Kind of Awesome Habeas News

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights. If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

The Court stressed that it was not ruling that the detainees are entitled to be released — that is, entitled to have writs issued to end their confinement. That issue, it said, is left to the District Court judges who will be hearing the challenges. The Court also said that “we do not address whether the President has authority to detain” individuals during the war on terrorism, and hold them at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba; that, too, it said, is to be considered first by the District judges.

The Court also declared that detainees do not have to go through the special civilian court review process that Congress created in 2005, since that is not an adequate substitute for habeas rights. The Court refused to interpret the Detainee Treatment Act — as the Bush Administration had suggested — to include enough legal protection to make it an adequate replacement for habeas. Congress, it concluded, unconstitutionally suspended the writ in enacting that Act.

The Court also found serious defects in the process that the Pentagon set up in 2004 to decide which prisoners are to be designated as “enemy combatants” — the status that leads to their continued confinement. This process is the system of so-called Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The procedures used by CSRTs, the Court said, “fall well short of the procedures and adversarial mechanisms that would eliminate the need for habeas corpus review.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion for the majority in Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. U.S. (06-1196) was an almost rhapsodic review of the history of the Great Writ. The Suspension Clause, he wrote, “protects the rights of the detained by a means consistent with the essential design of the Constitution. It ensures that, except during periods of formal suspension, the Judiciary will have a time-tested device, the writ, to maintain the ‘delicate balance of governance’ that is itself the surest safeguard of liberty.” Those who wrote the Constitution, he added, “deemed the writ to be an essential mechanism in the separation-of-powers scheme.”

Even though the two political branches — the President and Congress — had agreed to take away the detainees’ habeas rights, Kennedy said those branches do not have “the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.”

Read on: SCOTUS

US failed to democratise Arabs

We didn't need Carnegie to tell us this, but a report for an American institute helps convince people sometimes (at least it's something to quote in your next anti-US speech)...

Democratic reforms in the Middle East have failed to take off or even leave a nominal impact on Arab countries, according to a study published by Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Arab countries largely remain autocratic, the study said and blamed the current US administration for failing to transform them to democracy. The study called for a clear strategy with rational objectives for democratic reforms in the region.

Check out the reaction of Arab 'pro-democracy' activists:

Commenting on the study, Dr Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria (NOHR), said the US and the EU have never been sincere about promoting democracy in the Arab world and no one in the region would believe the Americans and the Europeans any more.

"Call for democracy is meant to blackmail the regimes rather than implementing real changes in the region. They are sure that any reform will not be in favour of Israel which makes them abandon the support for change," he said.

...

Dr Qurabi said Arab activists have fallen prey to their autocratic governments because of miscalculation regarding the true intention of foreign power to support the democratisation process in the Arab world.

"The more pressure the US exert on regimes in the Arab world the more pressure the regimes inflict on activists. In many countries, democratic activists are portrayed as either puppets of the West or terrorists and agents of Al Qaida."

More at Gulf News

Lasting Impressions

Check out my friend's motivating article in the latest edition of Sisters magazine:

Have you ever stood by a pond and thrown a pebble into it? Didn't it create an infinite number of ripples? Similarly, over the span of our lives, every one of us is constantly creating a series of unending ripples by our words, actions, presence and personality.

This ripple-effect stays long after we are gone or our action is over, in the form of traces and impressions, and continues to influence and inspire others. Thus, the chain continues.

Allah (SWT)states:

"... We record whatever deeds they have sent ahead, and the traces (aathaarahum) which they left behind; for of all things do we take account in a clear record." (Surah Ya-sin 36:12)

We know that Allah (SWT) is meticulous in His Accountability and fair in His Judgment. Thus, He informs us that His recording includes everything big and small, exposed or concealed, good and bad with numerical clarity. He (SWT) records not just deeds but also the traces, impact and impressions of those deeds, with precision.

"Whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it. Whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it." (Surah az-Zalzalah 99: 7-8)

Everyday, whatever we do is presented to Allah (SWT). What remains are the impressions, and these we will find in our Book on the Day of Accountability. Therefore, with the right intention, knowledge and actions we can strive to leave impressions that just might play an important role in tipping the scale in our favour.

The Arabic word,'Aathaar' cannot be translated into one word in English as it encompasses various sublime concepts depending on the context in which it is used:

1. Impression of a deed on one's body - for example, tasbeeh on fingers. The Prophet (SAW) said, "Count on your fingers, for they will be asked, and will be made to speak."

2. Impression of our body on the environment - for example, footsteps on the way to the masjid. The Prophet (SAW) said, "...And your footsteps will be recorded." [Bukhari]

3. Effects of direct instruction or imparting knowledge. "When the son of Adam dies, all his deeds come to an end except three: knowledge which is beneficial to others, a righteous child who prays for him, or an ongoing charity which he leaves behind." (Muslim)

4. Effects of setting an example or through inspiring others. "Whoever starts (or sets an example of) something good in Islam, will have a reward for it. And a reward equal to that of everyone who does it after him, without that detracting from their reward in the slightest..." [Muslim]

5. Direct impact of a deed performed and its continuation. "...An ongoing charity which he leaves behind." [Muslim]

Continue here for tips on things to do to leave lasting impressions.

Israel to Attack Iran Unless Enrichment Stops

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks "unavoidable" given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, one of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's deputies said on Friday.

"If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective," Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

"Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable," said the former army chief who has also been defense minister.

It was the most explicit threat yet against Iran from a member of Olmert's government, which, like the Bush administration, has preferred to hint at force as a last resort should U.N. Security Council sanctions be deemed a dead end.

Iran has defied Western pressure to abandon its uranium enrichment projects, which it says are for peaceful electricity generation rather than bomb-building. The leadership in Tehran has also threatened to retaliate against Israel -- believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal -- and U.S. targets in the Gulf for any attack on Iran.

Mofaz also said in the interview that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, "would disappear before Israel does."

Read on here.

Turkey Upholds Hijab Ban

Disappointing and concerning. Banning the AKP seems like the next step.

Excerpts below (and photo above) from TIME:

Turkey's pro-Islam governing party was handed a devastating legal defeat Wednesday when the country's top court ruled that a constitutional amendment to allow women in headscarves on university campuses was anti-secularist and hence unlawful.

The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushed through the amendment in February to make it possible for pious women to attain a higher education. But the case has even greater ramifications. Turkey's secularist establishment considers the government's campaign to lift the headscarf ban as key grounds for outlawing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for its alleged Islamicizing agenda; that case will be decided in the next few months by the same Constitutional Court. A ban is being sought not just against the party but also against 71 party members, including Erdogan, who face being barred from all political activity for five years.

Continue here

As this NYT article points out, it is the voice of the college women most affected by this law that is forgotten; may Allah (swt) find a way for them to continue their education and be a force of positive change in their society:

All but lost in the debate have been the voices of the women whose futures are caught in the political cross hairs. Neslihan Akbulut, 26, a sociology graduate student, said she cried when she heard the verdict.

“There is no way for me in Turkey now,” she said. She was waiting to see if the changes would take effect so she could start work on a doctorate degree in Turkey. “When I see this result, I feel that I don’t need to wait. I would need to wait for a long time.”

Outcry after French Court Ruling

PARIS - The bride said she was a virgin. When her new husband discovered that was a lie, he went to court to annul the marriage -- and a French judge agreed.

The ruling ending the Muslim couple's union has stunned France and raised concerns the country's much-cherished secular values are losing ground to religious traditions from its fast-growing immigrant communities.

The decision also exposed the silent shame borne by some Muslim women who transgress long-held religious dictates demanding proof of virginity on the wedding night.

In its ruling, the court concluded the woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin and that, in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite.

But in treating the case as a breach of contract, the ruling was decried by critics who said it undermined decades of progress in women's rights. Marriage, they said, was reduced to the status of a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them.

The court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women. We are returning to the past," said Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, the daughter of immigrants from Muslim North Africa, using the Arabic term for a religious decree.

The outcry has been unrelenting since word of the April 1 decision in the closed-door trial in Lille was made public last week by the daily newspaper Liberation. In its judgment, the tribunal said the 2006 marriage had been ended based on "an error in the essential qualities" of the bride, "who had presented herself as single and chaste."

Justice Minister Rachida Dati, whose parents also were born in North Africa, initially shrugged off the ruling -- but the public clamor reached such a pitch that she asked the prosecutor's office this week to lodge an appeal.

What began as a private matter "concerns all the citizens of our country and notably women," a statement from her ministry said.

The appeal was filed Tuesday and three judges could hear the case sometime this month, said Eric Vaillant of the appeals court in Douai, near Lille.

The hitch is that both the young woman and the man at the center of the drama are opposed to an appeal, according to their lawyers. The names of the woman, a student in her 20s, and the man, an engineer in his 30s, have not been disclosed.

The young woman's lawyer, Charles-Edouard Mauger, said she was distraught by the dragging out of the humiliating case. In an interview on Europe 1 radio, he quoted her as saying: "I don't know who's trying to think in my place. I didn't ask for anything. ... I wasn't the one who asked for the media attention, for people to talk about it, and for this to last so long."

The issue is particularly distressing for France because the government has fought to maintain strong secular traditions as demographics change. An estimated 5 million Muslims live in the country of 64 million, the largest Muslim population in Western Europe.

Read on here. Wow...What is your opinion on this?

The One Thing Clinton & Obama Agree On

Obama's first first foreign policy speech of the general election campaign entailed him "whoring" himself out to AIPAC this morning. Sad, right? On the bright side, at least we now know for sure that Clinton and him agree on one thing: ensuring the Palestinian people continue to suffer under iron fist of Apartheid Israel.

Hillary Clinton:
"It has been an honor to contest these primaries with him. It is an honor to call him my friend. And let me be very clear: I know that Sen. Obama will be a good friend to [apartheid] Israel."

Barack Obama:
Rumors have been circulating at least since last year that Obama is a Muslim and does not support the Jewish state. He is a Christian and said at the conference he is a "true friend of [apartheid] Israel," earning applause.

Source: Obama Addresses Rumors at pro-[Apartheid] Israel Conference

Tutu's Trip to Gaza Censored by the US Media

By Mike Whitney

“There can be no justice, no peace, no stability, not for Israel, not for the Palestinians, without accountability for human rights violations." Archbishop Desmond Tutu

01/06/08 "ICH" -- - Why was Desmond Tutu's trip to Gaza censored by the US media?

When Nobel Laureate and world renowned peacemaker Desmond Tutu goes to Gaza to visit the site of an Israeli massacre; that's news, right? So why is it impossible to find any account of his trip in America's leading newspapers? Is it because any information that is incompatible with the territorial ambitions of the Israeli leadership is simply “disappeared” into the media-ether?

Archbishop Tutu was a leader in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. He is neaither a terrorist nor an anti-Semite. His work as a human rights activist spans 4 decades. Like former president Jimmy Carter he was shunned by the Israeli government and refused entry into Gaza. Why?

Two days earlier author and university professor Norman Finkelstein was refused entry into Israel even though he's Jewish and had parents who survived the Holocaust. Isn't that enough to gain entry or must one accept the prevailing doctrine of the far-right extremists in the Olmert government who think that it's okay to deprive Palestinians of their rights whenever they see fit?

Bishop Tutu had to go through Eqypt to get to Beit Hanoun; the town where 18 members of the al-Athamna family--including 14 women and children--were killed by Israeli artillery fire in November 2006. Tutu said that hearing "from the survivors of the massacre" had left him in a "state of shock". Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, told the UK Guardian that her preliminary assessment of the attack was that it was a breach of international law.

"Firing in a way that cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants is clearly a violation of international humanitarian law," she said. "I don't think that the idea of a technical mistake takes away from the initial responsibility of the action of firing where civilian casualties are clearly foreseeable ... it has to be foreseeable when you give yourself such a small margin that any error has the potential to lead to civilian casualties." (UK Guardian)

Chinkin is right, of course. It was a massacre and should be thoroughly investigated by the international community. The responsible parties need to be held accountable. According to the UK Telegraph, “No soldiers were ever charged in connection with the incident. Israel blocked attempts by the UN's Human Rights Council to investigate the shelling, saying that members of the body were "biased".

So now the members of the UN's Human Rights Council can't be trusted either?!?

Tutu ended his three day mission by calling for an end to the blockade of food, medical supplies and economic assistance to the Gaza Strip and by condemning the “culture of impunity” in which one nation arbitrarily imprisons one and a half million civilians who are left to languish in abject poverty and hopelessness. "We saw a forlorn, deserted, desolate and eerie place," Tutu said "The entire situation is abominable. We believe that ordinary Israeli citizens would not support this blockade, this siege, if they knew what it really meant to ordinary people like themselves."

Tutu is right. This is not the work of the Israeli public, which (according to a recent poll in the Jewish newspaper Ha'aretz) 65% want direct negotiations with Hamas. This is the work of fanatics at the top-rung of the political system who—much like the Bush administration---operate without any regard for the will their people and without any concern about the vast human suffering they are creating. Tutu met with the Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday and told him that, while he was opposed to the Israeli occupation, he condemned the rocket fire by militants into Gaza.

"True security, peace, will not come from the barrel of a gun," he said. "It will come through negotiation; negotiation not with your friends, peace can come only when enemies sit down and talk. It happened in South Africa. It has happened more recently in Northern Ireland. It will happen here too."
(UK Guardian)

Tutu went to Gaza for peace and not one newspaper in the United States covered the story. Apparently, the "culture of impunity" extends to America's media as well as the Israeli leaders who killed the 18 Palestinians at Beit Hanoun.

Source.

Levels of prayer

Jazakum Allah khairan to the sister who forwarded this:

Ibn al-Qayyim [may Allah have mercy on him] said:

And mankind, with regard to their performance of prayer are in five levels:

The First: The level of the one who is negligent and wrongs his soul: He is the one who falls short in performing wudoo properly, performing the prayer upon its time and within its specified limits, and in fulfilling its essential pillars.

The Second: The one who guards his prayers upon their proper times and within their specified limits, fulfills their essential pillars and performs his wudoo with care. However, his striving (in achieving the above) is wasted due whisperings in his prayer so he is taken away by thoughts and ideas.

The Third: The one who guards his prayers within the specified limits, fulfills their essential pillars and strives with himself to repel the whisperings, thoughts and ideas. He is busy struggling against his enemy (Shaytan) so that he does not steal from the prayer. On account of this he is engaged in (both) prayer and jihad.

The Fourth: The one who stands for the prayer, completes and perfects its due rights, its essential pillars, performs it within its specified limits and his heart becomes engrossed in safeguarding its rights and specified limits, so that nothing is wasted from it. His whole concern is directed towards its establishment, its completion and its perfection, as it should be. His heart is immersed in the prayer and in enslavement to his Lord the Exalted.

The Fifth: The one who stands for the prayer like the one mentioned above. However, on top of this, he has taken and placed his heart in front of his Lord (عز وجل), looking towards Him with his heart with anticipation, (his heart) filled with His love and His might, as if he sees and witnesses Allah. The whisperings, thoughts and ideas have vanished and the coverings which are between him and his Lord are raised. What is between this person and others with respect to the prayer, is superior and greater than what is between the heavens and the earth. This person is busy with his Lord (عز وجل), delighted with Him.

The First type will be punished, the second type will be held to account, the third will have his sins and shortcomings expiated, the fourth will be rewarded and the fifth will be close to his Lord, because he will receive the portion of the one who makes his prayer the delight and pleasure of his eye. Whoever makes his prayer,the delight and pleasure of his eye, will have the nearness to his Lord (عز وجل) made the delight and pleasure of his eye in the hereafter. He will also be made a pleasure to the eye in this world since whoever makes Allah the pleasure of his eye in this world, every other eye will become delighted and pleased with him.

So, what level are you?

Source: Excerpted from Ibn al-Qayyim's book al-Wabil al-Sayyib

Original post on Ilm Fruits

Livni better than Olmert?

The frontrunner to become Israel’s next prime minister, Tzipi Livni, was a Paris agent for Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence agency, in the early 1980s when it ran a series of missions to kill Palestinian terrorists in European capitals, according to former colleagues.

...

Livni joined Mossad after leaving the army with the rank of lieutenant and completing a year at law school. From her base in Paris she travelled throughout Europe in pursuit of Arab terrorists.

“Tzipi was not an office girl,” said an acquaintance. “She was a clever woman with an IQ of 150. She blended in well in European capitals, working with male agents, most of them ex-commandos, taking out Arab terrorists.”

...

Her career was forged in the violent creation of Israel. Both her parents were arrested for terrorist crimes in the 1940s. Her mother Sarah, who died recently aged 85, was a leader of Irgun, the militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine at the time of the British mandate and whose exploits included train robbery.

More here