#Muslim Welfare Community

[rightnewshindi]

कमिश्नर कोर्ट के फैसले के खिलाफ हाई कोर्ट पहुंची मुस्लिम वेलफेयर कम्युनिटी, आज नागा साधु करेंगे शहर की परिक्रमा

#News कमिश्नर कोर्ट के फैसले के खिलाफ हाई कोर्ट पहुंची मुस्लिम वेलफेयर कम्युनिटी, आज नागा साधु करेंगे शहर की परिक्रमा

Mandi News: जिला मुख्यालय के जेल रोड स्थित मस्जिद में बिना नक्शे के अवैध निर्माण को लेकर कमिश्नर कोर्ट के फैसले को मुस्लिम वेलफेयर कम्युनिटी के लोगों ने शुक्रवार को हाईकोर्ट में चुनौती दी है। नगर निगम मंडी की कमिश्नर कोर्ट ने 12 सितंबर को मस्जिद में किए गए अवैध निर्माण को 30 दिन के भीतर ध्वस्त करने और पुरानी यथास्थिति बहाल करने का फैसला सुनाया था। फैसले के अनुसार मस्जिद में बिना नक्शा पास कराए…

[teh-tj]

Greenbelt Maryland. Or, how America almost solved housing only to abandon it.

**I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I AM JUST AN ENTHUSIST! DO NOT TREAT MY OPINIONS/SPECULATION AS EDUCATION!**

During the Depression America faced a housing crisis that rhymes with but differs from our own. It’s different in that there wasn’t a supply issue, there were loads of houses in very desirable areas, but they were still unaffordable as people’s incomes collapsed causing a deflationary spiral. While the housing supply subtly grew and succeeded demand, people simply couldn’t pay the meager rents and mortgages. Herbert Hoover failed to manage the Depression, while his inaction is greatly exaggerated, his policy of boosting the economy with works projects and protecting banks from runs failed and the depression only got more pronounced in his term. In comes Franklin Roosevelt, a progressive liberal much like his distant and popular cousin/uncle-in-law Teddy. Franklin’s plan was to create a large safety net for people to be able to be economically viable even if they’re otherwise poor. These reforms are called the New Deal and they did many controversial things like giving disabled and retired people welfare, giving farmers conditioned subsidies to manipulate the price of food, a works program to build/rebuild vital infrastructure, etc. One of these programs was the USHA (a predecessor of America’s HUD), an agency created to build and maintain public housing projects with the goal of creating neighborhoods with artificially affordable rents so people who work low-wage jobs or rely on welfare can be housed.

In this spirit, the agency started experimenting with new and hopefully efficient housing blueprints and layouts. If you ever see very large apartment towers or antiquated brick low-rise townhouses in America, they might be these. The USHA bought land in many large and medium-sized cities to build “house-in-park” style apartments, which is what they sound like. Putting apartment buildings inside green spaces so residents can be surrounded by greenery and ideally peacefully coexist. Three entire towns were built with these ideas outside three medium-sized cities that were hit hard by the depression; Greenbelt outside DC, Greenhills outside Cincinnati, and Greendale outside Milwaukee. The idea was to move people out of these crowded cities into these more sustainable and idyllic towns. There were many catches though, the USHA planned for these towns to be all-white, they used to inspect the houses for cleanliness, they required residents to be employed or on Social Security (which basically meant retired or disabled), they also had an income limit and if your income exceeded that limit you were given a two-month eviction notice, and you were expected to attend town meetings at least monthly. While the towns didn’t have religious requirements they did only build protestant churches. Which is an example of discrimination by omission. While a Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc could in theory move into town they also couldn’t go to a Catholic church, synagogue, or Islamic center without having to extensively travel. Things planned communities leave out might indicate what kind of people planned communities want to leave out. Basically, the whole thing was an experiment in moving Americans into small direct-democracy suburbs as opposed to the then-current system of crowded cities and isolated farm/mine towns. This type of design wasn’t without precedent, there were famously company towns like Gary and Pullman which both existed outside Chicago. But those lacked the autonomy and democracy some USHA apparatchiks desired.

The green cities were a series of low-rise apartments housing over a hundred people each, they were short walks from a parking lot and roads, and walking paths directly and conveniently led residents to the town center which had amenities and a shopping district. Greenbelt in particular is famous for its art deco shopping complex, basically an early mall where business owners would open stores for the townspeople. These businesses were stuck being small, given the income requirements, but it was encouraged for locals to open a business to prove their entrepreneurial spirit. Because city affairs were elected at town meetings the city was able to pull resources to eventually build their own amenities the USHA didn’t originally plan for like a public swimming pool or better negotiated garbage collection.

These three cities were regarded as a success by the USHA until World War II happened and suddenly they showed flaws given the shift in focus. These towns housed poor people who barely if at all could afford a car, so semi-isolated towns outside the city became redundant and pointless. The USHA also had to keep raising the income requirement since the war saw a spike in well-paying jobs which made the town unsustainable otherwise. During the war and subsequent welfare programs to help veterans, these green cities became de facto retirement and single-mother communities for a few years as most able-bodied men were drafted or volunteered. Eventually, the USDA would make the towns independent, after the war they raised the income limit yet again and slowly the towns repopulated. As cars became more common and suburbanization became a wider trend these towns would be less noticeably burdensome and were eventually interpreted as just three out of hundreds of small suburban towns that grew out of major cities. They were still all-white and the town maintained cleanliness requirements; after all they lived in apartments it just takes one guy’s stink-ass clogged toilet to ruin everyone’s day.

By the 1950’s these towns were fully independent. Greendale and Greenhills voted to privatize their homes and get rid of the income limit all together so the towns can become more normal. Greenhills, Ohio still has many of these USHA-era houses and apartments, all owned by a series of corporations and private owners. Greendale, Wisconsin property owners have demolished most of these old houses and restructured their town government so most traces of its founding are lost. But Greenbelt, Maryland still maintains a lot of its structure to this day. Greenbelt has privatized some land and buildings, but most of the original USHA apartments are owned by the Greenbelt Homes, Inc cooperative which gives residents co-ownership of the building they live in and their payments mostly go to maintenance. Because Greenbelt was collectively owned the House Un-American Activities Committee would blacklist and put on trial most of Greenbelt’s residents and officials. Though they didn’t find much evidence of communist influence, the town was a target of the red scare by the DMV area, residents were discriminated, blacklisted, and pressured into selling their assets. While Greenbelt did commodify some of the town, the still existing co-ownership shows the town’s democratic initiative to maintain its heritage. The green cities desegregated in the 50’s and 60’s depending on state law, Greenbelt was the last to desegregate under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while discrimination persisted for years by the 1980’s the town would become half non-white, today the town is 47% black and 10% Asian.

Though these towns largely integrated with a privatized and suburbanized America, they do stand as a memorial to an idea of American urbanism that died. They were designed for walkability and were planned to be more democratic and egalitarian towns, with the conditions that came with segregation and government oversight. You can’t ignore the strict standards and racism in their history, but you can say that about many towns. How do you think America would be different if more cities had green suburbs that were more interconnected and designed for community gatherings?

[tangentiallly]

One way to spot patterns is to show AI models millions of labelled examples. This method requires humans to painstakingly label all this data so they can be analysed by computers. Without them, the algorithms that underpin self-driving cars or facial recognition remain blind. They cannot learn patterns.

The algorithms built in this way now augment or stand in for human judgement in areas as varied as medicine, criminal justice, social welfare and mortgage and loan decisions. Generative AI, the latest iteration of AI software, can create words, code and images. This has transformed them into creative assistants, helping teachers, financial advisers, lawyers, artists and programmers to co-create original works.

To build AI, Silicon Valley’s most illustrious companies are fighting over the limited talent of computer scientists in their backyard, paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to a newly minted Ph.D. But to train and deploy them using real-world data, these same companies have turned to the likes of Sama, and their veritable armies of low-wage workers with basic digital literacy, but no stable employment.

Sama isn’t the only service of its kind globally. Start-ups such as Scale AI, Appen, Hive Micro, iMerit and Mighty AI (now owned by Uber), and more traditional IT companies such as Accenture and Wipro are all part of this growing industry estimated to be worth $17bn by 2030.

Because of the sheer volume of data that AI companies need to be labelled, most start-ups outsource their services to lower-income countries where hundreds of workers like Ian and Benja are paid to sift and interpret data that trains AI systems.

Displaced Syrian doctors train medical software that helps diagnose prostate cancer in Britain. Out-of-work college graduates in recession-hit Venezuela categorize fashion products for e-commerce sites. Impoverished women in Kolkata’s Metiabruz, a poor Muslim neighbourhood, have labelled voice clips for Amazon’s Echo speaker. Their work couches a badly kept secret about so-called artificial intelligence systems – that the technology does not ‘learn’ independently, and it needs humans, millions of them, to power it. Data workers are the invaluable human links in the global AI supply chain.

This workforce is largely fragmented, and made up of the most precarious workers in society: disadvantaged youth, women with dependents, minorities, migrants and refugees. The stated goal of AI companies and the outsourcers they work with is to include these communities in the digital revolution, giving them stable and ethical employment despite their precarity. Yet, as I came to discover, data workers are as precarious as factory workers, their labour is largely ghost work and they remain an undervalued bedrock of the AI industry.

As this community emerges from the shadows, journalists and academics are beginning to understand how these globally dispersed workers impact our daily lives: the wildly popular content generated by AI chatbots like ChatGPT, the content we scroll through on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, the items we browse when shopping online, the vehicles we drive, even the food we eat, it’s all sorted, labelled and categorized with the help of data workers.

Milagros Miceli, an Argentinian researcher based in Berlin, studies the ethnography of data work in the developing world. When she started out, she couldn’t find anything about the lived experience of AI labourers, nothing about who these people actually were and what their work was like. ‘As a sociologist, I felt it was a big gap,’ she says. ‘There are few who are putting a face to those people: who are they and how do they do their jobs, what do their work practices involve? And what are the labour conditions that they are subject to?’

Miceli was right – it was hard to find a company that would allow me access to its data labourers with minimal interference. Secrecy is often written into their contracts in the form of non-disclosure agreements that forbid direct contact with clients and public disclosure of clients’ names. This is usually imposed by clients rather than the outsourcing companies. For instance, Facebook-owner Meta, who is a client of Sama, asks workers to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Often, workers may not even know who their client is, what type of algorithmic system they are working on, or what their counterparts in other parts of the world are paid for the same job.

The arrangements of a company like Sama – low wages, secrecy, extraction of labour from vulnerable communities – is veered towards inequality. After all, this is ultimately affordable labour. Providing employment to minorities and slum youth may be empowering and uplifting to a point, but these workers are also comparatively inexpensive, with almost no relative bargaining power, leverage or resources to rebel.

Even the objective of data-labelling work felt extractive: it trains AI systems, which will eventually replace the very humans doing the training. But of the dozens of workers I spoke to over the course of two years, not one was aware of the implications of training their replacements, that they were being paid to hasten their own obsolescence.

— Madhumita Murgia, Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI

[vague-humanoid]

In the past few days, the United Kingdom has witnessed a wave of violent disorder. Many of those involved are undoubtedly motivated, not so much by politics, as by the kind of excitement that football hooligans the world over have long derived from attacking the authorities. But there is no doubt that the attacks have been instigated and orchestrated by right-wing extremists tapping into what are, sadly, often widespread prejudices – particularly when it comes to people of colour, Muslims and asylum seekers.

Racist attacks in the UK nothing new

Of course, riots ostensibly driven by religious and racial hatred and opposition to immigration are nothing new in the UK. Indeed, one can go back as far as 1780 to see London suffering a week of violent anti-Roman Catholic disorder while, in the late 1950s, various towns and cities were afflicted by “race riots” on the part of white men objecting to the arrival of Black and south Asian immigrants from the British Commonwealth.

More recently, 2001 saw riots in cities and towns in northern England, most notably in Oldham, Greater Manchester, which saw conflicts between far-right activists and people from the town’s south Asian (predominantly Pakistani-origin) community.

Nor are violent protests outside hotels being used to house asylum seekers or attacks on mosques anything new. Last February, for example, a police vehicle was set ablaze and missiles were thrown at officers outside a hotel in Knowsley, Merseyside. True, the country’s mosques have rarely seen anything on that scale. But there are plenty of examples of isolated attacks on their property and on their worshipers – most horrifically in 2017, when a far-right extremist drove a van into a crowd outside the Muslim Welfare House and near a mosque in Finsbury Park, London.

[frithwontdie]

the average immigrant is smarter and harder working than you and your crowd of inbred entitled conspiracy theorist crackers<3

Not even close. Very few are, most no. I've worked with immigrats. Some of them were really hard working. Like the Asians I actually enjoyed working with. Who were hard working and smart. And some Hispanics. But most of the others, were incompetent, entitled, arrogant, rude idiots. Most mooch off of our welfare programs, are a net loss to the economy. Claiming they're smart when we had to lower our standards, test scores and things too easy for them. Each proved to be a failure. Oh, and you really need to see who's truly inbred in this scenario. Don't like it? Chimp out about it.

Although rare in the Americas and modern Europe, consanguineous marriage is notably common in North Africa and the Middle East, where it is a traditional and respected aspect of many Arab and Muslim cultures.

Today, 70 percent of all Pakistanis are inbred and in Turkey the amount is between 25-30 percent (Jyllands-Posten, 27/2 2009 “More stillbirths among immigrants”). A rough estimate reveals that close to half of everybody living in the Arab world is inbred. A large percentage of the parents that are blood related come from families where intermarriage has been a tradition for generations.

A BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. The Times of India affirmed that “this is thought to be linked to the probability that a British Pakistani family is at least 13 times more likely than the general population to have children with recessive genetic disorders.”

The BBC’s research also discovered that while British Pakistanis accounted for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality. It is not a surprise, therefore, that, in response to this evidence, a Labour Party MP has called for a ban on first-cousin marriage.

[asexualannoyance]

“[...] Like other movements within political Islam, the movement [Hamas] reflected a complex local reaction to the harsh realities of occupation, and a response to the disorientated paths offered by secular and socialist Palestinian forces in the past. Those with a more engaged analysis of this situation were well prepared for the Hamas triumph in the 2006 elections, unlike the Israeli, American, and European governments. It is ironic that it was the pundits and orientalists, not to mention Israeli politicians and chiefs of intelligence, who were taken by surprise by the election results more than anyone else. What particularly dumbfounded the great experts on Islam in Israel was the democratic nature of the victory. In their collective reading, fanatical Muslims were meant to be neither democratic nor popular. These same experts displayed a similar misunderstanding of the past. Ever since the rise of political Islam in Iran and in the Arab world, the community of experts in Israel had behaved as if the impossible was unfolding in front of their eyes. [...]

In 2009, Avner Cohen, who served in the Gaza Strip around the time Hamas began to gain power in the late 1980s, and was responsible for religious affairs in the occupied territories, told the Wall Street Journal, “the Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.” Cohen explains how Israel helped the charity al-Mujama al-Islamiya (the “Islamic Society”), founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 1979, to become a powerful political movement, out of which the Hamas movement emerged in 1987. Sheikh Yassin, a crippled, semi-blind Islamic cleric, founded Hamas and was its spiritual leader until his assassination in 2004. He was originally approached by Israel with an offer of help and the promise of a license to expand. The Israelis hoped that, through his charity and educational work, this charismatic leader would counterbalance the power of the secular Fatah in the Gaza Strip and beyond. [...]

In 1993, Hamas became the main opposition to the Oslo Accord. While there was still support for Oslo, it saw a drop in its popularity; however, as Israel began to renege on almost all the pledges it had made during the negotiations, support for Hamas once again received a boost. Particularly important was Israel’s settlement policy and its excessive use of force against the civilian population in the territories. [...]

It also captured the hearts and minds of many Muslims (who make up the majority in the occupied territories) due [to] the failure of secular modernity to find solutions to the daily hardships of life under occupation. [...]

The new Israeli methods of oppression introduced during the Second Intifada—particularly the building of the wall, the roadblocks, and the targeted assassinations—further diminished the support for the Palestinian Authority and increased the popularity and prestige of Hamas. It would be fair to conclude, then, that successive Israeli governments did all they could to leave the Palestinians with no option but to trust, and vote for, the one group prepared to resist an occupation described by the renowned American author Michael Chabon as “the most grievous injustice I have seen in my life.” [...]

The obvious failure of the Palestinian groups and individuals who had come to prominence on the promise of negotiations with Israel clearly made it seem as if there were very few alternatives. In this situation the apparent success of the Islamic militant groups in driving the Israelis out of the Gaza Strip offered some hope. However, there is more to it than this. Hamas is now deeply embedded in Palestinian society thanks to its genuine attempts to alleviate the suffering of ordinary people by providing schooling, medicine, and welfare. No less important, Hamas’s position on the 1948 refugees’ right of return, unlike the PA’s stance, was clear and unambiguous. Hamas openly endorsed this right, while the PA sent out ambiguous messages, including a speech by Abu Mazen in which he rescinded his own right to return to his hometown of Safad. [...]”

—Ten Myths About Israel by Ilan Pappé, Chapter 9: “The Gaza Mythologies”, the section titled “Hamas Is a Terrorist Organization”

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I realized that if I'm disappointed in the transmission of real information about Sudan and the Congo, I can just make the posts myself!

I am not surprised that people haven't been provided a strong understanding of the violence in the global south, but I *am* mad about it.

So let's talk about Sudan and the Congo

Since 2003 or so, an estimated 450,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to Chad, looking for safety from routine waves of ethnic cleansing committed by the Rapid Support Forces and their state/civilian allies.

While the Massalit make up the majority of those attacked, many other ethnicities are included amongst victims. It is NOT a religiously motivated cleansing, as most of those being victimized as well as most of those doing the victimizing are Muslim, and communicate the foundations of the violence as being the result of ethnic-cultural divides in the region current social system. Many of those speaking against the ethnic cleansing occurring agree, and also add that economic interactions appear to be major driving factors in who is targetted and when.

The Congo, meanwhile, has been going through it's own ethnic cleansing. One that has been more or less ongoing since 1996. An approximated 6mil people have been killed since.

Due to this relationship between economic motives and targets, ongoing desertification has been exacerbating violence in the region for years by making resources scarcer, more precious, and less stable to access.

The primary factors being credited with responsibility for this desertification and resultant resource volatility?

Climate change and human impact on the environment (via societal features such as urbanization, agriculture, waste management services, social welfare services, deforestation and bush removal, etc)

From FairPlanet ^

Funny how the global north causes lethal climate change but the global south is forced to die from it.

Funny how the global north forces the environmental recovery conversation to avoid study of environmental imperialism and remain solely focused on "incremental changes that can protect future generations". Whose future generations? What about the people dying NOW because of environmentally toxic industries??

And Nasreldin Atiya Rahamtalla via the International Journal of Social Sciences and Conflict Management says the following:

Hmm, I wonder why local power and social welfare infrastructure in Sudan and especially in Darfur might be diminished from previous governance:

It's almost like the British had a habit of pitting different regional communities against each other along enforced ethnic lines while pillaging some and sparing others, then blowing the whole governance network in a temper tantrum on their way out the door during decolonization, a method of inflicting one last violemt devastation and sabotage peaceful futures most often epitomized by Rwanda and the Belgian Empire:

It's almost like the imperialist businesses that feed off African continental resources and were installed during colonization as a form of economic imperialism were often THE ONLY PARTS of the social system left largely functional after withdrawal and "decolonization". It's almost like imperialism and colonization never actually stopped!!! It just??? Changed shape ☆->¤ still a fuckin crime against humanity my guy!!! Especially when child slaves are dying in your mines!!!

Sudan's economic imperialism comes in the form of Blood Diamonds! You know. The reason that none of us are buying earth mined diamonds anymore when lab made are literally the same goddamn thing RIGHT????????

Oh! They also have oil. The thing we're using to fuel our climate change machine. The climate change machine that's KILLING THEM.

And unfortunately for those of us with Nickel allergies, gold and silver have the same problem. If you haven't already switched to surgical steel, you might wanna. Of course, then we're right back to climate change since steel production allegedly creates a whopping 7% of global emissions due to relying on coke (coal) as a fuel source. So. I dunno really. I like my jewelry as much as anyone. But do I like it enough to know people are dying so I can have it?????

Not really. I'd rather save that risk addition for surgical steel being used in ACTUAL surgeries like the plates, pins, and screws that reattached my foot, or the replacement knee joint that my mom got. At least until we have a body-safe material for these things that ISN'T a source of devastation in the global south.

My point is, basically, that historically militerized conflict almost always stems, at least, in part, from efforts to control resources. It's the most timeless reason to go to war. To make sure you and the people you care about can guarantee themselves access to survival need-meeting. As consumerist and capitalist societies, it is DEEPLY important that we understand the price we ask other people to pay for our luxuries. For our right not to be made uncomfortable by too much radical change too quickly. We need to make that causal link A LOT more visibly explicit and unavoidable, because as it stands, allowing the hierarchy to go unspoken is going to kill billions.

I don't want that on my hands.

I highly recommend learning what civil disobedience and mutual aid infrastructures of care look like. How can we hold corporations (and the individual people who work there) accountable for the countless deaths directly attributable to their profit margins? How can we maximize our local resource distribution to ensure everyone has what they genuinely need to survive, even if that means we take a little less from the community resources for ourselves, or we have to give up things that can't be fully replaced by regionally sustainable alternatives.

I promise that we will adapt.

The dead can't.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

When you realise that "woke" started as a warning in Black communities to stay awake to injustice, and now its used as an insult.

This how Colonial BS works: it takes what's meaningful, breaks it and sells it back to you as propaganda. Why? So the "dominant" culture can stay ahead. Its that simple!

You're adorable. But you are wrong. It's not an insult. It's a signifier. IE: How you identify something. Moreover woke can from the idea of Red Pilling which was not originally a black owned idea. WOKE stemmed from "To be truly awake" an idea that was born of the Matrix movies. To be fully aware of the real reality around you. Not the one that has been made to keep you under control. Also colonization is the reality of the world around you.

Hell I'd be willing to bet you were all for the African colonization by the arab muslims back when they were taking over that area. Or how the Romans pushed out the Jews in a really nasty war campaign. Because you people are never consistent. Also blacks in the US right now are only mostly not ahead because of the Democrats. The party that brought forth the KKK. The ones that opposed civil rights laws. And the ones that said, if we can't beat them, MAKE THEM join us, and invented exploitation welfare programs incentivizing single parent homes and having a lot of kids.......while also putting a planned parenthood on ever fucking corner in mostly black areas.

You lack insight. What's more, AGAIN, Colonization is a reality of the entire world. It's far from unique to black africans. Hell there are still black slaves in middle eastern countries now. Where exactly is the outrage from you on that? OH RIGHT you don't care. Because you are either ignorant, OR if fine because at least those are good brown slave owners that actually love their slaves. *eyeroll* Either way, you have no clue what you speak. Certainly you are no historian, as there are quite a few on my blog.

[ed-recoverry]

Some good news to get you through

As someone super into history and current events, everything always sucks so I just want to make a little masterlist of some glimmers of hope. Will try to make multiple of these.

I shopped around for all of these, but this website and this website offers happy stories all in one place for those who don't have the time.

Colombia outlaws child marriage after 17-year campaign

Jordan Recognized as First in the World to Eradicate Leprosy

Norway, Paraguay, Antigua and Barbuda join the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty

Orran Gala Raises $400,000 for Armenia’s Most Vulnerable

Hanover firefighter creates ‘Belize Heroes’ to donate lifesaving equipment to home country

‌Norway’s Kon-Tiki Museum returns artifacts to Chile’s remote Easter Island

Minneapolis man's murder conviction vacated after 16 years

Hiking group for Muslim women breaks barriers as hundreds flock to the outdoors

Scientists find a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten in the Siberian permafrost

Tupelo Preschool Teacher Donates Organ to Student

Author Katherine Rundell donates royalties to climate charities in Trump protest

Pan-Mass Challenge Raises Record $75 Million for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Texas woodpecker no longer endangered after 54 years

Researchers discover 'lost' frog species in the Andes after over a century

More states are adopting laws to protect children of family vloggers

A 19-Year-Old Who Spent Her Childhood In Foster Care Was Finally Adopted By A Former Caseworker

Dolly Parton Gifts $4.5 Million to Nashville Public Library

New Mexico sees nearly 10% more first-year college students, bucking national trend

21-Year-Old Raising His 4 Siblings Since Their Mom Died Surprised With $40K and a New Car

Easy-fit prosthetics offer hope to thousands of Gaza amputees

UNM alumni hike tallest peaks in Ecuador to make prosthetic care more accessible

London charity helps young mums thrive

Italian charity sends 15 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza via Cyprus

Climate report shows the largest annual drop in EU greenhouse gas emissions for decades

Washingtonians defend the Climate Commitment Act

Voters decide MN Lottery will keep funding environmental causes

Finnish fathers taking nearly double length of paternity leave since 2022 reform

Oysters reintroduced to Firth of Forth appear to be 'thriving'

German union says auto and engineering workers to get 5.5% wage rise

Seaweed farming brings hope to Kenyan villagers hit by climate change

Previously extinct Cape Water Lily restored at False Bay Nature Reserve

From landfill to limelight, Ghana waste entrepreneurs win Earthshot Prize

A derogatory term for Native women will be removed from place names across California

Texas Native Health expands facility to better serve the state's Indigenous community

Borneo’s ‘omen birds’ find a staunch guardian in Indigenous Dayak Iban elders

African cinema takes to global stage with diverse storytelling

Maori haka in NZ parliament to protest at bill to reinterpret founding treaty

Animal welfare group works to rescue lions, pets in Lebanon

Inside a Massachusetts studio showcasing the work of artists with disabilities

[orthodoxadventure]

St Sabbas Orthodox Monastery has been asked by St Porphyius Orthodox Church in Gaza to fundraise on their behalf.

My name is Archimandrite Pachomy (John Belkoff) and I am the abbot of St. Sabbas Orthodox Monastery in Harper Woods, Michigan. On the evening of October 19 2023, the campus of St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza, a community which dates back to the 5th century A.D., was struck by several missiles; 18 civilians were killed, including elderly and children. The church halls were providing shelter to hundreds of both Muslim and Christian civilians. His Eminence, Archbishop Alexios Moschonas of Tiberias lives at St. Porphyrius as the local bishop and is a personal friend of mine. As often as circumstances allow, he calls me and gives updates about how he and the people who make up his flock are struggling to survive. St. Sabbas Monastery is raising money to contribute to the humanitarian welfare of civilians taking shelter at the campus of St. Porphyrius Church. People are in dire need of fuel, power, water, food, and other basic necessities. To that end we are asking for the support of people of good will across the globe. All proceeds will be directed from St. Sabbas to the official Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, to which St. Porphyrius belongs. Please read more about our cause from this article of the Detroit Free Press. Thank you and God bless you all.

[howtomuslim]

The Rights of Non-Muslims Under Sharia Law

Sharia law is often misunderstood, especially regarding its treatment of non-Muslims. However, the Sharia has a rich tradition of pluralism, allowing non-Muslims such as Christians and Jews to follow their own laws while living in Muslim-majority societies.

1. Pluralism Under Sharia: A Historical Perspective

Sharia law is not a monolithic system but rather a framework that has historically embraced justice. Within Islamic societies, non-Muslims, particularly “People of the Book” (Christians and Jews), were allowed to practice their religion freely and follow their own legal systems concerning personal matters like marriage, divorce, and inheritance.

“Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error.” (Quran 2:256)

This verse underscores that faith is a personal choice and that people should be allowed to practice their religion without coercion.

2. Dhimmi Status: Protection, Responsibilities, and Benefits

Non-Muslims living under Islamic rule were given the status of “dhimmi,” which granted them protection and certain rights in exchange for the payment of jizya, a tax levied on non-Muslim citizens. The jizya was not merely a tax but a means to ensure the safety and protection of non-Muslims in a Muslim-majority state. It also exempted them from military service, which was obligatory for able-bodied Muslim men.

A lesser-known aspect of the jizya is that it also contributed to providing pensions and other benefits to non-Muslims. This system ensured that non-Muslims were cared for in the state, particularly in old age or during times of need.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) emphasised the sanctity of the protection given to non-Muslims:

“Whoever kills a mu’ahid (a person who is granted the pledge of protection by the Muslims) shall not smell the fragrance of Paradise…” (Sahih Bukhari 3166)

“If somebody harms a disbeliever that’s living under the protection of the Muslims, they have harmed me; if they have harmed me, they have harmed God.” — Prophet Muhammed, Peace be Upon him

Islamic law does not allow for double standards when it comes to justice. Non-Muslims have the right to seek justice if they are wronged by a Muslim. Historical examples show that even the highest leaders, like Caliph Ali and Caliph Umar ibn Abdulaziz, upheld the rights of non-Muslims, ensuring that justice was served when a non-Muslim was wronged.

For instance, during Caliph Ali’s time, a Muslim who killed a non-Muslim was brought to justice, and the non-Muslim’s family was given the choice to demand the death penalty or accept compensation. Islamic Governance made sure everyone was responsible for their actions and justice was served.

3. Legal Autonomy: Non-Muslims and Their Laws

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Sharia’s application is its respect for the legal autonomy of non-Muslim communities. Non-Muslims were allowed to maintain their religious laws and customs in matters of personal status. This legal pluralism was practiced in various Islamic states, where Christian, Jewish, and other religious communities had their courts and legal systems.

“To each among you, We have prescribed a law and a clear way…” (Quran 5:48)

4. The Role of Jizya in Social Welfare

Non-Muslims under Sharia law were required to pay a tax called jizya (often being lower than the 2.5% tax on the wealth of Muslims paid towards charity yearly). However, this tax was a system that provided benefits, including protection and exemption from military service and those who would be burdened to pay it were exempted from paying it. Furthermore, certain groups, such as Christian monks who dedicated their lives to worship, were even exempted from paying the jizya, showing the flexibility and fairness of the system.

In contrast to modern taxation, where everyone must contribute regardless of their role in society, Islamic law recognised the unique circumstances of different communities and adjusted its requirements accordingly.

The Jizya was used not only for the administration and protection of the state but also to provide pensions and social services and support for those in need, including the elderly and disabled non-Muslims. This practice ensured that non-Muslims were not only protected but also cared for, reflecting the Islamic commitment to justice.

“O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm for Allah, witnesses in justice, and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer to righteousness.” (Quran 5:8)

The positive effects of this system can be seen during the time of Umar ibn Abd-Alaziz, poverty was wiped out, justice was deeply woven into the society and the animals were fed with the surplus food and wealth as they were seen as also a part of the responsibilities of the Caliph.

There are numerous historical examples of Islamic leaders advocating for the rights of non-Muslims. For instance, the scholar Taqi al-Din famously negotiated with the Tartar leaders to secure the release of both Muslim and non-Muslim prisoners of war, demonstrating that Islamic justice extends beyond the Muslim community.

To learn more about Islam visit: howtomuslim.org

[probablyasocialecologist]

Muslim anarchist and Islamic anarchist discourses, through what I refer to as Anarcha-Islām (an anarchistic, Qur’ānic non-authoritarian, non-capitalist, feminist, and social just interpretation of Islām, and Islamic interpretation of anarchism), explicitly argue that capitalist nation-states that are inherently cisheteropatrairchal, theologically, ethico-politically, contradict Qur’ānic Islamic communal nonauthoritarian and non-capitalist governance concepts such as Shūrā (mutual consultation), Ijmā (mutual consensus), Maṣlaḥa (public welfare), Muḍārabah/Mushārakah (productive partnerships), and pluralistic, as opposed to singular, conceptualizations of Khulafā (caretakers), such that governance and leadership is embodied, acted, if not remade every day, vis-à-vis egalitarian practices related to deep reciprocity (tabādul al-ḍiyāfa), intimate practices (hamīma or ulfa). Moreover, Islamic anarchist discourses tend to argue for a global interdependence that spirals across and through space-time, and emergent from and responsive to networks of (non)human relationships.

Mohamed Abdou, Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances

[nomadic-alternative]

A Layene pilgrim in contemplation inside a sacred grotto that opens up to the Atlantic Ocean. In their traditional religion the Lebu people worshipped and propitiated sea spirits, ancestral spirits and genies. Today, those same spirits, some of whom are now said to have converted to Islam along with the Lebu, continue to play a role in the religious life of the people. Known as the tuur and the rab, these spirits are the ones who secure the wellbeing of the community and individual welfare, and they require appeasement with gifts of food, sacrifices and ceremonies. In these rituals female priestesses act as intermediaries between people and the the tuur. So although the Lebus are Muslims and accept that there is only on God, many take the view that since the tuur and rab are spirits, not gods, there is nothing theologically objectionable about respecting and honoring them, the way one honors departed ancestors. Colloquially, the tuur and rab are even called “mame,” the Wolof word for grandmother or grandfather.

[kharmii]

So “Trump” (aka Israel) wants the “US” (aka Israel) to take over Gaza and leftists complain as if this isn’t exactly what they’re preaching. “Importing foreigners to a society is healthy and helps the society to survive!! Racist!!!”

WELL, in that case Israel is just substituting the Palestinians with Israelis which helps Palestine survive. Lmao.

Trump was probably irl trolling, same as he did with the tariffs and Panama Canal deal. He's throwing out an outrageous threat hoping that it will result in other countries making good decisions on their own.

Speaking of 'importing foreigners', the debacle with USAID is making me come up with some conspiracy theories I'm predicting might come to light as investigations into where all the money went proceed.

Since USAID is an arm of the CIA that does intel ops the government wouldn't normally approve of, or so the stories on Twitter say, there was an instance of fraud where money earmarked for Pakistan was instead sent to Cuba. They created a Cuban Twitter called ZunZuneo in order to organize flash mobs and cause social unrest. People are now wondering if they were using those same tactics in our own country with destructive flash mobs of BLM/Antifa people.

It makes me wonder if they earmarked money for one thing but actually used it to fund many of the problems happening in the world. IE: What if that grant for a 'gay opera in Ireland' was instead used to bring in welfare dependent migrants from Nigeria? What if it isn't just European countries being traitors against their own people, but the United States in collaboration?

The other thing I've been wondering about might have more to do with NGOs than USAID, but it's in regard to farmland in the Midwest, US. The price of land in Midwestern blue states has been really expensive for a while. If someone wants to build on a quarter acre of land, it's like 90K minimum for the lot, and then they also have to pay to build the actual house on top of exorbitant property, income, sales, etc taxes found in blue states. If someone wants to buy a house that's been already built sitting on an established farm, they're looking at a minimum of half a million dollars.

Suddenly last couple years, foreign companies from China and India are coming in, buying up farmland, and covering them with gaudy solar arrays. Sometimes the local citizens will go to the county meetings and protest. In most states, if a company wants to put up any sort of structure, -whether it's a solar panel or a pole barn- they have to send two certified letters to all their neighbors notifying them they can attend a county meeting and protest. People do this, but a lot of times, the panels go up anyway.

Also, sometimes a farm will sit for sale because nobody can afford to buy it, but then suddenly a bunch of Muslims from the other side of the planet are able to come in, buy it, then immediately be given a contract to send produce to a local grocery store. It's my suspicion that NGOs are funding the effort to bring people in from foreign countries to work on our farmland because....get it? Kids these days are too fat and lazy to work on farms in their own communities, just like how they don't want to get good paying jobs in their own communities, so we have to hire people from 50+ miles away or bring them in on H1B visas.

I'm sure if any NGO walked into any highschool in rural area and asked how many kids would work on farms if they fckn BOUGHT it for them and let them jump right into a profitable contract, they'd have a line of kids clamoring for the opportunity, but our government hates its own populace and wants to import better serfs. When it's all said and done, I'll bet they find enough dirty deeds to warrant a military tribunal and Gitmo for some of these scumbag crooks, but I'm satisfied with the current progress. Hopefully once the funding dries up for all the Marxist bullshit, a lot of the evil happening in the world will be scaled back somewhat. I get we're not the only rich country in the world, but we do a large part.

[entropyblog]

Greenbelt Maryland. Or, how America almost solved housing only to abandon it.

**I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I AM JUST AN ENTHUSIST! DO NOT TREAT MY OPINIONS/SPECULATION AS EDUCATION!**

During the Depression America faced a housing crisis that rhymes with but differs from our own. It’s different in that there wasn’t a supply issue, there were loads of houses in very desirable areas, but they were still unaffordable as people’s incomes collapsed causing a deflationary spiral. While the housing supply subtly grew and succeeded demand, people simply couldn’t pay the meager rents and mortgages. Herbert Hoover failed to manage the Depression, while his inaction is greatly exaggerated, his policy of boosting the economy with works projects and protecting banks from runs failed and the depression only got more pronounced in his term. In comes Franklin Roosevelt, a progressive liberal much like his distant and popular cousin/uncle-in-law Teddy. Franklin’s plan was to create a large safety net for people to be able to be economically viable even if they’re otherwise poor. These reforms are called the New Deal and they did many controversial things like giving disabled and retired people welfare, giving farmers conditioned subsidies to manipulate the price of food, a works program to build/rebuild vital infrastructure, etc. One of these programs was the USHA (a predecessor of America’s HUD), an agency created to build and maintain public housing projects with the goal of creating neighborhoods with artificially affordable rents so people who work low-wage jobs or rely on welfare can be housed.

In this spirit, the agency started experimenting with new and hopefully efficient housing blueprints and layouts. If you ever see very large apartment towers or antiquated brick low-rise townhouses in America, they might be these. The USHA bought land in many large and medium-sized cities to build “house-in-park” style apartments, which is what they sound like. Putting apartment buildings inside green spaces so residents can be surrounded by greenery and ideally peacefully coexist. Three entire towns were built with these ideas outside three medium-sized cities that were hit hard by the depression; Greenbelt outside DC, Greenhills outside Cincinnati, and Greendale outside Milwaukee. The idea was to move people out of these crowded cities into these more sustainable and idyllic towns. There were many catches though, the USHA planned for these towns to be all-white, they used to inspect the houses for cleanliness, they required residents to be employed or on Social Security (which basically meant retired or disabled), they also had an income limit and if your income exceeded that limit you were given a two-month eviction notice, and you were expected to attend town meetings at least monthly. While the towns didn’t have religious requirements they did only build protestant churches. Which is an example of discrimination by omission. While a Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc could in theory move into town they also couldn’t go to a Catholic church, synagogue, or Islamic center without having to extensively travel. Things planned communities leave out might indicate what kind of people planned communities want to leave out. Basically, the whole thing was an experiment in moving Americans into small direct-democracy suburbs as opposed to the then-current system of crowded cities and isolated farm/mine towns. This type of design wasn’t without precedent, there were famously company towns like Gary and Pullman which both existed outside Chicago. But those lacked the autonomy and democracy some USHA apparatchiks desired.

The green cities were a series of low-rise apartments housing over a hundred people each, they were short walks from a parking lot and roads, and walking paths directly and conveniently led residents to the town center which had amenities and a shopping district. Greenbelt in particular is famous for its art deco shopping complex, basically an early mall where business owners would open stores for the townspeople. These businesses were stuck being small, given the income requirements, but it was encouraged for locals to open a business to prove their entrepreneurial spirit. Because city affairs were elected at town meetings the city was able to pull resources to eventually build their own amenities the USHA didn’t originally plan for like a public swimming pool or better negotiated garbage collection.

These three cities were regarded as a success by the USHA until World War II happened and suddenly they showed flaws given the shift in focus. These towns housed poor people who barely if at all could afford a car, so semi-isolated towns outside the city became redundant and pointless. The USHA also had to keep raising the income requirement since the war saw a spike in well-paying jobs which made the town unsustainable otherwise. During the war and subsequent welfare programs to help veterans, these green cities became de facto retirement and single-mother communities for a few years as most able-bodied men were drafted or volunteered. Eventually, the USDA would make the towns independent, after the war they raised the income limit yet again and slowly the towns repopulated. As cars became more common and suburbanization became a wider trend these towns would be less noticeably burdensome and were eventually interpreted as just three out of hundreds of small suburban towns that grew out of major cities. They were still all-white and the town maintained cleanliness requirements; after all they lived in apartments it just takes one guy’s stink-ass clogged toilet to ruin everyone’s day.

By the 1950’s these towns were fully independent. Greendale and Greenhills voted to privatize their homes and get rid of the income limit all together so the towns can become more normal. Greenhills, Ohio still has many of these USHA-era houses and apartments, all owned by a series of corporations and private owners. Greendale, Wisconsin property owners have demolished most of these old houses and restructured their town government so most traces of its founding are lost. But Greenbelt, Maryland still maintains a lot of its structure to this day. Greenbelt has privatized some land and buildings, but most of the original USHA apartments are owned by the Greenbelt Homes, Inc cooperative which gives residents co-ownership of the building they live in and their payments mostly go to maintenance. Because Greenbelt was collectively owned the House Un-American Activities Committee would blacklist and put on trial most of Greenbelt’s residents and officials. Though they didn’t find much evidence of communist influence, the town was a target of the red scare by the DMV area, residents were discriminated, blacklisted, and pressured into selling their assets. While Greenbelt did commodify some of the town, the still existing co-ownership shows the town’s democratic initiative to maintain its heritage. The green cities desegregated in the 50’s and 60’s depending on state law, Greenbelt was the last to desegregate under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while discrimination persisted for years by the 1980’s the town would become half non-white, today the town is 47% black and 10% Asian.

Though these towns largely integrated with a privatized and suburbanized America, they do stand as a memorial to an idea of American urbanism that died. They were designed for walkability and were planned to be more democratic and egalitarian towns, with the conditions that came with segregation and government oversight. You can’t ignore the strict standards and racism in their history, but you can say that about many towns. How do you think America would be different if more cities had green suburbs that were more interconnected and designed for community gatherings?

[dandelionh3art]

Sharia law, often misunderstood, is a moral and legal framework derived from Islamic teachings found in the Quran and the Hadith (sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad). It encompasses a wide range of topics, including personal ethics, family matters, finance, and, in some cases, criminal justice. Here's a breakdown to clarify misconceptions:

1. Sharia is not a single book of laws.

Sharia literally means "path" or "way" in Arabic and is more of a guiding principle than a codified law. Different Islamic scholars and schools of thought interpret Sharia differently, leading to variations in its application across Muslim-majority countries.

2. Sharia is primarily about personal conduct.

Most of Sharia focuses on guiding individual Muslims on how to live a moral and ethical life. This includes:

Prayer: Guidelines for worship.

Charity: Obligations to help the needy (Zakat).

Dietary rules: Prohibitions like avoiding alcohol or eating certain foods.

Marriage and family: Guidelines on marriage contracts, divorce, and inheritance.

3. Criminal justice is a small and often misunderstood part of Sharia.

Criminal punishments under Sharia (known as Hudood laws) are the most controversial aspect but apply only in specific circumstances with very strict evidence requirements. For example:

Theft requires eyewitnesses and specific conditions to be met before severe punishments can be imposed.

Many of these punishments are rarely carried out and, in practice, are often replaced by other legal systems in modern states.

4. Sharia applies only to Muslims.

Sharia governs the lives of Muslims who choose to adhere to its teachings. It is not imposed on non-Muslims, even in Islamic countries. Non-Muslims often have their own legal frameworks, especially in matters of marriage, inheritance, and religious practice.

5. Sharia promotes justice, compassion, and community welfare.

The principles of Sharia aim to ensure fairness, protect human dignity, and prevent harm. For example:

The prohibition of usury (interest) is intended to prevent exploitation in financial transactions.

Charity is a fundamental obligation to reduce poverty and inequality.

6. Sharia differs from country to country.

Sharia is interpreted differently depending on culture, history, and local laws. For instance, many Muslim-majority countries combine Sharia principles with modern, secular legal systems. The strict implementation often highlighted in media represents only a minority of cases.

7. Misconceptions stem from cultural practices, not Sharia.

Some practices attributed to Sharia, such as forced marriages or honor killings, are cultural traditions and not supported by Islamic teachings. Islam explicitly prohibits coercion in matters of faith and personal choice.

8. Non-Muslims living in Muslim-majority countries:

In most Muslim-majority countries, non-Muslims are free to practice their own faith and are not governed by Sharia in personal matters. For example, they may follow their own religious laws regarding marriage and inheritance.

In Summary:

Sharia is a holistic moral framework meant to guide Muslims in living an ethical life, not a universal legal system imposed on everyone. The misconception that Sharia seeks to govern non-Muslims or enforce harsh punishments universally is largely a result of misinformation and cultural misunderstandings.

By understanding the spiritual, ethical, and personal aspects of Sharia, people can see it as a system rooted in principles of justice, compassion, and mutual respect.