The Muslim World

British police will have a close look at the security arrangements in Makkah and Madinah during this year’s Hajj in order to gain first hand knowledge of the massive operation. The British Embassy announced that Jawaid Akhtar, an assistant chief constable with West Yorkshire Police (WYP), has been invited to the Kingdom by the Saudi Ministry of Interior. “He wants to see first hand how the Saudi police manage over two million pilgrims coming from around the world for the annual pilgrimage to Makkah,” an embassy official said. Akhtar performed Umrah earlier and said he has no intention to perform Hajj during this visit since he needs to concentrate on studying the whole chain of operations undertaken by the local police in Makkah and Madinah.


He has been in the police since 1982 and currently works in partnership programs with local authorities. He is one of the four WYP’s Assistant Chief Constables who is in charge of criminal justice support and community safety.

Plans for the 2006 Dubai International Boat Show (DIBS 2006) are being finalised. The show, organised by Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), will take place from March 14 to 18, 2006 at the Dubai International Marine Club, Mina Seyahi, and will generate multi-million dollar business deals for the booming Middle East marine industry. “Dubai is now firmly established on the marine calendar alongside the other global boat shows. DIBS 2006 will not only be welcoming established visitors from local GCC countries, but there will also be many new visitors coming from the emerging markets of India and Russia,” said Helal Saeed Khalfan Al Marri, director-general, Dubai World Trade Centre. The 2006 Dubai International Boat Show will see more than 120 boats on the water, and will be the largest gathering of leisure boats, equipment and associated services in the Middle East.

Women in Saudi Arabia are empowering themselves in affairs that concern them. A common scene these days in Makkah is to see women tackling unemployment and starting their own businesses by turning their kitchens into restaurants. Halema Mirza said that she started running her home-based restaurant when she failed to secure a decent job. “I cook all types of food for my clients,” she said. “I cook Indian, Persian and Asian food. My business began to expand so much that I hired three Saudi women to assist me. I also hired a driver to deliver the food to customers,” she added. Halema said that she has her regular customers and has even begun catering. All of this has been done without paid promotions. Simple word of mouth has sufficed. “Saudi women should be proud of doing these jobs. It is better than staying unempl-oyed. If a Saudi woman has a talent then she should invest in it,” said Halema. Home economics graduate Lamya Abdul Razzek said that she could not find a job for three years after she graduated from King Abdul Aziz University. She thought of creating a business at home using her mother’s kitchen. She started to make Makkah-style sweets and sell them for weddings. As her business started to grow, she hired more people to help her in the kitchen to meet the growing demand. So while the Kingdom continues to work on reforms to help empower women, at least a few of them have taken the initiative to empower themselves.

The first ever virtual museum on Islamic art and architecture in the Mediterranean, laun-ched recently, gives navigators an opportu-nity to explore the splendid Islamic monum-ents of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The second phase of Museum With No Frontiers Project (MWNF), is aimed at developing cultural relations between countries north and south of the Mediterranean by enhancing the landmarks of a shared history. “The Discover Islamic Art Virtual Museum” gives instant access to 850 artefacts and 385 monuments, linking every Islamic item exhibited to sites on the MWNF itineraries, which was created between 1999 and 2004. The electronic display was achieved through the installation of a special network through 17 European and Mediterranean museums in 14 countries — Algeria, Eg-ypt, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, the Palestinian Authority, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The site www.discover islamicart.org, which is available in English, French and Arabic in addition to the local language of each participating country, creates an innovative exhibition style showing the Islamic heritage of the Mediterranean basin, alongside the collections of Islamic art held by the participating museums, within a virtual environment.

Two business-women, Lama al-Sulaiman and Nashwa Taher were elected to the 18-member Board of the Jeddah Chamber and Industry recently. This was the first time that women were elected to a body in the Kingdom. The Jeddah Chamber has 40,000 members and nearly 10 per cent of them are reported to be women. King Abdullah who assumed the throne has promised to promote women in all sectors of life and development of the Kingdom. Hitherto, the women were neither allowed to vote nor stand for municipal elections, the only ones held in the country. But they are likely to participate in the municipal elections in 2009.

“Thank God we are done with the water-tight Israeli restrictions and can smoothly pass the Rafah border crossing,” said a jubilant Um Mahmoud. Like thousands of fellow Gazans, the Palestinian mother carried the bags through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt to fly for Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj. “We are walking over the moon. Finally, we will be able to perform Hajj. Last year, the Israeli occupation forces prevented us from going on the spiritual journey,.” she said. Palestinian pilgrims began leaving for Saudi Arabia via the Rafah border terminal, the only land crossing between Gaza and the rest of the world. The crossing, which opened to a flood of excited Palestinians on November 26, 2005, is jointly operated by the Palestinian Authority and Egypt along with EU (European Union) as observers. “Bye bye Israeli instigations,” said Mohamed Al-Masri while leaving the Rafah crossing. “I have waited years for this moment. Life is short and I wanted to perform Hajj last year, but the Israeli occupation forces stopped me,” he recalled. Before the unilateral withdrawal, Israeli occupation forces controlled ins and outs of the Gaza Strip, subjecting Palestinians to very strict security measures.

Muslim volunteers in Indonesia guarded churches on Christmas Eve. Members of a youth wing, the Banser group, affiliated with Indonesia’s largest Muslim group, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) were posted to churches across the world’s largest Muslim-populated nation to guard against possible attacks during Christmas festivities. “It’s our tradition. It is our obligation to protect one another as members of the nation,” said NU deputy chairman Masdar Masudi. Indonesia’s intelligence agency had warned that attacks may be planned by extremists over the Christmas-New Year period in large cities across the sprawling archipelago, including Jakarta.


Indonesia has 87 to 90 per cent of its population that follows Islam while lesser than 7 per cent follows Christianity. The rest are indigenous people. In 2000, several small bombs exploded at churches, killing 19 people, including a Banser member guarding a church in East Java, and injuring many more in what was seen as an attack against Christianity.

The Aga Khan Award for Architecture has announced eligibility criteria for completed building projects to be considered for the Award’s Tenth Cycle that spans the period from 2005 to 2007. Eligible projects may be submitted on-line by September 2006. The Award is governed by a Steering Committee chaired by Prince Kareem Aga Khan, who has appointed a new Committee for the 2007 Award Cycle. The Committee is responsible for providing thematic direction for the Award programme in response to the priorities and issues that have emerged during the recent past, and to develop plans for its cyclical and long-term future. A seminar entitled “Architectural Journalism and Criticism” was held in Kuwait City on December 6 and 7, 2005 and was jointly organised by the Award and the Kuwait Society of Engineers. The proceedings of the seminar presentations and discussions will be published during 2006.For more inform-ation, log on to: www.akdn.org

The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) conducted a two week campaign to identify the people who died as a result of genocide in Bosnia and confirm the deaths to their relatives. The Commission asked the 26,000 Bosnian refugees in the US to donate a few drops of blood to conduct DNA testing in order to identify more than 26,000 victims who were found in mass graves in forests of Srebenica. The Bosnian refugees are settled in Syracuse (NY), Michigan, St Louis (Missouri), Jacksonville, Connecticut, Chicago, Virginia, Hartford and Atlanta in large numbers. And 70 per cent of them are from Srebenica. Adisa Pot, President of the Association of Bosnians in Syracuse said, ‘You do not find a single Bosnian who does not have a person missing from among his relatives’. The ICMP has been organised to prepare the database of the missing people and since 2001 it has been able to match DNA of 8607 victims of the genocide and the surviving relatives.

A billionaire Saudi prince, ranked by Forbes Magazine as the world’s fifth richest person and wealthiest Muslim businessman, has donated $40 million to Harvard and Georgetown Universities to expand their Islamic studies programs. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of the late Saudi King Fahd, and a prominent figure both inside the Saudi Kingdom and internationally, gave $20 million to each university, according to both schools’ web sites. “Bridging the understand-ing between East and West is important for peace and tolerance,” said Alwaleed, a global investor with a net worth estimated by Forbes of more than $20 billion. The gift to Harvard -one of the 25th largest in its history will fund four new faculty positions in a new Islamic studies program and make rare Islamic textual sources available in digital format. Georgetown, the country’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, said it would expand its Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding. Harva-rd University already has the largest group of Islamic specialists in the English-speaking world, though it does not have a separate Islamic studies department. It said the new Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Islamic Studies Program will bring together faculty, students and researchers from across Harvard and will be housed in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in coordination with Harvard Divinity School.

World’s top pop singer Michael Jackson, who recently settled down in Manama has donated a huge amount of money, the figure was not disclosed, for building a state-of-the-art mosque near his luxury palace in the Bahraini capital. The proposed mosque would be designated for learning the principles and teachings of Islam, as well as teaching of English language, for which high-standard teachers would be brought from United States under his personal supervision. Jackson did so as a token of appreciation to the Bahraini people, who welcomed him and treated him as if he was one of the citizens of their country. Michael Jackson has moved to reside in Manama after the long-judicial battle, in which he ended up being acquitted of the charges of child molestation.


It is noteworthy that Germain Jackson, brother of Michael had embraced Islam in the early 1990s, and he was one of the former “Jackson Five” band and the solo singer. Germain says his brother Michael has great interest in the study of Islamic books since a long time.