Bits & Pieces

hamdoullahcava:

Muhammad Ali on the Vietnam War Draft

(via reflectionsofabritishmuslimah)

Eleven-year-old Zardana, is helped with her sandals by her father Samiullah after an interview in Kandahar, Afghanistan on Monday, April 22, 2013. She recounted the night of March 11, 2012 when a U.S. soldier attacked their family home, shooting her in the head and killing 11 relatives. She suffered nerve damage on her left side and has to walk with a cane. Her hand is too weak to hold anything heavy. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

(via imhalal)

keepya-head-up:

Following his release from Guantanamo Bay, Sami Al-Hajj, a (former) Guantanamo Bay detainee, dashes towards his eight year old son Mohammad and swoops him up in his arms, hugging him and planting tender kisses on his face in their first reunion after seven years.

After being imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for seven years, during which he was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, including being physically, sexually, and psychologically abused, Al Hajj was released without any charges held against him.

Al Hajj, a journalist for the Al Jazeera network, was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 while on his way to do camerawork for the network concerning the war that had recently broken out in Afghanistan. It has been speculated by both Al Hajj’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, and Reporters Without Borders that the main reason that he was incarcerated for so long was due to the US Miliary’s desire to make him an informant against Al Jazeera, as most of Al Hajj’s interrogations consisted of American interrogators questioning him about the (Al Jazeera) network.

While in Guantanamo, Al Hajj wrote a poem titled Humiliated in Shackles to his son Mohammad:

When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.

When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.

Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.

The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely around the world.

They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.

They offer me money and land,
And freedom to go where I please.

Their temptations seize
My attention like lightning in the sky.

But their gift is an empty snake,
Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,

They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.

But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.

America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.

Bush, beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.

To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.

Mohammad, do not forget me.
Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.

I was humiliated in the shackles.
How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?

After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,
How can I write poetry?

My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,
Violent with passion.

I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors’.
I am overwhelmed with apprehension.

Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.
Lord, grant success to the righteous.

Wow

(via reflectionsofabritishmuslimah)

nowinexile:

On May 15, 1948, 65 years ago Jewish Zionist militias launched a massive attack on the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine to ethnically cleanse them from their land in order to establish Israel as their Jewish state. This lead more than 750,000 Palestinians to flee their homes and become displaces as refugees in the neighboring countries. Most of the families that fled did not even have time to pack their belonging or anything in fear of being massacred by the vicious Jewish militias who went through villages massacring its inhabitants who refused to leave, most of whom were poor villagers and unarmed farmers. 

“We must do everything to insure they never return. The old will die and the young will forget” David Ben-Gurion – First Prime Minister of Israel, 1949.

We won’t forget. We won’t forgive. And one day, soon, we will return!

(via havesomeatay)