، 11: 61).
And to the Thamud People (We sent) their brother Saleh. He said: O my people! Worship Allah, you have no other god but Him. He produced you from the Earth and (enabled) you to construct therein (Hood, 11: 61).
إِنَّمَا يَعْمُرُ مَسَاجِدَ اللَّـهِ مَنْ آمَنَ بِاللَّـهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ وَأَقَامَ الصَّلَاةَ وَآتَى الزَّكَاةَ وَلَمْ يَخْشَ إِلَّا اللَّـهَ (التوبة ، 9: 18).
The mosques of Allah are constructed, visited, and maintained by whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, and by whoever observes the prayer, and pays zakat (the poor-due) and fears none except Allah (Al-Tawba, 9: 18 ).
أَوَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرُوا كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ ۚ كَانُوا أَشَدَّ مِنْهُمْ قُوَّةً وَأَثَارُوا الْأَرْضَ وَعَمَرُوهَا أَكْثَرَ مِمَّا عَمَرُوهَا (الروم ، 30: 9).
Have they not travelled on the land to see what was the sequel of those who were before them? They were much stronger than them, and they dug the earth and built upon it more than these have built (Al-Room, 30: 9).
***
Meanings of Caliphate, and duties of God’s successors on Earth, as mentioned in the following 14 verses of the Holy Quran:
The following fourteen verses of the Holy Quran the human caliphate of God on Earth with the following characteristics and responsibilities:
Believing in Allah
Doing good deeds
Mentioning blessings of God
Not corrupting the Earth
Ruling people with justice and according to God’s commands
Patience
Piety.
Allah, praise to Him, mentions in the Holy Quran that the caliphate or succession of humans on Earth is a test for them, as He wants to see how they behave with the blessings He bestowed on them.
He also mentions that oppressors and those who rule with injustice, away from God’s commands will be replaced by others, who are better than them.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
وَاذْكُرُوا إِذْ جَعَلَكُمْ خُلَفَاءَ مِن بَعْدِ قَوْمِ نُوحٍ وَزَادَكُمْ فِي الْخَلْقِ بَسْطَةً ۖ فَاذْكُرُوا آلَاءَ اللَّـهِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ (الأعراف ، 7: 69).
And reflect (think about) that He made you successors (caliphs) after the people of Noah, and made you exceeding them in stature. Then, remember the favors of Allah, so that you may prosper (Al-‘Araf, 7: 96).
فَكَذَّبُوهُ فَنَجَّيْنَاهُ وَمَن مَّعَهُ فِي الْفُلْكِ وَجَعَلْنَاهُمْ خَلَائِفَ وَأَغْرَقْنَا الَّذِينَ كَذَّبُوا بِآيَاتِنَا (يونس ، 10: 73).
They rejected him, so We saved him and those with him in the ship, and made them successors (caliphs), and We drowned those who rejected Our revelations (Younus, 10: 73). .
وَاذْكُرُوا إِذْ جَعَلَكُمْ خُلَفَاءَ مِن بَعْدِ عَادٍ وَبَوَّأَكُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ تَتَّخِذُونَ مِن سُهُولِهَا قُصُورًا وَتَنْحِتُونَ الْجِبَالَ بُيُوتًا ۖ فَاذْكُرُوا آلَاءَ اللَّـهِ وَلَا تَعْثَوْا فِي الْأَرْضِ مُفْسِدِينَ (الأعراف ، 7: 74).
Reflect (think about) that He made you successors (caliphs) after (the people of) 'Ad, and settled you on the Earth so that you could construct on its plains palaces, and carve dwellings out of mountains. So remember the favors of Allah, and do not act on the Earth as corruptors (Al-'Araf, 7:47).
يَا دَاوُودُ إِنَّا جَعَلْنَاكَ خَلِيفَةً فِي الْأَرْضِ فَاحْكُم بَيْنَ النَّاسِ بِالْحَقِّ وَلَا تَتَّبِعِ الْهَوَىٰ فَيُضِلَّكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّـهِ (ص ، 38: 26).
O Dawood (David)! We have made you as a successor on earth, so judge among people rightly, and do not follow desire, (which may) misguide away from the path of Allah (Saad, 38: 26).
هُوَ الَّذِي جَعَلَكُمْ خَلَائِفَ فِي الْأَرْضِ ۚ فَمَن كَفَرَ فَعَلَيْهِ كُفْرُهُ ۖ (فاطر ، 35: 39).
He is Who has made you successors (caliphs) on the Earth. So he who disbelieves, his disbelief will be on him (He will bear the consequences). (Fater, 35: 39).
أَمَّن يُجِيبُ الْمُضْطَرَّ إِذَا دَعَاهُ وَيَكْشِفُ السُّوءَ وَيَجْعَلُكُمْ خُلَفَاءَ الْأَرْضِ ۗ أَإِلَـٰهٌ مَّعَ اللَّـهِ ۚ قَلِيلًا مَّا تَذَكَّرُونَ (النمل ، 27: 62).
Or, Who listens to the distressed when he calls on Him, and Who relieves the suffering, and makes you successors (caliphs) on the Earth? (Are you still taking) Another god with Allah? It is little that you reflect on (Al-Naml, 27: 62).
وَهُوَ الَّذِي جَعَلَكُمْ خَلَائِفَ الْأَرْضِ وَرَفَعَ بَعْضَكُمْ فَوْقَ بَعْضٍ دَرَجَاتٍ لِّيَبْلُوَكُمْ فِي مَا آتَاكُمْ ۗ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ سَرِيعُ الْعِقَابِ وَإِنَّهُ لَغَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ (الأنعام ، 6: 165).
And it is He Who has made you successors (caliphs) of the Earth and raised some of you above others in ranks, so that He tests you of what He has given you; surely your Lord is quick in punishment, and surely He is Forgiving, (and) Merciful (Al-Ana'am, 6: 561).
ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاكُمْ خَلَائِفَ فِي الْأَرْضِ مِن بَعْدِهِمْ لِنَنظُرَ كَيْفَ تَعْمَلُونَ (يونس ، 10: 14).
Then We made you successors (caliphs) on the Earth, after them, to see how you would act (Younus, 10: 14).
آمِنُوا بِاللَّـهِ وَرَسُولِهِ وَأَنفِقُوا مِمَّا جَعَلَكُم مُّسْتَخْلَفِينَ فِيهِ (الحديد ، 57: 7).
Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and spend of that which He has made you (His) successors (caliphs) on (Al-Hadeed, 57: 7).
وَعَدَ اللَّـهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مِنكُمْ وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ لَيَسْتَخْلِفَنَّهُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ كَمَا اسْتَخْلَفَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ. (النور ، 24: 55).
Allah has promised those who believe among you to make them successors on Earth, as He made successors of those before them (Al-Noor, 24: 55).
وَرَبُّكَ الْغَنِيُّ ذُو الرَّحْمَةِ ۚ إِن يَشَأْ يُذْهِبْكُمْ وَيَسْتَخْلِفْ مِن بَعْدِكُم مَّا يَشَاءُ كَمَا أَنشَأَكُم مِّن ذُرِّيَّةِ قَوْمٍ آخَرِينَ (الأنعام ، 6: 133).
Your Lord is Self-Sufficient, (the Lord) of Mercy. If He will, He can remove you and make successors (caliphs) after you whom He wills, as He made you from offspring of other people (Al-Ana’am, 6: 13).
فَإِن تَوَلَّوْا فَقَدْ أَبْلَغْتُكُم مَّا أُرْسِلْتُ بِهِ إِلَيْكُمْ ۚ وَيَسْتَخْلِفُ رَبِّي قَوْمًا غَيْرَكُمْ وَلَا تَضُرُّونَهُ شَيْئًا (هود ، 11: 57).
(Prophet Hood): If they turn away (from what you told them, tell them) I have conveyed the Message with which I was sent to you, and my Lord will make another people to succeed you, and you will not harm Him anything (Hood, 11: 57).
قَالَ مُوسَىٰ لِقَوْمِهِ اسْتَعِينُوا بِاللَّـهِ وَاصْبِرُوا ۖ إِنَّ الْأَرْضَ لِلَّـهِ يُورِثُهَا مَن يَشَاءُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ ۖ وَالْعَاقِبَةُ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ (الأعراف ، 7: 128).
Moussa (Moses) said to his people: Seek help from Allah and endure. The Earth is Allah's. He gives it as inheritance to whom He wills of his worshippers, and the sequel is for the pious (Al-‘Araf, 7: 128).
قَالُوا أُوذِينَا مِن قَبْلِ أَن تَأْتِيَنَا وَمِن بَعْدِ مَا جِئْتَنَا ۚ قَالَ عَسَىٰ رَبُّكُمْ أَن يُهْلِكَ عَدُوَّكُمْ وَيَسْتَخْلِفَكُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرَ كَيْفَ تَعْمَلُونَ (الأعراف ، 7: 129).
They said: We had been hurt before and after you came to us. He said: May your Lord destroy your enemy and make you successors (caliphs) on the Earth, so He sees how you act (Al-‘Araf, 7: 921). Notes
[i]
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Islamic%20Editorials/2007/October/Creation%20and%20Evolution%20in%20the%20Holy%20Qur'an%20By%20Hassan%20El-Najjar.htm
[ii] The complete works of these great Islamic scholars, who interpreted the Holy Quran in different centuries are published on the official website of the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, at: http://quran.al-islam.com/
[iii] Pages 469-480 of the Holy Quran Index in Arabic by Muhammed Fuad Abdul Baqi. Cairo: Dar Al-Fikr. 1406 (1986). The Arabic Title of the index is: “Al-Mu’ajam Al-Mufahras Li Alfadh Al-Qur’an Al-Kareem.” In particular, there are about 26 verses, on pages 474-475, which are directly related to human learning and God’s influence in that process.
[iv] The fourth Hadith, selected by Imam Al-Nawawi, may Allah be pleased with him, in his famous anthology, titled, “The Forty Correct Sayings of the Prophet,” by Imam Yahya Sharafuddin Al-Nawawi, who died in 676 Hijriyah.
[v] For a discussion about the human self, the author’s article:
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Islamic%20Editorials/2007/November/Mind,%20Self,%20Soul,%20Spirit,%20and%20Happiness%20from%20an%20Islamic%20Perspective%20By%20Hassan%20Ali%20El-Najjar.htm
[vi] Abdul Rahman Bin Khaldoun was an Arab sociologist who lived in Andalusia, North Africa, and Egypt. He was born in Tunis, in 732 H (1332 AD) and died in Cairo in 808 H (1406 AD). He wrote his famous “Introduction to Sociology,” about five centuries before Auguste Compte started modern sociology in France in the 19th century.
Ibn Khaldoun was not alone in equating construction with civilization. Modern anthropologists have also acknowledged that fact, associating human civilization with intensive agriculture, which was also associated with construction of temples, palaces, theaters, dams, canals, roads, and huge monuments like pyramids, Sphinx, and statues. This construction was not possible without writing languages and developing various sciences, hence civilization.
* Dr. Hassan Ali El-Najjar is a native speaker of Arabic. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Georgia, USA.
Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.
By Hassan Ali El-Najjar
4 Jumada Al-Thaniya, 1431, May 18, 2010
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
I seek refuge with God from the stoned Shaitan (Satan)
In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
Introduction
A necessary background for this article can be found in the author’s article Creation and Evolution in the Holy Qur'an [i] which tells the Quran story of how God created life on Earth, let it evolve, and intervened to improve his creation.
Thus, this article is a continuation of the topic of creation and evolution but with focus on human beings, as they represent the climax of the stages of creation, fashioning in the right proportions, walking upright on two, and imaging them in the best of images. As God felt that He taught Adam enough, He decided to make him His successor on Earth. He brought him to a contest with the angels to show them that human beings are worth His decision of making them His successors on Earth. The story of Adam is addressed in another article at the following link:
Adam's Contest With the Angels, and Getting Out of Paradise
The verses related to the topics of these three articles, like the rest of the verses of the Holy Qur’an, are very concise and each word has a specific meaning within a certain context but it may have other meanings in other contexts. That is why the translation from Arabic is not enough. It has to be complimented with facts from the sciences, particularly from Anthropology and Biology in this case, as well as with interpretations of prominent Islamic scholars, such as Al-Tabari (Died in 310 Hijria), Al-Qurtubi (Died in 671 Hijria), Bin Katheer (Died in 774 Hijria), and Al-Siyouti (849-911 Hijria, 1445-1505). [ii]
Though he consulted with various translations and interpretations, the translation of the meanings of the Quranic verses as well as the interpretations related to them in this article are the sole responsibility of the author.
***
A Brief Background
The following five verses give a brief background about the first article, Creation and Evolution in the Holy Qur'an which tells the Quran story of how God created life on Earth, let it evolve, and intervened to improve his creation.
The verses tell us that Allah, praise to Him, began the creation of life, including humans out of clay, but He kept improving his creation, fashioning it with the right proportions, leading humans to walk uprightly (on two), and imaging them in the best image.
Verse 11 of Surat Al-‘Araf (Chapter 7) clearly states that Allah, praise to Him, created humans (in plural), fashioned them in the image He wanted, then He said to the angels to prostrate to Adam, the top of His human creation.
Verse 59 of Surat Al-‘Imarn (Chapter 3), states that both of Jesus Christ and Adam (peace be upon them) were alike in that they were created of the Earth soil. We know for sure that Jesus Christ was created in his mother’s womb, which means that the verse is referring to the first creation of life on Earth, out of clay (which is water and soil together). The verse tells us that this also applies to the creation of Adam.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الَّذِي أَحْسَنَ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقَهُ وَبَدَأَ خَلْقَ الإنْسَانِ مِنْ طِين (السجدة ، 32: 7).
(Allah is He) who has made everything He created better, and He began the creation of the human (being) out of clay (Al-Sajda, 32: 7).
الَّذِي خَلَقَكَ فَسَوَّاكَ فَعَدَلَكَ (الإنفطار ، 82: 7).
It is He Who created you, fashioned you perfectly, and made you with the right proportions (straightened you up), to walk in an upright position (Al-Infitar, 82: 7).
فِي أَيِّ صُورَةٍ مَّا شَاء رَكَّبَكَ (الإنفطار ، 82: 8).
In whatever form (image) He willed, He put you together (assembled you) (Al-Infitar, 82: 8).
وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَاكُمْ ثُمَّ صَوَّرْنَاكُمْ ثُمَّ قُلْنَا لِلْمَلآئِكَةِ اسْجُدُواْ لآدَمَ فَسَجَدُواْ إِلاَّ إِبْلِيسَ لَمْ يَكُن مِّنَ السَّاجِدِينَ (الأعراف ، 7: 11).
And We created you (humans, in plural form), then fashioned you (made you in the image you are, also addressing humans in plural form), then said to the angels: Prostrate to Adam! And they prostrated, all except Iblis (another name for Satan), who was not of those who made prostration (Al-A'araf, 7: 11).
إِنَّ مَثَلَ عِيسَىٰ عِندَ اللَّـهِ كَمَثَلِ آدَمَ ۖ خَلَقَهُ مِن تُرَابٍ ثُمَّ قَالَ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ (آل عمران ، 3: 69).
The example of ‘Eissa (Jesus) for Allah is as that of Adam. He created him from the earth soil, then said to him: "Be". And he was (Al-'Imran, 3: 69).
***
Meaning of Human Caliphate on Earth
The starting point in this article is the word “khalifa”, or caliph, which is mentioned in Verse 30 of Surat Al-Baqara (Chapter 2 of the Holy Quran). The root of the word is the Arabic verb “khalafa,” which means ”came after or succeeded.” However, several derivatives of the verb are used in many other verses, as listed below.
The caliph (Al-Khalifa) is the ruler who comes after, or succeeds another. The main meaning is that Allah, praise to Him, has chosen humans to be His successors, or caliphs, on Earth, ruling it according to His Law )Shari’a), and on His behalf.
Muslims used the word to describe the second head of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq, may Allah be pleased with him, referring to him as the Caliph of the Prophet, or his successor, as the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, was the first head of the Islamic State. Then, Muslims continued describing their rulers as such until the end of World War I, at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Ottoman Caliphate was defeated by Western empires and was replaced by the Turkish secular state.
Another related meaning to the word “Khalifa” or “caliph” is that Allah, praise to Him, has willed that humans shall succeed each other in ruling the Earth, century after century, until He inherits this planet and all that is on it.
Honor, But Responsibility
God’s decision, or mandate, to make humans His successors, caliphs, on Earth is a great honor to them, but it is a grave responsibility at the same time. It is true that they lived up to God’s expectations in many centuries and stages of their history. However, they failed in many other occasions and times. They did injustice to themselves and to the planet they have been entrusted to care about.
The very characteristics of success that humans possess could be used in bad ways, as a result of following Satan and his wicked ways, which took humans away from the right path of God.
Verse 72 of Surat Al-Ahzab (Chapter 33 of the Holy Quran) tells us that the Heavens, the Earth, and the Mountains (as solid and strong as they are) could not carry God’s mandate and the responsibility associated with it. However, humans were happy to carry it, or accept it, out of ignorance about the burdens of the responsibility associated with God’s mandate for them to become His successors on Earth.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
إِنَّا عَرَضْنَا الْأَمَانَةَ عَلَى السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ وَالْجِبَالِ فَأَبَيْنَ أَن يَحْمِلْنَهَا وَأَشْفَقْنَ مِنْهَا وَحَمَلَهَا الْإِنسَانُ ۖ إِنَّهُ كَانَ ظَلُومًا جَهُولًا (الأحزاب ، 33: 72).
We offered the trust (of succession, caliphate) to the heavens and the Earth and the mountains, but they refused to undertake it, and were afraid of it. And (but) the human (being) undertook it (because) he was unjust (to himself) and ignorant (of the consequences of his undertaking) (Al-A'hzab, 33: 72).
God’s Mandate: Verse 30 of Surat Al-Baqara
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
وَإِذۡ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلۡمَلَـٰٓٮِٕكَةِ إِنِّى جَاعِلٌ۬ فِى ٱلۡأَرۡضِ خَلِيفَةً۬ۖ قَالُوٓاْ أَتَجۡعَلُ فِيہَا مَن يُفۡسِدُ فِيہَا وَيَسۡفِكُ ٱلدِّمَآءَ وَنَحۡنُ نُسَبِّحُ بِحَمۡدِكَ وَنُقَدِّسُ لَكَۖ قَالَ إِنِّىٓ أَعۡلَمُ مَا لَا تَعۡلَمُونَ (البَقَرَة ، 2: 30).
And when your Lord said to the angels: I am making a caliph on the Earth. They said: Are You making therein one who corrupts it and sheds blood, while we hymn Your praise and sanctify You? He said: Surely I know that which you do not know (Al-Baqara, 2: 30).
In explaining the meaning of this verse, Al-Siyouti mentioned that Allah decided to make Adam as His caliph, successor, on Earth, to succeed Him in implementing His rules.
Al-Tabari used the same explanation, mentioning a narration by the Companions Ibn Massa’aud and Ibn Abbas. However, he added, as Ibn Katheer did, saying that the meaning of caliphate is the succession of a century of people by another.
Al-Qurtubi was clear in that the caliphate, or succession, is that of Adam succeeding God, praise to Him, on Earth. He cited Ibn Massa’aud and Ibn Abbas in saying that Adam, peace to him, was God’s caliph in implementing His rules and commands, because he was a Messenger of God, as the Prophet, peace and blessings of God be upon him, told the Companion Abi Dher, may Allah be pleased with him.
Thus, the word “caliph” can also be interpreted as “representative,” meaning that God, praise to Him, entrusted human beings to be his representatives on Planet Earth, implementing His rules and observing His commands.
God’s trust in his human creation to be His representatives on Earth was based on His knowledge of them as capable to receive His trust. Among the characteristics that made humans trustworthy of God’s mandate for them to be His caliphs were their ability to learn, to choose, and to build.
Human Ability to Learn
Allah, praise to Him, made humans His caliphs on Earth, after they proved to Him their ability to learn, to accumulate knowledge, to process that knowledge, to make rules and laws on the basis of their knowledge, and to make use of what they have learned.
Allah, praise to Him, facilitated for humans to learn by making Earth abundant in food and resources and protected it from harmful cosmic effects. He surrounded it with several layers of atmospheres as protection and made its distance from the Sun ideal for life to flourish and progress. Thus, humans have enjoyed peaceful and comfortable conditions in most regions of Earth, which freed them to learn.
The Compassionate never left His creation alone or lonely to despair. He would intervene to improve His creation with fashioning in the right proportions and best imaging. He also instructed them to learn, use their knowledge for their benefit, and guided them to how they can achieve that.
God’s first word to humans was: “Read.” This was the first word, the Senior Angel, Jibril (Gabriel), peace to him, told to the Prophet Muhammed, peace and blessings of God be upon him. He actually repeated it three times to confirm its importance to humanity, as stated in the first five verses of Surat Al-‘Alaq.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
اقْرَأْ بِاسْمِ رَبِّكَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ ﴿١﴾ خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ ﴿٢﴾ اقْرَأْ وَرَبُّكَ الْأَكْرَمُ ﴿٣﴾ الَّذِي عَلَّمَ بِالْقَلَمِ ﴿٤﴾ عَلَّمَ الْإِنسَانَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ ﴿٥﴾ (العلق ، 96: 1-5).
Read! In the name of your Lord, Who created, (1) Created the human (being), out of an alaqa (leech-like embryo), (2) Read! And your Lord is the Most Bountiful, (3) He Who taught with the pen, (4) taught the human (being) that which he did not know (Al-‘Alaq, 96: 1-5).
There are many verses, which deal with learning, knowledge, and science in the Holy Quran. These are cited in about twelve pages in the Quran Index. [iii]
Here are some examples of these verses. When we look at them, we find that Allah, praise to Him, states that He and His senior angel, Jibril, peace to him, are involved in teaching humans. The teaching happens directly, as in the case of Jibril and the Messengers of God, and indirectly by facilitating learning to the average person, as in the case of the scribe (See verse 2: 282 below).
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الرَّحْمَـٰنُ ﴿١﴾ عَلَّمَ الْقُرْآنَ ﴿٢﴾ خَلَقَ الْإِنسَانَ ﴿٣﴾ عَلَّمَهُ الْبَيَانَ ﴿٤﴾ (الرَّحْمَـٰن ، 55: 1-4).
The Most Merciful, (1) has taught the Qur'an, (2) created the human (being), (3) taught him speech (Al-Rahman, 55: 1-4)
فَاذْكُرُوا اللَّـهَ كَمَا عَلَّمَكُم مَّا لَمْ تَكُونُوا تَعْلَمُونَ (البقرة ، 2: 239).
Remember Allah, as He has taught you that which you did not know (Al-Baqara, 2: 239).
إِنْ هُوَ إِلَّا وَحْيٌ يُوحَىٰ ﴿٤﴾ عَلَّمَهُ شَدِيدُ الْقُوَىٰ ﴿٥﴾ - (النجم ، 53: 4-5).
It is an inspiration sent down (to him),(4) taught by one mighty in power (Jibril) (Al-Najm, 53: 4-5).
وَلَا يَأْبَ كَاتِبٌ أَن يَكْتُبَ كَمَا عَلَّمَهُ اللَّـهُ (البقرة ، 2: 282).
A scribe should not refuse to write as Allah has taught him (Al-Baqara, 2: 282).
Human Freedom of Choice
God’s trust in His human creation to be His representatives on Earth was also based on His knowledge of them as being capable to choose between right and wrong. Unlike angels, who are obedient to their Creator by creation (Al-Tahreem, 66: 6), humans have the characteristic of choice between obedience or disobedience, making their own decisions.
لَا يَعْصُونَ اللَّه مَا أَمَرَهُمْ وَيَفْعَلُونَ مَا يُؤْمَرُونَ (التَّحْرِيم ، 66: 6).
They (angels) do not disobey Allah in what He commands them, but do what they are commanded (Al-Tahreem, 66: 6).
Allah, praise to Him, wanted to enjoy seeing his human creation obey Him and observe His commands by choice. When He told His angels that He would make human His caliphs on Earth, they were surprised because of their knowledge of human corruption and violence (blood-shedding). But Allah, praise to Him, answered them saying He knew what they did not know, as stated in 2:30.
He knew that as some humans may choose to corrupt and shed blood, others will choose to obey His commands and do good to themselves, to others, and to their Planet.
Humans are born with this characteristic of being able to identify what’s right and what’s wrong. They are also born with the ability to choose which of the two paths they are going to follow. This freedom of choice is inherent, not learned. It’s part of the original DNA software inscribed by the Creator and blown into the fetus in its mother’s womb, as the verses tell us, as well as we are told by a well-known and strong Hadith by Prophet Muhammed, peace and blessings of God be upon him.[iv]
Verse 3: 76 states that the human being is guided to the path of choice, which will show if he or she will be grateful to the Creator who guided him or her, or a disbeliever who won’t recognize this great blessing.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
إِنَّا هَدَيْنَاهُ السَّبِيلَ إِمَّا شَاكِرًا وَإِمَّا كَفُورًا (الإنسان ، 76: 3).
We guided him (the human being) to the path (of choice, to see if he chooses to be) grateful or disbelieving (Al-Insan, 76: 3).
Verse 89: 10 is bluntly direct in stating that Allah has guided the human being to identify the two paths of right and wrong or good and evil. Then, He left him or her there to choose with free will which path to follow.
أَلَمْ نَجْعَل لَّهُ عَيْنَيْنِ ﴿٨﴾ وَلِسَانًا وَشَفَتَيْنِ ﴿٩﴾ وَهَدَيْنَاهُ النَّجْدَيْنِ ﴿١٠﴾ - (البلد ، 89: 8-10).
Have We not made for him two eyes? (8) And a tongue, and two lips? (9) And guided him to the two paths (to choose from)? (Al-Balad, 89: 8-10).
Verse 91: 8 states that Allah, praise to Him, has inspired the human self to know the paths of disobedience and piety. He praised those who keep the self pure and warn those who corrupt it. [v]
وَنَفْسٍ وَمَا سَوَّاهَا ﴿٧﴾ فَأَلْهَمَهَا فُجُورَهَا وَتَقْوَاهَا ﴿٨﴾ قَدْ أَفْلَحَ مَن زَكَّاهَا ﴿٩﴾ وَقَدْ خَابَ مَن دَسَّاهَا
(الشمس ، 91: 7-10).
By the (human) self, and how He fashioned it, (7) by inspiring it to (to know the paths of) disobedience and piety. (8) Truly, whoever keeps it pure will succeed, (9) And whoever corrupts it will fail (10) (Al-Shams, 91: 7-10).
Human Tendency to Construct
God’s trust in His creation of human beings to be His representatives on Earth was further based on His knowledge of them as being capable to build, or construct. He expected human beings to be creative in continuously improving their conditions on Earth, reaching the stage of civilization, as Ibn Khaldoun described it, using the Quranic meaning of ‘Amarah (construction or civilization). [vi]
Verse 30: 9 is an invitation for humans to excavate the previous civilization to learn lessons from. It’s a direct reference to the human tendency of construction.
There is no doubt that construction benefited from the other two human characteristics of learning and choice. The three qualities interacted with each other producing this wonderful human phenomenon, which has pleased God, Who did bet on to do so, and to be thus, in front of His angels.
Here are three verses in which the reference to human construction is used.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
وَإِلَىٰ ثَمُودَ أَخَاهُمْ صَالِحًا ۚ قَالَ يَا قَوْمِ اعْبُدُوا اللَّـهَ مَا لَكُم مِّنْ إِلَـٰهٍ غَيْرُهُ ۖ هُوَ أَنشَأَكُم مِّنَ الْأَرْضِ وَاسْتَعْمَرَكُمْ فِيهَا (هود ، 11: 61).
And to the Thamud People (We sent) their brother Saleh. He said: O my people! Worship Allah, you have no other god but Him. He produced you from the Earth and (enabled) you to construct therein (Hood, 11: 61).
إِنَّمَا يَعْمُرُ مَسَاجِدَ اللَّـهِ مَنْ آمَنَ بِاللَّـهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ وَأَقَامَ الصَّلَاةَ وَآتَى الزَّكَاةَ وَلَمْ يَخْشَ إِلَّا اللَّـهَ (التوبة ، 9: 18).
The mosques of Allah are constructed, visited, and maintained by whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day, and by whoever observes the prayer, and pays zakat (the poor-due) and fears none except Allah (Al-Tawba, 9: 18 ).
أَوَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرُوا كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ ۚ كَانُوا أَشَدَّ مِنْهُمْ قُوَّةً وَأَثَارُوا الْأَرْضَ وَعَمَرُوهَا أَكْثَرَ مِمَّا عَمَرُوهَا (الروم ، 30: 9).
Have they not travelled on the land to see what was the sequel of those who were before them? They were much stronger than them, and they dug the earth and built upon it more than these have built (Al-Room, 30: 9).
***
Meanings of Caliphate, and duties of God’s successors on Earth, as mentioned in the following 14 verses of the Holy Quran:
The following fourteen verses of the Holy Quran the human caliphate of God on Earth with the following characteristics and responsibilities:
Believing in Allah
Doing good deeds
Mentioning blessings of God
Not corrupting the Earth
Ruling people with justice and according to God’s commands
Patience
Piety.
Allah, praise to Him, mentions in the Holy Quran that the caliphate or succession of humans on Earth is a test for them, as He wants to see how they behave with the blessings He bestowed on them.
He also mentions that oppressors and those who rule with injustice, away from God’s commands will be replaced by others, who are better than them.
أعوذ بالله من الشيطان الرجيم
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
وَاذْكُرُوا إِذْ جَعَلَكُمْ خُلَفَاءَ مِن بَعْدِ قَوْمِ نُوحٍ وَزَادَكُمْ فِي الْخَلْقِ بَسْطَةً ۖ فَاذْكُرُوا آلَاءَ اللَّـهِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ (الأعراف ، 7: 69).
And reflect (think about) that He made you successors (caliphs) after the people of Noah, and made you exceeding them in stature. Then, remember the favors of Allah, so that you may prosper (Al-‘Araf, 7: 96).
فَكَذَّبُوهُ فَنَجَّيْنَاهُ وَمَن مَّعَهُ فِي الْفُلْكِ وَجَعَلْنَاهُمْ خَلَائِفَ وَأَغْرَقْنَا الَّذِينَ كَذَّبُوا بِآيَاتِنَا (يونس ، 10: 73).
They rejected him, so We saved him and those with him in the ship, and made them successors (caliphs), and We drowned those who rejected Our revelations (Younus, 10: 73). .
وَاذْكُرُوا إِذْ جَعَلَكُمْ خُلَفَاءَ مِن بَعْدِ عَادٍ وَبَوَّأَكُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ تَتَّخِذُونَ مِن سُهُولِهَا قُصُورًا وَتَنْحِتُونَ الْجِبَالَ بُيُوتًا ۖ فَاذْكُرُوا آلَاءَ اللَّـهِ وَلَا تَعْثَوْا فِي الْأَرْضِ مُفْسِدِينَ (الأعراف ، 7: 74).
Reflect (think about) that He made you successors (caliphs) after (the people of) 'Ad, and settled you on the Earth so that you could construct on its plains palaces, and carve dwellings out of mountains. So remember the favors of Allah, and do not act on the Earth as corruptors (Al-'Araf, 7:47).
يَا دَاوُودُ إِنَّا جَعَلْنَاكَ خَلِيفَةً فِي الْأَرْضِ فَاحْكُم بَيْنَ النَّاسِ بِالْحَقِّ وَلَا تَتَّبِعِ الْهَوَىٰ فَيُضِلَّكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّـهِ (ص ، 38: 26).
O Dawood (David)! We have made you as a successor on earth, so judge among people rightly, and do not follow desire, (which may) misguide away from the path of Allah (Saad, 38: 26).
هُوَ الَّذِي جَعَلَكُمْ خَلَائِفَ فِي الْأَرْضِ ۚ فَمَن كَفَرَ فَعَلَيْهِ كُفْرُهُ ۖ (فاطر ، 35: 39).
He is Who has made you successors (caliphs) on the Earth. So he who disbelieves, his disbelief will be on him (He will bear the consequences). (Fater, 35: 39).
أَمَّن يُجِيبُ الْمُضْطَرَّ إِذَا دَعَاهُ وَيَكْشِفُ السُّوءَ وَيَجْعَلُكُمْ خُلَفَاءَ الْأَرْضِ ۗ أَإِلَـٰهٌ مَّعَ اللَّـهِ ۚ قَلِيلًا مَّا تَذَكَّرُونَ (النمل ، 27: 62).
Or, Who listens to the distressed when he calls on Him, and Who relieves the suffering, and makes you successors (caliphs) on the Earth? (Are you still taking) Another god with Allah? It is little that you reflect on (Al-Naml, 27: 62).
وَهُوَ الَّذِي جَعَلَكُمْ خَلَائِفَ الْأَرْضِ وَرَفَعَ بَعْضَكُمْ فَوْقَ بَعْضٍ دَرَجَاتٍ لِّيَبْلُوَكُمْ فِي مَا آتَاكُمْ ۗ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ سَرِيعُ الْعِقَابِ وَإِنَّهُ لَغَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ (الأنعام ، 6: 165).
And it is He Who has made you successors (caliphs) of the Earth and raised some of you above others in ranks, so that He tests you of what He has given you; surely your Lord is quick in punishment, and surely He is Forgiving, (and) Merciful (Al-Ana'am, 6: 561).
ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاكُمْ خَلَائِفَ فِي الْأَرْضِ مِن بَعْدِهِمْ لِنَنظُرَ كَيْفَ تَعْمَلُونَ (يونس ، 10: 14).
Then We made you successors (caliphs) on the Earth, after them, to see how you would act (Younus, 10: 14).
آمِنُوا بِاللَّـهِ وَرَسُولِهِ وَأَنفِقُوا مِمَّا جَعَلَكُم مُّسْتَخْلَفِينَ فِيهِ (الحديد ، 57: 7).
Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and spend of that which He has made you (His) successors (caliphs) on (Al-Hadeed, 57: 7).
وَعَدَ اللَّـهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مِنكُمْ وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ لَيَسْتَخْلِفَنَّهُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ كَمَا اسْتَخْلَفَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ. (النور ، 24: 55).
Allah has promised those who believe among you to make them successors on Earth, as He made successors of those before them (Al-Noor, 24: 55).
وَرَبُّكَ الْغَنِيُّ ذُو الرَّحْمَةِ ۚ إِن يَشَأْ يُذْهِبْكُمْ وَيَسْتَخْلِفْ مِن بَعْدِكُم مَّا يَشَاءُ كَمَا أَنشَأَكُم مِّن ذُرِّيَّةِ قَوْمٍ آخَرِينَ (الأنعام ، 6: 133).
Your Lord is Self-Sufficient, (the Lord) of Mercy. If He will, He can remove you and make successors (caliphs) after you whom He wills, as He made you from offspring of other people (Al-Ana’am, 6: 13).
فَإِن تَوَلَّوْا فَقَدْ أَبْلَغْتُكُم مَّا أُرْسِلْتُ بِهِ إِلَيْكُمْ ۚ وَيَسْتَخْلِفُ رَبِّي قَوْمًا غَيْرَكُمْ وَلَا تَضُرُّونَهُ شَيْئًا (هود ، 11: 57).
(Prophet Hood): If they turn away (from what you told them, tell them) I have conveyed the Message with which I was sent to you, and my Lord will make another people to succeed you, and you will not harm Him anything (Hood, 11: 57).
قَالَ مُوسَىٰ لِقَوْمِهِ اسْتَعِينُوا بِاللَّـهِ وَاصْبِرُوا ۖ إِنَّ الْأَرْضَ لِلَّـهِ يُورِثُهَا مَن يَشَاءُ مِنْ عِبَادِهِ ۖ وَالْعَاقِبَةُ لِلْمُتَّقِينَ (الأعراف ، 7: 128).
Moussa (Moses) said to his people: Seek help from Allah and endure. The Earth is Allah's. He gives it as inheritance to whom He wills of his worshippers, and the sequel is for the pious (Al-‘Araf, 7: 128).
قَالُوا أُوذِينَا مِن قَبْلِ أَن تَأْتِيَنَا وَمِن بَعْدِ مَا جِئْتَنَا ۚ قَالَ عَسَىٰ رَبُّكُمْ أَن يُهْلِكَ عَدُوَّكُمْ وَيَسْتَخْلِفَكُمْ فِي الْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرَ كَيْفَ تَعْمَلُونَ (الأعراف ، 7: 129).
They said: We had been hurt before and after you came to us. He said: May your Lord destroy your enemy and make you successors (caliphs) on the Earth, so He sees how you act (Al-‘Araf, 7: 921). Notes
[i]
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Islamic%20Editorials/2007/October/Creation%20and%20Evolution%20in%20the%20Holy%20Qur'an%20By%20Hassan%20El-Najjar.htm
[ii] The complete works of these great Islamic scholars, who interpreted the Holy Quran in different centuries are published on the official website of the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, at: http://quran.al-islam.com/
[iii] Pages 469-480 of the Holy Quran Index in Arabic by Muhammed Fuad Abdul Baqi. Cairo: Dar Al-Fikr. 1406 (1986). The Arabic Title of the index is: “Al-Mu’ajam Al-Mufahras Li Alfadh Al-Qur’an Al-Kareem.” In particular, there are about 26 verses, on pages 474-475, which are directly related to human learning and God’s influence in that process.
[iv] The fourth Hadith, selected by Imam Al-Nawawi, may Allah be pleased with him, in his famous anthology, titled, “The Forty Correct Sayings of the Prophet,” by Imam Yahya Sharafuddin Al-Nawawi, who died in 676 Hijriyah.
[v] For a discussion about the human self, the author’s article:
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Islamic%20Editorials/2007/November/Mind,%20Self,%20Soul,%20Spirit,%20and%20Happiness%20from%20an%20Islamic%20Perspective%20By%20Hassan%20Ali%20El-Najjar.htm
[vi] Abdul Rahman Bin Khaldoun was an Arab sociologist who lived in Andalusia, North Africa, and Egypt. He was born in Tunis, in 732 H (1332 AD) and died in Cairo in 808 H (1406 AD). He wrote his famous “Introduction to Sociology,” about five centuries before Auguste Compte started modern sociology in France in the 19th century.
Ibn Khaldoun was not alone in equating construction with civilization. Modern anthropologists have also acknowledged that fact, associating human civilization with intensive agriculture, which was also associated with construction of temples, palaces, theaters, dams, canals, roads, and huge monuments like pyramids, Sphinx, and statues. This construction was not possible without writing languages and developing various sciences, hence civilization.
* Dr. Hassan Ali El-Najjar is a native speaker of Arabic. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Master’s degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Georgia, USA.
Opinions expressed in various sections are the sole responsibility of their authors and they may not represent Al-Jazeerah's.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
US diplomats spied on UN leadership• Diplomats ordered to gather intelligence on Ban Ki-moon
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-spying-un?intcmp=239
• Diplomats ordered to gather intelligence on Ban Ki-moon• Secret directives sent to more than 30 US embassies• Call for DNA data, computer passwords and terrorist links
Robert Booth and Julian Borger
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 18.14 GMT
Article history
A directive from Hillary Clinton ordered US diplomats to gather biometric information on the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. Photograph: Bernat Armangue/AP
Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton's name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
It called for detailed biometric information "on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders" as well as intelligence on Ban's "management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat". A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.
Washington also wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and "biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives".
The secret "national human intelligence collection directive" was sent to US missions at the UN in New York, Vienna and Rome; 33 embassies and consulates, including those in London, Paris and Moscow.
The operation targeted at the UN appears to have involved all of Washington's main intelligence agencies. The CIA's clandestine service, the US Secret Service and the FBI were included in the "reporting and collection needs" cable alongside the state department under the heading "collection requirements and tasking".
The leak of the directive is likely to spark questions about the legality of the operation and about whether state department diplomats are expected to spy. The level of technical and personal detail demanded about the UN top team's communication systems could be seen as laying the groundwork for surveillance or hacking operations. It requested "current technical specifications, physical layout and planned upgrades to telecommunications infrastructure and information systems, networks and technologies used by top officials and their support staff", as well as details on private networks used for official communication, "to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys and virtual private network versions used".
The UN has previously asserted that bugging the secretary general is illegal, citing the 1946 UN convention on privileges and immunities which states: "The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action".
The 1961 Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, which covers the UN, also states that "the official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable".
The emergence of the directive also risks undermining political trust between the UN leadership and the US, which is the former's biggest paying member, supplying almost a quarter of its budget – more than $3bn (£1.9bn) this year.
Washington wanted intelligence on the contentious issue of the "relationship or funding between UN personnel and/or missions and terrorist organisations" and links between the UN Relief and Works Agency in the Middle East, and Hamas and Hezbollah. It also wanted to know about plans by UN special rapporteurs to press for potentially embarrassing investigations into the US treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, and "details of friction" between the agencies co-ordinating UN humanitarian operations, evidence of corruption inside UNAids, the joint UN programme on HIV, and in international health organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO). It even called for "biographic and biometric" information on Dr Margaret Chan, the director general of WHO, as well as details of her personality, role, effectiveness, management style and influence.
The UN is not the only target. The cables reveal that since 2008 the state department has issued at least nine directives to embassies around the world which set forth "a list of priorities intended to guide participating US government agencies as they allocate resources and update plans to collect information".
They are packed with detailed orders and while embassy staff are particularly encouraged to assist in compiling biographic information, the directive on the mineral and oil-rich Great Lakes region of Africa also requested detailed military intelligence, including weapons markings and plans of army bases. A directive on "Palestinian issues" sent to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus and Riyadh demanded the exact travel plans and vehicles used by leading members of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, without explaining why.
In one directive that would test the initiative, never mind moral and legal scruples, of any diplomat, Washington ordered staff in the DRC, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi to obtain biometric information of leading figures in business, politics, intelligence, military, religion and in key ethnic groups.
Fingerprints and photographs are collected as part of embassies' consular and visa operations, but it is harder to see how diplomats could justify obtaining DNA samples and iris scans. Again in central Africa, embassy officials were ordered to gather details about countries' military relations with China, Libya, North Korea, Iran and Russia. Washington assigned high priority to intelligence on the "transfer of strategic materials such as uranium", and "details of arms acquisitions and arms sales by government or insurgents, including negotiations, contracts, deliveries, terms of sale, quantity and quality of equipment, and price and payment terms".
The directives, signed simply "Clinton" or "Rice", referring to the current and former secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, form a central plank of America's intelligence effort and reveal how Washington is using its 11,500-strong foreign service to glean highly sensitive information on both allies and enemies.
They are compliant with the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, which is approved by the president, and issued by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence who oversees the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency, FBI and 13 other intelligence agencies.
Washington circulated to its Middle Eastern embassies a request for what was effectively a counter-intelligence operation against Mukhabarat, the Palestinian Authority's secret service, and Istikhbarat, its military intelligence.
The directive asked for an assessment of the foreign agencies' "signals intercept capabilities and targets, decryption capabilities, intercept sites and collection hardware, and intercept operation successes" and information of their "efforts to illicitly collect classified, sensitive, commercial proprietary or protected technology information from US companies or government agencies".
Missions in Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were asked to gather biometric information "on key Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders and representatives, to include the young guard inside Gaza, the West Bank", as well as evidence of collusion between the PA security forces and terror groups.
Taken together, the directives provide a vivid snapshot of America's perception of foreign threats which are often dazzlingly interconnected. Paraguayan drug traffickers were suspected of supporting Hezbollah and al-Qaida, while Latin American cocaine barons were linked to criminal networks in the desert states of west Africa, who were in turn linked to Islamist terrorists in the Middle East and Asia.
High on the list of requests in an April 2009 directive covering the Saharan west African countries, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal, was information about the activities of fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Information was wanted on "indications that international terrorist groups are seeking to take advantage of political, ethnic, tribal or religious conflict".
Diplomats were told to find out about the links between drug traffickers in the region to Latin American cocaine cartels, as well as terrorist or insurgent groups' income derived from the drugs trade.
Sometimes the directives appear linked to forthcoming diplomatic obligations of the secretary of state. In a cable to the embassy in Sofia last June, five months before Clinton hosted Bulgaria's foreign minister in Washington, the first request was about government corruption and the links between organised crime groups and "government and foreign entities, drug and human trafficking, credit card fraud, and computer-related crimes, including child pornography".
Washington also wanted to know about "corruption among senior officials, including off-budget financial flows in support of senior leaders … details about defence industry, including plans and efforts to co-operate with foreign nations and actors. Weapon system development programmes, firms and facilities. Types, production rates, and factory markings of major weapon systems".
Top tips for dealing with defectors and turncoats
One cable offered a detailed and practical guide for embassies on how to handle possible defectors, known as "walk-ins", who turned up at embassies offering to switch sides. It called for them to be treated with considerable care because they "may be sources of invaluable intelligence".
"Walk-ins may exhibit nervous or anxious behaviour, particularly because access controls and host nation security forces around many of our diplomatic posts make it difficult for walk-ins to approach our facilities discreetly," it warned. "All briefings should also stress the importance of not drawing attention to the walk-in or alerting host nation security personnel."
Embassy staff should immediately copy the person's identification papers or passport, in case they got cold feet and ran off, it said. A walk-in who possessed any object that appeared potentially dangerous should be denied access even if the item was presented "as evidence of some intelligence he offers, eg, red mercury [a possibly bogus chemical which has been claimed to be a component of nuclear weapons] presented as proof of plutonium enrichment".
Blogger comment:
No comment read the documents yourself. The only thing I fear of if this leak to put the Muslim and Arab world that attack on Iran is inevitable and the Arab tyrants bless it so the Arab Leaders and the public submit to the idea. Which will be endless wars in the Middle East that will involve all the countries in the area. I hope I am wrong but the left in USA has to be on guard one more war means endless wars.
• Diplomats ordered to gather intelligence on Ban Ki-moon• Secret directives sent to more than 30 US embassies• Call for DNA data, computer passwords and terrorist links
Robert Booth and Julian Borger
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 18.14 GMT
Article history
A directive from Hillary Clinton ordered US diplomats to gather biometric information on the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. Photograph: Bernat Armangue/AP
Washington is running a secret intelligence campaign targeted at the leadership of the United Nations, including the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon and the permanent security council representatives from China, Russia, France and the UK.
A classified directive which appears to blur the line between diplomacy and spying was issued to US diplomats under Hillary Clinton's name in July 2009, demanding forensic technical details about the communications systems used by top UN officials, including passwords and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.
It called for detailed biometric information "on key UN officials, to include undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders" as well as intelligence on Ban's "management and decision-making style and his influence on the secretariat". A parallel intelligence directive sent to diplomats in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi said biometric data included DNA, fingerprints and iris scans.
Washington also wanted credit card numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers and even frequent-flyer account numbers for UN figures and "biographic and biometric information on UN Security Council permanent representatives".
The secret "national human intelligence collection directive" was sent to US missions at the UN in New York, Vienna and Rome; 33 embassies and consulates, including those in London, Paris and Moscow.
The operation targeted at the UN appears to have involved all of Washington's main intelligence agencies. The CIA's clandestine service, the US Secret Service and the FBI were included in the "reporting and collection needs" cable alongside the state department under the heading "collection requirements and tasking".
The leak of the directive is likely to spark questions about the legality of the operation and about whether state department diplomats are expected to spy. The level of technical and personal detail demanded about the UN top team's communication systems could be seen as laying the groundwork for surveillance or hacking operations. It requested "current technical specifications, physical layout and planned upgrades to telecommunications infrastructure and information systems, networks and technologies used by top officials and their support staff", as well as details on private networks used for official communication, "to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys and virtual private network versions used".
The UN has previously asserted that bugging the secretary general is illegal, citing the 1946 UN convention on privileges and immunities which states: "The premises of the United Nations shall be inviolable. The property and assets of the United Nations, wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation and any other form of interference, whether by executive, administrative, judicial or legislative action".
The 1961 Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, which covers the UN, also states that "the official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable".
The emergence of the directive also risks undermining political trust between the UN leadership and the US, which is the former's biggest paying member, supplying almost a quarter of its budget – more than $3bn (£1.9bn) this year.
Washington wanted intelligence on the contentious issue of the "relationship or funding between UN personnel and/or missions and terrorist organisations" and links between the UN Relief and Works Agency in the Middle East, and Hamas and Hezbollah. It also wanted to know about plans by UN special rapporteurs to press for potentially embarrassing investigations into the US treatment of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, and "details of friction" between the agencies co-ordinating UN humanitarian operations, evidence of corruption inside UNAids, the joint UN programme on HIV, and in international health organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO). It even called for "biographic and biometric" information on Dr Margaret Chan, the director general of WHO, as well as details of her personality, role, effectiveness, management style and influence.
The UN is not the only target. The cables reveal that since 2008 the state department has issued at least nine directives to embassies around the world which set forth "a list of priorities intended to guide participating US government agencies as they allocate resources and update plans to collect information".
They are packed with detailed orders and while embassy staff are particularly encouraged to assist in compiling biographic information, the directive on the mineral and oil-rich Great Lakes region of Africa also requested detailed military intelligence, including weapons markings and plans of army bases. A directive on "Palestinian issues" sent to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus and Riyadh demanded the exact travel plans and vehicles used by leading members of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, without explaining why.
In one directive that would test the initiative, never mind moral and legal scruples, of any diplomat, Washington ordered staff in the DRC, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi to obtain biometric information of leading figures in business, politics, intelligence, military, religion and in key ethnic groups.
Fingerprints and photographs are collected as part of embassies' consular and visa operations, but it is harder to see how diplomats could justify obtaining DNA samples and iris scans. Again in central Africa, embassy officials were ordered to gather details about countries' military relations with China, Libya, North Korea, Iran and Russia. Washington assigned high priority to intelligence on the "transfer of strategic materials such as uranium", and "details of arms acquisitions and arms sales by government or insurgents, including negotiations, contracts, deliveries, terms of sale, quantity and quality of equipment, and price and payment terms".
The directives, signed simply "Clinton" or "Rice", referring to the current and former secretaries of state, Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, form a central plank of America's intelligence effort and reveal how Washington is using its 11,500-strong foreign service to glean highly sensitive information on both allies and enemies.
They are compliant with the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, which is approved by the president, and issued by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence who oversees the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency, FBI and 13 other intelligence agencies.
Washington circulated to its Middle Eastern embassies a request for what was effectively a counter-intelligence operation against Mukhabarat, the Palestinian Authority's secret service, and Istikhbarat, its military intelligence.
The directive asked for an assessment of the foreign agencies' "signals intercept capabilities and targets, decryption capabilities, intercept sites and collection hardware, and intercept operation successes" and information of their "efforts to illicitly collect classified, sensitive, commercial proprietary or protected technology information from US companies or government agencies".
Missions in Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were asked to gather biometric information "on key Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders and representatives, to include the young guard inside Gaza, the West Bank", as well as evidence of collusion between the PA security forces and terror groups.
Taken together, the directives provide a vivid snapshot of America's perception of foreign threats which are often dazzlingly interconnected. Paraguayan drug traffickers were suspected of supporting Hezbollah and al-Qaida, while Latin American cocaine barons were linked to criminal networks in the desert states of west Africa, who were in turn linked to Islamist terrorists in the Middle East and Asia.
High on the list of requests in an April 2009 directive covering the Saharan west African countries, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal, was information about the activities of fighters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Information was wanted on "indications that international terrorist groups are seeking to take advantage of political, ethnic, tribal or religious conflict".
Diplomats were told to find out about the links between drug traffickers in the region to Latin American cocaine cartels, as well as terrorist or insurgent groups' income derived from the drugs trade.
Sometimes the directives appear linked to forthcoming diplomatic obligations of the secretary of state. In a cable to the embassy in Sofia last June, five months before Clinton hosted Bulgaria's foreign minister in Washington, the first request was about government corruption and the links between organised crime groups and "government and foreign entities, drug and human trafficking, credit card fraud, and computer-related crimes, including child pornography".
Washington also wanted to know about "corruption among senior officials, including off-budget financial flows in support of senior leaders … details about defence industry, including plans and efforts to co-operate with foreign nations and actors. Weapon system development programmes, firms and facilities. Types, production rates, and factory markings of major weapon systems".
Top tips for dealing with defectors and turncoats
One cable offered a detailed and practical guide for embassies on how to handle possible defectors, known as "walk-ins", who turned up at embassies offering to switch sides. It called for them to be treated with considerable care because they "may be sources of invaluable intelligence".
"Walk-ins may exhibit nervous or anxious behaviour, particularly because access controls and host nation security forces around many of our diplomatic posts make it difficult for walk-ins to approach our facilities discreetly," it warned. "All briefings should also stress the importance of not drawing attention to the walk-in or alerting host nation security personnel."
Embassy staff should immediately copy the person's identification papers or passport, in case they got cold feet and ran off, it said. A walk-in who possessed any object that appeared potentially dangerous should be denied access even if the item was presented "as evidence of some intelligence he offers, eg, red mercury [a possibly bogus chemical which has been claimed to be a component of nuclear weapons] presented as proof of plutonium enrichment".
Blogger comment:
No comment read the documents yourself. The only thing I fear of if this leak to put the Muslim and Arab world that attack on Iran is inevitable and the Arab tyrants bless it so the Arab Leaders and the public submit to the idea. Which will be endless wars in the Middle East that will involve all the countries in the area. I hope I am wrong but the left in USA has to be on guard one more war means endless wars.
Mubarak Tyrant to the Last Day of his Life
بدء التصويت فى انتخابات الشعب فى ظل تضييق أمنى على مرشحى الإخوان والمستقلين
منع مندوبى جميع المرشحين من دخول اللجان وانفراد مندوبى (الوطنى) بالصناديق
أزمة بين مندوبى المستقلين بسبب إصرار مشرفى اللجان على وضع أختام أقسام الشرطة
(الوطنى) يستخدم البلطجية والرشاوى الانتخابية.. والإعلام الغربى يواصل انتقاداته الواسعة
قضاة بمجلس الدولة يقاطعون الإشراف على الانتخابات لتجاهل الداخلية والعليا للانتخابات للأحكام
القضاء يوقف الانتخابات في دائرة المصيلحي.. والعثور على بطاقات تصويت مختومة ليلة الانتخابات
بدأت في انحاء مصر عملية الاقتراع صباح الأحد لانتخاب 508 نواب في مجلس الشعب المصري، وسط توترات وحضور أمني واسع واتهامات للأمن بمحاباة مرشحى ومندوبى "الوطنى"، ومنع مندوبى مرشحى الإخوان والمستقلين والتضييق عليهم. فبعد مرور دقائق على فتح باب التصويت فى الانتخابات البرلمانية رفض رؤساء 5 لجان انتخابية بدائرة الجيزة إدخال مندوبى مرشحى جماعة الإخوان عزب مصطفى "عمال جيزة" وآمال عبد الكريم "عمال كوتة المرأة"، وقال رؤساء اللجان إن التوكيلات الخاصة بمندوبى المرشحَين غير معتمدة من قِبَل أقسام الشرطة، ولا تحمل إلا خاتم الشهر العقارى، وهذه اللجان هى "شجرة الدر"، و"الفاروق عمر"، والجيزة الثانوية"، و"الهيئة المصرية العامة لمشروعات الصرف" و"تنمية المشروعات الصغيرة". وتزاحم نحو 400 مندوب عن مرشحين إخوان ومستقلين أمام قسم شرطة الجيزة فى محاولةٍ للوفاء بشرط رؤساء اللجان الانتخابية، وهو ختم التوكيلات من "الشرطة". المزيد
An Islamic education for all?
From: www.islamicity.com
By: Rania Hafez Independent* -
In the debate about education, religion is seen as essentially reactionary with the aim of indoctrinating children and young people into a set of unreasoned if not irrational beliefs.But in our currently barren intellectual state and with a political climate that mistrusts debate and demands compliance, education has been shackled to standards and competencies with a very narrow instrumentalist view of the curriculum. So education has become the constraining factor and perhaps religion may offer a way forward?A religious perspective (Islamic or otherwise) on education provides us with a paradox. "Educere" from the Latin means to lead out (to liberate) whereas "religio" means to constrain. Thus religious education has often meant to indoctrinate the young people into the rules of a particular faith.
I propose however that education in the traditional Islamic discourse, going back to the principles of education in Islamic text and the practice of Muslim thinkers and scholars in the heyday of Islamic civilization, far from harnessing the mind to restrict it, supports freeing the mind through harnessing a person's intellectual and emotional capabilities in a framework of reasoned enquiry and scholarly study.Until recently "education" in its true sense has been missing from the debate. What passes for 'education' is little more than a social engineering agenda. Control of personal behavior has been the focus of education with a view that kids are out of control and it's the job of schools and teachers to make the "buggers" behave. Teachers have lost their autonomy and teacher education has become one of training teachers to perform, not to think.That sounds quite traditional and, some may think, Islamic. Surely Islam with its strict rules on dress, food, sexual behavior seeks to control in a more draconian way? Actually, as far as education is concerned, Islam is traditional in a way that may surprise you.There are seven broad principles that define Islam's approach to education:
(1) First and foremost Islam values Knowledge as an objective universal truth (Haqq). It is not bound to culture or religion. It exists "out there" to be discovered. And discovering knowledge is a way of entering faith. Al-Haqq is one of God's names meaning absolute truth. So there is an objective truth that is independent of faith, yet leads to faith. The Quran states that those who come to "know" the measure of God are the "knowledgeable".
(2) Seeking this Knowledge through rational empirical investigation is the second principle. We have to be active seekers/learners. Muslims are instructed to seek truth through a spirit of inquiry and discovery. We are enjoined to study ourselves and the world around us.
(3) Islam has made seeking knowledge an obligation on every individual. Ignorance is not an excuse. Muslims are encouraged to 'seek knowledge all the way to China' - very contemporary! Knowledge is not ethnocentric. It is not "our" knowledge; it is universal knowledge that can be accessed by all regardless of time and place.
(4) Islam recognizes an ethical unity of knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge in a vacuum, devoid of purpose, is a deviation from the truth (Haqq). Knowledge is an integrated reality essentially and existentially; the facts of the empirical world are signs and symbols operating in a network of conceptual relations that altogether describe an organic unity.
(5) The value of the written word and the importance of the book. The first word revealed is Islam was the command "Read!". The Quran is central to every Muslim's life and as the first of the books, but not the only one, reading is central to the faith. Knowledge is to be found in the scholarly works across nations and ages.
(6) Transmission and the centrality of the teacher. 'The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr'. Scholars and Teachers hold a very important social position in Islam. Islam states that 'The best of you are those who learn (a) knowledge and then teach it'.
(7) Action. Knowledge has to be acknowledged by recognizing the true nature and relationship of people and things. Recognition of the truth in both domains, the ontological and the theological, necessitates in the human being conduct that conforms to that truth. The pursuit of knowledge should lead to the emancipation of the human.An Islamic approach to education would focus on knowledge, the need to enquire and experiment. It would make the seeking of objective knowledge a moral obligation on every individual and provide an ethical unity to that knowledge. It would venerate learning from books and the teacher. Finally, it would necessitate in every individual action to ensure human progress.An education built on Islamic principles would be a triumph over contemporary instrumentalist social engineering that passes for education.Throughout October and November, The Independent Online is partnering with the Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions of our time.Source:
Rania Hafez for The Independent. Sr. Hafez is Director of Post Compulsory Education at the University of East London and founder of the professional network Muslim Women in Education. Her Battle in Print, entitled An Islamic education for all?, can be viewed here.
Blogger Comment:
Islamic knowledge is not obligatory on non-Muslims but works for them since they will live with Muslims that live by ethics and decency. Islamic law is never applied on non-Muslims. They will scare you of Islam so the world stay the same the tyrants continue to be tyrants and the rich and connected continue in power. The words of the falsehood continue to be up and the words of God continue to be unheard or misrepresented.
By: Rania Hafez Independent* -
In the debate about education, religion is seen as essentially reactionary with the aim of indoctrinating children and young people into a set of unreasoned if not irrational beliefs.But in our currently barren intellectual state and with a political climate that mistrusts debate and demands compliance, education has been shackled to standards and competencies with a very narrow instrumentalist view of the curriculum. So education has become the constraining factor and perhaps religion may offer a way forward?A religious perspective (Islamic or otherwise) on education provides us with a paradox. "Educere" from the Latin means to lead out (to liberate) whereas "religio" means to constrain. Thus religious education has often meant to indoctrinate the young people into the rules of a particular faith.
I propose however that education in the traditional Islamic discourse, going back to the principles of education in Islamic text and the practice of Muslim thinkers and scholars in the heyday of Islamic civilization, far from harnessing the mind to restrict it, supports freeing the mind through harnessing a person's intellectual and emotional capabilities in a framework of reasoned enquiry and scholarly study.Until recently "education" in its true sense has been missing from the debate. What passes for 'education' is little more than a social engineering agenda. Control of personal behavior has been the focus of education with a view that kids are out of control and it's the job of schools and teachers to make the "buggers" behave. Teachers have lost their autonomy and teacher education has become one of training teachers to perform, not to think.That sounds quite traditional and, some may think, Islamic. Surely Islam with its strict rules on dress, food, sexual behavior seeks to control in a more draconian way? Actually, as far as education is concerned, Islam is traditional in a way that may surprise you.There are seven broad principles that define Islam's approach to education:
(1) First and foremost Islam values Knowledge as an objective universal truth (Haqq). It is not bound to culture or religion. It exists "out there" to be discovered. And discovering knowledge is a way of entering faith. Al-Haqq is one of God's names meaning absolute truth. So there is an objective truth that is independent of faith, yet leads to faith. The Quran states that those who come to "know" the measure of God are the "knowledgeable".
(2) Seeking this Knowledge through rational empirical investigation is the second principle. We have to be active seekers/learners. Muslims are instructed to seek truth through a spirit of inquiry and discovery. We are enjoined to study ourselves and the world around us.
(3) Islam has made seeking knowledge an obligation on every individual. Ignorance is not an excuse. Muslims are encouraged to 'seek knowledge all the way to China' - very contemporary! Knowledge is not ethnocentric. It is not "our" knowledge; it is universal knowledge that can be accessed by all regardless of time and place.
(4) Islam recognizes an ethical unity of knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge in a vacuum, devoid of purpose, is a deviation from the truth (Haqq). Knowledge is an integrated reality essentially and existentially; the facts of the empirical world are signs and symbols operating in a network of conceptual relations that altogether describe an organic unity.
(5) The value of the written word and the importance of the book. The first word revealed is Islam was the command "Read!". The Quran is central to every Muslim's life and as the first of the books, but not the only one, reading is central to the faith. Knowledge is to be found in the scholarly works across nations and ages.
(6) Transmission and the centrality of the teacher. 'The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr'. Scholars and Teachers hold a very important social position in Islam. Islam states that 'The best of you are those who learn (a) knowledge and then teach it'.
(7) Action. Knowledge has to be acknowledged by recognizing the true nature and relationship of people and things. Recognition of the truth in both domains, the ontological and the theological, necessitates in the human being conduct that conforms to that truth. The pursuit of knowledge should lead to the emancipation of the human.An Islamic approach to education would focus on knowledge, the need to enquire and experiment. It would make the seeking of objective knowledge a moral obligation on every individual and provide an ethical unity to that knowledge. It would venerate learning from books and the teacher. Finally, it would necessitate in every individual action to ensure human progress.An education built on Islamic principles would be a triumph over contemporary instrumentalist social engineering that passes for education.Throughout October and November, The Independent Online is partnering with the Battle of Ideas festival to present a series of guest blogs from festival speakers on the key questions of our time.Source:
Rania Hafez for The Independent. Sr. Hafez is Director of Post Compulsory Education at the University of East London and founder of the professional network Muslim Women in Education. Her Battle in Print, entitled An Islamic education for all?, can be viewed here.
Blogger Comment:
Islamic knowledge is not obligatory on non-Muslims but works for them since they will live with Muslims that live by ethics and decency. Islamic law is never applied on non-Muslims. They will scare you of Islam so the world stay the same the tyrants continue to be tyrants and the rich and connected continue in power. The words of the falsehood continue to be up and the words of God continue to be unheard or misrepresented.
The Obligations Muslims Owe the Qur’an
By Living Shari`ah Staff
The pathetic and disastrous condition of the Muslim Ummah throughout the world is due to the abandoning of the Qur'an by the Muslims. The attitude of indifference that we constantly show towards the last of the Allah's Revelations, along with our hypocritical lip-service, is tantamount to ridiculing it. Instead, we must clearly understand our responsibilities towards the Qur'an and try our very best in fulfilling them. We can neither expect any improvement in our worldly state of affairs nor hope for salvation in the Hereafter, unless we carry out all the obligations that we owe the Qur'an.
Five things that the Qur'an demands from every Muslim are as follows:
The Muslim is required to believe in the Qur'an,
He is required to read it,
He is required to understand it,
He is required to act upon its teachings, and
He is required to convey its teachings to others.
OUR FIRST OBLIGATION is to have faith (Iman) in the Divine origin of the Qur'an. Iman has two phases: verbal profession (iqrar bil-lisan) and heart-felt conviction (tasdiq bil-qalb). To have faith in the Qur'an means that we should verbally profess that the Qur'an is the Word of Almighty Allah that was revealed by Him through His angel Gabriel to the last of His Messengers, Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.
This is a legal requirement for the acceptance of a person as a member of the Muslim society. Having done that, however, we also need to develop a deeply felt certitude in the Qur'an. It is only when we have real conviction in that verbal declaration that our hearts and minds would come under the influence of the Qur'an, leading us towards genuine devotion and veneration of the Glorious Book.
Unfortunately, there is a woeful lack of staunch faith in the Divine origin of the Qur'an among the Muslims of today. This lack of faith is the reason why we neither find any reverence for the Qur'an in our hearts, nor feel inclined to study it, nor evince any interest in pondering over its meanings, nor ever think of seeking its guidance in conducting our lives.
It might be asked as to how can we acquire true faith? The answer is that the source of Iman is the Qur'an itself. If the Book is studied and its meanings are pondered upon in an authentic quest for truth, all the veils of darkness shall be lifted from one's heart, and the inner self - the soul - will get illuminated by the light of true faith.
Note that faith is not something that can be planted in us from the outside. It is an embodiment of fundamental truths that already exist inside us; the practice of pondering over the verses of the Qur'an serves to bring them to the surface of our consciousness.
OUR SECOND OBLIGATION is mindful and thoughtful reading of the Qur'an with correct pronunciation, generally described as Tilawah, Tartil, and Tajwid. Note that Tilawah is not only an important form of worship, but it is also an effective method of continually refreshing our faith.
The Qur'an is not a book to be read once; it is a Book that needs to be read again and again. We must read it carefully, reflecting on its messages, constantly seeking guidance for our lives. Just as our material body is in constant need of food for its sustenance, our spiritual soul or Ruh is also in perpetual need for its nourishment. And just as the food for our bodies is derived from the earth, the diet for our souls is obtained from the Word of God, the Qur'an itself.
Moreover, a regular and constant program of reciting the Qur'an is also needed because it is a means of refreshing and reviving our faith, and a weapon for surmounting the obstacles in the path of Almighty Allah. The ideal way in which the Glorious Book should be recited is that one should stand in the post-midnight prayer before his Lord and recite its verses in a slow and patient manner, pausing at proper places so as to enable one's heart to imbibe its influence. (Though reading the Qur'an in all times is virtuous, reading it at mid-night is more virtuous.)
Abide by the Qur'an - Yusuf Estes (1)
OUR THIRD OBLIGATION is to understand and comprehend the Qur'an. The Qur'an has been revealed so that it may be understood and pondered upon. Of course, there are numerous levels and grades of comprehension, accessible to different persons according to their respective planes of intellect and consciousness.
The first stage in the comprehension of the Qur'an is called Tazakkur, a term which alludes to the fact that the teachings of the Qur'an are not at all foreign or alien to the human Fitrah (pure instinct). Instead, they represent the eternal truths dormant in the human soul itself, and the reading or listening of the Qur'an only facilitates the recalling of these forgotten verities.
The Qur'an has been rendered very easy, by Almighty Allah, for the purpose of gaining this level of guidance. It does not matter if a person's intelligence is limited, or his knowledge of logic and philosophy is poor, or if he has no fine sense of language and literature. In spite of these drawbacks, he can still understand the basic message and practical guidance of the Qur'an, provided he has an untainted nature not perverted by any crookedness.
The second stage in the comprehension of the Qur'an is far from easy. Tadabbur is described as a penetrating study, an intense reflection, as thorough deliberation of the Qur'an as possible, and diving deep into the bottomless ocean of its wisdom.
This kind of understanding is impossible unless one is to devote his entire life, all his talents, and all his energies for the sole purpose of comprehending the Qur'an. Obviously, not everyone is capable of such a high level of devotion and effort to acquire such insight and comprehension. But there must be a number of persons, at all times, who are engaged in this enterprise.
Such scholars cannot be produced unless we have a network of universities throughout the Muslim world, which concentrate on the Qur'anic research and make this Book the focus of all their intellectual activity.
OUR FOURTH OBLIGATION is to act upon the teachings of the Qur'an. The Qur'an is the "Guidance for mankind." The purpose for which this Book has been revealed will be fully realized only when people act upon its teachings and make it the guide for them in every sphere of their lives. If we disregard the injunctions of the Qur'an, then the reading and understanding of the Glorious Book, instead of doing us any good, will only make us more guilty before Almighty Allah.
At an individual level, it is imperative for every Muslim to mold his or her life according to the teachings of the Qur'an. Our Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "None of you can become a true believer until his desires become subordinate to what I have brought." The best way to benefit from the study of the Qur'an is to go on changing our life-styles and mending our ways in accordance with its teachings.
At the collective level of the community, it is equally imperative for us to try and establish the system of Social Justice as given by the Qur'an. The Muslims are, as a whole, responsible for establishing the Sovereignty of Almighty Allah in the public as well as the private sphere, and each of us is obligated to try his utmost in this path. The struggle for the establishment of such a just and equitable order in accordance with the teachings of the Qur'an is the bounding duty of its followers.
OUR FIFTH OBLIGATION is to propagate the message of the Qur'an to every nook and corner of the world. This was originally the responsibility of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) who fulfilled his own obligation by conveying the Divine message to the Ummah; since Prophethood has been concluded with the advent of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) who is the last of the Divine Messengers, it is now the duty of the Muslims to deliver that message to all humanity.
Unfortunately, the proclamation of the Divine message to the whole world appears like a far-fetched and fantastic idea, because, at the moment, the Muslims themselves are ignorant of the teachings of the Qur'an.
Therefore, a powerful intellectual and academic movement - back to the Qur'an - is needed in order to propagate and disseminate the knowledge and wisdom of the Qur'an, both on a general scale for the benefit of our masses and on the highest level of scholarship in order to convert the educated and intelligent elite of the Muslim society.
Sources:
Israr Ahmad, “The Obligations the Muslims Owe to the Qur’an”, in The Straight Way online magazine.
The pathetic and disastrous condition of the Muslim Ummah throughout the world is due to the abandoning of the Qur'an by the Muslims. The attitude of indifference that we constantly show towards the last of the Allah's Revelations, along with our hypocritical lip-service, is tantamount to ridiculing it. Instead, we must clearly understand our responsibilities towards the Qur'an and try our very best in fulfilling them. We can neither expect any improvement in our worldly state of affairs nor hope for salvation in the Hereafter, unless we carry out all the obligations that we owe the Qur'an.
Five things that the Qur'an demands from every Muslim are as follows:
The Muslim is required to believe in the Qur'an,
He is required to read it,
He is required to understand it,
He is required to act upon its teachings, and
He is required to convey its teachings to others.
OUR FIRST OBLIGATION is to have faith (Iman) in the Divine origin of the Qur'an. Iman has two phases: verbal profession (iqrar bil-lisan) and heart-felt conviction (tasdiq bil-qalb). To have faith in the Qur'an means that we should verbally profess that the Qur'an is the Word of Almighty Allah that was revealed by Him through His angel Gabriel to the last of His Messengers, Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him.
This is a legal requirement for the acceptance of a person as a member of the Muslim society. Having done that, however, we also need to develop a deeply felt certitude in the Qur'an. It is only when we have real conviction in that verbal declaration that our hearts and minds would come under the influence of the Qur'an, leading us towards genuine devotion and veneration of the Glorious Book.
Unfortunately, there is a woeful lack of staunch faith in the Divine origin of the Qur'an among the Muslims of today. This lack of faith is the reason why we neither find any reverence for the Qur'an in our hearts, nor feel inclined to study it, nor evince any interest in pondering over its meanings, nor ever think of seeking its guidance in conducting our lives.
It might be asked as to how can we acquire true faith? The answer is that the source of Iman is the Qur'an itself. If the Book is studied and its meanings are pondered upon in an authentic quest for truth, all the veils of darkness shall be lifted from one's heart, and the inner self - the soul - will get illuminated by the light of true faith.
Note that faith is not something that can be planted in us from the outside. It is an embodiment of fundamental truths that already exist inside us; the practice of pondering over the verses of the Qur'an serves to bring them to the surface of our consciousness.
OUR SECOND OBLIGATION is mindful and thoughtful reading of the Qur'an with correct pronunciation, generally described as Tilawah, Tartil, and Tajwid. Note that Tilawah is not only an important form of worship, but it is also an effective method of continually refreshing our faith.
The Qur'an is not a book to be read once; it is a Book that needs to be read again and again. We must read it carefully, reflecting on its messages, constantly seeking guidance for our lives. Just as our material body is in constant need of food for its sustenance, our spiritual soul or Ruh is also in perpetual need for its nourishment. And just as the food for our bodies is derived from the earth, the diet for our souls is obtained from the Word of God, the Qur'an itself.
Moreover, a regular and constant program of reciting the Qur'an is also needed because it is a means of refreshing and reviving our faith, and a weapon for surmounting the obstacles in the path of Almighty Allah. The ideal way in which the Glorious Book should be recited is that one should stand in the post-midnight prayer before his Lord and recite its verses in a slow and patient manner, pausing at proper places so as to enable one's heart to imbibe its influence. (Though reading the Qur'an in all times is virtuous, reading it at mid-night is more virtuous.)
Abide by the Qur'an - Yusuf Estes (1)
OUR THIRD OBLIGATION is to understand and comprehend the Qur'an. The Qur'an has been revealed so that it may be understood and pondered upon. Of course, there are numerous levels and grades of comprehension, accessible to different persons according to their respective planes of intellect and consciousness.
The first stage in the comprehension of the Qur'an is called Tazakkur, a term which alludes to the fact that the teachings of the Qur'an are not at all foreign or alien to the human Fitrah (pure instinct). Instead, they represent the eternal truths dormant in the human soul itself, and the reading or listening of the Qur'an only facilitates the recalling of these forgotten verities.
The Qur'an has been rendered very easy, by Almighty Allah, for the purpose of gaining this level of guidance. It does not matter if a person's intelligence is limited, or his knowledge of logic and philosophy is poor, or if he has no fine sense of language and literature. In spite of these drawbacks, he can still understand the basic message and practical guidance of the Qur'an, provided he has an untainted nature not perverted by any crookedness.
The second stage in the comprehension of the Qur'an is far from easy. Tadabbur is described as a penetrating study, an intense reflection, as thorough deliberation of the Qur'an as possible, and diving deep into the bottomless ocean of its wisdom.
This kind of understanding is impossible unless one is to devote his entire life, all his talents, and all his energies for the sole purpose of comprehending the Qur'an. Obviously, not everyone is capable of such a high level of devotion and effort to acquire such insight and comprehension. But there must be a number of persons, at all times, who are engaged in this enterprise.
Such scholars cannot be produced unless we have a network of universities throughout the Muslim world, which concentrate on the Qur'anic research and make this Book the focus of all their intellectual activity.
OUR FOURTH OBLIGATION is to act upon the teachings of the Qur'an. The Qur'an is the "Guidance for mankind." The purpose for which this Book has been revealed will be fully realized only when people act upon its teachings and make it the guide for them in every sphere of their lives. If we disregard the injunctions of the Qur'an, then the reading and understanding of the Glorious Book, instead of doing us any good, will only make us more guilty before Almighty Allah.
At an individual level, it is imperative for every Muslim to mold his or her life according to the teachings of the Qur'an. Our Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "None of you can become a true believer until his desires become subordinate to what I have brought." The best way to benefit from the study of the Qur'an is to go on changing our life-styles and mending our ways in accordance with its teachings.
At the collective level of the community, it is equally imperative for us to try and establish the system of Social Justice as given by the Qur'an. The Muslims are, as a whole, responsible for establishing the Sovereignty of Almighty Allah in the public as well as the private sphere, and each of us is obligated to try his utmost in this path. The struggle for the establishment of such a just and equitable order in accordance with the teachings of the Qur'an is the bounding duty of its followers.
OUR FIFTH OBLIGATION is to propagate the message of the Qur'an to every nook and corner of the world. This was originally the responsibility of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) who fulfilled his own obligation by conveying the Divine message to the Ummah; since Prophethood has been concluded with the advent of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) who is the last of the Divine Messengers, it is now the duty of the Muslims to deliver that message to all humanity.
Unfortunately, the proclamation of the Divine message to the whole world appears like a far-fetched and fantastic idea, because, at the moment, the Muslims themselves are ignorant of the teachings of the Qur'an.
Therefore, a powerful intellectual and academic movement - back to the Qur'an - is needed in order to propagate and disseminate the knowledge and wisdom of the Qur'an, both on a general scale for the benefit of our masses and on the highest level of scholarship in order to convert the educated and intelligent elite of the Muslim society.
Sources:
Israr Ahmad, “The Obligations the Muslims Owe to the Qur’an”, in The Straight Way online magazine.
Friday, November 26, 2010
If you are scared from the Arab Tyrants do not join my Facebook
By: Maged Taman
If you are scared of the Arab tyrants do not join my Facebook. If you are brave and is only fearful of God join my facebook, http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000124741558
Maged
If you are scared of the Arab tyrants do not join my Facebook. If you are brave and is only fearful of God join my facebook, http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000124741558
Maged
Saudi Arabia's war of steel and concrete on Islam
Saudi Arabia's war of steel and concrete on Islam
by Zainab Cheema
(Thursday, November 25, 2010)
"...post-9/11 oil bonanza and the ensuing development boom have placed these remaining sites under a timer. Profits flowing in from the skyscraper hotels and other commercial venues proved too seductive for the Saudi capitalists — the area around the Haramayn is prime real estate, and why say no to the clown when McDonalds comes knocking? The house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born is now slated to become a parking lot. Presumably the princes’ Mercedes were too inconvenienced by the city’s existing parking facilities."
“Art Rocks in Saudi Arabia”! trumpeted the glossy cover of an issue of Saudi Aramco World, a journal on culture and society in the Kingdom. The accompanying article by Peter Harrigan looked at pre-historic rocks scrawled with drawings of camels and other animals, querying why the international community has ignored study of ancient rock in the Najd. However, Harrigan eagerly forecasts that this unfortunate oversight will soon be addressed. After all, old rock is a resource on par with the black gold that Aramco excavates from beneath the desert.
The laborious preservation of “art rock” in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contrasts with on-going demolitions of the monumental structures and sacred sites mapping the Hijaz’s Islamic geography. Since the House of Saud’s takeover of Arabia, following its foundational alliances with British imperialists and Wahhabi ideologues, it is an open secret that the princes-cum-businessmen are waging a war of steel and concrete against great sign posts of Islamic history that even neo-Qurayshi dictators like Yazid ibn Mu‘awiyah had dared not disturb.
A list is in order here — a mere slice of the nearly 300 Islamic structures that have been dynamited, bulldozed, and paved down in the past 80 years. It is a remarkable testament to Muslims’ gifts of preservation that the homes and other intimate structures of the early Makkan period of Islam have stood secure through the long centuries of dynastic change and political uncertainty. These landmarks of the close associations and fraternal bonds through which a fledging Islam gained a social presence have now disappeared in the region’s necro-commercialization. Abu Bakr As-Siddiq’s house is now the Makkah Hilton Hotel. The Prophet’s (pbuh) mother, Aminah bint Wahb’s grave was paved down and burnt with gasoline. His first wife Khadijah’s house, where the Prophet’s (pbuh) children were born, is now a public lavatory.
The garbage of history is a term used for painfully reconstructing the past through the remnants and remains — but this sheds a neon-colored light on how history itself can be rendered as garbage.
Archaeologists now estimate that less than 20 structures dating from the Prophet’s (pbuh) time are left in the Hijaz. Yes, that means 90% of Islamic sites have now disappeared, a memory of a memory. Even as outrage sparked in the Muslim countries, from Palestine to Pakistan to Turkey, the Wahhabization of the Hijaz’s social landscape has mobilized local zealots in overseeing the demolitions. The alchemy of their logic turns demolitions of Islamic spaces into a sign of piety. Far better to transform these venerated sites into public bathrooms than to allow the shadow of a possibility that non-Wahhabi visitors would lapse into idolatry before them.
Besides the structures materializing memories of the Prophet (pbuh) and his Companions, the very geography of the Sirah has been wiped away. The routes followed by the Muslims to the battlegrounds of Badr and Uhud have been cleared. Hamzah ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib’s grave is gone. The famous seven masjids of Salman al-Farsi, Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, Fatimah, ‘Ali, Bilal and al-Fath (built on the rock where the Prophet (pbuh) stood during the Battle of the Trench, praying for victory) have been razed and replaced by ATM machines. Dar-al-Arqam, the first meeting place of the Muslims and indeed, the first Islamic school where the Prophet (pbuh) tutored the early Muslims, now hosts the escalators of a high-rise. The king’s palace stands on the bones of the Abu-Qubays Masjid.
Graveyards are known to be a magnet for Wahhabi ire. The 1806 razing of the Baqi‘ Cemetery in Madinah is a famous chronicle: the domes and markers of the great Islamic personalities interred there were flattened out into an anonymous field. Other graveyards met the same fate, with no aftertaste of infamy. The graveyard of Maqbarah al-Muala (in Makkah), where Khadijah is buried, has likewise been razed. All this is part of King Abdullah ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s quest to “re-envision” the holy cities. Toward this end, he has hired diva architects like Norman Foster, Lord Foster of Thames Bank and Zaha Hadid to blast the area into accommodating another million pilgrims who can afford the deluxe Hajj packages now going for $8,000 and above. “We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Makkah,” said Sami Angawi, an expert on Islamic architecture
Local residents of these spaces are not entirely immune to the costs of this demolition derby. Makkans rescued the house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born, pressing to transform it into a library rather than permit its disappearance under a shopping mall. However, post-9/11 oil bonanza and the ensuing development boom have placed these remaining sites under a timer. Profits flowing in from the skyscraper hotels and other commercial venues proved too seductive for the Saudi capitalists — the area around the Haramayn is prime real estate, and why say no to the clown when McDonalds comes knocking? The house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born is now slated to become a parking lot. Presumably the princes’ Mercedes were too inconvenienced by the city’s existing parking facilities.
This conflagration of the visible traces of the men and women who translated the Qur’anic word into social and political reality, has even aghast some Saudi citizens. Irfan al-Allawi channeled his outrage into the Islamic Heritage Foundation, an online website meticulously documenting each site destroyed by the Saudis and the corporate monstrosity erected over it. After provoking Saudi criticism in even US and UK newspapers, the website was yanked by the Saudi government, and Allawi has been placed under house arrest. Clearly, even memories are too dangerous a political capital to be left untampered with — whether present in stone or in digital pixels on the information highway.
There are other sites that are threatened, sites tied to the very presence of the Prophet (pbuh). Wahhabi authorities are planning to destroy Jabal al-Nur, where the Cave of Hira’ is located. Visiting the mountain, one can find a signpost blazened with a fatwa, “The Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) did not permit us to climb on to this hill, not to pray here, not to touch stones, and tie knots on trees…”
In short, keep away — don’t get too close to site of the first Qur’anic revelation, the place that first witnessed the communication between Allah (swt) and the Prophet (pbuh) that was to alter the geography of the world. If there is a location that rivals this in early Islamic history, it would be the Prophet’s (pbuh) grave itself. And yes, that too is slated for destruction.
Construction underway has already partitioned the graves of the Prophet (pbuh), Abu Bakr, and ‘Umar from the rest of the Masjid in preparation for razing them into rubble. A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and endorsed by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, reads, “The green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet’s Mosque.” The removal of the iconic Green Dome from over the graves is a preliminary step to this plan that has already been checked off the to-do list. Even the body of the Prophet (pbuh), the medium of Allah’s (swt) mercy to the worlds, is to disappear under the rubble and dust of Saudi-Wahhabi demolition.
The question of why is always a hazardous one when discussing the House of Saud and their Wahhabi henchmen. But any work of destruction is only a precursor to some project of reconstruction. What are the signs and traces of prophetic history to be replaced with? And while the Wahhabi cadres are hamstrung by the ideology wrapped around their minds like metal bands, the Saudi royal family’s priorities are a bit different. If Islamic history is being systematically dynamited from the surface of the earth, then it is a precursor to the construction of a new history that fully justifies Saudi sovereignty.
At a 1989 New York conference on “cultural preservation” in Saudi Arabia, Saudi diplomats, ambassadors and businessmen met with hired archaeologists and preservationists to trumpet their success in cementing the institutional memory of the House of Saud. The model being followed is Colonial Williamsburg, that charming Virginia town restored to produce a sanitized memory of US colonial times. (Tourists enjoy hooped dresses, handicrafts, and colonial music, without unpleasant reminders of black slavery and Indian genocide). “You in the United States have preserved places uniquely associated with the founding of your nation,” said Saad Nazer, Saudi Arabia's New York consul-general, “we too have now preserved the sites at Riyadh and Dar‘iyyah where Saudis can learn how King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz formed our modern kingdom.æ
In a word — Saudi restoration projects en process are not in Makkah or Madinah, but in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dar‘iyyah, locations that had been crude desert outposts before the House of Saud’s fortunes struck gold. And unlike past dynasties like the Ottomans, who had integrated their cultural, religious, and political structures into the layout of the two holy cities, the Saudis laid out an alternate geography from day one. A secular geography that preys on the prophetic one, gorging on it to render the love and faith of billions into cash. Dollars only, please.
So, if the Prophet’s (pbuh) geography is too visible a reminder that the House of Saud is an upstart tribal pretender that views Islam’s sedimentation throughout the Hijaz with distaste, then which past is the valid one? Nation-states are a modern invention, dating a mere 400 years on the European heartland. However, each new-born nation state must manufacture its existence back in time, colonizing history as it were. The Saudis, who market themselves as custodians of the Haramayn to justify their fabulous Hajj profits, only want to remember the pre-Islamic annals of beduin tribes and the founding of their political dynasty.
As graves, masjids and mountains fall around Makkah and Madinah, elaborate new structures take form in Riyadh and Jeddah. The National Museum at Riyadh has built an elaborate pre-Islamic wing, featuring multi-media installations intermingling with pre-historic “art rock” helicoptered in from the Najd sands. Various plush museum complexes such as Darat al-Malik ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, dedicated to the founding patriarch, have literally risen from the dunes. In assigning the multi-million dollar contrasts for these memory projects, Riyadh Development Authority opened the competition to celebrity architects from around the world. The goal was to erect “cultural focus for the whole nation” and create “a sense of continuity and dignity for all Saudis”. Apparently, the Saudis didn’t fear that their citizens would fall into idolatrous devotion before the gleaming, high-tech relics commemorating ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud and the pre-historic ancestors.
The death of sacred structures is not just the perishing of stone and mortar — it is the destruction of those compasses with which we orient ourselves in landscapes of history and memory. It is the erasure of traces of the personalities that traded blood and treasure so that Islam could survive. It is the fading of the material inscriptions nourishing our memory and indeed, the very consciousness of ourselves as Muslims. What elegy shall we sing to the crumbling bones of the Companions? What words are appropriate to the vanishing presence of our Prophet (pbuh)?
Source:
by courtesy & © 2010 Zainab Cheema
Blogger Comment:
The Saudi tyrants and the king and his family and his scholars who are conspiring with them will go to hell in the day of judgment. In the war between Iraq and Iran they were the great supporters to protect the western interests. The war of America in Iraq twice were ignited by them for their security and hegmoney. They do not love the west but for personal interests. The liberation of the Muslims lands has to start by Saudi. Before they demolish Al Kaba we should demolish their palaces. Anyone to stand against them is a terrorist. One correction to them as by our beloved prophet prophecies God will grant Muslims victory and their house will collapse on them. I challenge the King or his brothers if to say publically I am not Al Mahdi Al Muntazer. Why America and the west leaving my web up because their actions created terrorism. The west hope to have a new front against the tyrants and I am one of these fronts. Qatar as well the most wicked of the hypocrites did not allow me to talk with Al Jazzera TV. I swear by God they confirm my suspicion that I am Al Mahdi Al Muntazer.
by Zainab Cheema
(Thursday, November 25, 2010)
"...post-9/11 oil bonanza and the ensuing development boom have placed these remaining sites under a timer. Profits flowing in from the skyscraper hotels and other commercial venues proved too seductive for the Saudi capitalists — the area around the Haramayn is prime real estate, and why say no to the clown when McDonalds comes knocking? The house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born is now slated to become a parking lot. Presumably the princes’ Mercedes were too inconvenienced by the city’s existing parking facilities."
“Art Rocks in Saudi Arabia”! trumpeted the glossy cover of an issue of Saudi Aramco World, a journal on culture and society in the Kingdom. The accompanying article by Peter Harrigan looked at pre-historic rocks scrawled with drawings of camels and other animals, querying why the international community has ignored study of ancient rock in the Najd. However, Harrigan eagerly forecasts that this unfortunate oversight will soon be addressed. After all, old rock is a resource on par with the black gold that Aramco excavates from beneath the desert.
The laborious preservation of “art rock” in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia contrasts with on-going demolitions of the monumental structures and sacred sites mapping the Hijaz’s Islamic geography. Since the House of Saud’s takeover of Arabia, following its foundational alliances with British imperialists and Wahhabi ideologues, it is an open secret that the princes-cum-businessmen are waging a war of steel and concrete against great sign posts of Islamic history that even neo-Qurayshi dictators like Yazid ibn Mu‘awiyah had dared not disturb.
A list is in order here — a mere slice of the nearly 300 Islamic structures that have been dynamited, bulldozed, and paved down in the past 80 years. It is a remarkable testament to Muslims’ gifts of preservation that the homes and other intimate structures of the early Makkan period of Islam have stood secure through the long centuries of dynastic change and political uncertainty. These landmarks of the close associations and fraternal bonds through which a fledging Islam gained a social presence have now disappeared in the region’s necro-commercialization. Abu Bakr As-Siddiq’s house is now the Makkah Hilton Hotel. The Prophet’s (pbuh) mother, Aminah bint Wahb’s grave was paved down and burnt with gasoline. His first wife Khadijah’s house, where the Prophet’s (pbuh) children were born, is now a public lavatory.
The garbage of history is a term used for painfully reconstructing the past through the remnants and remains — but this sheds a neon-colored light on how history itself can be rendered as garbage.
Archaeologists now estimate that less than 20 structures dating from the Prophet’s (pbuh) time are left in the Hijaz. Yes, that means 90% of Islamic sites have now disappeared, a memory of a memory. Even as outrage sparked in the Muslim countries, from Palestine to Pakistan to Turkey, the Wahhabization of the Hijaz’s social landscape has mobilized local zealots in overseeing the demolitions. The alchemy of their logic turns demolitions of Islamic spaces into a sign of piety. Far better to transform these venerated sites into public bathrooms than to allow the shadow of a possibility that non-Wahhabi visitors would lapse into idolatry before them.
Besides the structures materializing memories of the Prophet (pbuh) and his Companions, the very geography of the Sirah has been wiped away. The routes followed by the Muslims to the battlegrounds of Badr and Uhud have been cleared. Hamzah ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib’s grave is gone. The famous seven masjids of Salman al-Farsi, Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, Fatimah, ‘Ali, Bilal and al-Fath (built on the rock where the Prophet (pbuh) stood during the Battle of the Trench, praying for victory) have been razed and replaced by ATM machines. Dar-al-Arqam, the first meeting place of the Muslims and indeed, the first Islamic school where the Prophet (pbuh) tutored the early Muslims, now hosts the escalators of a high-rise. The king’s palace stands on the bones of the Abu-Qubays Masjid.
Graveyards are known to be a magnet for Wahhabi ire. The 1806 razing of the Baqi‘ Cemetery in Madinah is a famous chronicle: the domes and markers of the great Islamic personalities interred there were flattened out into an anonymous field. Other graveyards met the same fate, with no aftertaste of infamy. The graveyard of Maqbarah al-Muala (in Makkah), where Khadijah is buried, has likewise been razed. All this is part of King Abdullah ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s quest to “re-envision” the holy cities. Toward this end, he has hired diva architects like Norman Foster, Lord Foster of Thames Bank and Zaha Hadid to blast the area into accommodating another million pilgrims who can afford the deluxe Hajj packages now going for $8,000 and above. “We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history of Makkah,” said Sami Angawi, an expert on Islamic architecture
Local residents of these spaces are not entirely immune to the costs of this demolition derby. Makkans rescued the house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born, pressing to transform it into a library rather than permit its disappearance under a shopping mall. However, post-9/11 oil bonanza and the ensuing development boom have placed these remaining sites under a timer. Profits flowing in from the skyscraper hotels and other commercial venues proved too seductive for the Saudi capitalists — the area around the Haramayn is prime real estate, and why say no to the clown when McDonalds comes knocking? The house where the Prophet (pbuh) was born is now slated to become a parking lot. Presumably the princes’ Mercedes were too inconvenienced by the city’s existing parking facilities.
This conflagration of the visible traces of the men and women who translated the Qur’anic word into social and political reality, has even aghast some Saudi citizens. Irfan al-Allawi channeled his outrage into the Islamic Heritage Foundation, an online website meticulously documenting each site destroyed by the Saudis and the corporate monstrosity erected over it. After provoking Saudi criticism in even US and UK newspapers, the website was yanked by the Saudi government, and Allawi has been placed under house arrest. Clearly, even memories are too dangerous a political capital to be left untampered with — whether present in stone or in digital pixels on the information highway.
There are other sites that are threatened, sites tied to the very presence of the Prophet (pbuh). Wahhabi authorities are planning to destroy Jabal al-Nur, where the Cave of Hira’ is located. Visiting the mountain, one can find a signpost blazened with a fatwa, “The Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) did not permit us to climb on to this hill, not to pray here, not to touch stones, and tie knots on trees…”
In short, keep away — don’t get too close to site of the first Qur’anic revelation, the place that first witnessed the communication between Allah (swt) and the Prophet (pbuh) that was to alter the geography of the world. If there is a location that rivals this in early Islamic history, it would be the Prophet’s (pbuh) grave itself. And yes, that too is slated for destruction.
Construction underway has already partitioned the graves of the Prophet (pbuh), Abu Bakr, and ‘Umar from the rest of the Masjid in preparation for razing them into rubble. A pamphlet published in 2007 by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and endorsed by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, reads, “The green dome shall be demolished and the three graves flattened in the Prophet’s Mosque.” The removal of the iconic Green Dome from over the graves is a preliminary step to this plan that has already been checked off the to-do list. Even the body of the Prophet (pbuh), the medium of Allah’s (swt) mercy to the worlds, is to disappear under the rubble and dust of Saudi-Wahhabi demolition.
The question of why is always a hazardous one when discussing the House of Saud and their Wahhabi henchmen. But any work of destruction is only a precursor to some project of reconstruction. What are the signs and traces of prophetic history to be replaced with? And while the Wahhabi cadres are hamstrung by the ideology wrapped around their minds like metal bands, the Saudi royal family’s priorities are a bit different. If Islamic history is being systematically dynamited from the surface of the earth, then it is a precursor to the construction of a new history that fully justifies Saudi sovereignty.
At a 1989 New York conference on “cultural preservation” in Saudi Arabia, Saudi diplomats, ambassadors and businessmen met with hired archaeologists and preservationists to trumpet their success in cementing the institutional memory of the House of Saud. The model being followed is Colonial Williamsburg, that charming Virginia town restored to produce a sanitized memory of US colonial times. (Tourists enjoy hooped dresses, handicrafts, and colonial music, without unpleasant reminders of black slavery and Indian genocide). “You in the United States have preserved places uniquely associated with the founding of your nation,” said Saad Nazer, Saudi Arabia's New York consul-general, “we too have now preserved the sites at Riyadh and Dar‘iyyah where Saudis can learn how King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz formed our modern kingdom.æ
In a word — Saudi restoration projects en process are not in Makkah or Madinah, but in Riyadh, Jeddah, and Dar‘iyyah, locations that had been crude desert outposts before the House of Saud’s fortunes struck gold. And unlike past dynasties like the Ottomans, who had integrated their cultural, religious, and political structures into the layout of the two holy cities, the Saudis laid out an alternate geography from day one. A secular geography that preys on the prophetic one, gorging on it to render the love and faith of billions into cash. Dollars only, please.
So, if the Prophet’s (pbuh) geography is too visible a reminder that the House of Saud is an upstart tribal pretender that views Islam’s sedimentation throughout the Hijaz with distaste, then which past is the valid one? Nation-states are a modern invention, dating a mere 400 years on the European heartland. However, each new-born nation state must manufacture its existence back in time, colonizing history as it were. The Saudis, who market themselves as custodians of the Haramayn to justify their fabulous Hajj profits, only want to remember the pre-Islamic annals of beduin tribes and the founding of their political dynasty.
As graves, masjids and mountains fall around Makkah and Madinah, elaborate new structures take form in Riyadh and Jeddah. The National Museum at Riyadh has built an elaborate pre-Islamic wing, featuring multi-media installations intermingling with pre-historic “art rock” helicoptered in from the Najd sands. Various plush museum complexes such as Darat al-Malik ‘Abd al-‘Aziz, dedicated to the founding patriarch, have literally risen from the dunes. In assigning the multi-million dollar contrasts for these memory projects, Riyadh Development Authority opened the competition to celebrity architects from around the world. The goal was to erect “cultural focus for the whole nation” and create “a sense of continuity and dignity for all Saudis”. Apparently, the Saudis didn’t fear that their citizens would fall into idolatrous devotion before the gleaming, high-tech relics commemorating ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud and the pre-historic ancestors.
The death of sacred structures is not just the perishing of stone and mortar — it is the destruction of those compasses with which we orient ourselves in landscapes of history and memory. It is the erasure of traces of the personalities that traded blood and treasure so that Islam could survive. It is the fading of the material inscriptions nourishing our memory and indeed, the very consciousness of ourselves as Muslims. What elegy shall we sing to the crumbling bones of the Companions? What words are appropriate to the vanishing presence of our Prophet (pbuh)?
Source:
by courtesy & © 2010 Zainab Cheema
Blogger Comment:
The Saudi tyrants and the king and his family and his scholars who are conspiring with them will go to hell in the day of judgment. In the war between Iraq and Iran they were the great supporters to protect the western interests. The war of America in Iraq twice were ignited by them for their security and hegmoney. They do not love the west but for personal interests. The liberation of the Muslims lands has to start by Saudi. Before they demolish Al Kaba we should demolish their palaces. Anyone to stand against them is a terrorist. One correction to them as by our beloved prophet prophecies God will grant Muslims victory and their house will collapse on them. I challenge the King or his brothers if to say publically I am not Al Mahdi Al Muntazer. Why America and the west leaving my web up because their actions created terrorism. The west hope to have a new front against the tyrants and I am one of these fronts. Qatar as well the most wicked of the hypocrites did not allow me to talk with Al Jazzera TV. I swear by God they confirm my suspicion that I am Al Mahdi Al Muntazer.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Saudi Grand Mufti uses haj sermon to condemn fanaticism and violence
by Muqtedar Khan
23 November 2010
Newark, Delaware - The haj sermon this year – one of the highlights of the three-day pilgrimage that millions of Muslims make to Mecca every year – has received special attention in the media all over the Muslim world. Excerpts from the sermon, which condemns terrorism and extremism and advocates moderation, have been reproduced in hundreds of newspapers. Videos of the sermon with English subtitles are circulating widely by email and have been posted on websites like YouTube. It seems that the Muslim world has embraced the message enthusiastically. The haj is a transformative experience for most Muslims. The African American civil rights leader Malcolm X abandoned his anti-white views after participating in the haj and had a huge impact on Muslim youth throughout the United States. This year the haj sermon was given by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh.During the hour-long sermon, he made the usual call for unity and piety among Muslims, reminding them about the significance of being God-conscious, adhering to monotheism and living a life cognizant of the Day of Judgment. The Grand Mufti also called for environmental protection. He talked about Islamic values which promote security for the ecosystem and mandate frugal and wise use of natural resources. In addition, part of the sermon was devoted to security issues. The mufti emphasised the necessity of security for the well-being of Muslim communities, and called for the punishment of criminals as well as obedience to rulers, although he did not specify which, as he was vague on political issues.He spoke about the consequences when human security is absent: the suffering of women and children, chaos and an absence of peace and prosperity. Islam is a religion of mercy and moderation. Spreading violence, hatred and extremism, Sheikh Abdul Aziz said, is against the ethics of Islam. Islam’s goal is to spread peace and security in all its forms, and he called on Muslim communities to uphold the ethics and teachings of Islam.He then proceeded to talk about the concept of security in Islamic law, saying that security permeates all aspects of life and encompasses economic, social, political, intellectual, media, environmental and spiritual dimensions. It is while explaining intellectual security that the mufti called on Muslim communities to guard against deviancy, especially extremism and fanaticism. He warned that recent advancements in media and technology have led to the spread of dangerous ideologies and cyber terrorism. He called on Muslim teachers, imams, scholars, think tanks and professors to spread the true message of Islam and combat the spread of extremism.Not everyone considers the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia an enlightened intellectual. Last year, a child marriage controversy erupted in the country when a judge refused to annul the marriage of an eight-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man. At the time Sheikh Abdul Aziz insisted that ten-year-old girls were ready for marriage and to claim otherwise was being unfair to the girls. A compassionate and prudent statement from him then could have done much for the protection and emancipation of young Muslim girls, and for women everywhere. However, it is precisely because he comes from the hardcore Wahhabi tradition, which is very strictly traditionalist and not very open to progressive change, that his sermon calling for moderation and condemning violence and terrorism gains tremendous significance. As such, it has the potential to reach those segments of Muslim society that liberal Muslims scholars who have routinely condemned violence cannot influence. This condemnation of violence and extremism, from the most sacred of Muslim places and during the most sacred of Muslim moments, will hopefully reach the darkest of Muslim places and the most intransigent of Muslim groups. I hope that like Malcolm X, whose extremism was cured by the haj, Muslim youth who are engaged in radical politics too will be inspired by this sermon, and find balance and moderation in their lives. ###*
Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor of Islam and Global Affairs at the University of Delaware and a Fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understating. His website is www.ijtihad.org. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 23 November 2010, http://www.commongroundnews.org/
Blogger comment:
Forget about Al Queda and the similar this hypocrite Imam does not mention or defend Muslims from their Tyrannically leaders. He does not advocate Jihad against them but surrender to tyranny and feel happy for the corrupt leaders who are oppressing us and put on prison or torture whoever stands against them. In fact the French and American revolutions were considered two of the best movements in history against corruption and oppression. George Washington was considered a hero by the American people and not a terrorist. For Muslims to win their war against the tyrants they have to attack those shameful Imams. If Al Mahdi Al Muntazer to come today he would be considered a terrorist. A challenge to this AH Imam attack me publicly so I can gather Muslims against you and dissect your arguments and make you a lesson to every hypocrite Imam like you. I am not the nice guy anymore. To win and remove the wicked tyrants we have to be strong and mean, nice and weak mean that our continued humiliation. He is also talking about the unity of Muslims which is basically to have the Arab tyrants unite against us and seek their secret meetings to keep their chairs and families in power while in their hearts they hate each other and do not do anything to advance Islam or improve Muslims condition. The history teach us that liberation comes with force, Jihad or whatever name you use. America used two wars to advance its agenda and did not care about killing millions of Muslims. The silent to say the truth is a silent devil as the prophet peace upon him said.
23 November 2010
Newark, Delaware - The haj sermon this year – one of the highlights of the three-day pilgrimage that millions of Muslims make to Mecca every year – has received special attention in the media all over the Muslim world. Excerpts from the sermon, which condemns terrorism and extremism and advocates moderation, have been reproduced in hundreds of newspapers. Videos of the sermon with English subtitles are circulating widely by email and have been posted on websites like YouTube. It seems that the Muslim world has embraced the message enthusiastically. The haj is a transformative experience for most Muslims. The African American civil rights leader Malcolm X abandoned his anti-white views after participating in the haj and had a huge impact on Muslim youth throughout the United States. This year the haj sermon was given by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh.During the hour-long sermon, he made the usual call for unity and piety among Muslims, reminding them about the significance of being God-conscious, adhering to monotheism and living a life cognizant of the Day of Judgment. The Grand Mufti also called for environmental protection. He talked about Islamic values which promote security for the ecosystem and mandate frugal and wise use of natural resources. In addition, part of the sermon was devoted to security issues. The mufti emphasised the necessity of security for the well-being of Muslim communities, and called for the punishment of criminals as well as obedience to rulers, although he did not specify which, as he was vague on political issues.He spoke about the consequences when human security is absent: the suffering of women and children, chaos and an absence of peace and prosperity. Islam is a religion of mercy and moderation. Spreading violence, hatred and extremism, Sheikh Abdul Aziz said, is against the ethics of Islam. Islam’s goal is to spread peace and security in all its forms, and he called on Muslim communities to uphold the ethics and teachings of Islam.He then proceeded to talk about the concept of security in Islamic law, saying that security permeates all aspects of life and encompasses economic, social, political, intellectual, media, environmental and spiritual dimensions. It is while explaining intellectual security that the mufti called on Muslim communities to guard against deviancy, especially extremism and fanaticism. He warned that recent advancements in media and technology have led to the spread of dangerous ideologies and cyber terrorism. He called on Muslim teachers, imams, scholars, think tanks and professors to spread the true message of Islam and combat the spread of extremism.Not everyone considers the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia an enlightened intellectual. Last year, a child marriage controversy erupted in the country when a judge refused to annul the marriage of an eight-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man. At the time Sheikh Abdul Aziz insisted that ten-year-old girls were ready for marriage and to claim otherwise was being unfair to the girls. A compassionate and prudent statement from him then could have done much for the protection and emancipation of young Muslim girls, and for women everywhere. However, it is precisely because he comes from the hardcore Wahhabi tradition, which is very strictly traditionalist and not very open to progressive change, that his sermon calling for moderation and condemning violence and terrorism gains tremendous significance. As such, it has the potential to reach those segments of Muslim society that liberal Muslims scholars who have routinely condemned violence cannot influence. This condemnation of violence and extremism, from the most sacred of Muslim places and during the most sacred of Muslim moments, will hopefully reach the darkest of Muslim places and the most intransigent of Muslim groups. I hope that like Malcolm X, whose extremism was cured by the haj, Muslim youth who are engaged in radical politics too will be inspired by this sermon, and find balance and moderation in their lives. ###*
Dr. Muqtedar Khan is Associate Professor of Islam and Global Affairs at the University of Delaware and a Fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understating. His website is www.ijtihad.org. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 23 November 2010, http://www.commongroundnews.org/
Blogger comment:
Forget about Al Queda and the similar this hypocrite Imam does not mention or defend Muslims from their Tyrannically leaders. He does not advocate Jihad against them but surrender to tyranny and feel happy for the corrupt leaders who are oppressing us and put on prison or torture whoever stands against them. In fact the French and American revolutions were considered two of the best movements in history against corruption and oppression. George Washington was considered a hero by the American people and not a terrorist. For Muslims to win their war against the tyrants they have to attack those shameful Imams. If Al Mahdi Al Muntazer to come today he would be considered a terrorist. A challenge to this AH Imam attack me publicly so I can gather Muslims against you and dissect your arguments and make you a lesson to every hypocrite Imam like you. I am not the nice guy anymore. To win and remove the wicked tyrants we have to be strong and mean, nice and weak mean that our continued humiliation. He is also talking about the unity of Muslims which is basically to have the Arab tyrants unite against us and seek their secret meetings to keep their chairs and families in power while in their hearts they hate each other and do not do anything to advance Islam or improve Muslims condition. The history teach us that liberation comes with force, Jihad or whatever name you use. America used two wars to advance its agenda and did not care about killing millions of Muslims. The silent to say the truth is a silent devil as the prophet peace upon him said.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
A Funny Fatwa
By: Maged Taman
Some of the Muslims Scholars who are the piece mouth of the Arab tyrants will tell the public the Fatwa: Jihad is only declared by Muslim statemen like Mubarak and others. The funny thing they are the ones that Jihad is supposed to be against them. Not only they are oppressing and stealing the money of Muslims they are also supporting their enemies. Jihad is an order from God, Sadat did not fight America and fought Israel only when they left him without alternatives. America is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Fighting America is a suicide, however fighting and changing the Arab regimes is what we need to do. A lot of people in Israel are waiting for a good Muslim leader to make permanent peace with them. So Muslims have to unite and bring the Arab regimes down. If Al Qada to modify herself and change its tactics they will have a lot of people to join not necessarily by war but by smart tactics to bring the rotten regimes down. If Al Mahdi Al Muntazer to come today he will be labelled as a terrorist. Know very well I do not follow any western, Jewish or Israeli groups or even Muslims groups. I am very independent who wants to join my facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000124741558 please welcome including spies just no one to steal me again I am still looking for my passport.
Some of the Muslims Scholars who are the piece mouth of the Arab tyrants will tell the public the Fatwa: Jihad is only declared by Muslim statemen like Mubarak and others. The funny thing they are the ones that Jihad is supposed to be against them. Not only they are oppressing and stealing the money of Muslims they are also supporting their enemies. Jihad is an order from God, Sadat did not fight America and fought Israel only when they left him without alternatives. America is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Fighting America is a suicide, however fighting and changing the Arab regimes is what we need to do. A lot of people in Israel are waiting for a good Muslim leader to make permanent peace with them. So Muslims have to unite and bring the Arab regimes down. If Al Qada to modify herself and change its tactics they will have a lot of people to join not necessarily by war but by smart tactics to bring the rotten regimes down. If Al Mahdi Al Muntazer to come today he will be labelled as a terrorist. Know very well I do not follow any western, Jewish or Israeli groups or even Muslims groups. I am very independent who wants to join my facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000124741558 please welcome including spies just no one to steal me again I am still looking for my passport.
George Soros
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
"Soros" redirects here. For other uses, see Soros (disambiguation).
George Soros
George Soros at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010
Born
August 12, 1930 (1930-08-12) (age 80)Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
Alma mater
London School of Economics
Occupation
Entrepreneur, currency trader, investor, philosopher, philanthropist, political activist
Net worth
$14.2 billion (Forbes)[1]
Religion
None (Atheist)
Spouse
Twice divorced (Annaliese Witschak and Susan Weber Soros)
Children
Robert, Andrea, Jonathan, Alexander, Gregory
Website
http://www.georgesoros.com/
George Soros (Hungarian: Soros György) (pronounced /ˈsɔəroʊs/ or /ˈsɔərəs/,[2] Hungarian: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American financier, is a businessman and notable philanthropist focused on supporting liberal ideals and causes.[3] He became known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises.[4][5] Soros correctly anticipated that the British government would have to devalue the pound sterling.[6]
Soros is Chairman of the Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89)[5] and provided Europe's largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.[7] Later, the Open Society Institute's programs in Georgia were considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial in the success of the Rose Revolution. In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. In 2010, he donated $1 million in support of Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana in the state of California. He was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress, and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. The Open Society Institute has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.
In 2003, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance:
George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,' open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.
Contents[hide]
1 Family
2 Early life
3 Emigration
4 Business
4.1 Currency speculation
4.2 Public predictions
4.3 Insider trading conviction
4.4 Sports
5 Philanthropy
5.1 Political donations and activism
5.1.1 United States
5.1.2 Eastern Europe
5.1.3 Africa
5.1.4 Drug policy reform
5.1.5 Death and dying
6 Philosophy
6.1 Education and beliefs
6.2 Reflexivity, financial markets, and economic theory
6.3 View of potential problems in the free market system
6.4 Views on antisemitism
7 Wealth
8 Relation to Hungarian politics
9 Books
9.1 Authored or co-authored
9.2 Biographies
10 Journalism
10.1 Authored
10.2 About
10.3 Scholarly perspectives
10.4 Speeches
10.5 Interviews
11 Notes
12 External links
//
Family
Soros was born in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, the son of the Esperantist writer Tivadar Soros. Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a Hungarian Jew, who was a prisoner of war during and after World War I and eventually escaped from Russia to rejoin his family in Budapest.[8][9]
The family changed its name from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-semitism with the rise of fascism. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and has a meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufman's biography, in Hungarian, soros means next in line, or designated successor; and, in Esperanto, it means "will soar".[10] Tivadar taught George to speak Esperanto from birth. George Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.[11]
Married and divorced twice, Soros has three children with Annaliese Witschak (Robert, Andrea, Jonathan) and two with Susan Weber Soros (Alexander and Gregory). His elder brother, Paul Soros, also a private investor and philanthropist, is an engineer, who headed Soros Associates and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans.[12][13] George Soros' nephew Peter Soros, a son of Paul Soros, is married to the former Flora Fraser — a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter.[14]
His son Alexander Soros is also gaining prominence for his donations to social and political causes. Alexander led the list of student political donors in the 2010 election cycle.[15]
Early life
Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.[16] Soros worked for the Jewish Council,[8] which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary to forcibly carry out Nazi and Hungarian government anti-Jewish measures.[17][18] Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:
The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper...It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 a.m....And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported."[19]
In 1944, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. On one occasion, the official was ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country.[20] Rather than leave the young George alone in the city, the official brought him along. The following year, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.
Soros immigrated to England in 1947 and, as an impoverished student, lived with his uncle, an Orthodox Jew. His uncle paid his living expenses while he attended the London School of Economics, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy in 1952.[21] While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros worked as a railway porter and as a waiter. A University tutor requested aid for Soros, and he received £40 from a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) charity.[22] He eventually secured an entry-level position with London merchant bank Singer & Friedlander. He has a cousin from that family era, Caron Enlander (née Weiss) in New York.
Emigration
In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader with F. M. Mayer (1956–59) and as an analyst with Wertheim & Co. (1959–63). Throughout this time, Soros developed a philosophy of reflexivity based on the ideas of Karl Popper. Reflexivity, as used by Soros, is the belief that the action of beholding the valuation of any market, by its participants, affects said valuation of the market in a procyclical 'virtuous or vicious' circle.[23]
Soros realized, however, that he would not make any money from the concept of reflexivity until he went into investing on his own. He began to investigate how to deal in investments. From 1963 to 1973, he worked at Arnhold and S. Bleichroder, where he attained the position of Vice-President. Soros finally concluded that he was a better investor than he was a philosopher or an executive. In 1967, he persuaded the company to set up First Eagle, an offshore investment fund for him to run; and, in 1969, it founded the Double Eagle hedge fund for him.[23]
In 1973, when investment regulations restricted his ability to run the funds as he wished, he resigned his position and established a private investment company, which evolved into the Quantum Fund. He has stated that his intent was to earn enough money on Wall Street to support himself as an author and philosopher —he calculated that $500,000 after five years would be possible and adequate.
He also once had a small stake in the Carlyle Group.[23]
Business
In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management with Jim Rogers. In 1973, he left Arnhold and S. Bleichroder to set up his own hedge fund with US$12 million from investors. Christoper Ink was also involved, and other partners have included Victor Niederhoffer and Stanley Druckenmiller. Rogers retired from the fund in 1980.
Initially called the Soros Fund, it was eventually renamed the Quantum Fund. In 2000, the Quantum Group of Funds was reorganized, and the flagship Quantum Endowment Fund was established. Soros Fund Management LLC is the principal advisor to the Quantum Endowment Fund. George Soros is the Chairman of Soros Fund Management. The firm's day-to-day operations are managed by Soros's two elder sons and the firm's Chief Investment Officer. The fund has assets of approximately $27 billion.[24]
In 2007, the Quantum Fund returned almost 32%, netting Soros $2.9 billion.[25]
Currency speculation
On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros's fund sold short more than US$10 billion worth of pounds,[24] profiting from the Bank of England's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.
Finally, the Bank withdrew the currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound sterling, earning Soros an estimated US$1.1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England." In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.
On Monday, October 26, 1992, The Times quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."
Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."[26][27]
In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Following on a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge" [28]) and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir apologized and withdrew the accusations.[29] In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:
The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity.... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai Baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline – we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)[30]
The nominal U.S. dollar Gross domestic product (GDP) of the ASEAN fell by US$9.2 billion in 1997 and US$218.2 billion (31.7%) in 1998.
Public predictions
Soros' book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (May 2008), described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states:
I have a record of crying wolf... I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times... the wolf really came.[31]
He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.
I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong... I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.[31]
In February 2009, George Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.[32] "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system[...]It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."
Insider trading conviction
In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but later bought a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989, and in 2002 a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony conviction as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.3 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.
Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge.[33]
His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006.[34] In December, 2006 he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.[35]
Sports
In 2005, Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals, a Major League baseball team. Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might move to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption if Soros bought the team.[36] In 2008, Soros' name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian football team but the club was not sold. Soros was also a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., the group that owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United when the league was founded in 1995, but the group lost these rights in 2000.[37]
Philanthropy
Main article: List of projects supported by George Soros
George Soros (left) and James H. Billington.
Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa,[38] and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain.
Soros' philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion.[33] The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.
Time magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects - $100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities; and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa — while noting that Soros has given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $7 billion.[39]
Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU). The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI.
According to National Review[40] the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended alleged terrorists in court and was sentenced to 2⅓ years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support."
In September 2006 Soros pledged $50 million to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs to provide educational, agricultural, and medical aid to help villages in Africa enduring poverty. The New York Times termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.[41]
He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University in 1991. Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.
Political donations and activism
United States
In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it."[42] Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million [43] to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush[44] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the Vice Presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros's site.[45] Soros has stated that:
"The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States ."[46]
Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527. Despite Soros' efforts, Bush was reelected to a second term as president.
After Bush's re-election, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.[47] Soros supported the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which many hoped would end "soft money" contributions to federal election campaigns.[citation needed] Soros has made soft money donations to 527 organizations that he says do not raise the same corruption issues as donations directly to the candidates or political parties.[citation needed]
In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be ear-marked for under-privileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at the rate of $200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act.[22]
On October 26, 2010, George Soros donated $1 million dollars to the Drug Policy Alliance to fund Proposition 19, the biggest donation in the campaign, that would have legalized marijuana in the state of California if it had passed in the November 2, 2010 elections.[48]
Eastern Europe
According to Neil Clark in the New Statesman, Soros's role was crucial in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.[49] From 1979, as an advocate of 'open societies', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union[38] donating $3 million a year according to Clark.[49] In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere. His funding of pro-democratic programs in of Georgia was considered by Russian and Western observers to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated."[50] Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2,500,000.[51]
Former Georgian Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like the Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratisation and that all the NGOs which gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.[52]
Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.[53] Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said in an interview that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs...Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well."[54] In 1997, Soros had to close his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations". According to The New York Times, the Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control the Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society".[55]
In June 2009, Soros donated $100m to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the economic crisis on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations.[56]
Africa
The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization. [1] Its director for Zimbabwe is Godfrey Kanyenze, who also directs the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which was the main force behind the founding of the Movement for Democratic Change, the principal indigenous organization promoting Regime change in Zimbabwe.
Drug policy reform
Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform. In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in the state of Massachusetts known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative which decriminalized possession of less than 1 oz (28g) of marijuana in the state. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine.[57] Among the drug decriminalization groups that have received funding from Soros are the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation.[58]
Soros donated $1.4 million to publicity efforts to support California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed ballot measure that would have expanded drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for persons convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses. [2] [59]
In October 2010, Soros donated $1 million to support California's Proposition 19.[60]
According to remarks in an interview in October, 2009, it is Soros's opinion that marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students. He himself has not used marijuana for years.[61]
Death and dying
The Project on Death in America, active from 2001–2003, was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement."[62] In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide.[63] In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act,[64] the campaign for which he helped fund.[65]
Philosophy
Education and beliefs
Soros has a keen interest in philosophy, and has stated that he entered finance to be able to support himself as a philosopher. His philosophical outlook is influenced by Karl Popper, under whom he studied at the London School of Economics (LSE). His Open Society Institute is named after Popper's two volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Soros's ongoing philosophical commitment to the principle of fallibilism (that anything he believes may in fact be wrong, and is therefore to be questioned and improved) stems from Popper's philosophy.
Reflexivity, financial markets, and economic theory
Soros' writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the perception of fundamentals of the economy. Soros argues that such transitions in the perceptions of fundamentals of the economy are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the 'efficient market hypothesis') does not apply in these situations. Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions.[23]
Reflexivity is based on three main ideas:[23]
Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators.
Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the equilibrium process's character is best considered in terms of probabilities.
Investors' observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations AND fundamental conditions or outcomes.
A current example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is that of the debt and equity of housing markets. Lenders, under regulatory rules imposed by the Federal Government, began to make more money available to more people in the 1990s to buy houses. More people bought houses with this larger amount of money, thus increasing the prices of these houses. Lenders looked at their balance sheets which not only showed that they had made more loans, but that their equity backing the loans—the value of the houses, had gone up (because more money was chasing the same amount of housing, relatively). Thus they lent out more money because their balance sheets looked good, they were guaranteed by the Federal Government, and prices went up more. This was further amplified by public policy. Many governments see home ownership as a positive outcome and so first home owners grant and other financial subsidies — or influences to buy a home such as the exemption of a primary residence from capital gains taxation — mean that house purchases were seen as a good thing. Prices increased rapidly, and lending standards were relaxed. The salient issue regarding reflexivity is that it explains why markets gyrate over time, and do not just stick to equilibrium—they tend to overshoot or undershoot.[23]
View of potential problems in the free market system
This section's factual accuracy is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.
Despite working as an investor and currency speculator, he argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. Soros blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism. His opposition to many aspects of globalization has made him a controversial figure.
Victor Niederhoffer said of Soros: "Most of all, George believed even then in a mixed economy, one with a strong central international government to correct for the excesses of self-interest."
Soros claims to draw a distinction between being a participant in the market and working to change the rules that market participants must follow. According to Mahathir bin Mohamed, Prime Minister of Malaysia from July 1981 to October 2003, Soros — as the hedge fund chief of Quantum — may have been partially responsible for the economic crash in 1997 of East Asian markets when the Thai currency relinquished its peg to the US dollar. According to Mahathir, in the three years leading to the crash, Soros invested in short-term speculative investment in East Asian stock markets and real estate, then divested with "indecent haste" at the first signs of currency devaluation.[66] Soros replied, saying that Mahathir was using him "as a scapegoat for his own mistakes", that Mahathir's promises to ban currency trading (which Malaysian finance officials hastily retracted) were "a recipe for disaster" and that Mahathir "is a menace to his own country".[67]
In an interview regarding the late-2000s recession, Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess". In Soros' view, the markets' moods — a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which the markets look at reality — "actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles".[68]
In reaction to the late-2000s recession he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think-tank composed of international economic, business and financial experts, mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organising the international economic and financial system.
Views on antisemitism
At a Jewish forum in New York City, November 5, 2003, Soros partially attributed a recent resurgence of antisemitism to the policies of Israel and the United States, and to successful Jews such as himself:
There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies... If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can't see how one could confront it directly... I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world... As an unintended consequence of my actions... I also contribute to that image.[69]
In a subsequent article for The New York Review of Books, Soros emphasized that
I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.[70]
Wealth
In 2010, Forbes lists Soros as the 35th richest person in the world, and the 24th richest person in America, with a net worth estimated at US$14.2 billion.[1] Soros has given away $7 billion to various causes since 1979.[71]
Relation to Hungarian politics
In the 1980s Viktor Orbán -Chairman of Fidesz (1994–2000, 2000-) and Prime Minister (1998–2002, 2010-) - and László Kövér - Chairman of Fidesz (2000)m Secret Service Minister (1998–2002) and Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary (2010-) - were Soros scholarship recipients. Furthermore the Orban cabinet's Deputy Prime Minister István Stumpf - now member of the Constitutional Court - was a member of the Soros Foundation's Board of Trustees between 1994 and 2002.
Books
Authored or co-authored
The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means (PublicAffairs, 2008). ISBN 1586486837
The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror (PublicAffairs, 2006) ISBN 1586483595
The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, 2003) ISBN 1586482173 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58648-292-0)
George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, 2002) ISBN 1-58648-125-8 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2005; ISBN 1-52648-278-5)
Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2001) ISBN 1-58648-039-7
With Mark Amadeus Notturno, Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy (Central European University Press, 2000) ISBN 963-9116-69-6 (paperback: Central European University Press, 2000; ISBN 943-9116-70-X)
The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (PublicAffairs, 1998) ISBN 1-891220-27-4
Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0-471-12014-6 (paperback; Wiley, 1995; ISBN 0-371-11977-6)
Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise and Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 0-02-930285-4 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58948-227-0)
Opening the Soviet System (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990) ISBN 0-297-82155-9 (paperback: Perseus Books, 1996; ISBN 0-8133-1205-1)
The Alchemy of Finance (Simon & Schuster, 1988) ISBN 0-671-66338-4 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 0-471-44549-5)
Biographies
Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ISBN 0-375-40585-2
Soros: The World's Most Influential Investor by Robert Slater (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009) ISBN 978-0-07-160844-2
Journalism
Authored
George Soros, "Why I support legal marijuana", The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2010.
George Soros, "The Crisis and the Euro", The New York Review of Books, August 19, 2010.
George Soros, "On Israel, America and AIPAC", The New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007.
George Soros, "The Bubble of American Supremacy", The Atlantic, December 2003.
George Soros, The Bubble of American Supremacy, audio recording of The Atlantic article via Assistive Media, read by Grover Gardner, 18 minutes.
George Soros, "Soros on Brazil", Financial Times, August 13, 2002.
George Soros, "Bitter Thoughts with Faith in Russia", Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News), translated from the Russian by Olga Kryazheva, February 27, 2000.
George Soros, "The Capitalist Threat", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1997.
George Soros, "Paulson Cannot be Allowed a Blank Cheque", Financial Times, September 24, 2008
About
Stephen Adams "Furious George" on Citizen — Family Issues in Policy and Culture
John Authers, Book Review, "A successful prophet of the markets," Financial Times, May 19, 2008.
Laura Blumenfeld, Billionaire Soros Takes On Bush, MSNBC, November 11, 2003
Connie Bruck, Abstract of New Yorker profile of Soros "The World According to Soros", The New Yorker, January 23, 1995
Neil Clark Analysis of Soros' role in Eastern Europe from "New Statesman"
Malcolm Gladwell, "Blowing Up," The New Yorker, April 22 & 29, 2002, at gladwell.com.
John Horvath The Soros Effect on Central and Eastern Europe
Matt Welch, Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew Reason magazine, December 8, 2003
Martin Peretz, "Tyran-a-Soros: The Madness of King George," The New Republic, February 12, 2007.
TIME's 25 Most Influential Americans, TIME Magazine April 21, 1997. Accessed May 21, 2007.
The TIME 100, The Power Givers, George Soros, TIME Magazine May 14, 2007 accessed May 21, 2007.
Scholarly perspectives
Bryant, C. G. A. (2002). "George Soros's theory of reflexivity: a comparison with the theories of Giddens and Beck and a consideration of its practical value". Economy and Society 31 (1): 112–131. doi:10.1080/03085140120109277.
Cross, R.; Strachan, D. (1997). "On George Soros and economic analysis". Kyklos 50: 561–574. doi:10.1111/1467-6435.00030.
Kwong, C.P. (2008). "Mathematical analysis of Soros's theory of reflexivity". ArXiv: 0901.4447. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0901.4447.
Pettis, Michael (2001). The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195143302.
Stone, Diane (2007). "Market Principles, Philanthropic Ideals and Public Service Values: The Public Policy Program at the Central European University". PS: Political Science and Politics: 545–551.
Speeches
Testimony of George Soros to a congressional sub-committee, Sept. 15, 1998
The Theory of Reflexivity Delivered April 26, 1994 to the MIT Department of Economics World Economy
"The Differences Between Natural and Social Science: Implications of Fallibility" at IISc Bangalore, January 5, 2007
George Soros introduced by Lajos Bokros. (November 11, 2008). George Soros Lecture on the Global Financial Crisis On November 11, 1 hour 16 minutes. Budapest, Hungary: CEU Business School.
Testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Oversight Hearing on FTC Advanced Rulemaking and Oil Market Manipulation[72]
Interviews
Fareed Zakaria discussing economic crisis with George Soros on GPS
The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC) - Audio Archive: "George Soros on Freedom"
frontline: the crash: interviews: george soros
George Soros Interview On 60 Minutes
Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE . TV Program PBS
Challenge: The international financial crisis - International ...
NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. David Brancaccio interviews ...
Booknotes with Brian Lamb. Transcript and streaming video.
Rocketboom: The Age of Fallibility (Video, 2006)
Google Video: Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google interviews George Soros (Video, 2006)
Fox News Interview with Neil Cavuto, October 11, 2006 Video and text, accessed May 25, 2007.
Interview with George Soros, September 5, 2000
Notes
^ a b Forbes The Richest People In America, Forbes, September 22, 2010
^ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6150320548187842685
^ William Shawcross, "Turning Dollars into Change," Time Magazine, September 1, 1997
^ Open University
^ a b The Atlantic
^ George Soros FAQ from GeorgeSoros.com
^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-79165556.html
^ a b Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Alfred A. Knopf: 2002
^ Soros, George (2008). The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. PublicAffairs. p. 13. ISBN 1586486837. http://books.google.com/?id=F_aBKX4AnLUC&q=Tivadar#search_anchor.
^ Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Alfred A. Knopf: 2002, p. 24.
^ Slater, R.: Soros: The Unauthorized Biography, page 30.
^ "Background and History". Paul and Dora Soros Fellowships for Young Americans. http://www.pdsoros.org/overview/. Retrieved March 22, 2009.
^ Elisabeth Bumiller (June 17, 1998). "Public Lives: An Overshadowed Altruist Sees the Light". New York Times (New York Times Company). http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/17/nyregion/public-lives-an-overshadowed-altruist-sees-the-light.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved March 22, 2009.
^ "Peter Soros and Flora Fraser". New York Times (New York Times Company). February 2, 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/02/style/peter-soros-and-flora-fraser.html. Retrieved March 22, 2009.
^ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/10/college-life-conjures-visions-of.html
^ "Holocaust Encyclopedia". Ushmm.org. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005458. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Holocaust Denial: George Soros vs. the Tea Parties by Roger Simon, 6 September 2010
^ The Man Who Broke the Bank of England, Spent $24 million to Defeat George Bush, and Never Met a Left Wing-Cause he Didn’t Like by Roger Kimball, 6 September 2010
^ Michael Lewis, "The Speculator: What on earth is multibillionaire George Soros doing throwing wads of money around in Eastern Europe?", The New Republic, January 10, 1994. See also Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Alfred A. Knopf: 2002, p. 32-33
^ Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire page 37
^ Official Web Biography
^ a b All Things Considered (August 11, 2009). "Soros Uses Leverage To Aid New York Children". Npr.org. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111786652. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ a b c d e f Soros, George (2008). The New Paradigm for Financial Markets. Public Affairs, New York. ISBN 978-1-58648-683-9.
^ a b http://www.georgesoros.com/faqs/archive/category/finance/
^ Anderson, Jenny (April 16, 2008). "Wall Street Winners Get Billion-Dollar Paydays". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16wall.html?ex=1366084800&en=1eee7351824a31ce&ei=5124. Retrieved July 28, 2008.
^ Steven Drobny, "Inside the House of Money", John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ, 2006.
^ Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0-471-12014-6
^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/3597972/Mahathirs-dark-side.html
^ http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1812946.htm
^ Soros, George (1999). The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, 2nd ed., PublicAffairs, ISBN 1-891220-27-4, pp. 208-209.
^ a b "Soros, the Man Who Cries Wolf, Now Is Warning of a 'Superbubble'" by Greg Ip, B1, June 21–22, 2008 The Wall Street Journal.
^ Soros sees no bottom for world financial "collapse", Reuters, February 21, 2009, Retrieved on August 17, 2009.
^ a b David Brancaccio interviews George Soros, Now, PBS, September 12, 2003, accessed Feb. 8, 2007.
^ Insider trading conviction of Soros is upheld (International Herald Tribune)
^ Soros appeals conviction for insider trading, Billionaire takes French conviction to European court (International Herald Tribune)December 14, 2006
^ "Soros's Nats Bid Irks Republicans". Washingtonpost.com. June 28, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/27/AR2005062701447.html. Retrieved May 19, 2010.
^ Goff, Steven (October 12, 2000). "United's Ownership Uncertain; After Sale Fell Through, MLS Might Take Over Operation". Pqasb.pqarchiver.com. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/62439758.html?dids=62439758:62439758&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=&date=Oct+12%2C+2000&author=Steven+Goff&desc=United%27s+Ownership+Uncertain%3B+After+Sale+Fell+Through%2C+MLS+Might+Take+Over+Operation. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ a b "George Soros biography", Open Society Foundation
^ http://georgesoros.com/faqs/entry/georgesorosphilanthropyisunprecedented/
^ York, Byron, Soros Funded Stewart Defense, National Review Online. Retrieved February 7, 2007.
^ Dugger, Celia W. (September 13, 2006). "Philanthropist Gives $50 Million to Help Aid the Poor in Africa". Africa: Travel2.nytimes.com. http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/us/13soros.html. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Laura Blumenfeld, Deep Pockets vs. Bush, Financier Contributes $5 Million More in Effort to Oust President, Washington Post, November 11, 2003; Page A03
^ "Soros, who would eventually give ACT $20 million of his own money" from http://old.nationalreview.com/york/york200508030928.asp
^ "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush". Commondreams.org. September 28, 2004. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-16.htm. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Suellentrop, Chris (October 6, 2004). "Cheney Drops the Ball". Slate.com. http://www.slate.com/id/2107809/. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ America the Dangerous? - Newsweek interview with George Soros
^ "New Alliance Of Democrats Spreads Funding". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/16/AR2006071600882_pf.html. Retrieved July 17, 2006.
^ "George Soros gives $1 million to Prop. 19 campaign". Sfgate.com. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=75546. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
^ a b Clark, Neil. "Soros Profile". the New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/200306020019. Retrieved June 6, 2007.
^ "Soros Downplays Role in Georgia Revolution". Archive.newsmax.com. June 1, 2005. http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/5/31/164945.shtml. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "Alexander Lomaia — Minister of Education and Science (Georgia)". Oecd.org. http://www.oecd.org/document/49/0,2340,en_21571361_36507471_37001521_1_1_1_1,00.html. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Salomé Zourabichvili, Herodote (magazine of the French Institute for Geopolitics, April, 2008
^ Fred Weir: Democracy rising in ex-Soviet states, Christian Science Monitor, February 10, 2005
^ "Does Foreign Funding Make NGOs into Puppets?". Globalpolicy.org. October 11, 2006. http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/fund/2006/1011puppets.htm. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Miller, Judith (September 4, 1997). "Soros Closes Foundation In Belarus — The". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E0D91530F937A3575AC0A961958260. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Soros donates $100 million to Europe, UNIAN (June 19, 2009)
^ LeBlanc, Steve, Soros behind Mass. effort to decriminalize pot, Associated Press, August 27, 2008
^ Norml.org, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
^ Halper, Evan (November 1, 2008). "Wealthy Californians put their agendas to a vote — Los Angeles Times". Latimes.com. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-billionaires1-2008nov01,0,3904554.story. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "George Soros gives $1 million to Prop. 19 campaign". sfgate.com. October 26, 2010. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=75546. Retrieved 30 October 2010.
^ Gorge Soros. Ekots lördagsintevju Swedish Radio, Oktober 10 2009. 12:55
^ Project on Death in America Archived June 3, 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
^ "George Soros: Reflections on Death in America Project on Death in America". Web.archive.org. June 22, 2001. Archived from the original on June 3, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080603005835/http%3A//www.soros.org/death. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "George Soros: Reflections on Death in America contd. 2 Project on Death in America". Web.archive.org. March 25, 2002. http://web.archive.org/web/20020325032428/www.soros.org/death/george_soros3.htm. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "Fatal prescription — re-enactment of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act on physician-assisted suicide Commonweal Find Articles at BNET". Findarticles.com. 1997. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_n20_v124/ai_20520550. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ chapter 10 "The Developmental States of East Asia." Hoogvelt, Ankie. 2001. in Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development. Balimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
^ Maggie Farley: Malaysian Leader, Soros Trade Barbs, Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1997
^ Bill Moyers Journal, George Soros on the financial crisis, published October 10, 2008, at http://odeo.com, full transcript and podcast
^ Kampeas, Ron (October 12, 2009). "jta.org". jta.org. http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13428. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Soros, George. "On Israel, America and AIPAC." New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007.
^ "The World's Billionaires". Forbes. March 10, 2010. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank_2.html. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
^ "The Perilous Price of Oil — The New York Review of Books". Nybooks.com. September 25, 2008. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21792. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: George Soros
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: George Soros
Official website
Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network
Institute for New Economic Thinking
Soros Fund Management 13F filing and Portfolio Activities
List of articles and speeches by and about George Soros
George Soros' Political Campaign Contributions
Forbes.com: Forbes 400 Richest in America
George Soros in SEC Filings
The Money Man - New Yorker
In depth review of The New Paradigm
Soros archive from The New York Review of Books
Why Does Soros Bite Hand That Feeds Him? in Investor's Business Daily
George Soros at the Internet Movie Database
Persondata
Name
Soros, George
Alternative names
Schwartz, György
Short description
speculator, investor, philanthropist, political activist
Date of birth
August 12, 1930
Place of birth
Budapest, Hungary
Date of death
Place of death
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros"
Categories: 1930 births Alumni of the London School of Economics American atheists American billionaires American Jews American money managers American people of Hungarian descent American philanthropists Hedge fund managers Hungarian atheists Hungarian immigrants to the United States Hungarian Jews Jewish atheists Living people Native Esperanto speakers Naturalized citizens of the United States People convicted of insider trading People from Budapest Stock traders Framing theorists Drug policy reform activists Hungarian American Jews
Hidden categories: Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism Articles with hCards Articles containing Hungarian language text All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from August 2010 Accuracy disputes All accuracy disputes Use mdy dates from August 2010
Blogger comment:
As humans we can not agree in every thing however this is a hick of a great man, fair, just and very principaled.
Jump to: navigation, search
"Soros" redirects here. For other uses, see Soros (disambiguation).
George Soros
George Soros at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2010
Born
August 12, 1930 (1930-08-12) (age 80)Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary
Alma mater
London School of Economics
Occupation
Entrepreneur, currency trader, investor, philosopher, philanthropist, political activist
Net worth
$14.2 billion (Forbes)[1]
Religion
None (Atheist)
Spouse
Twice divorced (Annaliese Witschak and Susan Weber Soros)
Children
Robert, Andrea, Jonathan, Alexander, Gregory
Website
http://www.georgesoros.com/
George Soros (Hungarian: Soros György) (pronounced /ˈsɔəroʊs/ or /ˈsɔərəs/,[2] Hungarian: [ˈʃoroʃ]; born August 12, 1930, as Schwartz György) is a Hungarian-American financier, is a businessman and notable philanthropist focused on supporting liberal ideals and causes.[3] He became known as "the Man Who Broke the Bank of England" after he made a reported $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crises.[4][5] Soros correctly anticipated that the British government would have to devalue the pound sterling.[6]
Soros is Chairman of the Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. He played a significant role in the peaceful transition from communism to capitalism in Hungary (1984–89)[5] and provided Europe's largest-ever higher education endowment to Central European University in Budapest.[7] Later, the Open Society Institute's programs in Georgia were considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial in the success of the Rose Revolution. In the United States, he is known for donating large sums of money in an effort to defeat President George W. Bush's bid for re-election in 2004. In 2010, he donated $1 million in support of Proposition 19, which would have legalized marijuana in the state of California. He was an initial donor to the Center for American Progress, and he continues to support the organization through the Open Society Foundations. The Open Society Institute has active programs in more than 60 countries around the world with total expenditures currently averaging approximately $600 million a year.
In 2003, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker wrote in the foreword of Soros' book The Alchemy of Finance:
George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become 'open societies,' open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but—more important—tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior.
Contents[hide]
1 Family
2 Early life
3 Emigration
4 Business
4.1 Currency speculation
4.2 Public predictions
4.3 Insider trading conviction
4.4 Sports
5 Philanthropy
5.1 Political donations and activism
5.1.1 United States
5.1.2 Eastern Europe
5.1.3 Africa
5.1.4 Drug policy reform
5.1.5 Death and dying
6 Philosophy
6.1 Education and beliefs
6.2 Reflexivity, financial markets, and economic theory
6.3 View of potential problems in the free market system
6.4 Views on antisemitism
7 Wealth
8 Relation to Hungarian politics
9 Books
9.1 Authored or co-authored
9.2 Biographies
10 Journalism
10.1 Authored
10.2 About
10.3 Scholarly perspectives
10.4 Speeches
10.5 Interviews
11 Notes
12 External links
//
Family
Soros was born in Budapest, Kingdom of Hungary, the son of the Esperantist writer Tivadar Soros. Tivadar (also known as Teodoro) was a Hungarian Jew, who was a prisoner of war during and after World War I and eventually escaped from Russia to rejoin his family in Budapest.[8][9]
The family changed its name from Schwartz to Soros in 1936, in response to growing anti-semitism with the rise of fascism. Tivadar liked the new name because it is a palindrome and has a meaning. Although the specific meaning is left unstated in Kaufman's biography, in Hungarian, soros means next in line, or designated successor; and, in Esperanto, it means "will soar".[10] Tivadar taught George to speak Esperanto from birth. George Soros later said that he grew up in a Jewish home and that his parents were cautious with their religious roots.[11]
Married and divorced twice, Soros has three children with Annaliese Witschak (Robert, Andrea, Jonathan) and two with Susan Weber Soros (Alexander and Gregory). His elder brother, Paul Soros, also a private investor and philanthropist, is an engineer, who headed Soros Associates and established the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowships for Young Americans.[12][13] George Soros' nephew Peter Soros, a son of Paul Soros, is married to the former Flora Fraser — a daughter of Lady Antonia Fraser and the late Sir Hugh Fraser and a stepdaughter of the late 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter.[14]
His son Alexander Soros is also gaining prominence for his donations to social and political causes. Alexander led the list of student political donors in the 2010 election cycle.[15]
Early life
Soros was thirteen years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.[16] Soros worked for the Jewish Council,[8] which had been established during the Nazi occupation of Hungary to forcibly carry out Nazi and Hungarian government anti-Jewish measures.[17][18] Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:
The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper...It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 a.m....And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, "You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported."[19]
In 1944, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. On one occasion, the official was ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country.[20] Rather than leave the young George alone in the city, the official brought him along. The following year, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house-to-house through the city.
Soros immigrated to England in 1947 and, as an impoverished student, lived with his uncle, an Orthodox Jew. His uncle paid his living expenses while he attended the London School of Economics, where he received a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy in 1952.[21] While a student of the philosopher Karl Popper, Soros worked as a railway porter and as a waiter. A University tutor requested aid for Soros, and he received £40 from a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) charity.[22] He eventually secured an entry-level position with London merchant bank Singer & Friedlander. He has a cousin from that family era, Caron Enlander (née Weiss) in New York.
Emigration
In 1956, Soros moved to New York City, where he worked as an arbitrage trader with F. M. Mayer (1956–59) and as an analyst with Wertheim & Co. (1959–63). Throughout this time, Soros developed a philosophy of reflexivity based on the ideas of Karl Popper. Reflexivity, as used by Soros, is the belief that the action of beholding the valuation of any market, by its participants, affects said valuation of the market in a procyclical 'virtuous or vicious' circle.[23]
Soros realized, however, that he would not make any money from the concept of reflexivity until he went into investing on his own. He began to investigate how to deal in investments. From 1963 to 1973, he worked at Arnhold and S. Bleichroder, where he attained the position of Vice-President. Soros finally concluded that he was a better investor than he was a philosopher or an executive. In 1967, he persuaded the company to set up First Eagle, an offshore investment fund for him to run; and, in 1969, it founded the Double Eagle hedge fund for him.[23]
In 1973, when investment regulations restricted his ability to run the funds as he wished, he resigned his position and established a private investment company, which evolved into the Quantum Fund. He has stated that his intent was to earn enough money on Wall Street to support himself as an author and philosopher —he calculated that $500,000 after five years would be possible and adequate.
He also once had a small stake in the Carlyle Group.[23]
Business
In 1970, Soros founded Soros Fund Management with Jim Rogers. In 1973, he left Arnhold and S. Bleichroder to set up his own hedge fund with US$12 million from investors. Christoper Ink was also involved, and other partners have included Victor Niederhoffer and Stanley Druckenmiller. Rogers retired from the fund in 1980.
Initially called the Soros Fund, it was eventually renamed the Quantum Fund. In 2000, the Quantum Group of Funds was reorganized, and the flagship Quantum Endowment Fund was established. Soros Fund Management LLC is the principal advisor to the Quantum Endowment Fund. George Soros is the Chairman of Soros Fund Management. The firm's day-to-day operations are managed by Soros's two elder sons and the firm's Chief Investment Officer. The fund has assets of approximately $27 billion.[24]
In 2007, the Quantum Fund returned almost 32%, netting Soros $2.9 billion.[25]
Currency speculation
On September 16, 1992, Black Wednesday, Soros's fund sold short more than US$10 billion worth of pounds,[24] profiting from the Bank of England's reluctance to either raise its interest rates to levels comparable to those of other European Exchange Rate Mechanism countries or to float its currency.
Finally, the Bank withdrew the currency from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, devaluing the pound sterling, earning Soros an estimated US$1.1 billion. He was dubbed "the man who broke the Bank of England." In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.
On Monday, October 26, 1992, The Times quoted Soros as saying: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell."
Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under Soros, originally saw the weakness in the pound. "Soros' contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position."[26][27]
In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, the Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir bin Mohamad accused Soros of using the wealth under his control to punish the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for welcoming Myanmar as a member. Following on a history of antisemitic remarks, Mahathir made specific reference to Soros's Jewish background ("It is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge" [28]) and implied Soros was orchestrating the crash as part of a larger Jewish conspiracy. Nine years later, in 2006, Mahathir apologized and withdrew the accusations.[29] In 1998's The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered Soros explained his role in the crisis as follows:
The financial crisis that originated in Thailand in 1997 was particularly unnerving because of its scope and severity.... By the beginning of 1997, it was clear to Soros Fund Management that the discrepancy between the trade account and the capital account was becoming untenable. We sold short the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit early in 1997 with maturities ranging from six months to a year. (That is, we entered into contracts to deliver at future dates Thai Baht and Malaysian ringgit that we did not currently hold.) Subsequently Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia accused me of causing the crisis, a wholly unfounded accusation. We were not sellers of the currency during or several months before the crisis; on the contrary, we were buyers when the currencies began to decline – we were purchasing ringgits to realize the profits on our earlier speculation. (Much too soon, as it turned out. We left most of the potential gain on the table because we were afraid that Mahathir would impose capital controls. He did so, but much later.)[30]
The nominal U.S. dollar Gross domestic product (GDP) of the ASEAN fell by US$9.2 billion in 1997 and US$218.2 billion (31.7%) in 1998.
Public predictions
Soros' book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (May 2008), described a "superbubble" that had built up over the past 25 years and was ready to collapse. This was the third in a series of books he has written that have predicted disaster. As he states:
I have a record of crying wolf... I did it first in The Alchemy of Finance (in 1987), then in The Crisis of Global Capitalism (in 1998) and now in this book. So it's three books predicting disaster. (After) the boy cried wolf three times... the wolf really came.[31]
He ascribes his own success to being able to recognize when his predictions are wrong.
I'm only rich because I know when I'm wrong... I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. Whenever you are wrong you have to fight or [take] flight. When [I] make the decision, the backache goes away.[31]
In February 2009, George Soros said the world financial system had effectively disintegrated, adding that there was no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.[32] "We witnessed the collapse of the financial system[...]It was placed on life support, and it's still on life support. There's no sign that we are anywhere near a bottom."
Insider trading conviction
In 1988, he was asked to join a takeover attempt of the French bank Société Générale. He declined to participate in the bid but later bought a number of shares in the company. French authorities began an investigation in 1989, and in 2002 a French court ruled that it was insider trading, a felony conviction as defined under French securities laws, and fined him $2.3 million, which was the amount that he made using the insider information.
Punitive damages were not sought because of the delay in bringing the case to trial. Soros denied any wrongdoing and said news of the takeover was public knowledge.[33]
His insider trading conviction was upheld by the highest court in France on June 14, 2006.[34] In December, 2006 he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, claiming that the 14-year delay in bringing the case to trial precluded a fair hearing.[35]
Sports
In 2005, Soros was a minority partner in a group that tried to buy the Washington Nationals, a Major League baseball team. Some Republican lawmakers suggested that they might move to revoke baseball's antitrust exemption if Soros bought the team.[36] In 2008, Soros' name was associated with AS Roma, an Italian football team but the club was not sold. Soros was also a financial backer of Washington Soccer L.P., the group that owned the operating rights to Major League Soccer club D.C. United when the league was founded in 1995, but the group lost these rights in 2000.[37]
Philanthropy
Main article: List of projects supported by George Soros
George Soros (left) and James H. Billington.
Soros has been active as a philanthropist since the 1970s, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa,[38] and began funding dissident movements behind the iron curtain.
Soros' philanthropic funding includes efforts to promote non-violent democratization in the post-Soviet states. These efforts, mostly in Central and Eastern Europe, occur primarily through the Open Society Institute (OSI) and national Soros Foundations, which sometimes go under other names (such as the Stefan Batory Foundation in Poland). As of 2003, PBS estimated that he had given away a total of $4 billion.[33] The OSI says it has spent about $500 million annually in recent years.
Time magazine in 2007 cited two specific projects - $100 million toward Internet infrastructure for regional Russian universities; and $50 million for the Millennium Promise to eradicate extreme poverty in Africa — while noting that Soros has given $742 million to projects in the U.S., and given away a total of more than $7 billion.[39]
Other notable projects have included aid to scientists and universities throughout Central and Eastern Europe, help to civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, and Transparency International. Soros also pledged an endowment of €420 million to the Central European University (CEU). The Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his microfinance bank Grameen Bank received support from the OSI.
According to National Review[40] the Open Society Institute gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Defense Committee of Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who has defended alleged terrorists in court and was sentenced to 2⅓ years in prison for "providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy" via a press conference for a client. An OSI spokeswoman said "it appeared to us at that time that there was a right-to-counsel issue worthy of our support."
In September 2006 Soros pledged $50 million to the Millennium Promise, led by economist Jeffrey Sachs to provide educational, agricultural, and medical aid to help villages in Africa enduring poverty. The New York Times termed this endeavor a "departure" for Soros whose philanthropic focus had been on fostering democracy and good government, but Soros noted that most poverty resulted from bad governance.[41]
He received honorary doctoral degrees from the New School for Social Research (New York), the University of Oxford in 1980, the Corvinus University of Budapest, and Yale University in 1991. Soros also received the Yale International Center for Finance Award from the Yale School of Management in 2000 as well as the Laurea Honoris Causa, the highest honor of the University of Bologna in 1995.
Political donations and activism
United States
In an interview with The Washington Post on November 11, 2003, Soros said that removing President George W. Bush from office was the "central focus of my life" and "a matter of life and death." He said he would sacrifice his entire fortune to defeat President Bush, "if someone guaranteed it."[42] Soros gave $3 million to the Center for American Progress, $2.5 million to MoveOn.org, and $20 million [43] to America Coming Together. These groups worked to support Democrats in the 2004 election. On September 28, 2004 he dedicated more money to the campaign and kicked off his own multi-state tour with a speech: Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush[44] delivered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The online transcript to this speech received many hits after Dick Cheney accidentally referred to FactCheck.org as "factcheck.com" in the Vice Presidential debate, causing the owner of that domain to redirect all traffic to Soros's site.[45] Soros has stated that:
"The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States ."[46]
Soros was not a large donor to US political causes until the 2004 presidential election, but according to the Center for Responsive Politics, during the 2003-2004 election cycle, Soros donated $23,581,000 to various 527 groups dedicated to defeating President Bush. A 527 group is a type of American tax-exempt organization named after a section of the United States tax code, 26 U.S.C. § 527. Despite Soros' efforts, Bush was reelected to a second term as president.
After Bush's re-election, Soros and other donors backed a new political fundraising group called Democracy Alliance, which supports progressive causes and the formation of a stronger progressive infrastructure in America.[47] Soros supported the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which many hoped would end "soft money" contributions to federal election campaigns.[citation needed] Soros has made soft money donations to 527 organizations that he says do not raise the same corruption issues as donations directly to the candidates or political parties.[citation needed]
In August 2009, Soros donated $35 million to the state of New York to be ear-marked for under-privileged children and given to parents who had benefit cards at the rate of $200 per child aged 3 through 17, with no limit as to the number of children that qualified. An additional $140 million was put into the fund by the state of New York from money they had received from the 2009 federal recovery act.[22]
On October 26, 2010, George Soros donated $1 million dollars to the Drug Policy Alliance to fund Proposition 19, the biggest donation in the campaign, that would have legalized marijuana in the state of California if it had passed in the November 2, 2010 elections.[48]
Eastern Europe
According to Neil Clark in the New Statesman, Soros's role was crucial in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.[49] From 1979, as an advocate of 'open societies', Soros financially supported dissidents including Poland's Solidarity movement, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Andrei Sakharov in the Soviet Union[38] donating $3 million a year according to Clark.[49] In 1984, he founded his first Open Society Institute in Hungary and pumped millions of dollars into opposition movements and independent media. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Soros' funding has continued to play an important role in the former Soviet sphere. His funding of pro-democratic programs in of Georgia was considered by Russian and Western observers to be crucial to the success of the Rose Revolution, although Soros has said that his role has been "greatly exaggerated."[50] Alexander Lomaia, Secretary of the Georgian Security Council and former Minister of Education and Science, is a former Executive Director of the Open Society Georgia Foundation (Soros Foundation), overseeing a staff of 50 and a budget of $2,500,000.[51]
Former Georgian Foreign Minister Salomé Zourabichvili wrote that institutions like the Soros Foundation were the cradle of democratisation and that all the NGOs which gravitated around the Soros Foundation undeniably carried the revolution. She opines that after the revolution the Soros Foundation and the NGOs were integrated into power.[52]
Some Soros-backed pro-democracy initiatives have been banned in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.[53] Ercis Kurtulus, head of the Social Transparency Movement Association (TSHD) in Turkey, said in an interview that "Soros carried out his will in Ukraine and Georgia by using these NGOs...Last year Russia passed a special law prohibiting NGOs from taking money from foreigners. I think this should be banned in Turkey as well."[54] In 1997, Soros had to close his foundation in Belarus after it was fined $3 million by the government for "tax and currency violations". According to The New York Times, the Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko has been widely criticized in the West and in Russia for his efforts to control the Belarus Soros Foundation and other independent NGOs and to suppress civil and human rights. Soros called the fines part of a campaign to "destroy independent society".[55]
In June 2009, Soros donated $100m to Central Europe and Eastern Europe to counter the impact of the economic crisis on the poor, voluntary groups and non-government organisations.[56]
Africa
The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa is a Soros-affiliated organization. [1] Its director for Zimbabwe is Godfrey Kanyenze, who also directs the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), which was the main force behind the founding of the Movement for Democratic Change, the principal indigenous organization promoting Regime change in Zimbabwe.
Drug policy reform
Soros has funded worldwide efforts to promote drug policy reform. In 2008, Soros donated $400,000 to help fund a successful ballot measure in the state of Massachusetts known as the Massachusetts Sensible Marijuana Policy Initiative which decriminalized possession of less than 1 oz (28g) of marijuana in the state. Soros has also funded similar measures in California, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Nevada and Maine.[57] Among the drug decriminalization groups that have received funding from Soros are the Lindesmith Center and Drug Policy Foundation.[58]
Soros donated $1.4 million to publicity efforts to support California's Proposition 5 in 2008, a failed ballot measure that would have expanded drug rehabilitation programs as alternatives to prison for persons convicted of non-violent drug-related offenses. [2] [59]
In October 2010, Soros donated $1 million to support California's Proposition 19.[60]
According to remarks in an interview in October, 2009, it is Soros's opinion that marijuana is less addictive but not appropriate for use by children and students. He himself has not used marijuana for years.[61]
Death and dying
The Project on Death in America, active from 2001–2003, was one of the Open Society Institute's projects, which sought to "understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement."[62] In 1994, Soros delivered a speech in which he reported that he had offered to help his mother, a member of the Hemlock Society, commit suicide.[63] In the same speech, he also endorsed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act,[64] the campaign for which he helped fund.[65]
Philosophy
Education and beliefs
Soros has a keen interest in philosophy, and has stated that he entered finance to be able to support himself as a philosopher. His philosophical outlook is influenced by Karl Popper, under whom he studied at the London School of Economics (LSE). His Open Society Institute is named after Popper's two volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Soros's ongoing philosophical commitment to the principle of fallibilism (that anything he believes may in fact be wrong, and is therefore to be questioned and improved) stems from Popper's philosophy.
Reflexivity, financial markets, and economic theory
Soros' writings focus heavily on the concept of reflexivity, where the biases of individuals enter into market transactions, potentially changing the perception of fundamentals of the economy. Soros argues that such transitions in the perceptions of fundamentals of the economy are typically marked by disequilibrium rather than equilibrium, and that the conventional economic theory of the market (the 'efficient market hypothesis') does not apply in these situations. Soros has popularized the concepts of dynamic disequilibrium, static disequilibrium, and near-equilibrium conditions.[23]
Reflexivity is based on three main ideas:[23]
Reflexivity is best observed under special conditions where investor bias grows and spreads throughout the investment arena. Examples of factors that may give rise to this bias include (a) equity leveraging or (b) the trend-following habits of speculators.
Reflexivity appears intermittently since it is most likely to be revealed under certain conditions; i.e., the equilibrium process's character is best considered in terms of probabilities.
Investors' observation of and participation in the capital markets may at times influence valuations AND fundamental conditions or outcomes.
A current example of reflexivity in modern financial markets is that of the debt and equity of housing markets. Lenders, under regulatory rules imposed by the Federal Government, began to make more money available to more people in the 1990s to buy houses. More people bought houses with this larger amount of money, thus increasing the prices of these houses. Lenders looked at their balance sheets which not only showed that they had made more loans, but that their equity backing the loans—the value of the houses, had gone up (because more money was chasing the same amount of housing, relatively). Thus they lent out more money because their balance sheets looked good, they were guaranteed by the Federal Government, and prices went up more. This was further amplified by public policy. Many governments see home ownership as a positive outcome and so first home owners grant and other financial subsidies — or influences to buy a home such as the exemption of a primary residence from capital gains taxation — mean that house purchases were seen as a good thing. Prices increased rapidly, and lending standards were relaxed. The salient issue regarding reflexivity is that it explains why markets gyrate over time, and do not just stick to equilibrium—they tend to overshoot or undershoot.[23]
View of potential problems in the free market system
This section's factual accuracy is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page.
Despite working as an investor and currency speculator, he argues that the current system of financial speculation undermines healthy economic development in many underdeveloped countries. Soros blames many of the world's problems on the failures inherent in what he characterizes as market fundamentalism. His opposition to many aspects of globalization has made him a controversial figure.
Victor Niederhoffer said of Soros: "Most of all, George believed even then in a mixed economy, one with a strong central international government to correct for the excesses of self-interest."
Soros claims to draw a distinction between being a participant in the market and working to change the rules that market participants must follow. According to Mahathir bin Mohamed, Prime Minister of Malaysia from July 1981 to October 2003, Soros — as the hedge fund chief of Quantum — may have been partially responsible for the economic crash in 1997 of East Asian markets when the Thai currency relinquished its peg to the US dollar. According to Mahathir, in the three years leading to the crash, Soros invested in short-term speculative investment in East Asian stock markets and real estate, then divested with "indecent haste" at the first signs of currency devaluation.[66] Soros replied, saying that Mahathir was using him "as a scapegoat for his own mistakes", that Mahathir's promises to ban currency trading (which Malaysian finance officials hastily retracted) were "a recipe for disaster" and that Mahathir "is a menace to his own country".[67]
In an interview regarding the late-2000s recession, Soros referred to it as the most serious crisis since the 1930s. According to Soros, market fundamentalism with its assumption that markets will correct themselves with no need for government intervention in financial affairs has been "some kind of an ideological excess". In Soros' view, the markets' moods — a "mood" of the markets being a prevailing bias or optimism/pessimism with which the markets look at reality — "actually can reinforce themselves so that there are these initially self-reinforcing but eventually unsustainable and self-defeating boom/bust sequences or bubbles".[68]
In reaction to the late-2000s recession he founded the Institute for New Economic Thinking in October 2009. This is a think-tank composed of international economic, business and financial experts, mandated to investigate radical new approaches to organising the international economic and financial system.
Views on antisemitism
At a Jewish forum in New York City, November 5, 2003, Soros partially attributed a recent resurgence of antisemitism to the policies of Israel and the United States, and to successful Jews such as himself:
There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It's not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well. I'm critical of those policies... If we change that direction, then anti-Semitism also will diminish. I can't see how one could confront it directly... I'm also very concerned about my own role because the new anti-Semitism holds that the Jews rule the world... As an unintended consequence of my actions... I also contribute to that image.[69]
In a subsequent article for The New York Review of Books, Soros emphasized that
I do not subscribe to the myths propagated by enemies of Israel and I am not blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism predates the birth of Israel. Neither Israel's policies nor the critics of those policies should be held responsible for anti-Semitism. At the same time, I do believe that attitudes toward Israel are influenced by Israel's policies, and attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby's success in suppressing divergent views.[70]
Wealth
In 2010, Forbes lists Soros as the 35th richest person in the world, and the 24th richest person in America, with a net worth estimated at US$14.2 billion.[1] Soros has given away $7 billion to various causes since 1979.[71]
Relation to Hungarian politics
In the 1980s Viktor Orbán -Chairman of Fidesz (1994–2000, 2000-) and Prime Minister (1998–2002, 2010-) - and László Kövér - Chairman of Fidesz (2000)m Secret Service Minister (1998–2002) and Speaker of the National Assembly of Hungary (2010-) - were Soros scholarship recipients. Furthermore the Orban cabinet's Deputy Prime Minister István Stumpf - now member of the Constitutional Court - was a member of the Soros Foundation's Board of Trustees between 1994 and 2002.
Books
Authored or co-authored
The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means (PublicAffairs, 2008). ISBN 1586486837
The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror (PublicAffairs, 2006) ISBN 1586483595
The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power (PublicAffairs, 2003) ISBN 1586482173 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58648-292-0)
George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, 2002) ISBN 1-58648-125-8 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2005; ISBN 1-52648-278-5)
Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (PublicAffairs, 2001) ISBN 1-58648-039-7
With Mark Amadeus Notturno, Science and the Open Society: The Future of Karl Popper's Philosophy (Central European University Press, 2000) ISBN 963-9116-69-6 (paperback: Central European University Press, 2000; ISBN 943-9116-70-X)
The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (PublicAffairs, 1998) ISBN 1-891220-27-4
Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0-471-12014-6 (paperback; Wiley, 1995; ISBN 0-371-11977-6)
Underwriting Democracy: Encouraging Free Enterprise and Democratic Reform Among the Soviets and in Eastern Europe (Free Press, 1991) ISBN 0-02-930285-4 (paperback; PublicAffairs, 2004; ISBN 1-58948-227-0)
Opening the Soviet System (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990) ISBN 0-297-82155-9 (paperback: Perseus Books, 1996; ISBN 0-8133-1205-1)
The Alchemy of Finance (Simon & Schuster, 1988) ISBN 0-671-66338-4 (paperback: Wiley, 2003; ISBN 0-471-44549-5)
Biographies
Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire by Michael T. Kaufman (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ISBN 0-375-40585-2
Soros: The World's Most Influential Investor by Robert Slater (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009) ISBN 978-0-07-160844-2
Journalism
Authored
George Soros, "Why I support legal marijuana", The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2010.
George Soros, "The Crisis and the Euro", The New York Review of Books, August 19, 2010.
George Soros, "On Israel, America and AIPAC", The New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007.
George Soros, "The Bubble of American Supremacy", The Atlantic, December 2003.
George Soros, The Bubble of American Supremacy, audio recording of The Atlantic article via Assistive Media, read by Grover Gardner, 18 minutes.
George Soros, "Soros on Brazil", Financial Times, August 13, 2002.
George Soros, "Bitter Thoughts with Faith in Russia", Moskovskiye Novosti (Moscow News), translated from the Russian by Olga Kryazheva, February 27, 2000.
George Soros, "The Capitalist Threat", The Atlantic Monthly, February 1997.
George Soros, "Paulson Cannot be Allowed a Blank Cheque", Financial Times, September 24, 2008
About
Stephen Adams "Furious George" on Citizen — Family Issues in Policy and Culture
John Authers, Book Review, "A successful prophet of the markets," Financial Times, May 19, 2008.
Laura Blumenfeld, Billionaire Soros Takes On Bush, MSNBC, November 11, 2003
Connie Bruck, Abstract of New Yorker profile of Soros "The World According to Soros", The New Yorker, January 23, 1995
Neil Clark Analysis of Soros' role in Eastern Europe from "New Statesman"
Malcolm Gladwell, "Blowing Up," The New Yorker, April 22 & 29, 2002, at gladwell.com.
John Horvath The Soros Effect on Central and Eastern Europe
Matt Welch, Open Season on 'Open Society': Why an anti-communist Holocaust survivor is being demonized as a Socialist, Self-hating Jew Reason magazine, December 8, 2003
Martin Peretz, "Tyran-a-Soros: The Madness of King George," The New Republic, February 12, 2007.
TIME's 25 Most Influential Americans, TIME Magazine April 21, 1997. Accessed May 21, 2007.
The TIME 100, The Power Givers, George Soros, TIME Magazine May 14, 2007 accessed May 21, 2007.
Scholarly perspectives
Bryant, C. G. A. (2002). "George Soros's theory of reflexivity: a comparison with the theories of Giddens and Beck and a consideration of its practical value". Economy and Society 31 (1): 112–131. doi:10.1080/03085140120109277.
Cross, R.; Strachan, D. (1997). "On George Soros and economic analysis". Kyklos 50: 561–574. doi:10.1111/1467-6435.00030.
Kwong, C.P. (2008). "Mathematical analysis of Soros's theory of reflexivity". ArXiv: 0901.4447. http://arxiv.org/pdf/0901.4447.
Pettis, Michael (2001). The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195143302.
Stone, Diane (2007). "Market Principles, Philanthropic Ideals and Public Service Values: The Public Policy Program at the Central European University". PS: Political Science and Politics: 545–551.
Speeches
Testimony of George Soros to a congressional sub-committee, Sept. 15, 1998
The Theory of Reflexivity Delivered April 26, 1994 to the MIT Department of Economics World Economy
"The Differences Between Natural and Social Science: Implications of Fallibility" at IISc Bangalore, January 5, 2007
George Soros introduced by Lajos Bokros. (November 11, 2008). George Soros Lecture on the Global Financial Crisis On November 11, 1 hour 16 minutes. Budapest, Hungary: CEU Business School.
Testimony before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee Oversight Hearing on FTC Advanced Rulemaking and Oil Market Manipulation[72]
Interviews
Fareed Zakaria discussing economic crisis with George Soros on GPS
The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC) - Audio Archive: "George Soros on Freedom"
frontline: the crash: interviews: george soros
George Soros Interview On 60 Minutes
Wall $treet Week with FORTUNE . TV Program PBS
Challenge: The international financial crisis - International ...
NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. David Brancaccio interviews ...
Booknotes with Brian Lamb. Transcript and streaming video.
Rocketboom: The Age of Fallibility (Video, 2006)
Google Video: Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google interviews George Soros (Video, 2006)
Fox News Interview with Neil Cavuto, October 11, 2006 Video and text, accessed May 25, 2007.
Interview with George Soros, September 5, 2000
Notes
^ a b Forbes The Richest People In America, Forbes, September 22, 2010
^ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6150320548187842685
^ William Shawcross, "Turning Dollars into Change," Time Magazine, September 1, 1997
^ Open University
^ a b The Atlantic
^ George Soros FAQ from GeorgeSoros.com
^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-79165556.html
^ a b Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Alfred A. Knopf: 2002
^ Soros, George (2008). The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means. PublicAffairs. p. 13. ISBN 1586486837. http://books.google.com/?id=F_aBKX4AnLUC&q=Tivadar#search_anchor.
^ Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Alfred A. Knopf: 2002, p. 24.
^ Slater, R.: Soros: The Unauthorized Biography, page 30.
^ "Background and History". Paul and Dora Soros Fellowships for Young Americans. http://www.pdsoros.org/overview/. Retrieved March 22, 2009.
^ Elisabeth Bumiller (June 17, 1998). "Public Lives: An Overshadowed Altruist Sees the Light". New York Times (New York Times Company). http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/17/nyregion/public-lives-an-overshadowed-altruist-sees-the-light.html?sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved March 22, 2009.
^ "Peter Soros and Flora Fraser". New York Times (New York Times Company). February 2, 1997. http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/02/style/peter-soros-and-flora-fraser.html. Retrieved March 22, 2009.
^ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/10/college-life-conjures-visions-of.html
^ "Holocaust Encyclopedia". Ushmm.org. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005458. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Holocaust Denial: George Soros vs. the Tea Parties by Roger Simon, 6 September 2010
^ The Man Who Broke the Bank of England, Spent $24 million to Defeat George Bush, and Never Met a Left Wing-Cause he Didn’t Like by Roger Kimball, 6 September 2010
^ Michael Lewis, "The Speculator: What on earth is multibillionaire George Soros doing throwing wads of money around in Eastern Europe?", The New Republic, January 10, 1994. See also Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Alfred A. Knopf: 2002, p. 32-33
^ Kaufman, Michael T., Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire page 37
^ Official Web Biography
^ a b All Things Considered (August 11, 2009). "Soros Uses Leverage To Aid New York Children". Npr.org. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111786652. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ a b c d e f Soros, George (2008). The New Paradigm for Financial Markets. Public Affairs, New York. ISBN 978-1-58648-683-9.
^ a b http://www.georgesoros.com/faqs/archive/category/finance/
^ Anderson, Jenny (April 16, 2008). "Wall Street Winners Get Billion-Dollar Paydays". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/16wall.html?ex=1366084800&en=1eee7351824a31ce&ei=5124. Retrieved July 28, 2008.
^ Steven Drobny, "Inside the House of Money", John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ, 2006.
^ Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (John Wiley, 1995) ISBN 0-471-12014-6
^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/3597972/Mahathirs-dark-side.html
^ http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1812946.htm
^ Soros, George (1999). The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, 2nd ed., PublicAffairs, ISBN 1-891220-27-4, pp. 208-209.
^ a b "Soros, the Man Who Cries Wolf, Now Is Warning of a 'Superbubble'" by Greg Ip, B1, June 21–22, 2008 The Wall Street Journal.
^ Soros sees no bottom for world financial "collapse", Reuters, February 21, 2009, Retrieved on August 17, 2009.
^ a b David Brancaccio interviews George Soros, Now, PBS, September 12, 2003, accessed Feb. 8, 2007.
^ Insider trading conviction of Soros is upheld (International Herald Tribune)
^ Soros appeals conviction for insider trading, Billionaire takes French conviction to European court (International Herald Tribune)December 14, 2006
^ "Soros's Nats Bid Irks Republicans". Washingtonpost.com. June 28, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/27/AR2005062701447.html. Retrieved May 19, 2010.
^ Goff, Steven (October 12, 2000). "United's Ownership Uncertain; After Sale Fell Through, MLS Might Take Over Operation". Pqasb.pqarchiver.com. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/62439758.html?dids=62439758:62439758&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&fmac=&date=Oct+12%2C+2000&author=Steven+Goff&desc=United%27s+Ownership+Uncertain%3B+After+Sale+Fell+Through%2C+MLS+Might+Take+Over+Operation. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ a b "George Soros biography", Open Society Foundation
^ http://georgesoros.com/faqs/entry/georgesorosphilanthropyisunprecedented/
^ York, Byron, Soros Funded Stewart Defense, National Review Online. Retrieved February 7, 2007.
^ Dugger, Celia W. (September 13, 2006). "Philanthropist Gives $50 Million to Help Aid the Poor in Africa". Africa: Travel2.nytimes.com. http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/us/13soros.html. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Laura Blumenfeld, Deep Pockets vs. Bush, Financier Contributes $5 Million More in Effort to Oust President, Washington Post, November 11, 2003; Page A03
^ "Soros, who would eventually give ACT $20 million of his own money" from http://old.nationalreview.com/york/york200508030928.asp
^ "Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush". Commondreams.org. September 28, 2004. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-16.htm. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Suellentrop, Chris (October 6, 2004). "Cheney Drops the Ball". Slate.com. http://www.slate.com/id/2107809/. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ America the Dangerous? - Newsweek interview with George Soros
^ "New Alliance Of Democrats Spreads Funding". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/16/AR2006071600882_pf.html. Retrieved July 17, 2006.
^ "George Soros gives $1 million to Prop. 19 campaign". Sfgate.com. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=75546. Retrieved October 26, 2010.
^ a b Clark, Neil. "Soros Profile". the New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/200306020019. Retrieved June 6, 2007.
^ "Soros Downplays Role in Georgia Revolution". Archive.newsmax.com. June 1, 2005. http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/5/31/164945.shtml. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "Alexander Lomaia — Minister of Education and Science (Georgia)". Oecd.org. http://www.oecd.org/document/49/0,2340,en_21571361_36507471_37001521_1_1_1_1,00.html. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Salomé Zourabichvili, Herodote (magazine of the French Institute for Geopolitics, April, 2008
^ Fred Weir: Democracy rising in ex-Soviet states, Christian Science Monitor, February 10, 2005
^ "Does Foreign Funding Make NGOs into Puppets?". Globalpolicy.org. October 11, 2006. http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/fund/2006/1011puppets.htm. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Miller, Judith (September 4, 1997). "Soros Closes Foundation In Belarus — The". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E0D91530F937A3575AC0A961958260. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Soros donates $100 million to Europe, UNIAN (June 19, 2009)
^ LeBlanc, Steve, Soros behind Mass. effort to decriminalize pot, Associated Press, August 27, 2008
^ Norml.org, National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
^ Halper, Evan (November 1, 2008). "Wealthy Californians put their agendas to a vote — Los Angeles Times". Latimes.com. http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-billionaires1-2008nov01,0,3904554.story. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "George Soros gives $1 million to Prop. 19 campaign". sfgate.com. October 26, 2010. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=75546. Retrieved 30 October 2010.
^ Gorge Soros. Ekots lördagsintevju Swedish Radio, Oktober 10 2009. 12:55
^ Project on Death in America Archived June 3, 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
^ "George Soros: Reflections on Death in America Project on Death in America". Web.archive.org. June 22, 2001. Archived from the original on June 3, 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080603005835/http%3A//www.soros.org/death. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "George Soros: Reflections on Death in America contd. 2 Project on Death in America". Web.archive.org. March 25, 2002. http://web.archive.org/web/20020325032428/www.soros.org/death/george_soros3.htm. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ "Fatal prescription — re-enactment of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act on physician-assisted suicide Commonweal Find Articles at BNET". Findarticles.com. 1997. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_n20_v124/ai_20520550. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ chapter 10 "The Developmental States of East Asia." Hoogvelt, Ankie. 2001. in Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development. Balimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
^ Maggie Farley: Malaysian Leader, Soros Trade Barbs, Los Angeles Times, September 22, 1997
^ Bill Moyers Journal, George Soros on the financial crisis, published October 10, 2008, at http://odeo.com, full transcript and podcast
^ Kampeas, Ron (October 12, 2009). "jta.org". jta.org. http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=13428. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
^ Soros, George. "On Israel, America and AIPAC." New York Review of Books, April 12, 2007.
^ "The World's Billionaires". Forbes. March 10, 2010. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Worlds-Billionaires_Rank_2.html. Retrieved August 22, 2010.
^ "The Perilous Price of Oil — The New York Review of Books". Nybooks.com. September 25, 2008. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21792. Retrieved October 16, 2009.
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: George Soros
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: George Soros
Official website
Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network
Institute for New Economic Thinking
Soros Fund Management 13F filing and Portfolio Activities
List of articles and speeches by and about George Soros
George Soros' Political Campaign Contributions
Forbes.com: Forbes 400 Richest in America
George Soros in SEC Filings
The Money Man - New Yorker
In depth review of The New Paradigm
Soros archive from The New York Review of Books
Why Does Soros Bite Hand That Feeds Him? in Investor's Business Daily
George Soros at the Internet Movie Database
Persondata
Name
Soros, George
Alternative names
Schwartz, György
Short description
speculator, investor, philanthropist, political activist
Date of birth
August 12, 1930
Place of birth
Budapest, Hungary
Date of death
Place of death
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros"
Categories: 1930 births Alumni of the London School of Economics American atheists American billionaires American Jews American money managers American people of Hungarian descent American philanthropists Hedge fund managers Hungarian atheists Hungarian immigrants to the United States Hungarian Jews Jewish atheists Living people Native Esperanto speakers Naturalized citizens of the United States People convicted of insider trading People from Budapest Stock traders Framing theorists Drug policy reform activists Hungarian American Jews
Hidden categories: Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism Articles with hCards Articles containing Hungarian language text All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from August 2010 Accuracy disputes All accuracy disputes Use mdy dates from August 2010
Blogger comment:
As humans we can not agree in every thing however this is a hick of a great man, fair, just and very principaled.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)