If I did it I would do it to create a wonderful huge diverse family cuz I’m a real man and would take care of them… you dig? I’m gonna do a much more elaborate post on this subject with a book review on “The Female Solution” by Naimah Latif about this VERY issue

America is so hypocritical about this subject:

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=2

All Things Considered, May 28, 2008 · Polygamy in the U.S. is not limited to remote enclaves in the West or breakaway sects once affiliated with the Mormon Church. Several scholars say it’s growing among black Muslims in the inner city — and particularly in Philadelphia, which is known for its large orthodox black Muslim community.

No one knows exactly how many people live in polygamous families in the U.S. Estimates from academics researching the issue range from 50,000 to 100,000 people.

Take Zaki and Mecca, who have been married for nearly 12 years. In their late 20s, they live in the Philadelphia suburbs, have a 5-year-old son and own a real estate business.

Zaki also has something else: a second wife.

Two years ago, Mecca told her husband she wanted to study Arabic in the Middle East, which would mean a lot of time away from home. (NPR is not using any full names in this story because some of those we interviewed could be prosecuted for bigamy.)

“We were talking about it,” Mecca recalls, “and the first thing that came to my mind was, ‘I’m going to have to find you another wife!’”

Zaki was game. After all, he had been raised in a polygamous home in Philadelphia. Like many black Muslims, his father subscribed to an orthodox view of Islam that allows a man to marry several women. Zaki says he loved having seven siblings and four mothers, especially at dinnertime.

“I would find out who’s making what that particular night. I know that this mom makes barbequed chicken better than my other mom makes fried chicken, so I’m going with the barbequed chicken tonight. Things of that nature,” he says with a laugh.

Unlike Zaki, Mecca was raised by a single mother and converted from Southern Baptist to Muslim when she was 16.

Finding Another Wife

When it came to finding a second wife, Zaki said he had no one in mind, and he asked Mecca to conduct the search.

“You know, he gave me the baton, and I took it and ran with it,” Mecca says.

Mecca launched a nationwide search. She found candidates by word of mouth. She scoured the Internet. Eventually, she interviewed about a dozen women.

“I had to make sure that she’d be the right fit — not just for my husband, but for our whole family,” Mecca says.

But the ultimate match was right under their noses: 20-year-old Aminah, who was a friend of Zaki’s younger sister. Aminah knew Mecca was looking for a second wife but thought she was too young. That is, until one night after a dinner party when Mecca pulled her aside. Mecca asked Aminah if she would consider marrying Zaki.

“And I said, ‘That’s funny, because I was thinking the same thing,’” Aminah says.

Zaki was the last to know the identity of the final candidate to be his bride. He could have vetoed the choice, of course, but he was delighted.

In October 2007, he and Aminah married in a religious, not civil, ceremony. Many polygamous marriages are conducted in secret and are not legally binding because state laws prohibit them.

Aminah recalls that Mecca helped prepare the wedding feast.

Aminah, who’s finishing college, lives in an apartment a few miles away from Mecca’s house. Zaki moves between homes on alternating nights. But every week after Friday prayers, they get together as a family.

“It can be a variety of things,” Zaki says. “Going to a nice restaurant, catching a movie, going bowling, maybe seeing a concert. All kind of things.”

“I always call it family date night, because it’s one big date,” Mecca says. “We just chill. I always look forward to it. We always have a ball, laughing, goofing around.”

Treating Each Wife Equally

On a recent day, Zaki’s attention is on Aminah. Riding the elevator to her penthouse apartment, he explains that it’s Aminah’s 21st birthday and he’s taking her to New York to see a Broadway show.

“She has no idea what she’s going to do today,” he whispers. And so while Zaki’s second wife is changing for a surprise trip, his first wife is getting the train tickets and making the arrangements.

“See, you got to work as a unit or it’s very inconvenient otherwise,” he laughs.

As Zaki hurries Aminah along, he says he will do something equivalent for Mecca on her birthday. Islam requires that the husband treat each wife equally. Zaki explains that doesn’t mean he gives them the same things. For example, Mecca likes jewelry but Aminah doesn’t.

But, he says, “If I upgrade one, then I have to upgrade the other. But the upgrade may not be the same because you have two different women with two different tastes.”

They’ve worked out a system. Even still, why would a woman want to share her husband?

“Well, I’m looking at it more as a spiritual perspective,” Mecca says. “Zaki is a blessing — just like everything else. He is a loan from God, is the way I look at it. And in my religion, if he’s able and capable to [marry another wife], I wouldn’t want to hold him back. So, why not?”

She acknowledges that there have been “a few bumps in the road.” But she hasn’t once second-guessed sharing Zaki with Aminah.

As Mecca speaks, Aminah nods in agreement.

“I might have certain feelings when my husband walks out the door and I haven’t seen him all day, but I know his responsibility is not only to me. And the respect I have for my co-wife, all that plays a role in how I handle my emotions,” Aminah says.

‘Two, Three, Four’

Zaki believes ultimately, polygamy is good for society — especially in the inner city, where intact families are rare and many kids grow up without their fathers.

“There are a lot of blessings in it because you’re helping legitimize and build a family that’s rooted in values and commitment. And the children that come out of those types of relationships only become a benefit to society at large.”

Many orthodox Muslims agree. You can find them on Fridays at a mosque in South Philadelphia.

The congregation that has gathered in a slim townhouse is largely African-American. The rules are orthodox, and the prayers (if not the sermon) are in classical Arabic.

Abdullah, the imam, has conducted religious ceremonies for a dozen polygamous marriages.

Abdullah says polygamy in Islam dates back to the 7th century, when battles were killing off Muslim men and leaving widows and children unprotected.

As a result, Abdullah says, the Koran specifies that a man can marry “women of your choice: two, three, four, and if you fear you cannot be just, then marry one.”

“And so, a lot of scholars look at it sequentially,” he says. “Two is optimum, then three, then four, then as a last resort, one!”

A Shortage of Men

And while polygamy may seem like a man’s paradise, Abdullah says, often an unmarried woman initiates it.

“Sometimes a woman may be interested in a man, but he’s off limits. That’s not the case in Islam. Does he have four wives? No? Then he’s still available.”

That’s how Abdullah met his second wife. A divorcee, she heard Abdullah preach a few sermons and approached his wife to ask if he would be interested in a second wife. Soon she married Abdullah and now the imam cares for two families — with 13 children and another on the way.

The single women at the mosque say polygamy is a fact of life. But it’s not their first choice.

“Every woman has a preference to be the sole wife,” says Aliya, echoing the sentiments of the others. Aliya is a 28-year-old single woman who is finishing up a master’s degree. She says that South Philadelphia in the 21st century is a little like Arabia in the 7th century. There is a dearth of men to marry.

“We’re dealing with brothers who are incarcerated — that is, unavailable,” she says. “And then unfortunately, you have the AIDS and HIV crisis, where HIV has struck the African-American community disproportionately to others. So when you look at it that way, there is a shortage.”

Shaheed’s Story

With this numerical advantage, some men collect wives for the sex. But some men also marry out of altruism. Consider 43-year-old Shaheed, who is married to Alieah.

Fourteen years ago, his friend died. The friend’s wife, Nadirah, was 30 and expecting her third child. That brought her to Shaheed’s attention.

“When we came to the grave site — I remember it as if it were yesterday — what stuck out was that her demeanor was so calm,” Shaheed says.

Nadirah is an elegant, contained woman. After becoming a widow, she decided the only way she would marry again was as a second wife.

“At that point in my life, I was used to being alone,” she says, running her household as she liked, “as opposed to constantly being with someone and attending to someone else’s needs.”

She accepted Shaheed’s proposal. But she quickly saw the tricky relationship was not with Shaheed. It was with his wife.

“We met, and we had dinner, and we had lunch and we went out and shopped and did different things at that point. As the marriage got closer, I think she was more apprehensive and more unnerved by the pending situation.”

“I remember me telling him, ‘Please don’t go,’” Alieah says. “He’s like ‘What do you mean? The wedding is today, you’re telling me not to go today?’ I’m like, ‘Just don’t go!’”

Alieah, who is 40, says she considered Shaheed’s commitment to a widow “noble.” Afterward, however, she considered divorce. She eventually decided she did not want to start over. After two years of misery, Alieah says, she had a spiritual epiphany.

“I literally just got up one morning and said [to God], ‘OK, this is what you want me to do. I’m going to handle it in a civil manner, and I’m going to do X, Y, Z about it,’” Alieah says. “And from that point on, it was the strangest thing, because it never bothered me anymore. I never even thought about it.”

The family began to operate like a well-oiled machine and a model of polygamy in their Muslim community. Shaheed runs his own security company. Alieah teaches first grade, and Nadirah home-schools some of the family’s 10 children.

“We really depend on each other,” says Nadirah, who considers Alieah a friend.

What About the Heart?

There are benefits to polygamy for the wives, Nadirah says.

“She could fill something that even a husband couldn’t fill. It was a cross between a sister and a friend and a co-worker,” she says. “You have a cushion or a help that you didn’t have before.”

At first, the two families lived in separate homes. Now Shaheed, his two wives and nine of his 10 children live in one house. Each wife has a bedroom on a separate floor, but everything else is communal, including cooking and eating. Shaheed says it’s not easy to treat his two very different wives equally, but he tries.

“I’m not going to be overly affectionate with this one as opposed to this one out in the open,” he explains.

And what about controlling his heart when it comes to these two women?

“That’s something that you can’t really control,” he says. “But materially, you want to do that as adequately as possible.”

For her part, Alieah is philosophical about love.

“You cannot blame someone for where their heart lies.”

Did she have a sense of whether her husband was falling for someone else?

She pauses.

“It really didn’t matter,” she eventually answers. “I just knew he had someone else in his life, and it wasn’t me.”

Alieah says polygamy isn’t easy for either wife, though she believes it is harder on the first.

“The second wife is receiving something, where a first wife will feel that something is being taken away from her,” she says. “I mean, I’m devoted to you for my whole life, but you’re only devoted to half of my life.”

Alieah’s youngest child is 4 years old. Her oldest — a 17-year-old daughter — says she’s had a happy childhood in a polygamous family. But she hopes she won’t have to share her husband with anyone else.

The international drug trade is dominated by you know who:

Two Israelis arrested in Thailand for possession of 23,000 Ecstasy pills

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Two Israelis were arrested Tuesday in Thailand after police found 23,000 Ecstasy pills in their possession, the foreign ministry said Friday. Israeli Consul Hanoch Amadi in Bangkok said he expected the two to be held for a long time for drug-dealing.

The two were arrested during a wide-scale police operation on Kwasan Street in Bangkok, where many Israeli tourists tend to congregate. Police also arrested a number of other Israelis at the same time, but some were released on bail and the others were released when it was clear they had no connection to the drug deal.

Amadi, who is in contact with the local authorities, told the foreign ministry that the two arrested are receiving legal aid. The foreign ministry updated the families of the two Israelis about their arrest.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/932325.html

SHOCK!

http://www.radioislam.org/crime/drugs/chassids.htm

http://www.radioislam.org/crime/drugs/ecstasyring.htm

http://www.radioislam.org/crime/drugs/rusdrug.htm

the enemy is the one who is hateful, not us.

An Open Letter to Defense Minister, Ehud Barak

Here’s the Truth You’ve Been Running From

By BASSAM ARAMIN

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Honorable General Ehud Barak, you don’t know me personally. I am a seeker of peace, and I struggle with all my strength and ability for the realization of a just peace that will bring calm and prosperity to Palestinians and Israelis together.

I have suffered personally from your criminal occupation and I have paid a heavy price. Firstly, I was imprisoned when I was 17 years old and wasted seven years of my life in your barbaric prisons. Secondly, have you perhaps read or heard about what happened to the young girl Abir Aramin? She was a ten-year-old whom your soldiers killed with a rubber bullet from a distance of 15 feet on January 16, 2007 in front of her eleven-year-old sister Areen. Despite this I, the father of Abir — may she rest in peace — believe in the right of the Israeli person, as in the right of all people, to exist and to live in peace and security.

So why do you not believe in our right to enjoy these same things, sir?

Where was the democratic nature of your state when your heroic soldiers killed my daughter before the eyes of her friends at the entrance to her school in Anata? Where were your democratic ideals when you closed the investigation file into Abir’s murder for lack of sufficient evidence, this despite the fact that the crime is clear and was committed in front of more than ten witnesses? Was Abir really a threat to your soliders, sir?

I carry in my possession the weapons with which Abir threatened those soldiers. I have in my hand her school backpack, reinforced and armored, of course — the mechanical pencil she had, laden with dangerous lead cartridges, and her math book in which class she had a test the same day, which of course included detailed instructions on how to prepare chemical weapons. In addition to all this, she had a sharp ruler, which could for sure be used as a weapon to stab someone. Lastly, I found in her possession two pieces of chocolate that perhaps contained a bit of enriched uranium that would have certainly brought devastation upon your state, if she hadn’t been tempted to take them in her hand for a taste seconds before she was shot…

Here I have to give your soldiers credit in their incredible ability to incapacitate and kill with such deadly accuracy. The bullet hit Abir exactly one centimeter from her hypothalamus—this caused her to immediately enter a coma and she died thereafter and went to dwell in the presence of God, sparing her the continuing pain and heartache herein expressed…

Thus, Abir Aramin can be added to the list of great successes and security accomplishments in the name of the state of Israel. But I request, Minister and General, in that I am the father of this young girl, at the very least an admission of responsibility for this murder, or its cause. It is your duty to bring the soldier who murdered Abir to court so he may be tried and judged a murderer and criminal…

I believe that there is no military solution to the conflict and when those cowards murdered my daughter, I announced that I did not want revenge, I wanted justice, even though revenge is much easier.

The real fighter is one who chooses the harder path of the two for the sake of peace, and revenge is the path of the coward…

Sir, the Palestinian people cannot forever pay the price of the fear and suspicion of the Israeli people.

Free my people from this abominable occupation so that your people may live in prosperity and be free from fear….

For sixty years, the Palestinian people have paid the price of the Israeli military occupation an occupation which, in celebration of the Israeli state’s inception, carries out acts of outright antagonism that spill the blood of Palestinian fighters, women, children and elders indiscriminately. It is the Palestinian general public that provides a target for your war machine that does not protect the small from the grown. Our people has faced the same murderer since Gaza in 1956 — and the never-ending series continues…

I will not remind you now of the massacres that your government committed against my people; you know them far better than I. I read about them, heard about them — but you took part in them…

The question I pose to you is this: in light of your rich military experience, and as someone who himself has seen sixty years of conflict go by, when will Israel have the strength to finish the conflict militarily and realize a complete victory over the Palestinian people? Do you continue to believe that what cannot be done by might may be done by more might? Does the occupation conceal in its bag of tricks additional methods of killing that the Palestinian people have not yet had the misfortune to know?

If this is the case, perhaps it is a good idea for the Israeli government to try and use those methods. And perhaps they will be able to accomplish that tantalizingly complete victory…in another 60 years…

Sir, when will you understand that the conflict between us cannot be ended with an army? For despite all the effort and conceit of the occupation, it could not stop the stones of our children from hitting your occupying soldiers. How will you be able to stop the Palestinian uprising? This is a dream that will never come true, even in another 1000 years.

Why are you not telling this truth to the residents of Ashkelon and Sderot, that there is no solution that will stop the Qassam missiles flying at them from a destroyed and blockaded Gaza except if there would be an end to the occupation?

This is the truth you’ve been running from for a long time…

Believe me, sir, that you will gain nothing out of continuing to detain people. More than 750,000 Palestinians have been detained from 1967 until today.

What result has been achieved except an increased determination on our part for confrontation and resistance?

The policy of occupation only creates more and more people who rise up to fight occupation and refuse to accept its burden. The Palestinian prisoners who sit in your jails are among the most learned and erudite of our people, those are the most sensitive and humanistic. They have become educated in the tradition of liberty and democracy—and for this reason they will never agree to accept the occupation and subjugation. It is these men and women who will fight for peace, and if you want to realize peace you have no option but to set free these soldiers of peace first and foremost…

How much have you really benefited from your strategy of home demolitions, uprooting of trees, confiscating lands for questionable reasons and then establishing illegal settlements on those same lands? How much has it helped you to set up disgraceful checkpoints in every corner and every road of the West Bank and Gaza and at each intersection for the purpose of humiliating the residents of those areas, among them workers, students and political leaders.

What is the expediency of all this, sir?

When will the bloodthirsty bullets of your soldiers be sated by the blood of our children? When will you be satisfied with our blood that you have already spilled and leave us? When will you leave our waters and our heavens? Do you not see the helmets upon which your soldiers write, “I was born to kill”? Do you not see your brave men killing children every day? How can you decide to prevent the people of Gaza from acquiring cooking gas and at the same time send them teargas and tanks and warplanes?

Only now do I understand the will of an Israeli woman in Italy — my colleague Eidan and I met her when we participated in a peace march from Perugia to Assisi as representatives of Combatants for Peace. When I asked her, “You aren’t planning to return to Israel?” She answered me: “I swore that if Ehud Barak won the election, I will leave Israel forever.” She continues to live there because you act according to a policy that says there is no Palestinian partner…

I cannot begin to express in this short letter the enormity of the moral failures that have harmed Israeli society. The newspaper Yediot Ahronot said that 40 per cent of new recruits to the IDF have criminal records and this may go a long way in explaining the long list of acts against Palestinian civilians that they commit during their service.

This is supposed to be the most distinguished, moral army in the entire world, no? Is this why we find that 25 per cent of the soldiers of the army of the occupation took part in instances of torture and punishment of innocent civilians or were witnesses to such acts?

Sir, I want to submit that I have read the shameful report that every person of conscience should be horrified by, that talks of the torture of children in Hebron. And this — the strangling of Palestinian children by soldiers to test how much time they can stand without breathing, incidents that were committed by captains in your army, the most moral army in the world, this is the crown of shame on the brow of the occupation…

Sir, how do you justify your soldier’s use of children aged 10 as personal shields that they tie to the front of your patrols when they search for wanted persons or break up a demonstration? Where does international law permit this? I am trying to understand if this use of children as human shields is in some way related to the science of modern warfare, for the accusation that I hear in all instances of the killing of children in particular and in the killing of Palestinian citizens in general is that the Palestinians fighters use citizens for human shields to hide behind.

How can there be a legal justification and distinction even in the Israeli terminology, but not in the international terminology, between Israelis and Palestinians?

How can you justify the deaths of those innocents just trying to peacefully pass though the checkpoints that your soldiers put up at all entrances to villages, cities or camps that prevent pregnant women from walking to hospitals to deliver? Would you ever agree to let this happen to your wife? What would you do then?

There are, however, military men, Israeli soldiers that used to do battle with the Palestinian people who at the moment of truth found that they are no more than pawns in the hands of the occupation. They had the courage and the valor to announce unanimously that they refuse to be occupiers. They exposed the falsehoods of their leaders who claim that Israel is reaching out her hand for peace but she has no partner on the Palestinian side. They discovered that they had never met a real Palestinian fighter face-to-face in combat, and that instead their day-to-day work was chasing schoolchildren, enforcing closures, destroying houses and putting up checkpoints and roadblocks to stop children who aren’t even 13 years old. They took a moral and courageous stance and without any difficulty found themselves a Palestinian partner from within the heart of the Palestinian movement, people who wasted the spring of their youth in the prisons of your occupation. Together they founded the organization Combatants for Peace. The name itself exposes the false promises and the policy that says there is no partner for peace. This organization, united in courageousness and and morality, is made up of people from both sides who understand that there is only one shared enemy that conceals the path of realization of peace and life together as two nations. This enemy is the illegal and immoral Israeli occupation. I am a member of this organization, and I call upon all who are searching for a true peace to join us…

We tell our peoples the truth, only the truth.

We are committed to nonviolent resistance to the occupation, and I call here, in this very missive, to the people of our Palestinian nation that have been inscribed in the pages of history as the epitome of resilience, that have had the humanity to withstand decades of abuse and occupation with the purest steadfastness. I call also upon the people in Israel to accept moral and historic responsibility for the establishment of these two states together, and for a national, humanistic, peaceful intifada, a rising up against this unjust occupation that has transformed your children into war criminals and to abject murderers. You Israelis — stop sending your soldiers — your sons — to kill our children, because the blood of our children and the blood of all those Palestinian innocents will chase your soldiers and the generals of your army to judgment in international courts as the rest of the war criminals in the world. You must learn this lesson.

The honorable general must surely be aware that the majority of captains and generals in the Israeli army are forbidden from entering any European state for they will be wanted persons there, to be arrested and taken to court as war criminals and for crimes against humanity?

One last word – the blood of Abir will remain as a black crown on the brow of every Israeli and every Jew in the world until her murderer is brought to justice and passes the remainder of his days in jail, among the murderers and the criminals…

Bassam Aramin is co-founder of Combatants for Peace. Translation by Mimi Asnes

http://www.ForgottenJournalist.com

Greetings All,

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD AND SIGN THE PETITION on the following, on what I conclude to be a truly FAKE article on Muslims which has started to filter into the headlines worldwide. The article in question details how a Muslim lady divorced her husband because he lifted her veil after 30 or so years, seeing her face for the very first time. If one only looks at the nature of this story, one can see it is fake, and yet when one does simple research it is easy to see how it is simply unfettered nonsense.

The offending newspapers in London which carried the article without ANY DUE corroboration were the London Metro and the Daily Mail. The Metro’s link is as follows:

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/world/article.html?in_article_id=148742&in_page_id=64

Simple investigation reveals the following - the Metro carried the story on May 21st , the Daily Mail on May 19th - right wing racist websites were running the story (the content of which were identical) BEFORE May 19th (no other ‘reputable’ medium were running it before then)! This shows the TRUE source of this story.

Now have a look at the following. The story first surfaced on the right wing Islam Watch website on May 14th, by someone using the fake name “Ibn Misr” (one can see how fake this name is):

http://www.islam-watch.org/Misr/Saudi-Woman-Divorce-for-Lifting-Veil.htm

The same “Ibn Misr”, using the same and differing aliases then contributed to hosts of other right-wing online mediums:

http://www.sonsofapesandpigs.org/2008/05/
http://arabiguitar.blogspot.com/
http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/page/2/

The unforgivable part is that the Metro didn’t even bother to change the wording of the article, and picked it up WORD FOR WORD when it first appeared in the ‘Islam Watch’ site, thus showing the truly horrendous nature of its editorial process (copying and pasting from a right wing website).

We ask that you spread the word to ALL, so that everyone becomes aware of this fake article, and that you sign the following petition to protest against the Daily Mail, Metro and other mediums for carrying this story without any authentication, and censor the Metro especially for picking this up word for word from a recognized racist website.

PETITION LINK (PLEASE SIGN, AND SPREAD THE WORD TO ALL):

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=4868899647&topic=4485

We hope that by highlighting this issue, we can help the global media portray the true image Islam, rather than the right wing/ militant/ ignorant images which seem to be manifesting from these racist sites such as Islam Watch. This is what citizen journalism is all about !

Kindest Regards,

FJ Team

Congratulations to the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam for a marvelous first 100 years of Divinely-Established GLOBAL CALIPHATE

May Allah continue to pour forth HIS Guidance until Judgement Day, enable us to protect the righteous from Satan’s footsoldiers, and speedily UNITE MANKIND under the banner of Khatamul Anbiya, Rasulullah (saw)

Return of the Caliphate!

100 YEARS OF KHILAFAT!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S53yJ28mro

The Ahmadi Muslim Community is celebrating 100 YEARS of Divinely Established Khilafat(successorship) on May 27th 2008. On May 27 1908 the first Khalifa of the Messiah, Hazrat Maulvi Hakim Noorudin was elected unanimously by the Faithful as their Ameer-ul Momineen after the demise of the founder of the movement, the Promised Messiah & Imam Mahdi, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (as)

The Ahmadiyya message to the world is clear – re-establish your link with your Creator and help God’s creation. Only by revitalising this spiritual awareness can peace and cohesion be truly attained in you, between neighbours as well as between nations. The Ahmadiyya community honours all prophets of God be they Moses, Krishna, Jesus or Muhammad (peace be on them all) and promotes religion as a force for good. It jealously guards the Qur’anic injunction that there should be no compulsion in religion, and vigorously defends the individual’s right to follow one’s beliefs for which accountability is to God alone.

The Ahmadiyya Movement is the most dynamic Islamic sect in modern history. In a little over 100 years they’ve established a community in over 185 countries of the world. They were the first to translate the Holy Quran in many languages and established the first 24/7 global Muslim satellite channel which enables the message of Ahmadiyyat, the True Islam, to reach the corners of the Earth. They have built schools and hospitals in several parts of the globe, notably Africa and Asia. They also have built the largest mosque in Western Europe with the UK Bait-ul-Futuh shown below:

One hundred years on, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Khilafat continues to spearhead an Islamic renaissance, drawing strength from an unwavering belief in God and a relentless passion to serve humanity the world over. Today tens of millions of Ahmadi Muslims belong to
this community and stand united under Khilafat.

Ahmadiyyat is the Divinely established Renaissance of Islam prophesied in the Quran (62:4) and by the Seal of the Prophets, Holy Prophet Muhammad Mustapha. (saw)

As their website states:

The Community he started is an embodiment of the benevolent message of Islam — peace, universal brotherhood, and submission to the Will of God — in its pristine purity. Hadhrat Ahmad (as) proclaimed Islam as the religion of man: “The religion of the people of the right path” (98:6)

A brief primer on the Ahmadiyya Khilafat (Caliphate)

Here is the Message of the 5th Khalifa Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad for ALL of mankind on the auspicious occasion of the Centenary Celebrations of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community:

Message to Mankind (5-27-08)

The Community would like to extend a warm Invitation to Ahmadiyyat to ALL of MANKIND

The Khalifa’s Sermons from Africa at the Annual Gatherings can be viewed here:

100 Years of Caliphate!

LOVE FOR ALL, HATRED FOR NONE!

A Documentary about the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community:

We would like to humbly thank Allah for bestowing his special guidance upon us and keeping us united under One Supreme Leader

Peace, Love, Respect & Blessings to All

-KV

http://www.khanverse.com/phorum

wow, big, big surprise here:

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/6920

10 defendants tried at a time? Trial sessions that would last from 8 am to 10 pm at night?

Why the rush? Are the feds trying to bury this ASAP and if so, why?

Those Hispanics are getting a taste of the American Jewdicial system, but anyone want to bet whether or not any of the Hasidic Jew owners ever see trial?

What’s that? No takers?

Of course, it’s not the Jews fault, it never is, since they are the chosen ones.

Their gawd told them to break the GOY laws and hire the illegals and that makes everything the Hasidics did at the plant Kosher.

The Kosher plant owners broke numerous laws and regulations regarding worker safety, the enviroment and labor laws regarding overtime provisions even before this raid and all they received were slaps on the wrist, if anything.

Now, while the workers they knowlingly hired illegally get sent off to the slammer, the poor, besieged Hasidic Jews will get to count their shekels in the comfort of their own homes and figure out the next Latin America country they will raid to hire illegal immigrants.

And we GOY, if we don’t take back our country from the destabilizing, corruptive and parasitic influence that is looting this country blind, if we don’t, we’ll get the same treatment those cattle got in the meat packing plant.

270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push

WATERLOO, Iowa — In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.

The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.

The convicted immigrants were among 389 workers detained at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in nearby Postville in a raid that federal officials called the largest criminal enforcement operation ever carried out by immigration authorities at a workplace.

Matt M. Dummermuth, the United States attorney for northern Iowa, who oversaw the prosecutions, called the operation an “astonishing success.”

Claude Arnold, a special agent in charge of investigations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said it showed that federal officials were “committed to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws in the workplace to maintain the integrity of the immigration system.”

The unusually swift proceedings, in which 297 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced in four days, were criticized by criminal defense lawyers, who warned of violations of due process. Twenty-seven immigrants received probation. The American Immigration Lawyers Association protested that the workers had been denied meetings with immigration lawyers and that their claims under immigration law had been swept aside in unusual and speedy plea agreements.

The illegal immigrants, most from Guatemala, filed into the courtrooms in groups of 10, their hands and feet shackled. One by one, they entered guilty pleas through a Spanish interpreter, admitting they had taken jobs using fraudulent Social Security cards or immigration documents. Moments later, they moved to another courtroom for sentencing.

The pleas were part of a deal worked out with prosecutors to avoid even more serious charges. Most immigrants agreed to immediate deportation after they serve five months in prison.

The hearings took place on the grounds of the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, in mobile trailers and in a dance hall modified with black curtains, beginning at 8 a.m. and continuing several nights until 10. On Wednesday alone, 94 immigrants pleaded guilty and were sentenced, the most sentences in a single day in this northern Iowa district, according to Robert L. Phelps, the clerk of court.

Mr. Arnold, the immigration agent, said the criticism of the proceedings was “the usual spate of false allegations and baseless rumors.”

The large number of criminal cases was remarkable because immigration violations generally fall under civil statutes. Until now, relatively few immigrants caught in raids have been charged with federal crimes like identity theft or document fraud.

“To my knowledge, the magnitude of these indictments is completely unprecedented,” said Juliet Stumpf, an immigration law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., who was formerly a senior civil rights lawyer at the Justice Department. “It’s the reliance on criminal process here as part of an immigration enforcement action that takes this out of the ordinary, a startling intensification of the criminalization of immigration law.”

Defense lawyers, who were appointed by the court, said most of the immigrants were ready to accept the plea deals because of the hard bargain driven by the prosecutors.

If the immigrants did not plead guilty, Mr. Dummermuth said he would try them on felony identity theft charges that carry a mandatory two-year minimum jail sentence. In many cases, court documents show, the immigrants were working under real Social Security numbers or immigration visas, known as green cards, that belonged to other people.

All but a handful of the workers here had no criminal record, court documents showed.

“My family is worried in Guatemala,” one defendant, Erick Tajtaj, entreated the federal district judge who sentenced him, Mark W. Bennett. “I ask that you deport us as soon as possible, that you do us that kindness so we can be together again with our families.”

No charges have been brought against managers or owners at Agriprocessors, but there were indications that prosecutors were also preparing a case against the company. In pleading guilty, immigrants had to agree to cooperate with any investigation.

Chaim Abrahams, a representative of Agriprocessors, said in a statement that he could not comment about specific accusations but that the company was cooperating with the government.

Aaron Rubashkin, the owner of Agriprocessors, announced Friday that he had begun a search to replace his son Sholom as the chief executive of the company. Agriprocessors is the country’s largest producer of kosher meat, sold under brands like Aaron’s Best. The plant is in Postville, a farmland town about 70 miles northeast of Waterloo. Normally it employs about 800 workers, and in recent years the majority of them have come from rural Guatemala.

Since 2004, the plant has faced repeated sanctions for environmental and worker safety violations. It was the focus of a 2006 exposé in The Jewish Daily Forward and a commission of inquiry that year by Conservative Jewish leaders.

In Postville, workers from the plant, still feeling aftershocks from the raid, said conditions there were often harsh. In interviews, they said they were often required to work overtime and night shifts, sometimes up to 14 hours a day, but were not consistently paid for the overtime.

“We knew what time we would start work but we did not know what time we would finish,” said Élida, 29, a Guatemalan who was arrested in the raid and then released to care for her two children. She asked that her last name not be published because she is in this country illegally.

A 16-year-old Guatemalan girl, who asked to be identified only as G.O. because she is illegal and a minor and was not involved in the raid, said she had been working the night shift plucking chickens. “When you start, you can’t stay awake,” she said. “But after a while you get used to it.”

The workers said that supervisors and managers were well aware that the immigrants were working under false documents.

Defense lawyers, who each agreed to represent as many as 30 immigrants, said they were satisfied that they had sufficient time to question them and prepare their cases. But some lawyers said they were troubled by the severity of the charges.

At one sentencing hearing, David Nadler, a defense lawyer, said he was “honored to represent such good and brave people,” saying the immigrants’ only purpose had been to provide for their families in Guatemala.

“I want the court to know that these people are the kings of family values,” Mr. Nadler said.

Judge Bennett appeared moved by Mr. Nadler’s remarks. “I don’t doubt for a moment that you are good, hard-working people who have done what you did to help your families,” Judge Bennett told the immigrants. “Unfortunately for you, you committed a violation of federal law.”

After the hearing, Mr. Nadler said the plea agreements were the best deal available for his clients. But he was dismayed that prosecutors had denied them probation and insisted the immigrants serve prison time and agree to a rarely used judicial order for immediate deportation upon their release, signing away their rights to go to immigration court.

“That’s not the defense of justice,” Mr. Nadler said. “That’s just politics.”

Christopher Clausen, a lawyer who represented 21 Guatemalans, said he was certain they all understood their options and rights. Mainly they wanted to get home to Guatemala as quickly as possible, he said.

“The government is not bashful about the fact that they are trying to send a message,” Mr. Clausen said, “that if you get caught working illegally here you will pay a criminal penalty.”

Robert Rigg, a Drake University law professor who is president of the Iowa Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said his group was not consulted when prosecutors and court officials began to make plans, starting in December, for the mass proceedings.

“You really are force feeding the system just to churn these people out,” Mr. Rigg said.

Kathleen Campbell Walker, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that intricate issues could arise in some cases, for example where immigrants had children and spouses who were legal residents or United States citizens. Those issues “could not be even cursorily addressed in the time frame being forced upon these individuals and their overburdened counsel.”

Linda R. Reade, the chief judge who approved the emergency court setup, said she was confident there had been no rush to justice. In an interview, Judge Reade said prosecutors had organized the immigrants’ detention to make it easy for their lawyers to meet with them. The prosecutors, she said, “have tried to be fair in their charging.”

The immigration lawyers, Judge Reade said, “do not understand the federal criminal process as it relates to immigration charges.