VOICE OF GLOBAL UMMAH

Volume 79 , May 17, 2009
St. Louis, Missouri

Editors: Mohamed & Rashida Ziauddin

بــــــــــسم الله الرحمن الرحيـــــــــــــم

In The Name Of Allah, Most Gracious and Most Merciful

Sri Lanka Crisis: Over 200,000 People Displaced by Conflict

EMERGENCY APPEAL FROM:

"Muslim Aid"

Assalamu alaykum - Peace and blessings be upon you

8th May 2009, Sri Lanka

Since February 2008, fighting between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (the LTTE, also known as the Tamil Tigers) and the Sri Lankan government has reached a climax leaving 200,000 people stranded in refugee camps as they attempt to flee the fighting.

It is believed that some 50,000 people are still caught up in the war zone. The 26-year old insurgency which has killed over 70,000 people and injured thousands more, has uprooted communities from their homes and forced them to take refuge in the more densely populated areas of Vavunia, Jaffna and Trincomalee that are unable to cope with the huge influx of internally displaced people (IDPs).

In Vavunia, 53,000 people have arrived since Sunday May 3rd 2009; the overwhelming numbers of injured and malnourished are putting pressure on hospitals and medical facilities due to poor infrastructure and inadequate resources.

In the camps, thousands are without access to clean water and adequate sanitation facilities increasing the threat of illness from waterborne diseases. Children, who make up about 30% of the displaced population, are especially at risk from chicken pox, ring worms and diarrhea due to dehydration and contaminated water supplies. Muslim Aid's response:

Muslim Aid has allocated £55,000 to provide emergency relief to the people of Sri Lanka. Since February this year the Muslim Aid Sri Lanka Field Office has provided: * 100 hospital beds to facilitate the rehabilitation of the injured in overwhelmed hospitals. * A mobile field hospital in Vavunia refugee camp providing medical treatment to 2,000 patients a day. * With our partners Kuwait Hospital and Al Shabab, we are supporting the provision of ambulances and medical supplies. *

Muslim Aid will provide clean drinking water using our trekker water purification equipment, water purification tablets and water bowsers that are currently waiting to enter the region.

Each water purification system can supply 144,000 litres of water per day. Please help us to give more to those with nowhere to turn. Donate Now. They need your support.

For follow up to assist Muslim Aid, please contact: muslimaid@gator.gtml2.com

ONGOING SUFFERING OF THE TAMILS IN SRI LANKA

May 11, 2009

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – The United Nations condemned a "bloodbath" in Sri Lanka's northern war zone Monday after two days of shelling that a government doctor said killed as many as 1,000 ethnic Tamil civilians — including 106 children.

Volunteers dug mass graves in the marshland, putting 50 to 60 bodies in each pit, according to Dr. V. Shanmugarajah, who works at a makeshift hospital in the war zone. He said one nurse was killed along with his family in a trench that was then filled with soil and turned into their grave.

A Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil man weeps over his dead son following a shell attack out side a makeshift hospital. (AP)
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A injured Tamil child is taken care of. (AP)

In this photograph released by the Sri Lankan navy April 22, 2009, a Tamil man and woman carry children after fleeing an area called the "No Fire Zone" controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Reuters/Sri Lankan Govt)

Displaced Tamil children at a camp in Chettikulam, northern Sri Lanka on April 29, 2009. (AFP/File/Pedro Ugarte)

A Tamilnet photo allegedly taken inside the Tamil Tiger rebel-controlled area in mullaittiu, northeast Sri Lanka, shows civilians waiting for food after fleeing their homes (AFP/Tamilnet/Ho)

Relatives and mourners of nine Sri Lankan villagers carry their coffins at a funeral service in the southeastern area of Buttala. The British and French foreign ministers said that Tamil Tigers rebels in Sri Lanka are using civilians as human shields, which was preventing them from leaving the conflict zone. (AFP)

Muslim Doctor Blames Prayers for her Dismissal

Yorkshire Post, may 15, 2009

A Muslim doctor who was dismissed from her job claims she was discriminated against on religious grounds because she wanted to attend Mosque for prayers every Friday, a tribunal heard yesterday. Dr Musarrat Syed-Shah, 31, is alleging religious discrimination and victimisation against four partners from the North Leeds Medical Practice after her partnership agreement was terminated on August 8 last year.

The employment tribunal in Leeds heard that Dr Syed-Shah claims the other doctors were "unhappy" about her attending the weekly prayers. Michael McDonough, for Dr Syed-Shah, told the tribunal: "They were unhappy with her attending the Mosque for Friday prayers and they applied a condition to her which was not applied to anyone else by saying they were not allowed to leave the surgery between sessions."

Mr McDonough continued: "Following the notice of termination on August 8, she was expressly forbidden from going to the Mosque from August 8 till the end of her contract." Dr Syed-Shah also claims she was victimised after refusing to see both her own and another GP's patients while covering for that doctor's surgery.

Mr McDonough said the amount of patients meant Dr Syed-Shah would have had to see one person every five minutes, which she refused to do. "She was asked to take on another doctor's surgery, which would have involved her doubling up on patients," he said. The solicitor added that Dr Syed-Shah had also suffered repetitive strain injury, which she believed was as a result of undertaking four-hour telephone consultation sessions with patients. She claims complaints about these health problems also led to her victimisation at the practice, which has surgeries in Harrogate Road and Milan Street.

Dr Syed-Shah described herself in her evidence as a "devout" Muslim who had been on a pilgrimage to Mecca before taking up the post at the practice and prayed five times a day. She had attended mosques on Fridays throughout her adult life. On being given the job, Dr Syed-Shah said she requested Fridays off but was told it was not convenient. However, she believed her sessions could be arranged to allow time in between to visit the Mosque for Friday prayers, and said the practice manager, Sharon James, and one of the other partners, Dr Manjit Purewal, agreed there would be no problem with this.

When Dr Purewal later asked her to take on an extra shift on Fridays, meaning she would have to work for more than nine hours without a break and miss prayers, she objected and was accused of not pulling her weight. Dr Syed-Shah said: "I felt that this was an attack on me by Dr Purewal. He knew that I could not take up an extra surgery on that day." At a meeting of the partners on August 4, one partner, Dr Marcus Julier, said: "Nobody should have a commitment that is more important than this surgery on any day that they are working at this practice.

Dr Syed-Shah said she was told the next day by partner Dr Elizabeth Martin that she would be "out of a job" if she continued going to Friday prayers. She said: "I felt bullied and victimised." Describing the occasion when she refused to take on another GP's patients as well as her own, Dr Syed-Shah said in her evidence that she did not consider it to be "clinically safe" to see a patient every five minutes.

The doctor said she became concerned about her health after two of her fingers swelled up and her hand and arm became painful following four-hour "telephone triage" sessions, which saw her "continually using" a computer and telephone. Dr Syed-Shah said that despite repeated complaints to the other partners about her health problems no-one suggested she should be excused from these sessions and "ignored their obligations to safeguard my health". Dr Syed-Shah was given one month's notice on August 8 in a letter which said the reason for the termination was that "arrangements are unfortunately... not working".

TURKEY

Turkish Muslim girls wait on April 7, 2009 behind a barricade near the Hagia sophia Church, now a museum, in Istanbul before US President Barack Obama's visit. Hagia Sophia which means Holy Wisdom in Greek, was built in the 6th century and converted to a Mosque in 1453 when the Ottomans conquered Istanbul, then called Constantinople. pledging respect for Islam, Obama turned to public diplomacy on April 7, meeting religious leaders and students and tourning ancient monuments in Istanbul on the second day of his first visit to a mainly Muslim nation. AFP Photo/Mustafa Ozer

US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (AFP/Salih Zeki Fazlioglyu)

SNAPSHOTS FROM GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL MEETING IN DOHA - MAY 2, 2009

(REUTERS, Yahoo News)