By Noor H. Salem

Dr. Abdulhakeem AlBaadany from Texas spoke at the Islamic Center of Detroit Friday night family event as the crowded room became quiet fast. He spoke at the ICD over four years ago and was attracted greatly by the youth. When the youth tried bringing him once more they found out of his accident which made traveling difficult for him. It was a pleasure welcoming him back to the center after so many years. Over 70 people attended the event, and many eagerly asked questions at the end. The Power of Words was his topic, and his speech was truly a collection of powerful words. We all talk and talk and talk every hour of every day. His short speech was relatable to the old and young and was interesting entirely. He reminds us over and over again how the companions of the Prophet (s) tracked every word they spoke, and if they spoke ill they immediately recognized and repented. He mentioned how Sayyida Aisha (ra) pointed out that Maymona (ra) was short, and the Prophet (s) said that if that one word was put in all bodies of water on earth it would pollute it completely. That had people uttering in the audience. Could it be? How would the bodies of water be if our words were put in there?

He reminds us how every single one of us has a book, and every word, every sentence, every curse uttered is recorded. We can choose to fill the book with good, or bad. He went on to advise us to fill our tongues with remembrance of Allah and decrease the amount of movies and television watched, since hearing foul language over and over again can sit in our subconscious.

Friday night’s family event ended with the recognition of the mosque’s Imam Ahmed Elgabri who gave his farewell speech. Friday was his last day at the center as he plans to leave the state for good. The event was held to recognize him among all present, and coffee and sweets were then served.

15-26

By Stanley Carvalho and Dinesh Nair

A view of the skyline of downtown Doha is seen in this April 8, 2013 file photo. A statement on foreign exchange policy by Qatar’s central bank governor has struck a nerve in financial markets across the Gulf, reminding investors that decades of currency stability will not last forever. REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad/Files

ABU DHABI/DUBAI (Reuters) – When British banker Michael Tomalin took the top job at National Bank of Abu Dhabi in 1999, the lender had about $9 billion in assets – tiny by global standards – and its operations were largely confined to the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Today, NBAD <NBAD.AD> has a presence in 14 countries and assets of about $100 billion, and is heavily involved in international businesses such as loan syndications, private banking for wealthy clients, and advising on mergers.

Such change is being repeated across the wealthy oil exporting countries of the Gulf as powerful economic trends combine to strengthen the region’s local banks while humbling their foreign rivals.

It amounts to a shift in the banking industry’s balance of power, which looks set to continue in coming years; NBAD, for example, has said it plans to have a presence in 41 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia by 2021, and sees international operations contributing 40 percent of its operating earnings by that time.

“Perceptions have changed over the years. The market recognizes we are now a bank with the balance sheet muscle and the intellectual capacity to compete with global banks on level terms,” Tomalin, who retires as chief executive this month, said in an interview.

Operating income at the 32 largest banks in the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council jumped 74 percent between 2006 and 2012, according to a study by the Boston Consulting Group. Meanwhile, income at their international peers fell 9 percent.

GCC banks such as NBAD are still much smaller than the world’s largest institutions, which each have over $2 trillion of assets, but the gap is narrowing. Assets in the GCC banking sector, two-thirds of them held by the 20 biggest local banks, increased 11 percent in 2012 to $1.47 trillion, estimated QNB Economics in Qatar.

CRISIS

One reason for the Gulf banks’ success is the strength of their home economies, which have ridden out the global financial crisis of the past five years more smoothly than many economists expected, thanks to heavy spending by governments.

High oil prices have given local banks access to huge pools of funds which they can use to expand their balance sheets and make foreign acquisitions.

The fact that most of the top Gulf banks, including NBAD, are largely state-owned has probably helped them, by ensuring financial security and in some cases, access to business. Expansion of the banks fits in with the national policy of most Gulf countries, which are marketing themselves as international financial centers.

But other trends have also helped local banks. The global financial crisis has in the last few years prompted some big Western banks to pull in their horns, cutting their teams in the Gulf as they focus on repairing their balance sheets back home. This has left a gap for Gulf banks to fill.

At the same time, cash-rich Gulf banks are finding it less difficult than Western banks to meet stricter capital and liquidity requirements that are being imposed across the world under the Basel III regulatory regime.

“The regional banks have sound capitalization, sound funding profiles and they have cleaned up their balance sheets significantly,” said Paul-Henri Pruvost, an associate director at credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s. “Unlike global banks, Basel III is not necessarily a constraint for these banks.”

The results are beginning to show in the league tables which record individual banks’ share of various sectors.

As late as 2010, Gulf banks were largely absent from investment banking league tables. But Saudi Fransi Capital, the investment banking arm of Banque Saudi Fransi <1050.SE>, Qatar National Bank and Samba Financial Group’s <1090.SE> investment banking division held the top three spots for fees from arranging equity offerings in the Middle East last year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

They replaced Bank of America Merrill Lynch <BAC.N>, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank <DBKGn.DE>, which held the top spots in 2011.

Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank earned the most fees from arranging syndicated loans in 2012, taking in $9.4 million and replacing HSBC Holdings <HSBA.L>, which was the top arranger in 2011, the data shows.

NBAD says it handled 20 debt issuance deals worth about $16.3 billion in 2012, after arranging only four such issues in 2011.

Even smaller local lenders are stepping in, identifying niche business areas where they believe they have competitive advantages.
National Bank of Fujairah <NBF.AD>, based in the small emirate of Fujairah, part of the United Arab Emirates, is setting up a financial advisory business in Dubai’s tax-free financial zone, it said this month.

“There’s a growing demand for financial advisory services in the mid-tier market currently not served by international players,” said the bank’s chief executive, Vince Cook.

PERSONNEL

Another sign of the rising strength of local banks is a shift of high-profile personnel to them. A decade ago, foreign banks operating in the Gulf cherry-picked many of their executives from local institutions; now, the flow is increasingly in the other direction.

Tomalin will be replaced by Alex Thursby, who spearheaded Australia and New Zealand Banking Group’s <ANZ.AX> international expansion before joining the Abu Dhabi bank.

Abu Dhabi’s First Gulf Bank <FGB.AD> hired Simon Penney, previously Royal Bank of Scotland’s <RBS.L> chief executive for the Middle East and Africa, to help expand its wholesale banking business, the lender said in May.

QInvest, a Doha-based bank, has appointed Michael Katounas, previously with Swiss lender Credit Suisse <CSGN.VX>, to run its investment banking division. Last year, the heads of the Qatar operations of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley joined local banks in that Gulf state.

“If you believe in the prospects of the region, then working for a local bank has increasingly become a better option now than being employed by a large bulge-bracket firm,” said a Dubai-based banker who resigned from a global bank last year. He declined to be named because of commercial sensitivities.

“These banks are here to stay and won’t run away once a crisis hits the region. They are embedded here and they are growing.”

(With additional reporting by David French; Editing by Andrew Torchia)

15-26

By M.J. Akbar

Amman: Jordan is as calm as the eye of a surrounding storm. As residents smoke shisham in cafes, and tourists trot out complaints without which no holiday is complete, you would never guess that an epochal civil war is devastating Syria, an hour’s smooth drive from Amman.

Members of the special forces abseil from a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter during a boarding drill, part of the Eager Lion military exercise, in the coastal city of Aqaba June 19, 2013. Eager Lion military exercise, set to take place in Jordan between June 9-20 is an annual multi-national exercise designed to focus on facing irregular warfare, as well as terrorism and national security threats. The exercise also aims to promote military relationships among the participants consisting of 8,000 participants from 19 countries. REUTERS/Muhammad Hamed

On the map, Jordan is a geopolitical fortress, still secure despite declared and undeclared conflict on every side. To its east is Iraq, the land of ceaseless violence ever since George Bush and his dark conservatives decided to destroy Al Qaeda in a land where it had never existed, through a war that Washington and London knew how to begin, but no one knows how to end. To Jordan’s west is Israel, where war has become a state of mind; where every citizen is on permanent alert; and history wanders through limbo, searching for a settlement that may or may not bring peace. To its south is Saudi Arabia, struggling with itself, unable to come to terms with the display of a woman’s face, struggling to find some way out of a time warp. Jeans flourish in Amman, whether worn by men or women, and the only veil you might see is probably worn by a tourist. To Jordan’s northwest lies Lebanon, which has given a new meaning to that old term: permanent war.

Conversation, inevitably, drips with the acid dew in the environment. Syria, claims one voice, is the latest victim of the oldest faultline in modern history: oil and gas. This must be at the very least a partial truth. No one was interested in West Asia’s vast deserts before Europe’s colonists began to sniff oil in remote spots like Masjid-e-Suleimania, and brought it home to Britain and France at cottage cheese prices to lubricate their navies and their commerce. I suggest that Army-based secular autocrats like the Assad family have also passed their sell-by date, but that invites a cynic’s shrug in a region where dictators are more familiar than democrats. It does not quite measure up against the fact that the oil and gas discovered in Syria, Lebanon and Israel could soon make them very rich indeed.

You cannot argue with some facts. Iraq’s oil tankers do not seem to face a violence problem. Nothing else may function in Libya but its oil industry is up and about. Did you say there were international sanctions against Iran? Tell that to the birds, or at least to the birds who will listen. Its oil flows into Iraq where it becomes, with the scribble of pen on invoice paper, Iraqi oil.
In yet another instance of unintended consequences, sanctions are helping Iran to develop the potential it has, much in the way that a protected economy enabled Indian industrialists to manufacture products that India could not import. Iran has ten automobile factories now. Sanctions do punish; one is not being romantic about them. But they can also prevent you from bloating on foreign fast food, or teach you to make your own soap instead of becoming addicted to multinationals. Local industry can co-exist with multinationals as equals, not as vendors for their products.

Israel is militarily strong enough to protect and exploit its natural resources. Other nations are not. There is a lot of hidden depth to the games afoot in Syria, including the Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict, tinged with ideological conservatism, that has become a sub-text of the region. These are games played with real weapons.

There has to be some reason beyond the urge to sell arms, or play geopolitics, for Russia to send sophisticated arsenals to Syria’s establishment, and for America to step in on the rebel side. This war has escalated with incremental intervention. The United Nations is not even pretending to show up. If Russia, and China from a discreet distance, cannot afford Assad’s defeat, then America too cannot afford the collapse of rebellion.

There are contradictions on both sides. Russia does not believe that the Assad family should be part of the long-term solution. And Washington understands that many rebels are extremists who will ravage Syria’s minorities and then turn their attention westwards if they ever come to power in Damascus.

When you think of minorities, include women. Some of the support for the rebels is coming from revanchist elements, whose stockpile of carbon cash keeps searching for ways to destroy a modern social order.

The ideal is not in formal dispute: Syria should have what it deserves, a secular democracy. This is the promise that made the Baathist party guardian of Syria’s destiny. Baathists veered away from democracy through an unsustainable alibi, and in the process have endangered the society they once nourished.

The present status quo is as unacceptable as the dangerous fringe in the alternative. But if war expands, it will blow out of control. Cease fire and talk, before there is no one left to talk to. There will be no calm left either.

15-26

By Oliver Holmes and Alexander Dziadosz

SALQIN, Syria (Reuters) – The moment the young fighter walks in, it’s clear he’s different. He has a grey robe, a scraggly beard and a gun holster – hallmarks of the rebels who control this part of the northwest. But he wears Adidas trainers. And his accent and swagger are pure London.

The young man sits at a small table, accepts the tea offered by his hosts, and asks to be called by his war name, Abu Khaled. He is 23 years old and lived in England his whole life, he says, but came to Syria four or five months ago to join the fight against President Bashar al-Assad.

“I didn’t know anybody to be honest,” he said. When he arrived, on his own, he met fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, an ultraconservative Islamist faction affiliated with al Qaeda’s Iraqi branch. They helped him buy a gun, and put him on the front lines outside Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Precise estimates of how many Britons have taken up arms alongside Syria’s rebels are hard to come by. British intelligence officials say they believe there are ‘dozens’.

It wasn’t easy at first, Abu Khaled said. He had never been to Syria. He learned some Arabic from his mother, who is Syrian, but it is still weak. His parents were afraid. To call them, he had to ask permission – his commanders took his cell phone and passport which they said was to guard against spies.

In a lengthy interview, Abu Khaled gave a window into the daily life, ideology and motivations of rebels trying to overthrow Assad, insights all the more relevant now the United States is arming them. Reuters could not independently verify Abu Khaled’s account.

Fighting was terrifying, he said, but got easier with practice. “My first time, I’m not gonna lie, I felt like I was going to wet myself,” he said. “But, honestly, when you get used to the sounds, God makes it easy, makes you feel relaxed.”

He saw friends killed. He missed them, but tried to feel happy by reassuring himself that they had died for a cause. He remembered one slain comrade, another Englishman, who was smiling when they found his body. “It was almost like he was laughing. So it was like a sign, a good sign, you know.”

Once, it nearly happened to him, he said. In a firefight in Aleppo, he moved out too far and got caught between the two sides. He fell to the floor, bullets zipping over his head, and prayed. For hours, he thought he would die. “I just started praying and praying, just praying to Allah, like just forgive me for all the things I’ve done.”

By the time fighters from an allied brigade came to rescue him, he said, he felt at peace.

SENSE OF COMMUNITY

Abu Khaled joined Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria which the United States calls a “terrorist organization,” because he was drawn to its piety and determination to fight Assad. A sense of community encouraged him to stay.

When he arrived he found other foreigners in the brigades. Englishmen from London and Birmingham, an Irishman, Russians from the Chechnya region, Chinese, Egyptians, Tunisians, Saudi Arabians, Libyans, others from Denmark, France, and, he says to his surprise, a lot from Sweden. Sometimes as many as half the fighters on the front line were foreign, he said. The Libyans and Saudis, especially, never wanted to retreat.

He lived in a barracks, which the group called a “house,” set up in an abandoned school, villa or hospital to house 40 or 50 men. The atmosphere was fraternal. Abu Khaled would wake up, pray, exercise, train, play football and chat about women. “A lot of the time you’re just sitting around waitin’ till something pops up and then off you go.”

He didn’t think much about al Qaeda, he said. He just wanted to be a good Muslim. One thing that unsettled him was the suicide bombs. In his house, there was a “waiting list” of people who volunteered to blow themselves up. Once, a man from his house killed himself in a truck bomb. Abu Khaled didn’t know beforehand, but he remembered the man acted differently the night before. He seemed happier.

“After he does it, you realize; ‘oh, that’s why he was like that,’” he said.

He is still learning about his new found religion and feels he is not “knowledgeable” enough about Islam to make a decision about the morality of suicide attacks. “It doesn’t feel right to me.”

SCHOOL DAYS

Back at school, Abu Khaled used to go to bars and clubs with his friends, he said. Then one day he stopped and decided to focus on his studies in business management. He thought about becoming a more observant Muslim – his mother’s family came from near Damascus and his father is an English convert to Islam.

When the revolts broke out in Libya and Syria in 2011, Abu Khaled went to religious lectures in London, he said. Some speakers talked about Syria’s importance in Islamic history, and encouraged Muslims to go fight. He saw carnage on television, heard reports of Syria’s army killing civilians, and decided to go.

He always had freedom to do as he liked in England, but says he felt that in some ways it was easier to be Muslim in Syria, removed from temptation.

“Over here you don’t see women, so that’s one problem to the side, you know. There’s not much you can do, there’s no alcohol. All these temptations, they’ve gone away.”

After the war, Abu Khaled said, he hopes Syria will show the world that an Islamic state is “not as bad as people think.” He envisions a return to the days of Prophet Mohammad (s), when you could leave your doors open, “knowing that no one is going to steal anything. And if they do, then there is a problem for them.”

What kind of problem? Abu Khaled laughed. “Taking off their hand. It is known. But these are severe punishments for a reason. It’s to stop people doing these things. And people don’t do them when they know, ‘Oooff, I want my hand, you know, I don’t want to lose it.’”

His parents have started to accept his decision now, he says. At first they would always tell him to come home. Now they told him to be careful, to look after himself, and be strong. His new life is in Syria and, smiling, he says he hopes to marry a Syrian. “I’m asking around, you know, fishing around.”

15-26

By Jodi Rudoren

JERUSALEM — The intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be seen as a trio of conflicts.

There is, of course, the bitter enmity between Israelis and Palestinians, hardened over decades, with many on each side questioning the other’s claim to the land bridging the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There is the deep rift between the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas factions that many recent reconciliation meetings have failed to resolve. And there is a cleavage within Israel over whether the two-state solution is desirable or even possible.

With Secretary of State John Kerry planning his fifth visit here in three months to revive peace talks, the Israeli divide was on stark display last week, as several right-wing ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government professed their profound opposition to a Palestinian state and promised to prevent one. While Mr. Netanyahu distanced himself from the remarks, questions about the sincerity of his recent pleas for peace resurfaced. Clearly, a dissonance exists in Israeli public opinion, where a strong majority supports two states, but only along parameters the Palestinians have roundly rejected.

“One of the tragedies of the last decade is that the security fears and pressures have dulled the Israeli conscience,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, an author and fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute here. “You come to a certain point where the disparity between what Israelis want and what Israelis believe is possible starts to break down. Given that there are no good alternatives, that’s a frightening possibility in the evolution of Israeli thinking.”

Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said there was a consensus in Israel favoring a Palestinian state, but not along the 1967 borders (as the Palestinian leadership insists); not with East Jerusalem as its capital (a cornerstone of every Palestinian plan); and not without maintaining an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley (which Palestinians reject as a challenge to their sovereignty). Israelis have also become more vigilant about security and less trusting of so-called moderate Arab leaders in the wake of the Arab uprisings exploding around them.

“There’s the idea of a two-state solution in the abstract, and then there’s converting it into a map,” said Mr. Gold, a former peace negotiator and Netanyahu adviser. “Israelis want negotiations, they want to see a settlement that addresses the issue, but they also have certain red lines that they don’t want any arrangement to cross.”

The current tempest began when Danny Danon, a hawkish member of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party and deputy defense minister, told the Web site The Times of Israel that “there is no majority for a two-state solution” within Likud or Israel’s governing coalition. Later, in a television interview, he said that the majority of the Israeli public “has given up the idea of land for peace”; that Israel should declare sovereignty over the Jewish settlements and empty areas of the West Bank; and that the fate of Palestinian “blocks” should be “determined in an agreement with Jordan.”

Opposition leaders called for Mr. Danon’s ouster. Palestinian leaders condemned his remarks as racist but said they revealed the “true face” of Israel.

“Danon is an honest man who discloses the Israeli real policies and plans,” Ahmad Tibi, an Arab-Israeli member of Parliament, was quoted as saying in gulfnews.com, the online version of a newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates. On Monday, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, issued a statement saying that “Israel has officially declared the death of the two-state solution,” and “is determined to make Kerry efforts fail,” citing policies Mr. Netanyahu “is pushing on the ground.”

While Mr. Netanyahu had appeased Washington by not proceeding with new settlement projects this spring, plans already approved for the West Bank have continued to move ahead, including more than 1,000 housing units in the far-flung settlements of Itamar and Bruchin pushed forward last week. Mr. Netanyahu’s housing minister said last week that he was ready to build thousands more apartments in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Naftali Bennett, a senior minister and head of the Jewish Home Party, declared at a settlers’ conference on Monday, “The idea that a Palestinian state should be established within the land of Israel has reached a dead end.”

Ari Shavit, a columnist at the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, blamed the failure of Israel’s center-left movement to propose “a new, relevant and attractive peace idea” for the rise of what has come to be called “Danonism.”

“Danon is not Israel, but there is no political force in Israel to stop Danon right now,” Mr. Shavit said in an interview. “The reasonable center does not express itself, and the militant minority — determined, with a vision, with political power — is working day and night to kill the two-state option. Because this minority is very effective politically, and because the majority is in a state of fatigue, they are having their way.”

Despite Mr. Kerry’s push, the Palestinian conflict has faded from view here as Israelis worry more about threats from Syria and Iran, as well as domestic social and economic issues. A poll by the Peace Index project of the Israel Democracy Institute in April showed the Palestinian issue ranked fifth among seven top concerns for Israelis, with fewer than half of the respondents supporting negotiations or believing that they will bear fruit.

Several analysts noted that while Israel’s Jan. 22 elections resulted in a less conservative Parliament than the previous one, the coalition Mr. Netanyahu assembled in mid-March tilts further to the right, particularly on the Palestinian question. David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel, said that the most telling thing was not what Mr. Danon said but that Mr. Netanyahu had given him and the others who disagree with the prime minister’s stated support for two states prominent positions in the cabinet.

Some political experts here see the open airing of these divergent views as a sign of Mr. Netanyahu’s weakness within his own party, and of the fragility of his coalition. Others wonder whether Mr. Danon and the others may be voicing more than a fringe view. Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s defense minister, said Friday in Washington that Mr. Kerry’s initiative had “failed so far” and that he was not optimistic about the prospect of an agreement.

For some, Mr. Danon’s directness is instructive. “If you ask me, he tells us the truth, while they are playing with the image they would like to project,” said Tamar Hermann, vice president of Israel’s Open University and director of the Peace Index project. “The proximity between Danon and the real Netanyahu — not the Netanyahu talking to Washington — is much smaller.”

15-26

By Susan Schwartz, TMO

Again war takes its greatest toll on the most innocent – the children. The conflict in Syria is not an exception.

The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), familiar to readers of The Muslim Observer, has once again stepped into the breach to aid these tiny victims by extending its operations into Syria.

The PCRF has worked with Syrian children for a number of years.The protocol has been that a social worker was sent from Lebanon to meet with the children and their families. A medical examination would be performed to see if PCRF could offer help to these children.

Since the Arab Spring began in March 2011, 80,000 have died, 500 of them children. More than 260,000 Syrians, one half of them children, are in refugee camps in Syria.

The civil war in Syria has been raging for two years.The PCRF has no offices there and no social workers on the ground.The organization has reached out to some Non Government Organizations (NGOs) and some medical communities to facilitate the identification of children in need.The PCRF has no contact with any government entity and in keeping with its non political orientation, takes no side in the conflict. Doctors are caught in a particularly bad spot. Many are afraid to help for fear of retaliation from either side.

“It has been very challenging to get the children out of Syria and into Lebanon where we have staff equipped to help the children in need.” said Lily Karam, the President of the Southern California  PCRF chapter. The PCRF is managing with the difficult situation and provides travel and housing expenses.

An inevitable aftermath of a serious burn is an infection. Some Syrian children who have been severely burned have died because the treatment necessary to prevent or treat infections was not available.

Steve Sosebee, the CEO of the PCRF has instructed the staff in Lebanon to accept children with burns even absent a medical report. A picture is sufficient. For other cases it must first be determined that the PCRF will be able to provide aid.

Herewith some examples.

Fourteen year old Mohammed Abu Jammous, also from Syria, lost a leg due to a shell explosion. He was treated in Texas Orthopedic Hospital in Houston for his injuries and received a prosthetic leg. Mohammed was the first Syrian child aided by the PCRF.

Nine year old Rawan Mubarak, who lost an arm during the conflict, arrived in Cincinnati to be treated at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She will receive a prosthetic arm, and her expenses will be covered by the PCRF. There she has joined one year old Mayan Taj-Eddin also from Syria and also the recipient of covered expenses form the PCRF.

Last month six year old Gozlon Ghassan had reconstructive plastic surgery in a hospital in Jordan. An army shell had hit her house. She was found by volunteers in a refugee camp in northern Jordan.

Mohammed Mansour was raised in Yarmouk Refugee Camp in Damascuc. He received head injuries and a skull defect when a shell hit his home. He was treated at the American Hospital  in Beirut.

As the war rages more and more children will need the help of the PCRF. The PCRF was founded to help children of the Middle East who have either congenital conditions or injuries or illnesses that cannot be adequately treated in their home country. They are sent to a hospital where they receive treatment free of charge including transportation and the transportation of a guardian if one is required.

Recently the PCRF opened a cancer wing named after Huda Al Masri, a social worker for the organization and the wife of CEO Steve Sosebee. She was the heart of the PCRF and succumbed to cancer. Her final wish was that a pediatric oncology center be established. At present the PCRF has plans to build a Pediatric Cardiac Center in the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza.

The PCRF sends medical missions to treat children in the West Bank and Gaza and while there trains local medical personnel. To name but a few of the services of the PCRF, the organization runs summer camps for the disabled, provides fitted wheelchairs, provides spectacles, and has a Woman’s Empowerment Project.

To find out more of the work of the PCRF, please access their web site at: www.pcrf.net.

15-26

Former Actress of Bollywood Mamta Kulkarni has converted to Islam. She is residing in Republic of kenya with her Husband “Vicky Goswami” who also some time ago converted to Islam. The couple got married on May 10, 2013 and some sources explained that they are residing in Nairobi, Kenya. In 1997, Mamta’s husband Vicky Goswami was arrested in Arab Emrites (UAE) in drug smuggling case. He was sentenced for 25 years but he was released in November 2012. Some media reports mentioned that his sentence was reduced due to model conduct. His conversion to Islam was also one of main reason of reduction.

Goswami converted to Islam and got married with Mamta Kulkarni when he was in prison. Mamta was also managing her husband’s hotels business.

Mamta Kulkarni was termed as most bold celebrity of Indian movie industry in 90’s. 41 years of age actress & Model was remained active in Bollywood from 1991 to 2002. From 2002, she is out of screen due to her personal reasons. In last ten years, Mamta has Rejected lots of acting and dancing offers and now she has decided to keep away from media.

On other hand, Pakistani electronic and print media haven’t reported this news. On other hand, Indian media is showing bias report on Mamta Kulkarni marriage.

15-26

By Malathi Nayak

Yusuf Mehdi, Vice President of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business.  REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Few first-time participants at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles this week would have realized that the $66 billion videogames industry is in steep decline.
Microsoft Corp, Sony Corp, Electronic Arts and other industry giants whipped up the crowd of gamers and developers at the event into a frenzy, with displays of high-powered new consoles and previews of popular genre games.

For an industry accustomed to dwindling revenue in recent years, the pervasive visual pyrotechnics offered something to look forward to after years of subsisting on franchise-oriented games such as “Call of Duty” and “Halo” that run off aging technology.

This fall will usher in the Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4, which apart from being more powerful than their predecessors, now support cloud-based game play and mobile integration.
It remains to be seen whether these will avoid the fate of Nintendo Co Ltd’s Wii U, whose disappointing sales since its late 2012 launch have forced the Japanese company to sharply curtail revenue forecasts.

The Xbox One will sell for $499 and the PlayStation 4 for $399 – a hefty bit of change in an era when free-to-play Internet and smartphone games from “Angry Birds” to “Clash of Clans” are attracting budget-conscious gamers and millions in investment.

“The graphics capabilities of console games are going through the roof, but mobile games are becoming more and more sophisticated too,” said Mike Cuff, vice president of content at Wikipad, which launched a portable gaming tablet at E3.

At this year’s E3, which will end late on Thursday, the debate raged around how Microsoft and Sony will treat used games, a segment that is growing quickly because the Facebook and iPhone generation seem to be moving away from the traditional practice of shelling out for newly released, highly marketed franchise titles.

“Sony and Microsoft still have work to do in order to convince a broad consumer base that they need to spend $400 or $500 on new hardware, in addition to $60 for each new piece of software,” R.W. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said.

“There doesn’t seem to be as clear a reason to upgrade compared to prior cycles, which introduced DVDs, 3D and HD to consumers.”

According to industry tracker NPD, sales of videogame hardware and software have fallen every month, on a year-on-year basis, since January 2012.

Still, industry executives were encouraged by the enthusiastic response they received at E3.

“There’s been a lot of confusion about, ‘Hey, with the rise of tablets and phone games does that have some impact on consoles?’ Not at all,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business. “All that’s doing is bringing more people to the world of gaming.”

The high level of excitement at the convention, driven by the faceoff between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, was the noticeable difference from last year, said Keza MacDonald, editor at games news site IGN.com.

Developers fed off that excitement by showing off what they envisioned as franchises in the making.

EA unveiled “Titanfall” with mech-style soldiers and robots, a project led by Vince Zampella, a co-creator of Activision Blizzard’s “Call of Duty.” Ubisoft Entertainment SA announced “Tom Clancy’s: The Division,” a role-playing shooter revolving round a pandemic that breaks out in New York on Black Friday.

“The good news is, we entered the show thinking, ‘Why do we need consoles anymore?’ We’re leaving the show with, ‘Which one would you like to buy?’” said Peter Moore, EA’s COO. “That’s a win for the industry coming in here.”

New hardware and software will boost the video game industry’s growth in 2014, Ubisoft Entertainment SA Chief Executive Officer Yves Guillemot said.

Still, questions remain over how long the good vibes will last or whether the crowd at E3 is representative of a much broader swathe of casual and mobile game players out there.

“In the near term, we see pent-up demand among core gamers for new hardware and software, which should deliver a strong launch,” R.W. Baird’s Sebastian said.

“Beyond that, we still need more visibility that Sony and Microsoft can safely avoid a stall-out like what is currently plaguing the Wii U.”

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By Aijaz Zaka Syed

THIS time last year we finally made it to Turkey. We spent a rare, serene week in Istanbul or Constantinople as it was once known. Our hotel was in the old city, which has been a witness to the march of history for thousands of years and is home to landmarks like Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque — the two look like mirror images of each other —Topkapi Palace and much, much more.

Much of our time though was spent in Taksim Square, exploring its bustling bazaars or simply sitting in its exotic restaurants watching the world go by. My wife with her black burqa seemed to stand out. Shopkeepers and waiters addressed her as Hajja apparently mistaking her for an Arab. Full of excited Western tourists and happy young people, Taksim Square looked like the city center of any European city.

Today Taksim Square is roiled by the fiercest protests seen since Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power 11 years ago. What began as a minor green protest defending one of Istanbul’s many parks has turned into a massive anti-government agitation attracting global attention.

Clearly, the excessive reaction of riot police provided the necessary spark. But as Financial Times put it, it couldn’t have caught fire so fast if there was no powder trail to ignite. Notwithstanding the three consecutive electoral wins of Prime Minister Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AK) Party, the powerful Kemalist establishment is far from down and out. It sees the Islamists as usurpers of Mustafa Kemal’s legacy.

Erdogan for his part views the protests as yet another “plot by a fringe of secular extremists and anarchists” to destabilize his government. The fact that the protest which began in Istanbul spread to other parts of the country almost in sync suggests there may be something in his charge after all. Many enthusiastic Western and Arab commentators have chosen to describe this as Turkey’s own Arab Spring, drawing predictable parallels between Taksim and Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square that saw Hosni Mubarak humbled.

Erdogan is no Mubarak though. And Turkey is not the corrupt and log-abused country ruled with an iron hand that was Egypt until three years ago. If anything, Erdogan has helped restore democracy and people power to its full vigor and glory by reining in the power-hungry generals, corrupt bureaucrats and judges.

Doubtless, Ataturk played a decisive role in building the modern Turkey during what were truly the most turbulent years in world history. However, he also carried his revulsion of the Ottoman caliphs and their incompetence in the face of marching imperialism too far banishing Islam itself. In the Muslim country that for centuries led the faithful under the Ottomans, belief had become a burden.
Wearing Hijab was a crime and use of Arabic even in religious context was a “no-no” as Ataturk went about changing the nation’s Qibla, forcing it to look Westward. Rightly or wrongly, Ataturk believed that the West or West’s way held the answers to all of Turkey’s woes.

After Ataturk’s departure, the army assumed his mantle and took it upon itself to think and decide for the people. For nearly seven decades, the army saw itself and acted as the so-called Deep State. It was the lord of all it surveyed, directly or indirectly ruling the country. (This model was heartily embraced by Pakistan, the newly created Muslim country, multiplying its woes).

The generals called the shots as they casually dismissed Parliaments and elected governments, as had been the case with Necmettin Erabkan in 1997. Both Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul cut their teeth under the first Islamist prime minister in a Versace suit and tie. The men in uniform tried the same against Erabkan’s protégé but ended up severely injuring themselves. One in eight generals today is in jail for that failed coup. The consummate strategist and smart student of history that he is, Erdogan has managed to tame the giant who had proved the nemesis of his mentor.

He hasn’t merely defanged the army and strengthened democratic institutions. By bringing in constitutional, political and judicial reforms, Turkey’s tallest leader since Ataturk has given a new sense of direction and charted a new path altogether for the nation that for centuries has acted as the bridge—literally—between Europe and Asia and between Islam and the West.

Erdogan has combined his spectacular electoral success, winning three watershed elections each time with greater mandate, with all-round economic growth and development. From being heavily indebted to the IMF 10 years ago, Turkey has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies today. It’s one of the few that have survived the global economic meltdown and chaos next door in Europe. In fact, it has been investing heavily in the Middle East and its backyard in Central Asia and eastern Europe.

In the words of Financial Times, “Erdogan’s achievements — in modernizing Turkey’s economy, taming the army and pioneering a politics of Muslim democracy, starting accession negotiations with the European Union and now, in starting a peace process with the Kurds — are extraordinary. In an international landscape of political pygmies, Erdogan stands out.”

One of his greatest achievements is busting the myth that Islam and democracy and religion and modernity cannot coexist. Even as he looks to join the EU and plays an ambitious role in the NATO, Turkey’s leader has successfully revived historical ties with the rest of the Islamic world and has been increasingly asserting the nation’s leadership in affairs of the Ummah.

Long before it won the hearts and minds in the Arab world by confronting the once close ally Israel, Turkey had been admired as a role model for a modern and progressive Muslim society. This may be why Turkish television dramas are such a rage across the Middle East. Turkey has successfully married Islamic spirit and traditions with the demands of a fast evolving world. It has been the first to come out in active support of the cravings for change in the Maghreb and the larger neighborhood.

It would be real a shame if this formidable legacy and defining period in the nation’s history is undermined by Erdogan’s own impatience. He needs all his political acumen and extraordinary leadership skills to deal with this crisis in the heart of Istanbul. And the last thing he needs right now is a display of force. As Teddy Roosevelt advised, speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

By using force to deal with protests, he would be playing right into the hands of his detractors who are trying to turn what is essentially a local civic issue into a national movement against the government.

It is not easy though. Erdogan and the governing AKP remain wildly popular and enjoy grassroots support. The only thing that can lend a new lease of life to the ossified, Kemalist elites and legitimacy to their ‘cause’ is the prime minister’s own response. In the end if anyone could bring down Erdogan, it’s Erdogan himself.

Dissent and tolerance are essential to democracy. Turkey’s leaders-and their Islamist fellow travelers elsewhere—have to learn to live with it. They must evolve more tolerant, nuanced ways of dealing with opposition as befits an inclusive democracy. How about visiting Taksim Square and addressing the protesters’ legitimate concerns about the mindless development perhaps? It would instantly take the wind out of the opposition’s sails. A bulldozer approach to development, or anything for that matter, seldom works. The world is watching Turkey. It just cannot afford to fail.

Email: aijaz.sayed@hotmail.com

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