Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Member of banned jihad group gives Qur'an lessons online to Muslim children in UK and North America
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
"Concerns over online Qur'an teaching as ex-Pakistan militants instruct pupils," by Jon Boone in The Guardian, June 17:
With his track record as a member of the political arm of a
banned terrorist organisation, Mian Shahzib is unlikely to ever be given
a visa to enter Britain.But that does not stop the jovial 33-year-old from giving British
children religious instruction every day from the comfort of his home in
Pakistan. He spends hours each night sitting under a fluorescent light in the
courtyard of a small mosque in Lahore, peering into a laptop as children
first from the Middle East, then Europe and North America spend half an
hour after school talking to him over a faltering Skype line. "Put on
your cap and wash your hands," he told a 12-year-old boy sitting in a
large office chair in his parents' home in Edinburgh.
After checking the boy had memorised various prayers to get him
through the day, including a special blessing for exiting and entering
the toilet, he got down to business, helping the boy read aloud the
classical Arabic of a few verses of the Qur'an. The fact that a hardcore Islamist and long-term follower of the
UN-proscribed Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) has daily access to children in the
west is likely to fuel concerns about religious radicals spreading their
message.
Shahzib's website, Easy Qur'an Memorising, makes no mention of his
history and is one of hundreds of such online companies, some of which
advertise on satellite channels broadcasting to the Pakistani diaspora.
They are part of a little-known outsourcing boom fuelled by parents of
Pakistani origin turning to Qur'an teachers in Pakistan. "It's just like
a call centre where you are saving a lot of money by getting someone
overseas to do it much more cheaply," said Fawad Rana, a property
developer in Solihull who has used Qur'an teachers for his two sons for
the past three years.
Rana makes an online payment of £30 a month to Faiz-e-Quran, one of
the larger online religious education companies, which gets his children
three half-hour sessions a week. "And there's the convenience factor – the last thing kids want to do
is spend half an hour travelling to the nearest mosque and then not even
getting 10 minutes of one-on-one tuition," he said.
Although Faiz-e-Quran say it takes care to scrutinise and monitor all
the teachers it employs, the industry is increasingly dominated by
one-man operations. After several years working on his business, Shahzib
now has about a dozen students aged 12 to 18 scattered all over the
world. It's a long way from his past role as an activist with JuD, a
Pakistani Islamist organisation known for its holy war against Indian
rule in the contested region of Kashmir.
The organisation is on the UN's list of sanctioned organisations
because of its alleged association with al-Qaida and is considered a
front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the 2008 terrorist attacks
on Mumbai. As a young man, Shahzib helped prepare young JuD militants before
they crossed the line of control that marks the unrecognised border
between Pakistani and Indian-held Kashmir. His job was to motivate them
with religious teachings and to fill their heads with tales of Indian
soldiers raping Muslim women. He was briefly arrested after falling out
with his old mentor, Hafiz Saeed, the JuD leader, who lives openly in
Lahore but who is subject to a US reward of $10m (£6.36m) for
information leading to his arrest. Shahzib believes Saeed has bent to
demands from Pakistan's security establishment to rein in militancy in
Kashmir.
"I told him to his face that he had betrayed the jihad," he said.
These days he still follows the "philosophy" of JuD, even if he is not
an active member. He supports the fight against foreign forces in Afghanistan. But he
does not think the struggle should be taken to the streets of Britain.
"It is completely wrong to attack soldiers in Britain," he said. "If a
young man in the UK wants to support jihad I support that, but come to
Afghanistan to fight, not the UK." The Guardian was told of other online tutors with radical backgrounds
or who are members of extreme or sectarian organisations, but it is
impossible to know how widespread the phenomenon is in a completely
unregulated industry.
Sultan Chaudri, the owner of Faiz-e-Quran, said his company is at
pains to scrutinise all 13 teachers who work for him to ensure radicals
are not employed. "All the problems we are seeing in Pakistan and
Afghanistan is because these young children get sent to madrasas where
no one knows what sort of education they are getting or what kind of
indoctrination is taking place." Chaudri, a retired colonel, started his business four years ago
his marketing team had to assure parents that there would be no such
risk with online teaching.
"They used to say we are not going to get education from a maulvi
[Islamic scholar] in Pakistan because he is going to teach bad things to
my child," he said. "Parents realise now that there is no risk because
they can see the lessons right in front of their own eyes."... Hat tip: Jihad Watch