Month: February 2006

From Arab News
Q. May I ask whether it is permissible to read the Qur’an without having performed ablution or wudhu?

The answer, whilst putting several scholars points of view, settles on this answer.
….. reading the Qur’an is a more involved task than holding it, and there is no disagreement among scholars that while it is better to have ablution before reading the Qur’an, it is permissible to read it without ablution.

Or thinking, as reader HRT suggests.

I’m not normally one to denigrate or redicule religion per se but for an article of this nature to be published in a major daily Arabian newspaper is akin to the Australian telling Catholics how to accept the host at Holy Communion.

They still have a long way to go.

From the Australian: Angry US slams Iraq bribe denials.

Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?

THE chairman of a powerful US Senate committee is demanding Australian ambassador to Washington Dennis Richardson explain the Howard Government’s role in the Iraqi wheat affair, saying he is “deeply troubled” by an apparent attempt to cover up the scandal.

It’s not quite the ‘US’ it is Republican Senator Norm Coleman, who is chairing the Senate’s inquiry into “illegal, under-the-table” payments to Saddam Hussein’s regime and I would suggest he is not so much ‘deeply troubled’ as ‘very excited’ at the possible damage to Australia’s wheat trade.

The good Senator represents Minnesota that just happens to produce 15% of the US Spring wheat crop.(scroll down) Now let’s see; spring in the US would be autumn in Australia which must be about when our summer harvest is ready for sale.

I’m not suggesting the man has any vested interests in knocking Australia’s wheat sales. I don’t have to, it’s obvious.

Neither am I suggesting the enquiry shouldn’t run it’s course but the media needs to point out obvious connections when they splash headlines scross their pages. Maybe if Caroline Overington and Geoff Elliott, the authors, had spent five minutes googling they might have been able to point out the Senator’s vested interests.

Just a thought.

With Parliament still in Summer break the ALP are beside themselves with the AWB fiasco. Ever keen to prove Howard micromanages every single aspect of government they are braying in ecstacy trying to get the public to pick up on a connection between Howard writing a standard ‘PM encouraging the troops’ type letter and extrapolate that to mean he is saying ‘pay all the bribe money you need, just get the job done’

Not working, guys.

The media move into feeding frenzy mode nowithstanding there a very few morsels. Terry McCrann, writing in the Herald nails it with this piece.

THE John Fairfax print media group’s Marian Wilkinson clearly thought on Sunday night she had been handed the much-desired ‘smoking gun’. Pity for her, it was a smoking pop-gun.

That though didn’t stop Wilkinson, who preaches, so to speak, at the David Marr School of Hate-Howard Journalism, from throwing facts and fairness — to coin a phrase — completely overboard.

But the best take is at The Currency Lad’s place where he talks of an amusing outbreak of Howard Derangement Syndrome

Well worth the read.

Poor, poor Palestine