Maintaining a cordial relationship between Malaysia and Australia

We are all familiar with the term "Aussie" .  Then there's the word "Ocker".  I came across it when I was reading Jan Morris's "From the Four Corners" many years ago.  Strange name, I thought, for the people from Down Under.  Only when I learned to take part in the Internet World  did I discover its origin.

From Aussie Slang Dictionary - Macquarie University

Following the recent incident of the nine middle-class Australian citizens baring their all  - well, at least 99% of 'the parts that cannot be reached' *- carefully hidden by an itsy bitsy teenie weenie swimwear based on the Malaysian flag - I decided on this posting to repair and enhance the relationship between Malaysia and Australia - and to dispel the Ocker's idea of us Malaysians as 'humourless'.


All cultures of whatever colour or religion have their own set of rules and etiquette.   It's a way of organising life, of lubricating relationships and creating a sense of order.     However, we Malaysians (and especially the Malay-Muslims) have been mocked and scoffed at because we have too many taboos in our culture: no alcohol, no pork, no bikinis or mankinis. no sultry dancing, etc., etc.    Perhaps this is why Thailand and the Philippines are top of the bill for Western (and Middle East, Eastern, and Down-under) tourists.   And perhaps this is why the fun-goers have recently been so upset:

Read more about it here : ..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3838931/Bangkok-grinds-halt-thousands-mourners-line-streets-mark-passing-Thai-king-British-tourists-complain-news-red-light-district-shut-MONTH.html



But what about the lands of the customers themselves?    In particular, what about Australia?   Well,
Australia has the usual set of rules pertaining to law and order and decency.   We must obey and respect them.     A visitor or an immigrant to Australia has to be reminded of the way of life of their host country, and where better to start than at this website:

 http://www.destinationtips.com/destinations/20-things-not-to-do-in-australia/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=adwords&utm_content=Dont+Do+Australia&utm_campaign=ADW001-DST-VAR-VAR-00000-01-var&utm_term=-113649954081-p-australia&gclid=CJbV_riA xc8CFU4eaAodOX4FHg
                                                 
.

Apart from the general rule of not dropping your trousers in public, there are various things to avoid in Australia.   Here's a selection - and please ignore the black numbering in the boxes:



1.   When you're  at a football match in Australia, don't try to be too pally and exclaim to the cobber next to you: "I'll be rooting for your team, mate."   This will be an unforgivable boo boo because...

2. 

Too true, too true.  For a dose of "fair dinkum Aussie charm" , take a visit to the smaller towns.  But you won't charm the city or small town ockers if you come with the objective of pulling down your trousers and displaying the Australian flag on your  underpants!  Even if you might be able to buy underpants decorated with flags from various nations of the world at places like Chow Kit or Chowrasta it's still not nice to be that disrespectful. Don't diss the flags and symbols of other cultures.  Among other symbols .....


3.

Diss = Aussie slang for disrespect.

You might just develop a taste for vegemite.    You might have to in a small town - your own culinary symbols (like belacan and durian) may be nowhere in sight.     And vegemite is healthier than the sight of topless men in their briefest of briefs!  (Besides, in some parts of the world you have to pay for such beefy strip shows).

Still, if you are pathetic enough to copy that arrogant tease in Australia, let's hope you can get an Australian lawyer as understanding and as sympathetic as Mr Wan Aizuddin (one of the defence lawyers for the Ocker Nine) who claimed,  "They all have good jobs in Australia and come from good families. .....  There were mitigating factors. They are young fellows.  They never meant to cause offence."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/world/australia/malaysia-budgie-nine.html?_r=0

Which makes me wonder:  first, if our Mat Rempits could claim such dispensation when they're hauled into court; and second, if our ocker friends would find the courts quite so kindly if they performed their inoffensive little pranks in Singapore.......



4.

Uluru, previously claimed as Ayers Rock by the early Aussie colonists.

Most certainly, but the same is expected of those Brits, EU Citizens, Americans, Kiwis and Aussies who visit places like Angkor Wat, Borobodur .... and Mount Kinabalu - which is also sacred, and also a favoured place for Mat (Rempit) Sallehs to show their flab.

5.

We Malaysians ( well, to be precise, Malays from Tanah Melayu) also have a colonial history (and we too are still living with its consequences) so we will certainly respect that - provided they don't mock us as wogballs descended from monkeys or layabouts descended from pirates.



6.   For this item, you are expected to be familiar with speaking Strine and having a skin as thick as a kangaroo's hide.

I suppose what those well-heeled ockers did at Sepang was "taking the piss" out of us locals.     Wow, those Ockers set a tough standard: must we all pull down our trousers and wear the Ocker flag on our backsides in order to be respected?

7.

The above seems like fair dinkum.  Thank you for the tip.  But something worries me.  If 'graduating  high schoolers'  celebrate end-of-school-days  'with a lot of drink-filled hormone-fuelled debauchery'' how  do the graduates and the adults celebrate the auspicious days of their life?      Should we avoid Sepang (or Mount Kinabalu) for fear of bumping into too many celebrating Ockers?


8.
In Australia, beer and liquor are a national hobby.  For instance you have to be very precise and almost fastidious in picking your drink especially your beer. Pronounce beer without the 'r' in the land of amber fluid and gold, but when in Australia, do as the Aussies do.  Get your beer vocabulary right!

Of course. as the Aussie Nine were getting sozzled at Sepang, they would have to make do with drinking from their shoes - they can't  get a schooner or middy or pot for love or money at Sepang!


Nevertheless, Australia (like the UK) faces a fluid problem.

Just as Malaysia should be running a very serious campaign against obesity - the Australian  Government is attempting to educate their population about binge-drinking.  While on a long haul MAS flight, I picked up a magazine and was intrigued by this full-page advertisement by the Australian Government about binge drinking.

If there was no indication that this advertisement was issued by the Australian Government, I would believe that this 'nightmare' was typical of a non-Western society.  Look at the star in this advertisement: she could be Indian, Pakistani, Iranian, Syrian.   Most certainly it does not indicate a white European in Australia!!  Strange indeed!

Read more in -
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/health/aussie-women-drinking-m e-alcohol-than-ever-university-of-nsw-booze-study-reveals/news-story/6cb3d4aae51185313ecf2d50c736f729

So, it looks like Australia will have to take better care and supervision of their women folk instead of worrying themselves about foreign women in hijab and nikab and their oppression by the menfolk.   Or do only non-Europeans get drunk in Australia?

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So we now know what NOT TO DO in Australia.   Well, fair enough.    But all these strictures, all these little rules of etiquette and proper conduct, beg an important question.      How do the Ockers treat the rest of the world - both within and beyond Ockerland's national boundaries?  

Firstly :  The plight of the Australian Aborigines.  (What oppression?  They're our Abos!  Never ever!!)

Read : https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/1999/04/yabu-a07.html




Secondly :  The plight of asylum seekers at Nauru.  (A cover- up of abuse by Australia, the bastion of freedom, democracy and equality and Human Rights in Asia? Well, I never!!)

Read :  https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention


Don't worry about this poster if you're coming as a tourist or a potential immigrant bringing loadsofmoney, speakee good English and maybe a bit of Strine and a credible qualification.  Not being a Muslim would also help.

Thirdly :  The plight of the Australian Great Barrier Reef.
(Doctoring of information by a country that pontificates about freedom and democracy and equality and environmental responsibility in Asia?  Never!!)

Read ; https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/27/great-barrier-reef-un-report-lead-author-shocked-all-australian-references-removed

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Do you come from the land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?

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 *   I can't resist putting in this advertisement  referring to 'parts that cannot be reached'.

G' day all.

TrumpCam - the Anglo-American Fetish - Act II

I shall begin with an apology.  We old geezers are prone to repeating ourselves; with our stories and experiences.  We are inclined to slide into reminiscences, beginning with "Aaah, I remember the time when I  ... blah, blah, blah ........." and we fail to see the faces with their eyes rolled up and the silent voices saying, "Here we go again."

However, it's not my intention to foist upon my readers the tales of past times and old writings.

The trouble is, man's bigotry and ignorance tend to echo the sins and stupidity of their forefathers ; from one generation to the next.  And so you get the same old replay - with the codgers and the whippersnappers, the eminences and the hoi polloi at loggerheads over the same old bile and prejudices.

The case of Cameron is a re-run of the old scenario, with the younger regurgitating their foréfathers' contempt of others not of their ilk, and spouting the same cultural and political bigotry.   Old wine in new bottles.

For this part of the AAF (Anglo-American Fetish) I cannot add any new revelation about the mouthings of the present  PM of Great Britain.   They will be merely repetitions and extensions of the old Islamophobe chestnut that his progenitors expounded on. There is, for example, the legacy of their hero and national pride like Sir Winston Churchill.  

In his 1899 book 'The River War" relating to the British war in Sudan Churchill had this to say :

There's also the four times British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-1898) who called the Quran an  "accursed book" and held it up during a session in Parliament, saying: " So long as there is this book there will be no peace in the world." 

I suppose one could find excuses for such contempt:  those were different times, an era when white Christian Britannia ruled the waves.  We cannot expect them to know better!

But old habits die hard.


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The Bottom Feeders

We are well aware of  right-wing extremists in UK like the BNP and others.

From Wikipedia

And this list is only partial - think, for example, of LibertyGB and the English Defence League.     Such groups may be variously categorized as nationalists, far-right, white supremacists, hard-right, radical right, fascist right, ultra-right, xenophobic - and they target (so the pundits say) foreigners, coloureds, blacks and Jews.   

We are bombarded with terms like Islamists, jihadists, Muslim extremists, Islamo-fascists in the print and electronic media.  However the label religious/Christianist Extremists hardly ever sticks to  white (and non-white) Christian affiliated  groups - Anders Brevik, for example, and the Klu Klux Klan are merely lone rangers and aberrations of white/Christian culture.  Christianity is likewise absolved of ungodly practices like slavery, the Holocaust, apartheid and imperialism.

Feed your eyes on these images of the Right Wing Christian Extremists "Britain First".

Note the non-white participant - a genuine True Brit.

Britain First is also reported by Channel 4 - A bona fide mainstream news channel. 

East and West - Never the Twain shall meet. (Kipling)

If ISIS are breeding an international group of followers - so is this German anti-Islam Fascist mob Pegida.

Pegida = the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident.

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Feeders at the High Table


They are quite a hallowed lot ranging from Saints, Presidents, philosophers, novelists, Prime Ministers,  and some women too!  Here are some names you can throw into the hat : Theodore Roosevelt, St Thomas Aquinas, Bertrand Russell, Stephen Harper, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wole Soyinka, Francois Gautier, Taslima Nasreen, Narendra Modi,  Naipaul and Rushdie and of course Trump and Cameron.

Take your pick!!

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But getting back to the British Prime Minister David Cameron.  How his heart bleeds for the salvation of Muslim women.  He reckons they should be made to learn and speak English so that they are better enabled to absorb and live up to British values  .....

  ...... or else ....  get out of Britain?!??

He had referred to this nagging problem of Muslim integration on 14 June 2014.

..

He was adamant that :

It bemuses me as to why Western men and women are so up in arms about the rights and plight of Muslim women.  There's no denying that the integrity, equity and  propriety of women of all faiths and colour and shapes require more attention than ever.

Let me quote these from  Femmes d'Islam  (Women in Islam) by Assia Djebar, translated from French by Jean Mac Gibbon.

 1.  Interesting though it is to see what swamps of uncertainty lie in wait for those who think they know most about the problem of the evolution of Moslem women because they are its victims, we should also turn our attention to those who, for a variety of different reasons and on a number of different levels simply pontificate on the problem. (page 11)

2.  But there are worse forms of curiosity than these - more infuriating and laughable because more pretentious or naive.  I mean the well-intentioned, ignorant stranger who is convinced beyond proof that the benighted Moslem woman must be 'rescued' from her misery.  And those less disinterested persons - among them learned scholars - who claim that Moslem women have inferior status in Moslem society because they are excluded from its public activities.(page 12)


 And this book was written 55 years ago in 1961!!! 

For your information, David Cameron, a descendant of King William IV was born in 1966.

For me, the most telling part of Assia Djebar's book is found in the first paragraph of the first chapter.

The story goes that there was once an old Arab who arrived in a European city straight from the wilds of his own land  and was amazed at the pictures of women he saw everywhere : on the films, on shoe boxes, on cheese cartons - on everything that was for sale.  He left the town the same day, or so they say, greatly pitying the women who lived there; in his simplicity he believed that some terrible nameless form of punishment lay behind this exploitation of their likeness. (page 5)

In 1961 David Cameron was just a twinkle in his pater's eyes and I very much doubt if he had been told this little story by his nanny !!!!!! ..... or even got any inkling of such a book or such a subject when in 1988, he graduated First Class in PPE at Oxford !!!!!!!

But, finally, let us indulge Cameron's angst about Muslim women in UK - and ask what the future holds for them.  

What is the "right" and the "wrong'' of their future status ?

Is it this?

Or this?

"Showing off.  A woman crosses the road wearing a skimpy outfit on Birmingham's Broad Street." From Mirror Online 1 January 2016.

                                                
What about this one?   Hmmmm .... not good enough.  That burka doesn't fit into our culture.

Next .. please.



Maybe this is the ideal non-white, non-Christian British citizen.

From AsH's posting of  6 years ago.

Now that's our cuppa tea!!!!

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TrumpCam - The Anglo-American Fetish - Act I

I've been hibernating, keeping away from the goings-on in my kampung - and the spouse's kampung too.  I've figured I'll just have to sit back and observe in despair - as the Lunchais  and the whippersnappers get on with their circus and shenanigans.  Certainly, this is not a time fit for a Septuagenarian,.. a Senior Citizen..... an Old Fogey, a Diddy, a Warga Mas, a Geriatric .... a Superannuated codger and crone.

So, ......




But even geezers like Ash  have to sit up and glower at the mouthings of present (Cameron) and future (Trump) leaders of the Free World.  More and more I observe an outbreak of these modern ailments - "constipation"  of the brain and "diarrhoea" of the mouth.

There's firstly Donald Trump, the Prime Contender for the throne of the Presidency in the US of A.

Repeating his wild suggestion for eliminating terrorism in his country would just be more publicity for his bigotry.  Perhaps a look at what he's made of would be more illuminating, to understand why the world has become what it is - especially in the geo-politics of the Middle East.

When Whites and Christians and non-Muslims express their racism, extremism and bigotry they are regarded as merely offensive and crazy.  Most devious of all:  their views and practices are just an aberration, a little blip on a spotless and civilized culture.

For instance, in the case of The Holocaust, we have the Holocaust deniers - but there are also the mollifiers, who deem the Holocaust as deviant and unrepresentative of European-Christian culture.  I reckon it is far easier for them to demonise and pulverize Muslims because the latter have no political and financial clout.  And best of all for the West - Muslims are hopelessly divided, they are their own worst enemies.  ( PS just like my bangsa Melayu)

DONALD TRUMP  - and his true colours.



Firstly, take the big news about Trump here in Britain:

.......  and here are the reasons why.

1.  According to the powers-that-be in the British Parliament  .....

2.

3.

Secondly, why should anyone condemn a man with such a fervent and relevant religious faith?  After all, we have his own word for this:

Not only that ......

This can be seen in the company he keeps.......

Thirdly, Donald Trump is no maverick outsider:

 There have been outbursts of dismay and anger in the United States about Trump's display of bigotry.  Concerned Americans and other Americaphiles have been very vocal in denouncing him, saying that his "incivility, his racism, his phobia about everything .... is un-American".  They claim Trump does not  not represent  "American values".

As for the meaning of "American values", it all depends on how susceptible you are to a belief in myths, and on the severity of your myopia  (or the  'inability to see distant objects clearly').

But do read the above article from Counterpunch - which should help to remove the scales from one's eyes. 

Refer to http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/11/donald-trump-is-america/

Here's an extract: 

Fourthly, Trump's opinion and bigotry are not new or outrageous.  They are also practised  by

their closest ally, Israel.

Read :  http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/trumps-religion-test

Finally, why should Muslims and non-Muslims be surprised?

But that is America.   What about here in my spouse's kampung?   Well, some would say it's not much better.   Take the Great British Prime Minister David Cameron ......

Here's an appetiser by Steve Bell, one of the best satirist-cartoonists from The Guardian 18 January 2016

TrumpCam - An Anglo - American Fetish

See you later in February.

                                                                                                                                                                                      

The Mantle of Victimhood

This is going to be a long read - to last until 2016

Aren't humans ever so clever?  In this 21st century, we have made boundless progress in technology which, for instance, enables me to do what I'm doing now.  We can communicate ideas, emotions, thoughts, knowledge, insults, hatred, bigotry, hypocrisy, self-righteousness and ignorance simply by tapping on a keyboard or switching on to gadgets like TV and smartphones.  However this can become too overwhelming for a geriatric dinosaur like me.

It's coming to the end of 2015.  Here in the cold of Leicester, escaping the heat (political and religious) of my Motherland, I'm so glad to be in my 70s and not living my twenty or thirty something years.  I was talking to a young employee of HSBC in Leicester just last week.  A graduate, he considered himself lucky to have his present job even though the salary was pittance.  It was so low that he was not even 'eligible'  for paying back his study loan.  (You have to earn at least  GBP22,000 per annum before the debt-collector knocks on your door.)

I 'take off my hat' to those Malaysian  graduates who have ignored or reneged on paying back their study loans even though they're living and working in well paid cushy occupations.  What cheek!  ("Apa aku peduli!  After all the politicians are raking in duit haram."  What a pathetic, self-serving excuse!)

I was once told how the Chinese have to pay up all their debts before the advent of Chinese New Year otherwise it will bring sway or bad luck for the following year.  As for Malay-Muslims they are very strict and punctilious about paying up their Zakat and Fitrah - if only they could apply that  principle and stricture to settling their debts and other pecuniary responsibilities before Hari Raya Puasa!!

However for most parts of the world they are in line for a lot more sway coming their way and certainly Malaysia will not be spared.  But this has nothing to do with luck or superstition - it's simply greed, perfidy and more greed.

This being the day after Christmas, we get this extract from the Archbishop of Canterbury's Christmas message.

Read the full text  : http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/25/christians-isis-middle-east-archbishop-justin-welby

This fear of Isis and Islamic extremism and distress for the fate of Christians and Christianity (which has also recently echoed in Malaysia) have been bandied about for the last few years by Christian leaders, politicians and has even touched the heartstrings of HRH Prince Charles.

Read : http://anaksihamid.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/prince-charles-prince-among-some-men.html

Apocalyptic suggestions like 'extinction',  'extermination' have been referred to by Christian pressure groups like the Catholic Charity Aid to the Church in Need.

Academics like Rupert Shortt write about 'Christianophobia' and he states that ''Exposing and combating the problem ought in my view to be political priorities across large areas of the world."

Read this : http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/05/christianity-could-be-completely-erased-from-middle-east-in-less-than-decade.html

.. and this : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9762745/Christianity-close-to-extinction-in-Middle-East.html


On the other hand in Angola  .......

Is this a church?  Is this a temple?  No, this was a mosque -  demolished by the Government of Angola in 2013

Claiming that Islam was a sect, the African nation of Angola becomes the first country to ban Islam, Muslims and has shut down the mosques in the country.

Concerning the ban, Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said Sunday : "this is the final end of Islamic influence in our country."

The above extract is taken from World Bulletin 3 September 2015.

And just for your information :

 
In addition, Angola is also a a rich hunting ground for Christian Evangelists.  For example,

Such Christian enterprise in Angola and in many other countries and cultures of the planet should at least help reassure those Christianists suffering from "Christianophobia".


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Let's flip the coin and consider this:

Firstly, included in the Archbishop's message was another by Britain's chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis

Chief Rabbi Mirvis somehow is quite incapable of seeing the elephant residing in his room.  That elephant is the Judaic-Zionist-Israeli occupation and tyranny in Palestine.  But then, the Christians, the secularists, the agnostics, the atheists, and the neo liberals are also culpable in that very selective oversight and blindness!

Secondly,  here is the gist of this article from Christian News on Christian Today 21 December 2015  by Jeremy Moodey .
Read : http://www.christiantoday.com/article/should.we.really.be.worrying.about.middle.east.christianity/74281.htm

This article outlines five facts to refute all that "doom and gloom".

No 1: It is an exaggeration to say that Middle East Christians face extinction.

No 2: Many more non-Christians than Christians face persecution in the Middle East.

No 3: There is nothing inevitable about Christian flight from the Middle East.

No 4: Islamic extremism is not the only threat to the Christian presence.  I'm quoting this for the benefit of the many ostriches with their heads buried in the sand.

....in historic Palestine, where Christians accounted for over 20 percent of the population in 1948 but now total less than two percent.  But this decline has had very little to do with Islamism.  Three years ago a CBS News report noted that the main reason for the decline was actually the political and economic hardship caused by 45 years of Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank.  Israel was so incensed that the Israeli Ambassador in Washington tried to have the show pulled from the airwaves.  Even in Gaza, controlled by Hamas, Palestinian Christians emigration is driven more by the trauma of Israel's eight-year blockade and regular bombardments than by Islamist government.


No 5: Middle East Christians themselves do not want favourable treatment.

Thirdly,  Timothy Seidel's article on "Christianity in Palestine : Misrepresentation and Dispossession".

Read:
https://electronicintifada.net/content/christianity-palestine-misrepresentation-and-dispossession/6280

Here's an extract :

Fourthly, pick and mix your victims.

I've loved  and lived with cats for as long as I can remember.  Whenever they are caught  doing something wrong or stupid (like breaking a plate trying to pinch an extra dinner, or tripping over a shoe, or failing to make a successful jump from the fence) they very quickly recover their dignity by licking themselves and pretending their innocence.     And so for humans too.

Often, in terms of strategy, the best form of defence is not to protest but to attack.  But when one has been responsible for so many wars - the War on Terror, wars for regime change, wars for democracy and human rights (all conducted, implicitly or explicitly, with the blessings of the Religious Establishment) - then it's time to conjure a distraction and a makeover of the Judaeo-Christian image.  Instead of being regarded as the perpetrators .........

Our glorious dead??  Will these (mainly) Muslim children be remembered on Poppy Day?

Squaring the Dead in Afghanistan - 2014

.......  why not turn the fox in the henhouse into a martyr.  Why not convert the guilty into victims?

Let us put on the Mantle of Victimhood.

Do enjoy this video clip from two of my favourite comedians - Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke.  You might be able to note the similarity with the strategy of the New Victims - with the grown-up Harrys of the world.

Fifthly, here's a picture gallery of some truths that have to be acknowledged.

.
1.

Just one query.  Why 'nonjihadist extremists'?  Why not 'White/Rightwing/Christian extremists'?

2.

3.  A Christmas greeting from a Muslim daughter, Kari Ansari.  (The Huffington Post - Dec 25, 2011)

4.  A bridge builder

5.

The Crusades and the decimation of Christianity in the Middle East

6.

Spreading Christianity then

7.

Spreading Christianity today in Muslim Malaysia ..........

8.

..... where there is so much intolerance of Christmas? ?? !!

9.  And, as for Donald Trump, the future(?) President of the USA, he is only articulating what has always been a covert attitude and practice towards Muslims and Islam in this WASP superpower. The reaction of the West is similar to that of the toddler Harry sans the pee in the pants.


Finally, as a septuagenarian Muslim with one foot in the grave, so to speak, I take heart from the Islam that is mentioned in Islamic Relief's global strategy, whose "values and teachings are provided by the revelations contained within the Quran and Prophetic example.  They are ikhlas (sincerity),  Ihsan (excellence),  Rahma (compassion), Adl (social justice), and Amana (custodianship)".


                           
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Here's  Vivaldi's piece to  remind me of the Winter of my Disaffection.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                .