Even by the murderous standards of Zionist Israel, the relentless aerial attacks on Ghazzah rank among the most criminal it has ever perpetrated against Palestinian civilians. At least 30 separate locations in the narrow strip were attacked simultaneously on December 27 as waves of US-supplied F16 planes and Apache helicopters dropped more than 100 tons of bombs.

Ever since the Palestinian Islamic resistance group, Hamas, won the January 2006 elections, Ghazzah has been turned into a concentration camp. Western countries immediately withdrew financial support once Hamas took full control in Ghazzah in June 2007. The aim was to strangle the Hamas-led government; so much for the West’s respect for democracy.

Such was the artificiality of the hype surrounding the election of Barack Obama at the beginning of November last year — only two months ago — that the elation has largely dissipated even before he has taken office. For many Americans, the realization that nothing much is likely to change has emerged from his appointment of establishment political figures to all major offices in his administration.

The official Indian version of the November 26–28 Mumbai attacks is well known. Ten members of Lashkar-e Taiba, a Pakistani paramilitary organization banned in 2005 as a terrorist organization, came in rubber boats — unnoticed by the Indian Navy that was conducting naval exercises in the area at the time — to attack Mumbai landmarks.

Never fall asleep when a “superpower” is watching you, especially if that “superpower” is a Zionist-crazed, anti-Islamic regime as is the case with the outgoing and incoming American administrations. In the past eight years the world has had to endure distress, be subjected to vicious wars, and be forced to abandon hope because of a group of politicians in the US called the neo-conservatives.

An inaugural memorial lecture on the translator of the Qur’an in English, the late Abdullah Yusuf Ali, was held in Kuala Lumpur on December 14. Organized by the Malaysian-based Islamic Book Trust (IBT), the lecture was delivered by M.A. Sherif, author of Searching for Solace, the first detailed account of the life of Yusuf Ali published by IBT in 1994.

There was always something surreal about Dubai’s fantastic development plans. Skyscrapers were rising in the desert faster than anybody imagined was possible. While some wondered about such rapid growth, others marveled at the plucky Dubaians’ go-get attitude. Nothing was considered out of reach;

On a secret visit to Kabul on December 20, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that the US would increase its troop level by 60,000. At the same time, he warned that this had to be coupled with development programs and better governance otherwise no number of troops will do the job.

One of the original US goals of the controlled demolitions of 9/11 was to target Pakistan to destroy its nuclear capability and ultimately destroy Pakistan itself, a State created in the name of Islam. The CIA-imposed civil war in the tribal areas since 9/11 is being not only accelerated, it has also assumed multi-dimensional roles to destroy the state and society in the manner ofIraq.

The “stans” of Central Asia are stirring in ferment and revolt. For the rest of the world, the five repubics — Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan — are important only because like the oil producing countries of the Middle East, they sit atop vast reserves of oil and gas that the West covets.

The war in Bosnia that resulted in the deaths of some 300,000 people, most of them Bosnian Muslims, may be over but old hatreds still run deep, and not too far beneath the surface. Theoreti-cally, the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina is made up of three peoples: the Bosnians, Croats and Serbs.

Islamophobia has been a political tool of convenience that has been used at least since 1492 CE and is still in use by Western imperialist powers. For the past 200 years it has also been adopted by Zionists. Both groups willingly accepted it as part of their historical makeup and have continued to use it as a means of advancing their respective agendas of domination, occupation, exploitation, torture and killing of Muslims, including the genocide of their language, religion and culture.

Once again the Land of Revelation has gathered legions of committed servants for its annual banquet. In the birthplace of Islam and the Holy Qur’an, eager hearts from throughout the world are now engaged in such rites which indeed show a sign of the eternal lesson of Islam and the Holy Qur’an to mankind: symbolic steps for implementing and applying such a lesson.

The entire journey from beginning to end is like a dress rehearsal for the final journey we will all make to Allah. In the weeks preceding my departure, like all hujjaj, I began calling and emailing family and friends, acquaintances and enemies, asking them all for their forgiveness for any hurt or offence I may ever have caused them.