Fight for the Future

He trudged forward, the weight of the gun bearing down on him. With his master's orders still ringing in his ears, he crouched down slowly, making sure that he did not make any sudden movement. He propped the gun against a nearby tree so that he could adjust his sitting position. He could hear sounds of footsteps approaching. Fear crept over him as he braced himself for the act that he was about to perform.
He picked up the rifle and carefully took aim. He struggled to keep his balance due to the weight of the gun. Through the eyepeice, he saw a man carrying a little girl through the woods. She was a tiny thing, he said to himself, barely four years old. He re-adjusted his position so he could see the mans face, fear clearly visible on his face. The man looked as if he had been running for hours, his breath was heavy and his shirt was blood stained. He held the little girl tightly to his chest, she looked like his daughter.
A tear rolled down his cheek, the sight before him reminded him of his father who used to carry him to school every morning. He liked going to school. It was the only place where he felt he was really something. The sound of a snapping twig brought him back to reality and to the daunting task ahead of him. As he set his eyes on the approaching man, an inner voice told him to just throw away the gun and run. But then he remembered his sister and cousins who were being held captive by his master. Their lives depended on him, he had to gather the courage and perform this task. But she was just a little infant, what would happen to her? He tried convincing himself that maybe his master was right, maybe blood needed to be shed so that the government would realise its mistakes and everything could go back to normal.
For him,a normal life was no longer possible. His father and mother had been taken away, he did not know if they were alive or dead. He had no family left, apart from his sister who was being held captive by the master and his men.
He heard the infant begin to cry. He carefully took aim. A knot formed in his stomach as he wrapped his little fingers around the trigger and squeezed it with all his strength. With a heavy heart, he watched as a tiny red dot appeared on the man's shirt. He fell to the ground, trying as much as possible to protect his daughter from the impact of the fall.
The gun fell from his hands as an aura of shame surrounded his soul. He felt a pat on his back. He turned around and saw his master smiling at him. 'You have done well, my son' he whispered in his ear.
Would God ever forgive me? thought the little 9 year old boy.

VOICES OF THE INNOCENT

"I had a friend, Juanita, who got into trouble for sleeping around. We had been friends in civilian life and we shared a tent together. The commander said that it didn’t matter that she was my friend. She had committed an error and had to be killed. I closed my eyes and fired the gun, but I didn’t hit her. So I shot again. The grave was right nearby. I had to bury her and put dirt on top of her. The commander said,”You did very well. Even though you started to cry, you did well. You’ll have to do this again many more times, and you’ll have to learn not to cry"
Angela, joined the FARC-EP in Colombia at age twelve

“Early on when my brothers and I were captured, the LRA explained to us that all five brothers couldn’t serve in the LRA because we would not perform well. So they tied up my two younger brothers and invited us to watch. Then they beat them with sticks until they died. They told us it would give us strength to fight. My youngest brother was nine years old.”
Martin, recruited by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda at age twelve

"When they came to my village, they asked my older brother whether he was ready to join the militia. He was just 17 and he said no; they shot him in the head. Then they asked me if I was ready to sign, so what could I do - I didn't want to die."
A former child soldier taken when he was 13

"There was no one in charge of the dormitories and on a nightly basis we were raped. The men and youths would come into our dormitory in the dark, and they would just rape us - you would just have a man on top of you, and you could not even see who it was. If we cried afterwards, we were beaten with hosepipes. We were so scared that we did not report the rapes The youngest girl in our group was aged 11 and she was raped repeatedly in the base."
19-year-old girl describing her experience in the National Youth Service Training Program.

"They give you a gun and you have to kill the best friend you have. They do it to see if they can trust you. If you don't kill him, your friend will be ordered to kill you. I had to do it because otherwise I would have been killed. That's why I got out. I couldn't stand it any longer."
17-year-old boy, joined paramilitary group aged 7, when a street child.

Over 250,000 children are currently being used in wars. Show your support towards the innocent children who are being abused in all parts of the world.
Show your RED HAND!

For more info, visit
www.redhandday.org

The Worth of Life, £5 ??

The British mass was in shock today as news of a horrifying attack on a 23 year old mentally challenged boy was reported. Three teenagers, aged 21, 17 and 16 bet £5 to each other that they could knock Brent Martin out. Brent Martin had spent 9 years of his life in mental hospitals and he regarded the three teens as his mates. They behaved like a pack of animals as they repeatedly punched, kicked, headbutted and stamped on him. Both the 17 and 16 year old boys were trained boxers.

There were four separate attacks of violence on Brent, and between each of them, he would apologise to the youths, shake their hand and buy them cigarettes and alcohol. As soon as they would finish the cigarette, they would continue punching him. One witness described them as "appearing to be happy from what they had done - getting a buzz out of it". The post mortem revealed that Brent suffered from 18 separate blows to the head and neck. He died 2 days later in the Royal Sunderland Hospital, having never regained consciousness.

Such events have become a norm in UK. With no religious/moral boundaries in life, troubled teens grow up to become gun-toting, bitter adults who are nothing but a waste of human resource for any country.

Many people argue that Muslims can't separate their religious and social life, but to those people I say, it is the discipline of religion that shows you what's right and wrong. Man is the most intelligent being on earth, but he is also very ignorant. The importance of a religion has clearly been noticed by the UK government as they have now introduced and encouraged religious subjects at GCSE level. On a final note, I'd like to offer my condolence to the family of Brent Martin. RIP !

How to fight with intellect

The recent statement by renowned scholar Dr. Zakir Naik has raised a big controversy in the Muslim community. In India, he was asked a question on the event of Karbala and on Yazid, and his reply was,

"To understand any religion, don't look at the followers. To understand Islam don't look at what the followers did. If you want to look at the followers, the best example is the Prophet Muhammad, Peace be upon him. As far as my understanding about the world of Karbala, you said that Yazid, May Allah( S.W.T) be pleased with him, was ferocious and a villain. There was a difference of opinion. I don't want to discuss history and neither do I want to create a difference in the Muslim ummah, what we say is that there was a difference of opinion between the sahaba's, that's history, what we have learnt about following Islam, is the Quran and the authentic sayings of the Holy Prophet(S.A.W). There was a political war that was fought"

How ironic it is that he says Peace be upon the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) and then asks Allah (S.W.T) to be pleased with the very killer of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) !! His reply has enraged muslims all over the world and many have responded to his statement. Unfortunately majority of the muslims have resorted to sending curses and trying to defame Dr. Naik. In 2006, a Canadian journalist, was asked about his opinion when the magazine he works for published the cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) as a terrorist and his reply was,

"We know nothing about the Prophet or about Islam, we just published the cartoon as a news story, but the way the Muslims reacted confirmed our suspicions"

After the publication of these cartoons, many muslims took to the streets chanting slogans of 'Freedom, Go to Hell!'. One man had a poster that read ' EUROPE, YOU WILL PAY, YOUR 3/11 IS ON ITS WAY'. (3/11 is in reference to the Madrid train bombings). How sad it is, that Muslims use death threats to retort the accusation of their Prophet being called a war-loving, terrorist. The reaction of a community to a crisis is what defines them. We can fight fire with fire, but we have to fight an ideology with intellect. Simply telling our children, family and friends that Dr. Naik is a bad man is not helping the cause of Islam. We have to educate ourselves on how to combat any threat that tries to stop the message of Imam Hussain (A.S). Sayed Ammar Nakshawani, an Iraqi born scholar and lecturer, currently residing in London has replied to the Zakir Naik issue in his lecture on the 10th Muharram 1429 in Sydney, Australia. The following are some of the points that he has addressed :

1. Who is Dr. Zakir Naik and what position has he achieved in Islam ?
2. Is this a Shia-Sunni issue or is it a clash of principles ?
3. Who was Yazid ? How did he become the Caliph of the Muslims ? Who was his mother and what effect did she have on him?
4. What is the opinion of the Sunni Ulema on Yazid ?
5. Did Yazid kill Imam Hussein ? If yes, how is it so if Yazid was in Syria and Imam Hussein was in Karbala ?
6. What is the meaning of 'Raziyallah Anh' ( May Allah (S.W.T) be pleased with him) ?
7. Who was Mukhtar Athaqafi ? And how did he avenge the death of Imam Hussein ?
The points that he chosen are very interesting and informative. In his lecture, he also analyzes Yazid's rule after the tragedy of Karbala, something that we rarely hear about. I recommend that all brothers and sisters listen to the lecture (link attached below) and circulate this message to all their family and friends. 'Every day is Ashura, Every land is Karbala'
Upon pondering on this statement, we realize that it warns us that every day we are faced with a Yazid and every day we have to save Islam. Please take part in the fight against all the Yazids' of our time.

Link to Dr Zakir Naik reply
Sayed Ammar Nakshawani reply

"It is Hussain's (AS) sacrifice that has kept Islam alive or else in this world there would be no one left to take Islam's name."
Swami Shankaracharya