VOICE OF GLOBAL UMMAH

VOICE OF GLOBAL UMMAH

Volume 53, November 10, 2008
St. Louis, Missouri

Editors: Mohamed and Rashida Ziauddin

In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent and the Most Merciful

CONTENTS:

(1) Victory of Barrack Hussein Obama in pictures (Sample from ten countries)

(2) Hey, Democrats, thank the women. (For victory of President Elect Barack Obama)

(3) California voters approve gay-marriage ban.

(ON FAMILY VALUES: Ed Note: Our hats off to the Voters of California to have upheld the five thousand year old dictum of marriage: (That) MARRIAGE IS EXCLUSIVELY BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN. Although the CALIFORNIA SUPREME COURT struck it down, the PEOPLE OVER-RODE THE ABOVE COURT'S DECISION. Here again, we call upon the majority voices of all faiths - Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhist et.c to work together through the BRIDGE OF INTERFAITH BONDING to keep the core of marriage intact that it is between a man and women).

(4) U.S. ELECTIONS: First Muslim Woman to Win the Seat for Michigan State Assembly

(5) Catholics, Muslims open landmark talks at Vatican

(1) VICTORY OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IN PICTURES: (Sample from ten countries)

PAKISTAN

Students hold placards to celebrate the victory of U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) in Multan November 5, 2008. Obama's victory fostered hopes in Pakistan that the United States would become less overbearing towards its ally in the war on terrorism, and nurture the country's recent return to civilian-led democracy. REUTERS/Asim Tanveer (PAKISTAN)

KUWAIT

Kuwaiti men follow the victory speech of President-elect Barak Obama in Salmiya, Kuwait City on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. ( AP Photo/Gustavo)

IRAN

An Iranian schoolgirl walks past an anti-US mural painted on the wall of the former US embassy in Tehran on November 3. Middle East countries hailed Barack Obama's win in the US presidential election after the turbulent years of the Bush administration but Iraq said it does not expect any overnight change in policies.
(AFP/File)


An unidentified Iranian man decorates on his shirt with a badge of US President elect Barack Obama, in Tehran, Iran on Wednesday Nov. 5, 2008. Iranians Wednesday welcomed the landslide victory of Democrat Barack Obama as America's first black president, saying he partly owes his triumph over Republican Sen. John McCain to the deeply unpopular war-mongering policies of President George W. Bush. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)

PALESTINE (OCCUPIED TERRITORY)-Ramallah, WEST BANK

With a U.S. and Palestinian flag in the background, U.S. Consulate employee Sibby Adams of Arlington, TX, jokes as she holds a card depicting U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, during a reception in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Barack Obama wrote his name indelibly into the pages of American history Tuesday, engineering a social and political upheaval to become the country's first black president-elect in a runaway victory over Republican John McCain. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

JORDAN

A girl displays a photo of U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) on her mobile phone with the word Mabrook (congratulations) in Amman November 5,2008. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji

IRAQ

A man who sells newspapers drinks his tea in front of a newspaper which covers the headline story of Sen. Barack Obama's victory in U.S. presidential election, in Baghdad, Iraq, on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Many in Iraq said Wednesday they don't expect an immediate shift in U.S. policy toward their country when Barack Obama takes over as the new U.S. president, despite his calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops within 16 months. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

Mohammed Saher, center, a member of Iraq's black community in the southern city of Basra, dances while the al-Basra band play music, as they celebrate Barack Obama's U.S. electoral victory, in central Basra, Iraq, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008.
(AP Photo/Nabil)

Members of the al-Basra band play music as they celebrate Barack Obama's U.S. electoral victory, in central Basra, Iraq, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. (AP Photo/Nabil)

Mohammed Saher, a member of Iraq's black community in the southern city of Basra, celebrates Barack Obama's U.S. electoral victory, in central Basra, Iraq, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. (AP Photo)

KENYA

People carry an U.S. flag as they celebrate President-elect Senator Barack Obama's historic White House victory in Nairobi's Kibera slum, November 5, 2008.
(Noor Khamis/Reuters)

Sarah Hussein Obama, grandmother to U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), is escorted from a news conference at her home in Nyangoma Kogelo village, 430km (267 miles) west of Kenya's capital Nairobi, November 5, 2008. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

Malik, center left white hat, the half-brother of U.S. President elect Barack Obama celebrates with friends and family members after Barack's victory in the U.S. election was announced, at the family's homestead in Kogelo village, Kenya, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. The village is where Obama's step-grandmother lives. Barack Obama's Kenyan family erupted in cheers Wednesday, singing 'We are going to the White House!' as Obama became the first African-American elected president in the United States. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Malick Obama (R), stepbrother to U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), addresses a news conference in Nyangoma Kogelo village, 430km (267 miles) west of Kenya's capital Nairobi, November 5, 2008. Looking on is President Obama's stepmother Grace Obama (L). REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

Kenyan family members of U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, including his step-grandmother Sarah Obama, center right red top, celebrate after his victory in the U.S. election was announced, at the family's homestead in Kogelo village, Kenya, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. The village is where U.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama's step-grandmother lives.
(AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Traditional dancers celebrate U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama's (D-IL) victory in Nyangoma Kogelo village, 430km (267 miles) west of Kenya's capital Nairobi, November 5, 2008. Kenyans in Obama's ancestral homeland sang and danced with joy on Wednesday as the Illinois senator they see as one of their own became the first black U.S. President. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

INDIA



Kashmiri students writes placards after the victory of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in Srinagar, India, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Nearly a dozen Kashmiri students celebrated the victory of Barack Obama and appealed him to resolve the dispute over the Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.
(AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

Kashmiri students hold candles and placards after the victory of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in Srinagar, India, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Nearly a dozen Kashmiri students celebrated the victory of Barack Obama and appealed him to resolve the dispute over the Himalayan region between India and Pakistan. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)



Kashmiri students hold candles and placards after the victory of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama in Srinagar, India, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008.

India hailed the election of Obama as the next U.S. president on Wednesday, saying his "extraordinary journey" to the White House would inspire people not only in his country but around the world. REUTERS/Fayaz Kabli (INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR)

People take photographs of a sand sculpture of U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama at Puri beach in eastern Indian November 5, 2008.
REUTERS/Sanjib Mukherjee

A portrait of President-elect Barack Obama is seen on a t-shirt during a gathering of American Democrats living in India to celebrate the victory of Obama in Bangalore, India, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008.

US expatriate supporters of Barack Obama celebrate his electoral win in Bangalore on November 5. India congratulated Barack Obama Wednesday on what Premier Manmohan Singh called his "extraordinary" election victory, while the ruling Congress party praised the US president-elect's "youthful energy.
"(AFP/Dibyangshu Sarkar) (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

EGYPT

Egyptians walk in front of a newspaper fronted by pictures of the U.S. elections and titled ' America elect its first black President' at a coffee shop in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Barack Obama won the US presidential election

INDONESIA

Effendi, a former teacher of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama points to a photo of Obama as he watches the U.S. election on a big screen in Jakarta November 5, 2008. Obama's former classmates in Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood, reacted with joy as the boy who stood by their side in the school yearbook years ago was elected as the first black U.S. president.
REUTERS/Enny Nuraheni

Sonni I.S. Gondokusumo (L) and others classmate of Barack Obama gather in a cafe to watch the U.S. election on a big screen in Jakarta November 5, 2008. Obama's former classmates in Indonesia, where he spent part of his childhood, reacted with joy as the boy who stood by their side in the school yearbook years ago was elected as the first black U.S. president. REUTERS/Enny Nuraheni

Bags of Indonesian coffee labelled "Obama 2008 Blend" are displayed in a cafe in Jakarta November 5, 2008. The "Obama 2008 Blend" coffee was sold out during an expatriate gathering in Jakarta for the U.S. presidential election, one of the owners, Alun Evans, said on Wednesday. REUTERS

LOS ANGELES, U.S.

Irma Reed, 84, sits under a historical sign as she waits to vote in the presidential election in a museum display at the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper office in Los Angeles, November 4, 2008. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

(2) Hey, Democrats: Thank the Women
Nov 5, 2008,
By Sarah Wheaton

On the day after the vote, everyone seems to want to claim credit for President-elect Barack Obama. But as Abigail Adams once wrote (though in a different context), the people from Emily’s List “desire you would remember the ladies.”

Emily’s List, which supports the candidacies of Democratic women, said it was women who put Mr. Obama over the top. According to exit polls, men virtually split their votes, with approximately 48 percent choosing Senator John McCain and 49 going with Mr. Obama. But 56 percent of women chose Mr. Obama.

(www.thecaucas.blogs.nytimes.com)

(3) California voters approve gay-marriage ban

(Condensed version: AP)

LOS ANGELES – In an election otherwise full of liberal triumphs, the gay rights movement suffered a stunning defeat as California voters approved a ban on same-sex marriages that overrides a recent court decision legalizing them. The constitutional amendment — widely seen as the most momentous of the nation's 153 ballot measures — will limit marriage to heterosexual couples, the first time such a vote has taken place in a state where gay unions are legal.

A gay couple watches the acceptance speech of U.S. President-elect Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) at an election party hosted by the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center at the Music Box in Hollywood, California November 4, 2008. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni (UNITED STATES) US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008

Gay-rights activists had a rough election elsewhere as well. Ban-gay-marriage amendments were approved in Arizona and Florida, and Arkansas voters approved a measure banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Supporters made clear that gays and lesbians were their main target.

Same-sex married couples watch the televised acceptance speech of President-elect Barack Obama during a rally against Proposition 8 in San Francisco, November 4, 2008. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

Similar bans had prevailed in 27 states before Tuesday's elections, but none were in California's situation — with about 18,000 gay couples married since a state Supreme Court ruling in May. The state attorney general, Jerry Brown, has said those marriages will remain valid, although legal challenges are possible. Spending for and against the amendment reached $74 million, making it the most expensive social-issues campaign in U.S. history and the most expensive campaign this year outside the race for the White House. (Associated Press writer Paul Elias in San Francisco contributed to this report).

(4) U.S. ELECTIONS: First Muslim Woman to Win the Seat for Michigan State Assembly

(www.arabamericannews.com)


A child carrying water in a brick factory in Pakistan.
When will the Global Ummah rise up and emphatically state that CHILD LABOR IS UNACCEPTABLE IN ISLAM ?

"Pakistan has recently passed laws greatly limiting child labor and indentured servitude—but those laws are universally ignored, and some eleven million children, aged four to fourteen, keep that country's factories operating, often working in brutal and squalid conditions" (www.theatlantic.com)

(Nov 10, 2008: Condensed from article by Andrew Bartlett)

Ms Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim woman of Palestinian descent, had initially won the primary contest to be the Democratic nominee for a Detroit based state seat. In the elections held this week, she won that seat, polling 90 per cent to the Republican candidate’s 10 per cent, and in the process becoming the:
First Muslim woman elected to the Michigan legislature.

According to the American Muslim Alliance, only nine Muslims were serving in state legislatures nationwide before Tuesday’s elections, and only one of them is a woman. There are two Muslim members of Congress — Democrats Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Andre Carson of Indiana.

Lawyer and community activist Rashida Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants who never attended high school, becomes the first Muslim woman ever to serve in the Michigan Legislature. She said she wouldn’t have run but for the repeated urging of her Jewish boss and predecessor, outgoing Democratic state Rep. Steve Tobocman.

“In my heart, I was more of a social worker than anything,” said Tlaib, 32. She said her top priorities will be immigrant rights and pollution, a major issue to her constituents who are surrounded by oil refineries and factories.

The eldest of 14 children of a retired Ford Motor Co. worker and his wife, she was the first in her family to earn a high school diploma. She went on to finish college and law school while helping raise 13 siblings.

Her mother was born in Beit Ur El Foka, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Her father was born in Beit Hanina, a Jerusalem suburb.

The Michigan Legislature’s first known Muslim member was James Karoub. Born in Highland Park to an Imam and his wife who came from what now is Lebanon, Karoub served three terms in the state House in the 1960s.

(5) Catholics, Muslims open landmark talks at Vatican

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Senior Vatican and Islamic scholars launched their first Catholic-Muslim Forum on Tuesday to improve relations between the world's two largest faiths by discussing what unites and divides them.

The three-day meeting comes two years after Pope Benedict angered the Muslim world with a speech implying Islam was violent and irrational. In response, 138 Muslim scholars invited Christian churches to a new dialogue to foster mutual respect through a better understanding of each other's beliefs.

In their manifesto, "A Common Word," the Muslims argued that both faiths shared the core principles of love of God and neighbor. The talks focus on what this means for the religions and how it can foster harmony between them.

The meeting, including an audience with Pope Benedict, is the group's third conference with Christians after talks with United States Protestants in July and Anglicans last month.

Delegation leaders Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Bosnian Grand Mufti Mustafa Ceric opened the session with a moment of silence so delegations, each comprising 28 members and advisers, could say their own prayers for its success.

"It was a very cordial atmosphere," one delegate said.

Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, told the French Catholic daily La Croix on Monday that the Forum "represents a new chapter in a long history" of often strained relations.

He said discussing theology was difficult because of different understandings of God. The closed meeting started with a Catholic official spelling out the Christian teaching that humans can only approach God through Jesus Christ.

Muslim theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr responded that such a view excluded non-Christians from salvation and suggested ways to see Islamic parallels to Christian views of God's love.

Delegates said the discussion that followed was friendly and respectful, not a clash of opinions. "We need to speak openly so we get to know each other," said one Muslim delegate.

NEW URGENCY

Christianity is the world's largest religion with 2 billion followers, just over half of them Catholic. Islam is next with 1.3 billion believers.

Saudi King Abdullah visits the United Nations next week to promote a parallel interfaith dialogue he launched last summer.

These and other meetings reflect a new urgency among Muslims since the September 11 attacks, the "clash of civilizations" theory and Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech showed a widening gap between the two faiths.

The Vatican was at first cool to the Common Word initiative, arguing that talks among theologians had little meaning if they did not lead to greater respect for religious liberty in Muslim countries, where some Christian minorities face oppression.

"We can only have a real dialogue if all believers have equal rights everywhere, which is not the case in some Muslim countries," said one Catholic delegate who requested anonymity.

The agenda reflects the different views. Tuesday's talks centered on theological issues proposed by the Muslims, Wednesday's meeting will focus on religious freedom issues the Vatican wants to raise.

The Vatican delegation includes bishops from minority Christian communities in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan. Among the Muslims are Sunnis and Shi'ites from around the world and converts from the United States, Canada and Britain.

There are three Catholic and two Muslim women participating.

The delegations will have an audience with Pope Benedict on Thursday and hold a public discussion that afternoon, the only session open to the media.

The Forum is due to meet every two years, alternately in Rome and in a Muslim country.(Editing by Tim Pearce)

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