By Noor H. Salem

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Noor Salem

Question:

I’m trying to let me kids eat healthier and I’m getting confused what I need to buy organic? Does everything with an organic label mean it’s healthy? How about produce?

Answer:

With our growing market and superstores, it’s no surprise that it could get confusing when deciding what to put on your plate and what to keep on the store shelves. My first advice is, when it comes to packaged food if it says organic on the label don’t easily fall for it. Many companies take advantage of the word “organic” “all natural” and “whole grain” etc. When shopping for fruits and vegetables many have heavy amounts of pesticides and chemicals, so you’re better off purchasing organic.  Below is the list of the dirty dozen, which are the top fruits and vegetables in terms of pesticide content. These pesticides should not be taken lightly and have been proven to cause cancer, disease, and issues with cell growth.  My advice, buy these foods organic whenever you can. If you can’t buy organic food because of the main complaint that they are cost, then peel your apples and potatoes, and remove the outer layers of lettuce and other greens.

Apples  
Celery
Strawberries
Peaches
Spinach
Nectarines- imported
Grapes- imported
Sweet Bell Peppers
Potatoes
Blueberries-domestic
Lettuce
Kale/Collard Greens

But my advice does not end with bad news. There has also been a list provided of the clean fifteen, the top fruits and vegetables you don’t need to buy organic. These are mostly because we normally peel them in order to eat them, like bananas, watermelon and avocadoes. Unless you’re eating the peel, you can definitely by these produce non-organic. So feel fairly comfortable buying and eating these without worrying about your health.

Onions
Corn
Pineapple
Avocado
Asparagus
Sweet Pea
Mango
Eggplant
Cantaloupe- domestic
Kiwi
Cabbage
Watermelon
Sweet Potatoes
Grapefruit
Mushrooms

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By Dr. Aslam Abdullah, TMO Editor-in-Chief

Prophet Muhammad (s) said: “The seeking of knowledge is obligatory for every Muslim.” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith #74) He also said: “One who treads a path in search of knowledge has his path to Paradise made easy by God…” (Riyadh us-Saleheen, hadith #245)

He further said: “A servant of God will remain standing on the Day of Judgment until he is questioned about his (time on earth) and how he used it; about his knowledge and how he utilized it; about his wealth and from where he acquired it and in what (activities) he spent it; and about his body and how he used it.” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith #148)

The Prophet (s) also said: “Knowledge from which no benefit is derived is like a treasure out of which nothing is spent in the cause of God.” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith #108)

He also said: “God, His angels and all those in Heavens and on Earth, even ants in their hills and fish in the water, call down blessings on those who instruct others in beneficial knowledge.” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith #422)

Then he said “Acquire knowledge and impart it to the people.” (Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith #107)

In Sunan Abdu Dawood one reads the Prophet (s) explaining, “If anyone travels on a road in search of knowledge, God will cause him to travel on one of the roads of Paradise. The angels will lower their wings in their great pleasure with one who seeks knowledge. The inhabitants of the heavens and the Earth and (even) the fish in the deep waters will ask forgiveness for the learned man. The superiority of the learned over the devout is like that of the moon, on the night when it is full, over the rest of the stars. The learned are the heirs of the prophets, and the prophets leave (no monetary inheritance), they leave only knowledge, and he who takes it takes an abundant portion. (Hadith #1631)

The statement that seek knowledge even if you have to travel to China is often attributed to the Prophet (s), but these are the words of Imam Ali, the fourth Caliph of Muslims.

Read these sayings of the Prophet (s) again and again. Repeat them to yourself and to others and notice something very simple that can be summarized in the following words.

“Knowledge is indivisible and regardless of one’s gender and age it is obligatory upon everyone.”

Throughout our Islamic history, we have tried to define and redefine knowledge in our image, an image conditioned by our politics, culture, gender, ethnicity, society, economics and personal interests. We are the ones who have bifurcated it into worldly and religious sciences. We are the ones who have closed its doors whomsoever we wanted out. We are the ones who have tried to limit its acquisition whomever we wanted to exclude and we are the ones who have often tried to taint education with our biases and absurdities. We often presented our viewpoints as that of God because we claimed that we are created in the image of God.

But most of us failed to recognize that it was not the intent of God and the Prophet (s) to limit the access of education to girls and women. It was not their intent to deprive those born in a state of bondage of knowledge. It was not their intent to dictate to others what to study and what not to study as long as one understands the parameters of knowledge set by the Divine, the supreme authority.

The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and those who are like them and have behaved like them throughout human history, have actually argued against the way of God and the Prophet (s), by setting limits on the nature and type of education girls, women, children, and even men.

Dr. Aslam Abdullah, TMO Editor-in-chief

A young child, in her courage and innocence, stood up against this idea based on her common sense, not fully aware of the true dimensions of the Divine expansion of education. The logic was simple. How could God be unjust to His own creation by giving one more access to education than to another of His creation? She was critical of the Taliban. She condemned their tactics as she saw them playing it in her small village. She even called them terrorists and called them unjust.

The mighty Taliban were upset. How could a young child question their understanding of religion? Rather than reviewing their own attitude or trying to educate their perspective to the child, they became furious. She became their target. Finally, they tried to kill her. This is how they had learned to deal with their opponents. “Shoot those who oppose you and you would be blessed by the one in whose name you kill.” But the one who gives life and death saved her. She was injured and although she nearly lost her life, Allah saved her and many physicians, mostly non-Muslims, were inspired to help to save her.

There were several countries in the world including those with a Muslim majority who could have offered medical help to her, including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, or India, but Britain took the lead to offer her the treatment. Since then, she is being projected by the so called western media as a symbol of resistance and an icon for women education. The Muslim media could also have taken up her case, but it preferred not only to ignore her, but to cast doubt on her story. Some even suggested that she was not attacked and she faked her injury. Among those who questioned her integrity were those Muslim theologians who have spent their lives teaching their followers the Quranic message that says: “don’t assume things.”

The so-called Western campaign to project her as a role model for girls regardless of their religion and ethnicity has angered many pious Muslims. After all not many young kids question the authority of a coercive group in a small village in a remote area of the world.

The projection of a girl to a position of prominence does not sit well with them. A woman should spend her time in the home getting ready to produce children and then rearing and nurturing them. She is not supposed to talk about education or offer a leadership role. Children are not the teachers of their adults so they are upset. Religion is the prerogative of men only. A woman’s voice in public is unacceptable in their understanding of Islam. Since they are the “defenders of Islam” and its gatekeepers, how could they let her be used by the West to make a mockery of genuine Islamic teachings?

They see in her rise a conspiracy on the part of the West to exploit her situation to serve their agenda against Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Muslim world. They suspect that the West is using her to impose upon the Muslim world its educational values, devoid of morality. They also see in her projection a well-conceived plot to strip Muslim world of its religious identity.

Ironically, none of those, especially the ones living in the West, would agree with what the Taliban have done or have been doing. Even the most anti-Western among them have serious issues with the thinking and logic of Taliban in implementing a version of Islam that is contaminated with male-chauvinism, tribal jingoism, and feudal parochialism.

What they also tend to ignore the fact that the girl they are accusing of playing in the hands of the West is echoing the ideas of their Prophet (s) on education to the world in an atmosphere of understanding and recognition. Their logic is interesting. “Don’t speak the truth if it serves the political interests of others.” In other word truth has no value of its own and cannot stand on its own strength. She is quoting the Quran. they do not like it. After all the Quran is their monopoly. How could she or her secular father quote or use the Quran in their arguments. Her dress does not fall outside the parameters of Islamic norms. But they are still not convinced because the two inches of her hair closer to her forehead are still exposed to a male eye. Her language is soft and her style is decent, but it does not matter. She is not talking of revenge, even against those who tried to kill her and they think she can decide on her own whom to forgive and whom to declare an enemy. She is repeating what every sensible Muslim has repeated and would like to repeat about education, but they argue that being a woman, she can only repeat this message only to a closed audience of women and girls.

Seemingly, they can’t rejoice the rise of one of their daughters and sisters to a position of dignity in front of a world audience in a climate that is filled with admiration towards her? To them even, as soon as a girl reaches the age of puberty, she is a source of test for men regardless of their age. They are so much obsessed with the sexuality of women in their own context that they are not willing to treat others like their daughters and sisters.

Let us come to other issues in her case. They argue that the west is exploiting her situation. Even if the West is exploiting her so what? The message she is delivering is worth repeating from every channel. She is not questioning Islam or challenging the Quran or the Prophet (s). She is simply following what every Muslim should have followed.

How many of those people who are critical of her were raising their voices in support of education for all when they were of her age? How many of them took the bullets for their stand? How many of them persisted in their mission even after being hit by a bullet? How many of them were seen as a symbol of hope by adults and non-Muslims when they were in their teens.

The argument that the West is hypocritical in its policies towards the Muslim world needs to be analyzed on its own merit. The West has double stand standards towards its own values. Yes, the West has used its drones to kill innocent people, yet it has played politics and havoc with the lives of the people, and yes it is not honest when it deals with Islam in general. But the same analysis can easily be applied to those countries that claim to be Muslim.

Let us also remember, that many others including the citizens of the Western world have also suffered at the hands of its brutal policies. The US destroyed its own economy in indulging itself in wars that were not necessary.

The tug of war between Republicans and Democrats is ruining the economy of the country. The foreign policies of the West are problematic even to its own declared principles.

But those policies need to be challenged on the basis of their absurdities and not on the basis of how the 16 year old girl is being projected. 

If the critics look beyond their myopic perspectives, they would discover a new image of Islam emerging in the words of this girl, an image that none of them was able to create as most of them were busy and are still busy in fighting and destroying each other.

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By Abdi Sheikh and Richard Lough

MOGADISHU/NAIROBI (Reuters) – Somali Islamist militant group al Shabaab’s attack on a shopping mall in the heart of the Kenyan capital has thrust it to the forefront of the global jihadist movement after years of internal feuding over the group’s aims.

The apparent sophistication of the weekend raid, involving 15 or so heavily-armed fighters who held off Kenya’s military for four days, suggests careful planning and a trained strike force that goes beyond the group’s hallmark hit-and-run tactics.

Regional intelligence experts said they believed the raiders, who killed 67 people in an assault that shocked Kenya and the world, were members of a crack unit loyal to the group’s leader, Ahmed Godane, who has been seeking to rebrand al Shabaab as a significant international jihadist group.

Al Shabaab had threatened revenge against Kenya since its troops joined the war against Islamist militants in its chaotic northern neighbor two years ago in an operation codenamed “Linda Nchi”, or “Protect the Country” in Swahili. The group had created funding, recruiting and training networks in Kenya, security agencies say.

The mall attack bears out Western fears that the insurgents would use Somalia, a hotspot in the U.S.-led war on Islamist militants across the globe, as a launch pad for strikes on regional countries even as African troops put them on the defensive in the Horn of Africa state.

Al Shabaab has been weakened by an African Union-led offensive that has expelled the group from urban strongholds over the past two years, but they remain a dangerous threat.

“They have not been dying in the past two years. They have developed guerrilla tactics instead of face-to-face fighting,” said a Somali intelligence officer who identified himself as Ahmed, a former Islamist fighter.

“There are still many foreign fighters with Godane.”

Al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage told Reuters the gunmen who burst into the Israeli-built, upscale Westgate mall around midday on Saturday were “well-trained special forces”. Their exact identity, though, remains unknown.

A Nairobi-based diplomat said it was possible Godane’s own secret service, the Amniyat, an elite unit which has its own chain of command, logistics network and financial resources, carried out the raid.

A second Somali intelligence agent, who gave his name as Mohamed, told Reuters he understood the Westgate attackers were a crack Shabaab unit known as the Iktihaam, after the Arabic term meaning to storm in.

The Kenyan military said the assailants were a “multi-national collection”, but they have not confirmed reports that the raiders, whom President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Tuesday had been “defeated”, include some Americans and British woman.

Al Shabaab is a militia which emerged from Somalia’s Islamic Courts Union movement that pushed U.S.-backed warlords out of the capital Mogadishu before being ousted by Somali and Ethiopian forces. Al Shabaab went on to seize large swathes of territory.

POWER STRUGGLE

Foreign combatants from the United States, Europe and the Gulf states have steadily gained influence within al Shabaab, many drawn by Godane’s ambition to take the group’s militant campaign beyond Somalia’s borders.

Al Shabaab’s first signature strike abroad came in 2010 when coordinated explosions killed more than 70 people in the Ugandan capital Kampala on the night of the World Cup soccer final. The group said the attack was to avenge the deployment of Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia.

Repeated threats of a big strike on Kenyan soil failed to materialize, however, denting the aspirations of the ultra-hardliners to be a prominent affiliate within the al Qaeda franchise. But Saturday’s high-impact attack on the mall, a symbol of Kenya’s economic power, has changed that.

“A lot of people have been thinking of al Shabaab as a Somali issue but (after) this attack they are going to be viewed more as a part of al Qaeda and the global terrorist network,” said Ali Soufan, whose Soufan Group provides strategic security intelligence to governments and businesses.

This could help al Shabaab to win new supporters and resources among militants committed to anti-Western jihad.

It also follows deep rifts within the group that saw a power struggle between those who wanted to keep its Jihad within Somalia – the so-called “indigenous faction” – and those led by Godane who wanted to take extend the campaign further afield.

“External attacks tend to happen when a group is trying to consolidate,” said Leah Farrall, a former senior counter terrorism intelligence analyst with the Australian Federal Police. “In recent months you have been seeing a tremendous amount of fracturing in their domestic environment.”

It is an internal fight that Godane appears to have won. After falling out with Godane, al Shabaab’s one-time spiritual leader, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, fled and is now in government custody. A prominent U.S.-born militant, Omar Hammami, known as al-Amriki, or “the American”, was killed in a gunbattle this month, after he criticized Godane’s wider jihadist ambitions.

“HOME GROWN” KENYAN CONNECTION

While al Shabaab has pressed the narrative of a crack strike unit, capable of hitting across international borders, analysts said Kenya would also need to look closer to home to hunt down those who helped plan and orchestrate the raid.

Reports from Kenya’s military that the gunmen moved covertly through Westgate’s air ventilation system indicated a high-level of planning requiring a detailed knowledge of the mall.

“I would be very surprised if al Shabaab carried out this attack on its own,” said Abdi Aynte, director of the Mogadishu-based Heritage Institute for Policy Studies. “They might have contracted a local Kenyan group to do some of the logistics and reconnaissance.”

Al Shabaab’s most important affiliate in Kenya is al Hijra, a group formerly known as the Muslim Youth Centre (MYC) based in Nairobi’s rundown Majengo neighborhood. Kenyan MYC members have trained and fought alongside al Shabaab in Somalia.

Kenya’s 2011 military foray into Somali led to a surge in shootings, grenade and bomb attacks across Kenya. The Kenyan government blamed the attacks on al Shabaab, while security experts said local sympathizers were more likely responsible.

In July, the U.N. Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea said al Hijra had suffered unexplained killings and disappearances of its members, believed to be the result of covert operations by Kenyan and international security services.

But U.N. investigators said al Hijra was “striving to regain the initiative, in part through its fighters in Somalia returning to conduct new and more complex operations”, such as the mall attack.

“You’ve got a home grown problem in Kenya with links to combat training and fighting in Somalia and longstanding recruitment networks operating in Kenya,” the diplomat said.

“The ingredients are all there.”

(Additional reporting by Feisal Omar in Mogadishu and Myra MacDonald in Tbilisi; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)

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By Karin Friedemann, TMO

Why does food get wasted in America? We live in a rich country. To a large extent, our nation is built upon the backs of the poor. It is popular to complain about the unfair distribution of goods and services and even to assign blame to a malicious conspiracy. Conspiracies might exist, on the level of the international banking cartels, but the truth is, there is actually a lot of freedom in this country to recycle and redistribute wealth in the form of goods and raw materials. Restaurants, produce warehouses, and bakeries throw away food because it is easier than recycling. Someone has to pick up the food at a time and in a manner that is convenient to the donors. Someone has to have the time and the means to pick up the food – and the desire.

The Good Samaritan Law, which exists in all continental US states, offers protection against law suits brought by anyone who becomes ill after eating donated food. There are also some tax benefits to donating surpluses. So, if food, lumber, paint and other basic human needs are rotting in a dumpster, it is mainly due to benign neglect. There is no one stopping people in the community from rescuing the goods.

“A store may order more produce than it ends up needing, trucks may be too full to ship all of the ordered produce, or shipments can be delayed or arrive too early due to weather, market fluctuations, and equipment malfunctions. Often, entire pallets of usable food will be refused by markets because some items have slight cosmetic imperfections. The problem with surplus produce is that unlike canned goods, which could be resold or redistributed later, produce will spoil if it sits too long,” reads the website of Fair Foods, a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Rescuing food and redistributing it to the people requires intensive work and planning. Trucks and strong men are need to pick up the fresh food that is being discarded and to bring it to some location for sorting and cleaning. The food must then be transported into poor communities – especially to locations where people do not have cars or who have other mobility limitations, such as the elderly. Repairs will be needed for the trucks, and of course there is the cost of gasoline. Even free food is never free, but Fair Foods has found a way to distribute huge amounts of fresh food in low income neighborhoods with limited supermarket access for about 10 cents a pound. They truck food in from all over New England and sell 20 pound bags of assorted produce, which will feed a family for a week, for $2 a bag. Their primary pick up location is the Chelsea Market on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, where huge container loads of produce sit in boxes piled up on the docks and warehouses.

Fair Foods has distributed hundreds of millions of pounds of food over the past 20 years, but the food that they have distributed is only a fraction of the food that is available. The organization currently relies on one medium sized truck like that used for movers, which is very old and requires frequent tinkering, in order to pick up the food in bulk; and a pickup truck to take the produce to various locations around Boston. There are a handful of core volunteers who work around the clock and share a home with Nancy Jamison, the founder of Fair Foods. The huge house itself is suffering from benign neglect – the roof leaks and the entire place is in need of a fresh coat of paint. Jamison, 63, though a carpenter by trade, is suffering from health problems and cannot keep up with the home repairs in addition to feeding the poor, so she feeds the poor.

Hundreds of other volunteers pitch in when they can. But if Americans want the poor to be fed, including themselves, more strong hands are needed. The government solution of bureaucracy is not a solution: Food Pantry executives receive 6-digit incomes and only distribute a fraction of the amount of fresh food that Fair Food volunteers distribute at the various drop off locations.

Daniel Fitzpatrick told the Dorchester Reporter, “Everyone looks forward to it. If they don’t show up, people starve.” 10,000 families in Boston rely on the produce.

Fair Foods began in the mid-1980s when Dorchester’s Nancy Jamison, 58, loaded up the back of her pick-up with discarded carrots and parked it in front of her home. As her neighbors walked home from their jobs, they scooped up the carrots. “They were gone in an hour and a half,” she said. Food redistribution is “something that I believe all Americans should do with all the assets and blessings that we have,” said Jamison.

Right now, most people are over-extended, underpaid and exhausted from working jobs to make enough money to buy food and pay bills for their family. Or else, they are unemployed and suffering the mental and emotional breakdown that goes along with having no income. When you are struggling night and day to keep yourself alive, volunteer work does not seem like an option. But when you are underemployed, giving a few hours of work in exchange for a bag of food starts looking really nice.

Rescuing food can address many of our basic problems: we are lonely, we are anxious, we are hungry, and we need more exercise. This author, after volunteering at Fair Foods, realized how deeply and blissfully she could sleep if she simply physically exhausted herself during the day. In order for discarded food to reach the masses, a reorganization of society needs to take place so that communities begin to take personal care of each other. For example, somebody needs to fix Nancy’s roof. People with children need to coordinate their time so they can take turns contributing to society. That means husbands and wives as well as friends and neighbors. Some major grants or donations are required to buy new trucks so that the available volunteers can be used to their capacity.

The good news is, there is so much hope. All we have to do is revolutionize our thinking. Instead of just earning wages in order to pay for groceries and babysitters and cable TV, we can work together to meet our needs and escape the lonely prison of the flat screen. Some people have muscle, some people have personal warmth, some people are super organized, and everyone has something to contribute.

There is no one stopping us. There is just nobody helping us. That in itself is not the worst thing because with help comes dependency and debt. We don’t need help. We just need to get to work.

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By Lesley Wroughton

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan on Friday to try to advance negotiations over a security pact that have stalled over two issues that have become deal breakers for the Afghan government.

The United States says it wants the deal done by the end of October, while Karzai has declared it can wait until after presidential elections in April next year, further straining what has become a rocky relationship between the allies.

The deal will determine the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after most are withdrawn in 2014 and a failure to reach an agreement could prompt Washington to pull out all of its forces at the end of 2014, an outcome known as the “zero option”.

“The ball remains in the Afghans’ court … Time is of the essence, the longer it goes, the harder it is to plan,” a State Department official said, speaking en route to Kabul.

The talks over the pact have stalled over two points.

One is a U.S. request to run independent counter-terrorism missions on Afghan territory, which have long infuriated Karzai. The Afghans instead want the United States to pass on information and let them handle the action.

The second sticking point is a U.S. refusal to guarantee protection from foreign forces as it could lead to offensive action against another ally, neighboring Pakistan.

Shortly after arriving in Kabul, Kerry and his delegation were escorted to the presidential palace where he met Karzai. There were no visible tensions with Karzai inquiring about Kerry’s recent visits to Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia.

Kerry was joined by U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan James Cunningham and Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top U.S. general to Afghanistan.

SECURITY NEEDS

U.S. officials said Kerry did not intend to close a deal on the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) during the visit but would discuss “issues of mutual concern”.

“This is really about us building momentum for the negotiators and helping establish conditions for success of the negotiations going forward,” another State Department official told reporters.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the White House was increasingly willing to abandon plans for a long-term partnership with Afghanistan. While the Pentagon has pleaded for patience, the rest of the administration was fed up with Karzai and sees Afghanistan as a fading priority, the newspaper said.

“The Afghans’ primary goal with the BSA is to come up with an agreement that meets their security needs, and we fully believe that what’s on the table right now would do that,” the official said.

The collapse of similar talks between the United States and Iraq in 2011 – triggered partly by Iraq’s refusal to provide immunity to U.S. soldiers serving there – led to the United States pulling its troops out of the country.

Washington is concerned that as Afghan election campaigning intensifies it will be harder to broker a deal. Indeed, Karzai’s brothers this week began their campaign take power and plan to offer the outgoing president, who is constitutionally barred from running again, a position in their government.

The election is considered the most crucial since the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, which brought Karzai to power, and an opportunity to push the country away from years of damaging allegations of corruption and maladministration.

“It’s going to be more difficult for them to focus on getting to a resolution of these issues, so we’d like to bring them to a close before we get to that point,” the U.S. official added.

(Writing by Jessica Donati; Editing by Alison Williams)

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MOSCOW (Reuters) – The head of a Russian forensics agency said on Tuesday that samples from the body of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had revealed no traces of radioactive polonium, a Russian news agency reported.

However, the government scientific body later denied that it had made any official statement about the research, saying only that it had handed its results to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

If confirmed, the findings would deal a blow to Palestinian suspicions that Arafat was assassinated by Israel – a theory fuelled by a Swiss lab report last year which found unusual amounts of the deadly isotope polonium on his clothes.

A Palestinian medical team took samples from Arafat’s corpse in the West Bank last year and gave them to Swiss, French and Russian forensic teams in an attempt to determine whether he was murdered with the hard-to-trace radioactive poison.

“He could not have been poisoned with polonium. The research conducted by Russian experts found no traces of this substance,” the Russian news agency Interfax quoted Vladimir Uiba, who heads the Federal Medico-Biological Agency (FMBA), as saying.

Uiba said experts from the FMBA had conducted a detailed study of Arafat’s remains.

The agency later sought to distance itself from the comments. “The FMBA of Russia has made no official statement about the results of research on the remains of Yasser Arafat,” the FMBA’s press service said.

It added that it had completed its tests and given the results to the authorities.

The Russian Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment, but state-run news agency RIA cited a source in the ministry as saying it was up to the Palestinian authorities to release any information about the tests.

Arafat died aged 75 of an unexplained ailment he developed while confined to his Ramallah headquarters by Israeli tanks at the height of an armed Palestinian uprising in 2004.

Palestinians saw the veteran guerrilla as a hero of their national cause. Israel regarded him as a terrorist, though it denied responsibility for his death.

A negative result from the samples may not totally preclude a poisoning, as experts warned last year that his partial exhumation might have occurred too late to detect polonium.

The Lausanne-based hospital which first found the isotope on Arafat’s clothing said that eight years would be the limit to detecting it on his remains and questioned whether such a late examination would provide conclusive results.

A spokesman for the hospital said at the time of the exhumation that findings might be reached by early this year.

No explanation has been given for the lengthy delay in presenting the results.

(Reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Writing by Noah Browning in Ramallah; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Robin Pomeroy)

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By Mark Gleeson

Egypt team coach Bob Bradley stands during their 2014 World Cup qualifying soccer match against Ghana at the Baba Yara Sports Stadium in Kumasi October 15, 2013. REUTERS/Luc Gnago

(Reuters) – An unusual football marriage looks on the rocks as the collaboration between Egypt and their American coach Bob Bradley appears close to an end after their World Cup playoff humiliation by Ghana on Tuesday.

A 6-1 thrashing in Kumasi in the first leg of the African zone playoff was not only a record-breaking defeat but also leaves Egypt facing the stark reality of yet another painful failure in the preliminaries.
“The dream of going to the World Cup is what kept our team united for these two years,” said Bradley in the wake of the one-sided loss and in a reference to the turmoil that has beset the north African country since early 2011.

“But we’ve seen that dream become nearly impossible. I say nearly impossible because the situation we’ve put ourselves in is a very difficult one. We know this and we feel this.”

Bradley’s contract is tied to the World Cup cycle but Egyptian media were speculating on Wednesday about a possible rapid departure, even with the return leg in Cairo to come on November 19.

The appointment of an American to take charge of the Arab world’s most successful team had been an unlikely match, indicative of an increasingly desperate desire by Egypt to find a solution to their World Cup woes.

Despite dominating African football at both national team and cup level, they have failed to reach the finals since their last appearance in Italy in 1990. During that time they have won four African Nations Cup titles.

The Egyptian FA had taken traditional routes in search of a solution, over the decades appointing both top local coaches and expatriates from Europe to guide their quest. Bringing on board Bradley was ‘thinking out of the box’.

He was the United States coach at the 2010 World Cup but made an impression on Egypt one year earlier when his American side staged a spirited showing to beat Egypt 3-0 and snatch away a Confederations Cup semi-final place from then defending world champions Italy at the tournament in South Africa.

Bradley accepted the Egypt job in 2011 to a general astonishment at the choice but found his working conditions vastly changed just five months later when league football was cancelled following the Port Said stadium disaster, where 74 spectators were killed.

It was followed by intermittent political strife, lengthy delays to the restart of the league and then a second cancellation this June after the military overthrow of president Mohammed Morsi.
Despite the turmoil Egypt were the only side to win all six group matches in the African preliminaries.

Bradley also managed to incorporate some exciting new talent into an ageing team and won respect for staying on in Cairo, even through the most turbulent times.

But his time will be up in either the next days or after the second leg next month, leaving Egypt to go back to the drawing board as they turn their focus to 2018.

(Editing by Justin Palmer)

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By Veronique Mistiaen

Ioni Sullivan: ‘In my heart, I began to consider myself a Muslim.’ Photograph: Felicity McCabe for the Guardian

Ioni Sullivan, local authority worker, 37, East Sussex

I’m married to a Muslim and have two children. We live in Lewes, where I’m probably the only hijabi in the village.

I was born and raised in a middle-class, left-leaning, atheist family; my father was a professor, my mother a teacher. When I finished my MPhil at Cambridge in 2000, I worked in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. Back then, I had a fairly stereotypical view of Islam, but became impressed with the strength the people derived from their faith. Their lives sucked, yet nearly everyone I met seemed to approach their existence with a tranquillity and stability that stood in contrast to the world I’d left behind.

In 2001, I fell in love with and married a Jordanian from a fairly non-practising background. At first we lived a very western lifestyle, going out to bars and clubs, but around this time I started an Arabic course and picked up an English copy of the Qur’an. I found myself reading a book that claimed that the proof of God’s existence was in the infinite beauty and balance of creation, not one that asked me to believe God walked the Earth in human form; I didn’t need a priest to bless me or a sacred place to pray. Then I started looking into other Islamic practices that I’d dismissed as harsh: fasting, compulsory charity, the idea of modesty. I stopped seeing them as restrictions on personal freedom and realised they were ways of achieving self-control.

In my heart, I began to consider myself a Muslim, but didn’t feel a need to shout about it; part of me was trying to avoid conflict with my family and friends. In the end it was the hijab that “outed” me to wider society: I began to feel I wasn’t being true to myself if I didn’t wear it. It caused some friction, and humour, too: people kept asking in hushed tones if I had cancer. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how little it has mattered in any meaningful relationship I have.

Anita Nayyar, social psychologist and gender equalities activist, 31, London

Anita Nayyar: ‘One of the biggest challenges I face is the prohibition of women from the mosque.’ Photograph: Felicity McCabe for the Guardian

As an Anglo-Indian with Hindu grandparents who lived through the partition of India and Pakistan, and saw family shot by a Muslim gang, I was brought up with a fairly dim view of what it was to be Muslim.

I was a very religious Christian, involved in the church, and wanted to become a vicar. At 16, I opted for a secular college, which is where I made friends with Muslims. I was shocked by how normal they were, and how much I liked them. I started debates, initially to let them know what a terrible religion they followed, and I started to learn that it wasn’t too different from Christianity. In fact, it seemed to make more sense. It took a year and a half before I got to the point of conversion, and I became a Muslim in 2000, aged 18. My mother was disappointed and my father quietly accepting. Other members of my family felt betrayed.

I used to wear a scarf, which can mean many things. It can be a signifier of one’s faith, which is helpful when you don’t wish to be chatted up or invited to drink. It can attract negative attention from people who stereotype “visibly” Muslim women as oppressed or terrorist. It can also get positive reactions from the Muslim community.

But people expect certain behaviour from a woman in a headscarf, and I started to wonder whether I was doing it for God or to fulfil the role of “the pious woman”. In the end, not wearing the scarf has helped make my faith invisible again and allowed me to revisit my personal relationship with God.

One of the biggest challenges I face is the prohibition of women from the mosque. It’s sad to go somewhere, ready to connect with a higher being, only to be asked to leave because women are not allowed. In the past, I have prayed in car parks, my office corridor and in a fried chicken shop. The irony is that while my workplace would feel it discriminatory to stop me praying, some mosques do not.

Dr Annie (Amina) Coxon, consultant physician and neurologist, 72, London

Dr Annie (Amina) Coxon: ‘After 9/11, my relationship with my sister-in-law changed and I am no longer welcome in their home.’ Photograph: Felicity McCabe for the Guardian

I’m English back to the Normans. I was brought up in the US and Egypt, before coming to boarding school in the UK at six, then doing medical training in London and the US. I’ve been married twice, have three stepchildren and five stepgrandchildren.

I converted 21 years ago. It was the result of a long search for a more spiritual alternative to Catholicism. Initially, I didn’t consider Islam because of the negative image in the media. The conversion process was gradual and ultimately guided by the example of the mother of the current Sultan of Oman – one of my patients – and by a series of dreams.

My family were initially surprised, but accepted my conversion. After 9/11, however, my relationship with my sister-in-law changed and I am no longer welcome in their home. I have friends for whom my conversion is an accepted eccentricity, but I lost many superficial ones because of it.

When I converted, I was told by the imam that I should dress modestly, but didn’t need to wear the hijab because I was already old. During Ramadan, however, I do warn patients that I’ll look a bit different if they see me coming back from the mosque. The response has been fascination rather than repulsion.

I tried to join various Islamic communities: Turkish, Pakistani and Moroccan. I went to the Moroccan mosque for three years without one person greeting me or wishing me “Eid Mubarak”. I had cancer and not one Muslim friend (except a very holy old man) came to pray with me in nine months of treatment. But these are small annoyances compared with what I’ve gained: serenity, wisdom and peace. I’ve now finally found my Muslim community and it is African.

Many Muslims come to London as immigrants. Their ethnic identity is tied to the mosque; they don’t want white faces there. We are pioneers. There will be a time when white converts won’t be seen as freaks.

Kristiane Backer, TV presenter, 47, London

Kristiane Backer: ‘It has been a challenge transforming my TV work in line with my new-found values.’ Photograph: Felicity McCabe for the Guardian

I grew up in Germany in a Protestant but not terribly religious family, then in 1989 moved to London to present on MTV Europe. I interviewed everyone from Bob Geldof to David Bowie, worked hard and partied hard, but something was missing. At a moment of crisis, I was introduced to the cricketer Imran Khan. He gave me books on Islam and invited me to travel with him through Pakistan. Those trips opened a new dimension in my life, an awareness of spirituality. The Muslims I met touched me profoundly through their generosity, dignity and readiness to sacrifice for others. The more I read, the more Islam attracted me. I converted in 1995.

When the German media found out, a negative press campaign followed and within no time my contract was terminated. It was the end of my entertainment career. It has been a challenge transforming my TV work in line with my new-found values, but I am working on a Muslim culture and lifestyle show. I feel I have a bridging role to play between the Muslim heritage community and society at large.

Most Muslims marry young, often with the help of their families, but I converted at 30. When I was still single 10 years later, I decided to look online. There, I met and fell in love with a charming, Muslim-born TV producer from Morocco who lived in the US. We had a lot in common and married in 2006. But his interpretation of Islam became a way of controlling me: I was expected to give up my work, couldn’t talk to men and even had to cut men out of old photographs. I should have stood up to him, because a lot of what he asked of me was not Islamic but cultural, but I wanted to make the marriage work. Insha Allah my future husband will be more trusting and focused on the inner values of Islam, rather than on outward restrictions.

I have no regrets. On the contrary: my life now has meaning and the void that I used to feel is filled with God, and that is priceless.

Andrea Chishti, reflexologist and secondary school teacher, 47, Watford

Andrea Chishti: ‘Islam has strengthened my ethics and morals.’ Photograph: Felicity McCabe for the Guardian

I have been happily married for 18 years to a British-born Muslim of Pakistani origins. We have a son, 11, and a daughter, eight.

Fida and I met at university in 1991. My interest in Islam was a symbiosis of love and intellectual ideas. Fida wanted a Muslim family, and by 1992 my interest in Islam had developed significantly, so I chose to convert. It took us three more years to get married. During that time, we battled things out, met friends and families, agreed on how to live together.

I grew up in Germany, in a household where religion did not play a prominent role. My father was an atheist, but my mother and my school left me with a conviction that spirituality was important. When I converted, my father thought it was crazy, but he liked my husband; even so, he bought me a little flat so I “could always come back”. My mother was shocked, horrified even. We had a typical Pakistani wedding with Fida’s large extended family, and I moved to another country, so it was a lot for her to deal with. His family were not all happy either, because they’d have preferred someone from a Muslim background.

I don’t feel I need to dress differently. I don’t feel I need to wear hijab in my daily life, but I am very comfortable wearing it in public when performing religious duties. I don’t wear it also out of consideration for my mother, because it was a huge issue for her.

I was a sensible teenager. I didn’t drink. I am a teacher. So, I didn’t drop out of an old life to find a new one. But Islam has strengthened my ethics and morals, and given a good foundation for our family life.

You sometimes feel like a “trophy” because you are white. If you go to a gathering, everyone wants to help and teach you and take you under their wing, up to the point where I found it suffocating. But, mostly, a lot of conversion problems are human problems, women’s problems.

Anonymous, software developer, East Midlands

‘I feel my family will be disappointed, somewhat embarrassed and also scared that the world will treat me unfairly if I’m Muslim.’ Photograph: Felicity McCabe for the Guardian

I was the talk of the student Islamic society when I became a Muslim: happy-go-lucky, trendy, outspoken me. After meeting Muslims at university, I’d become intrigued. I started studying Islam and taking heed of the Qur’an’s teachings. Two years later, at 23, I took my shahadah (Islamic profession of faith).

The fact that my family were Sikhs intrigued many Muslims. I was handed many sisters’ phone numbers and people wanted to meet me. Then it all went quiet: the sisters were too busy. It hurt; I was alone.

I am single, 26, and live at home with my family who are non-practising Punjabi Sikhs. My family and Sikh friends have yet to learn of my conversion, but I am not hiding my copies of the Qur’an. I want my family to see that I’m studying Islam with a fine-tooth comb, so they’ll know I’ve made a well-informed decision; Islam has given me a sense of independence and serenity, I’ve become more accepting of what life throws at me and less competitive. But I feel they will be disappointed, somewhat embarrassed and also scared that the world will treat me unfairly if I’m Muslim.
Becoming a Muslim is not easy: people say hurtful things about your faith, and it’s a struggle to fit in with pious-looking sisters who wear traditional Arabic dress. It’s also hard to kiss goodbye to nights out in bars with friends. I loved to party; I still do. I take pride in my appearance: I wear makeup, dresses and heels. Initially, I went in all guns blazing and covered every inch of my body. I used to go to work in the hijab and remove it as I drove back into my home city. It was as if I was leading a double life and that became tiresome and stressful, so I stopped.

I would like to marry sooner rather than later, but how will I ever find a suitable husband? Most Muslims find mingling with women haram [forbidden by Islamic law]. Because I am not fully out in the open, Muslim men won’t know I exist.

• This article was edited on 14 October 2013. Since the interviews, Kristiane Backer’s personal circumstances have changed, and the piece has been changed to reflect this. Also, an additional, anonymous interviewee has been added at the end.

The Guardian

By Laura Fawaz, Contributing Reporter

Professor John Halaka poses next to the welcome sign for his event “Landscapes of Desires” at the Arab American National Museum.

Dearborn, MI–The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, hosted a talk event Friday night with political activist, artist and Professor John Halaka of San Diego, California.

Titled, “Landscapes Of Desires,” Halaka’s work revolves around what he refers to as the “instability” caused by the “forced exile” of the Palestinians.  He received his Bachelors of Art from the City University of New York in 1979, and his Masters of Fine Art from the University of Houston in 1983.  He has exhibited his collection nationally as well as internationally, and is especially known for the group exhibition “Made In Palestine,” organized and hosted in Houston, Texas in 2003.  He’s been teaching at the University of San Diego since 1991.

Halaka has even created documentary films, the first one being The Presence of Absence In The Ruins of Kafr Bir’im, and aired on 60 Minutes in November 2007.  This film shows the life of a man who, along with several others, was displaced from his Palestinian village of Kafr Bir’im at the age of 13.  They were later able to return, about 25 years later, but with a bit of a catch.  This young boy is now a middle-aged father named Abu Issa, and said, “One of the reasons we were permitted to return is because we were Christian.”

They were given the homes of ethnically cleansed Muslims in the village of Jaesh.  Abu Issa described the bitter sweet feeling of finally being able to go home, but knowing that it is being done in the same method that it was done to you; by illegally taking someone else’s home. 

Halaka calls this a “great tragedy,” for these Palestinians who are able to finally return to their homeland, but having to live in the home of another Palestinian who had lost their homes.  Another tragedy is how the Palestinians were robbed of this home land, lively hood, income, agricultural income, with no way to survive, until they were hired to “build Israel,” the country that took all of the above away from them, along with their dignity.  They were very poorly paid, and later known as Israeli Arabs.  They had to build everything, the synagogues, the factories, and even the separation wall. 

“Landscapes Of Desires” revolve around three words: instability, resilience and resistance.  These strong words are deep within each painting and drawing in this exhibit, politically, sociologically and physiologically.  Halaka explained that though these are subtle dimensions, it is the entire weight of each art piece produced.  “The images are deliberately void of overt political and cultural references to Palestine,” elaborated Halaka when discussing that these types of struggles are parallels between Palestinians and other persecuted people.

He began Friday’s talk luring his audience onto the path that brought him to this political theme of art.  His first section of his art pieces titled Artist As A Public Servant.  “For a little over 3 decades, my work has explored the esthetics of instability.   I’ve attempted to bring to visual expressions the feeling of being pulled out and being pushed off balance, and of our struggle … resisting the forces that constantly try to undermine our stability and our resilience in our ability to recover from physiological trauma,” Halaka began.

The images are designed to be beautiful and tragic, simultaneously.  And Halaka says that this gap is where he feels most comfortable as an artist.  In 2006, while he was in Palestine, he recorded interviews with Palestinian refugees, as well as searched and photographed their destroyed villages in different parts of the country.  There are 531 Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed and destroyed, since 1948, resulting in a displacement of approximately 850,000 Palestinian people between December 1947 and December 1948.  85% of the native population was illegally exiled so that Israel could be created.  Three generations later, the number of Palestinians living in exile is now over eight million individuals who are scattered in all parts of the globe.

“I wanted the viewer to wonder about the origins of the ruins,” said Halaka.

Halaka’s drawings are composed from photographs and video stills he took in several destroyed Palestinian villages that he visited to interview the survivors that were ethnically cleansed.  These Palestinian villages have been physically erased, literally, with their names wiped out from all official maps created after 1948.  Most renamed as Israeli towns, with all of their agricultural lands confiscated, settled on and cultivated by Israeli settlers who had new towns built.  The experience of a forced migration is one of the greatest sources of instability.  “Being stripped of one’s home and homeland, denied one’s identity and history, repeatedly rejected and humiliated and even blamed for your demise and perpetually ignored and forgotten by a world that worships the powerful and disdains the victim.  That is the experience of exile,” said Halaka.

“Visual disappearance of an igneous people.”

“I wanted to create an images that would allow the viewer to pause, and look and feel and think.”

“I tried to create ghostly images and mirage-like landscapes that looked like they were in the process of disappearing, or conversely, immerging from an obscurer vest.”

Halaka hopes that these pieces will make people think about the situation, the place that is Palestine, what happened to the Palestinian people during their forced exile, but moreover, the complication of the tragedy as a world.  “A Palestinian standing in front of my drawings would reflect on a cultural genocide and the physical devastation that was inflicted on her or him.  A Native American or an African American would reflect on the massive genocide that decimated their societies and almost erased their histories.  A European Jew would reflect on the incomprehensible violence inflicted upon them by their fellow Europeans, and would hopefully reflect on the tragic irony possibly the greatest irony of the 20th Century that the generation of the holocaust inflicted and continues to inflict the cultural holocaust on the Palestinians.”

“Stripped of their identity and driven from their land, refugees live as ghosts, unseen and unheard, unknown and forgotten … Refugees drift from no where to no where living like ghosts in an endless sea of fog, forgotten survivors, haunting my consciousness.”

Halaka concluded with, “It’s important to remind the world that this catastrophe was not caused by natural forces, but by the cruel hands of humans.  It is also critical to remind the world that we all have a moral obligation to identify and to act on our political responsibilities towards the Palestinians.”

To see Halaka’s art, check out www.johnhalaka.com, a website dedicated to his paintings and drawings.

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Just about everyone snores occasionally, but if snoring happens frequently it can affect the quantity and quality of your sleep and that of your family members and roommates. Snoring can lead to poor sleep and daytime fatigue, irritability, and increased health problems. If your snoring keeps your partner awake, it can also create major relationship problems. Thankfully, sleeping in separate bedrooms isn’t the only remedy for snoring. There are many other effective solutions available.

Not all snoring is the same. In fact, everyone snores for different reasons. When you get to the bottom of why you snore, then you can find the right solutions to a quieter, deeper sleep.

People who snore often have too much throat and nasal tissue, or “floppy” tissue that is more prone to vibrate. The position of your tongue can also get in the way of smooth breathing.  Evaluating how and when you snore will help you pinpoint whether the cause of your snoring is within your control or not. The good news is that no matter how and when you snore, there are solutions to making your snoring better.

Snoring happens when you can’t move air freely through your nose and mouth during sleep. Often caused by the narrowing of your airway, either from poor sleep posture or abnormalities of the soft tissues in your throat. A narrow airway gets in the way of smooth breathing and creates the sound of snoring.

Many factors, such as the anatomy of your mouth and sinuses, alcohol consumption, allergies, a cold, and your weight, can lead to snoring.

When you doze off and progress from a light sleep to a deep sleep, the muscles in the roof of your mouth (soft palate), tongue and throat relax. The tissues in your throat can relax enough that they partially block your airway and vibrate. And, the more narrowed your airway, the more forceful the airflow becomes. This causes tissue vibration to increase, which causes your snoring to grow louder.
The following conditions can affect the airway and cause snoring:

•    Your mouth anatomy. Having a low, thick soft palate can narrow your airway. People who are overweight may have extra tissues in the back of their throat that may narrow their airways. Likewise, if the triangular piece of tissue hanging from the soft palate (uvula) is elongated, airflow can be obstructed and vibration increased.

•    Alcohol consumption. Snoring also can be brought on by consuming too much alcohol before bedtime. Alcohol relaxes throat muscles and decreases your natural defenses against airway obstruction.

•    Nasal problems. Chronic nasal congestion or a crooked partition between your nostrils (deviated nasal septum) may contribute to your snoring.

•    Sleep apnea. Snoring also may be associated with obstructive sleep apnea. In this serious condition, your throat tissues partially or completely block your airway, preventing you from breathing.

Sleep apnea often is characterized by loud snoring followed by periods of silence when breathing stops or nearly stops. Eventually, this reduction or pause in breathing may signal you to wake up, and you may awaken with a loud snort or gasping sound. You may sleep lightly due to disrupted sleep. This pattern of breathing pauses may be repeated many times during the night.

People with sleep apnea usually experience periods when breathing slows or stops at least five times during every hour of sleep.

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