Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa forbids the destructive sectarian strife that tears Yemen to shreds.

From the New York Times:

Aid Needs in Yemen Are Dire, Kerry Says By KAREEM FAHIM There was no evidence any cease-fire was imminent on Wednesday, as more than 80 people were killed across Yemen in some of the deadliest and most intense hostilities yet.

Two years ago the Times reported that thousands of Yemeni were starving.  "Dire"  is an understatement.

ACTION NEEDED:
BY KERRY:
Lift the embargo on humanitarian aid!  Fix the airport so aid can get to Sana'a and the interior!  Stop the bombing and shelling! Give Shiites living in Arabia a right of Self- Determination!  Respect Houthi right of self-determination!

BY SAUDI ARABIA AND IRAN:
Compel Sunni and Shiite alike to honor the fatwa of Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, that all Muslims are of the same faith.

Egypt's Grand Mufti: It is Permissible to Use Shia Jurisprudence

Egypt's Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa has declared that it is permissible to use Shia Imamiya Jurisprudence which is useful for the Islamic Ummah. 

 Ahlul Bayt News Agency (ABNA.ir): Egypt's Grand Mufti , Ali Gomaa has declared that it is permissible to use Shia Imamiya Jurisprudence which is useful for the Islamic Ummah.

The senior Sunni Alim has said that proximity between Shia and Sunni Muslim does not imply a follower of a particular Islamic school of thought forsaking his school.

 Dr. Ali Gomaa has emphasized on the importance of unity and solidarity among Muslims adding that, "It is incumbent on all Muslims from all over the world, from every race, belief and school of thought to move towards unity".

He added that Islamic Unity is a fundamental ideal and of immense importance for the world of Islam noting that, 'solidarity and unity are clear necessities and among the religious obligations'.

The Egyptian Mufti reiterated that: "Proximity between Shia and Sunni Muslims does not imply a follower of a particular Islamic school of thought embracing the other; further more it does not entail abandoning ones beliefs".

 Dr. Ali Gomaa has condemned extremist views and sectarianism adding that, 'sectarianism frustrates efforts toward proximity and dialogue among Islamic Schools of Thought'.

Speaking at Egypt's Darul Ifta' (House of Fatwa) office during a meeting with Iran's ambassador to Cairo Sayyed Mojtaba Imani , Dr Gomaa said that: "Many Muslim Ulamaa, Al Azhar and other Islamic institutions have reiterated on the correctness of utilizing Fiqhi achievements of all Muslims and Islamic Schools of Though including the Fiqhi heritage of Imamiya and Zaidi Ulamaa. Their rich and valuable thoughts can not be ignored".

 The prominent Grand Mufti referred to pro-Shia Fatwa of Sheikh Mahmoud Shaltout, the former rector of Al-Azhar, and said: "The Islamic Ummah is unique and as long as Muslims pray in the same prayer direction (Qiblah) then there is no difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims".

"Enemies of Islam and Muslims try to sever unity and solidarity of Muslims. They look for books to find some differences to encounter Shia and Sunni" noted Mufti Ali Gomaa affirming that this is a big mistake and everyone should be aware of enemies' conspiracies".  

 [Emphasis added.] 

Somebody hasn't paid attention to 

Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa's  

wise command.  

Yemen is nothing but a sectarian war.  

The United States should not contribute to

sectarian strife. 

Unless America fears a unified Muslim world 

more than it fears one 

torn by conflict.

Hatred never ceases by hatred,
 but by love alone is healed;
This is a great and eternal law.

Wahhabism, the Saudi official religion, the main destructive element in he Middle East

A quotation from the article below:

[Professor Mohammad] Marandi added, “The main problem in the region is Wahhabism. It is not Sunni [versus] Shiite or Arab-Persian or Turkish-Kurdish. It is basically the Saudi vision that has been promoted for decades and led to crisis all around the world.”

 I agree.  The Saudi monarchy was moving away from
 Wahhabism with the former King's new university, which promised professors who are scientists, not confined by Sharia literalism, just as Western scientists are not confined by Old Testament literalism.

The main quad is beautiful . . .

. . . and co-educational!

The changes in the Kingdom rulers is away from moralization and a return to Wahhabism.  That is a shame for Saudi themselves and for the World.

The change on rule is a reaction of fear that the Saudi will  again lose control of Makkah (it was not until 1925 that the Saud family conquered the Sharif of Makkah) and the Family  fears ISIS, more fervently Wahhabist that the Royals, , as ISIS moves ever closer to the Saudi's ill-defended border with Anbar Province in Iraq.

From al Monitor:

Saudi re-reshuffle turning point for relations with Tehran

Today’s Middle East, basically a battlefield between two opposing powers, is for many becoming an impossible place to live. Saudi Arabia and Iran are engaged in a series of proxy wars causing endless problems among Muslim states and the grassroots, where de facto animosity is increasing on both sides of the war front. Sectarianism is proving itself the only language spoken, but it is also clear that the heart of the struggle is political and involves history imported from hundreds of years ago to the present.

Summary⎙ Print King Salman's recent reshuffling of key positions and statements by the grand mufti and Iran's supreme leader point to strife between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Author Ali HashemPosted May 5, 2015

Yemen is the struggle’s newest arena. There the Saudis are leading a coalition arrayed against Iran’s close ally, Ansar Allah, the movement led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the Zaydi Shiite leader and descendant of a family from Saada, near the Saudi border. Over the course of a few months, forces led by Houthi advanced to the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and the southern capital, Aden, forcing Saudi-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to step down. The Houthis view him as the main hurdle to national unity.

With the war ongoing, people awoke April 29 to news of a political reshuffling in Saudi Arabia: a new crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, also the interior minister; a new second-in-line, Mohammed bin Salman, the defense minister; and a new foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir. The appointments were interpreted as a major shift and raised questions about possible changes in Saudi Arabia's domestic and foreign policies, including Riyadh’s battles with Tehran.

Abdullah al-Shammari, a former Saudi diplomat and columnist, and Mohammed Marandi, head of Tehran University’s world studies faculty, expressed pessimism about the future when asked their thoughts on the shuffle and whether there might be a chance of Saudi-Iranian tensions being contained.

Marandi stated, “Changes in [Saudi Arabia] are seen here as a major sign of weakness and a major split within the Saudi ruling family.” He also said, “Since Saudi Arabia is not a state with a civil society that can play a role in policymaking, everything is confined within the royal family, and a split within could lead to serious problems in the future. This comes at a time when the Saudis are making more enemies in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. They are surrounding themselves with enemies as a result of their policies.”

In an April 19 speech, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had referred to Saudi Arabia being led by “inexperienced young people" who had replaced patience and self-restraint with savagery in conducting foreign policy. The new foreign minister, Jubeir, had been the subject of an alleged Iranian assassination attempt in Washington in 2011. Tehran denied the accusation, but the controversy nonetheless raised tensions between the two countries.

Shammari told Al-Monitor, “Riyadh was strategically patient with Tehran, yet the [Iranians] left Saudi Arabia with no choice but indirect confrontation in the Arab countries where Iran has intervened, including Yemen.” He added, “Everyone knows that Iran’s involvement is catastrophic, and Iraq is a good example.” The former diplomat warned, “The new generation of the Saudi ruling elite practices less self-restraint than the older generation. They are backed not only by the religious institutions, but also by the main Saudi liberal personalities and the popular base. All of them want to draw red lines on Iran.”

Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Sheikh, on April 20 called on Iran to stop attacking Saudi Arabia. He said that Tehran’s interference in Arab affairs is a crime and should be stopped. “They are dividing the nation, and their policies are making them enemies to the Arabs,” he claimed.

Commenting on the mufti’s statements, Shammari observed, “This is a turning point. The Saudi religious institution for the first time, the mufti, is calling on the country to confront Iranian interference.” The former diplomat said the only solution is for Iran to make the decision to stop interfering in Arab and Gulf affairs, concluding, “Saudi Arabia won’t take a step back and bet once again on diplomacy and dialogue. Confidence in Iran is lost, and their rigid position ended all possibilities for talks. The ball is in the Iranian court. They started all this and never thought of dealing with Gulf countries the way they used to deal with them.”

“Iranians don’t think that the fault is with Tehran,” Marandi said. “Bombing Yemen is from the Iranian perspective the greatest foreign policy blunder that the Saudis have ever made. It has created a hatred among the Yemenis that is unprecedented in recent times toward the Saudis, and Yemen is a large country. Yemen isn’t Bahrain. All this together has weakened the Saudi position.”

Marandi added, “The main problem in the region is Wahhabism. It is not Sunni [versus] Shiite or Arab-Persian or Turkish-Kurdish. It is basically the Saudi vision that has been promoted for decades and led to crisis all around the world.” Ticking off a list of Islamic extremist groups, “Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Shabab, Daesh [Islamic State], in China and Central Asia,” Marandi reiterated, “It’s the Saudi advocacy of Wahhabism at the regional and international level, and this is why we are seeing all this havoc in Libya, Syria, Iraq and other countries.”

Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/05/iran-saudi-arabia-sectarian-fight-yemen.html#ixzz3ZO3AxLV4

US ad Saudis use cluster bombs in Yamen

 The New York Times reports today that the Saudis and the UAE are using cluster munitions in Sanaa and other cities in Yemen.  It also reports that the US had fired cluster munitions from ships upon targets that include Yemeni civilians, even though we are not at war with the people or country fired upon.  Saudi-Led Group Said to Use Cluster Bombs in Yemen - NYTimes.com




ACTION NEEDED:
Respectfully request that President Obama fire advisors who have for years mislead US presidents about our interests in Yemen, following the lead of the bloodthirsty and fearful Saudis.  The US provides ample protection to the Saudis from both ISIS and the Houthi.  There is no need for the slaughter and pain inflicted on the staving Yemeni.





The bloodthirsty nations -- the Persian Gulf Dictatorships, the uSA, Russia, China -- and the fearful nations, especially Pakistan, have not signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The United States gets bad advice from its military commanders:  killing multitudes of civilians years after hostilities have ceased makes one a pariah; the US, along with the other bloodthirsty nations, have become that to the civilized world: outcasts, though very powerful ones.

Citizens of pariah nations should do what they can  to effect regime change.




From Wikipedia:

Convention on Cluster Munitions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

-----------------------------

Cluster Munition Use in Syria | Cluster bombs | CMC

You can speak to your leaders more effectively that this youngman can.  Speak!  Raise your voice!

Azerbaijan Wrestling Federation Cup, Baku, April 20, 2015

The New Great Game, continued: Monocultural China and the multicultural West competing for the World

Why isn’t China’s drive to control markets in Central Asia and Africa a major topic of our political campaigns?  Why isn’t the Congress focused mainly on how to strengthen US power in Central Asia?  Why do we continue to anger Iran and Pakistan and India and even China by prohibiting our oil companies from exploiting natural gas from the Pars Field, the largest in the world?

Hussein Obama is keeping 10,000 troops in Afghanistan without going though the futile process os getting Congressional approval.  Why is it futile?  Whoever the next president is, will keep troops in Afghanistan, because US military presence in Central Asia is necessary to balance China’s propinquity there.  Just look at a map.  Why doesn’t Congress look?  Are Congressional maps so different from ours?  Do Congressional maps only show Congressional Districts?   

Makkah and Madinah are at risk of conquest by ISIS if Anbar falls, as seems likely.  When ISIS controls the Holy Places, it will control all of  Sunni Asia.  The danger is real, and the Saudi know it and fear it.  

Does a new oil route from Iran to China , which bypasses India, alarm you?  It comforts rulers in China.  Does Washington know it, outside the presidency?  You wouldn't believe that any know it besides my friend Gerry,  by attending to political campaigns. 

This blogger's take, looking at the world from Zeus’ point of view:  The struggle to control world markets and peoples was between England and Russia in the 19th Century, then the world’s most powerful; it is now between The West (Europe, including Russia and India, and  North America)  and China. 

 North America an Europe compete with one another, are multicultural, and have no central  deciding authority. Yet.  Though I think it is a’comin'.  Although multicultural, the West is mostly opposed to Chinese expansion.  

China has begun a a concentrated plan to control Central Asia and then the world. The West has more money and people than China has.  The West’s plan for expansion is  ad hoc, therefore poorly functioning.   China’s plan is well-thought-out, focused, an working as well as one might expect a central but global plan to work.  

There are seven billion of us human animals; we each see living and dying differently;  we all see nothing at all in the same way.  Any plan designed for all of us won’t wok, but one designed for all  of us will work better than inconsistent, hesitant ad hoc plans.

Here’s for  America to agree on a few central ad hoc plans!  Here’s for Ethnic Russians to join the EU!  Here’s for the the Turkic Council to become a united economic powerhouse!  Here’s for the UN to resolve the Palestine Nation issues!  Here’s for the Sunni to become China’s problem!  Here’s for a Congress that likes compromise, that knows the skills of horse-trading!

The Council on Foreign Relations

Foreign Affairs, 

a publication of the Foreign Policy Institute

China's Road Rules

Beijing Looks West Toward Eurasian Integration

An excerpt from the article:

First among them is bolstering the Chinese economy by providing an outlet for excess industrial capacity. As Beijing tries to cool an overheated domestic infrastructure sector without creating massive unemployment, plans that channel investment-led growth beyond China will be key. Inside China’s borders, the plans focus on China’s relatively underdeveloped western and southern regions, which will help accelerate growth and boost employment there, moves which leaders hope will tamp down ethnic unrest in addition to providing jobs and an outlet for the nation’s workforce. 

The bombing in ¥emen hasen't stopped, and neither have the Houthi

Well, in spite of Obama’s intervention, the bombing hasn’t ended in Sana’a or Taiz and naval bombardments on Aden continue unabated.  The air bombings have lessened in San’a.

For illuminating  tweets from Yemeni collected by The Times, see 

As War Grinds On, Yemenis Share Their Anguish Online

   

If you don’t know Taiz, also on the Red Sea, here are some images.  The bomb bursts are from the last 24 hours.

 

Many more on line.

Bombs bursting at night gave proof to our troops, years age, that American's flag still flew.  Bombs bursting at night give young Yemeni a determination to take control of their government, at any price.  

In Arabic, for my self:

أنا اليمنية [I am Yemeni!]

In German, as paraphrased from Kennedy:

Ich bin ein jemenitischen!

And, damn it,   you and I are also Saudi: kith and kin, no more than six degrees of separation. And yes, Houthi, oo.   

And we also, if born into a  Christian, Jewish, or Muslim tradition, in theory, respect the Holy Prophet Abraham.

Yours for victory in Yemen!  

d

A chance for leverage by Balochi and Uighurs, those willing to die for freedom as they define freedom

The Iran-Pakistan Pipeline, as planned,had begun in Pakistan at the Balochi front end of the Pipeline and ended in India.  

A new plan seems to have omitted india, and ends at the Uighur territory at the Chinese end.  

 Both the Balochi and the Uighurs  are Muslims, are both treated badly by their respective governments, and are both objecting to changes in the IP Pipeline.  And now the residents of Khyber Pass are complaining.

There are no details on the web of a new route for the pipeline; and both the Balochi and he Uighurs claim that there are changes that reduce benefits to their people.

The Pakistani government in Punjab, which is the primary beneficiary of the Pipeline, deny that there has been any change in the route.  

And Punjab is responding to complaints by “setting up a special division for the corridor, including nine army battalions and paramilitary forces”, expensive and unnecessary if there has been no change in the route.

Punjabi speak with forked toguens tongues, we we say in Hawaii.

[xImages added]

Reuters

Industries | Wed Apr 22, 2015 8:53am EDTRelated: ENERGY, INDUSTRIALS, UTILITIES

UPDATE 1-Pakistani politicians decry "unfair" China corridor route

(Adds comment from minister)

By Gul Yousafzai

(Reuters) - Politicians in Pakistan complained on Wednesday that a plan for projects worth $46 billion to be built with Chinese funding has been unfairly changed to the disadvantage of two provinces.

Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the plan in Pakistan on Monday. It involves energy and infrastructure projects linking the neighbours' economies and creating an "economic corridor" between Pakistan's Gwadar port and China's western Xinjiang region.

Gwadar is on the Arabian Sea in Baluchistan, Pakistan's poorest and least populous province, where rebels have waged a separatist insurgency for decades, complaining that richer provinces unfairly exploit their mineral and gas resources.

The deep water Port of Gwadar in Pakistan, on the Iranian border,  wholly owned by China

The insurgency has raised doubts about the corridor, a network of roads, railways and pipelines. To minimise the risk, government planners have shifted its route east, to bypass as much of Baluchistan as possible, Baluchistan politicians said.

Balochi freedom fighters

"We will not accept this decision and will resist this move very strongly," provincial Minister for Planning and Development Hamid Khan Achakzai told Reuters. "It will be a big injustice."

Jaffar Khan Mandokhel, a former provincial minister, said there would be a "strong reaction" to the change which would only benefit Pakistan's richest province.

"The change is meant to give maximum benefit to Punjab, which is already considered the privileged province," he said.

Islamabad, Punjab, Pakistan

The route change would also mean the proposed corridor would largely bypass the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said opposition politician Imran Khan, whose party rules the province. He condemned any route change as an injustice.

Khyber Pass and its defenders

But federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal denied that there had been any change and said the project should not fall victim to provincial rivalry.

"This impression that the route has been changed is wrong," Iqbal told a news conference. "Turning this into an issue of conflict between provinces is tantamount to sabotaging billions of dollars of investment."

The complaints highlight the political risks for a plan China sees as a key part of its aim to forge "Silk Road" land and sea ties to markets in the Middle East and Europe.

The Pakistani army said it was tackling the security risks by setting up a special division for the corridor, including nine army battalions and paramilitary forces.

On Tuesday, six separatist militants and two soldiers were killed in clashes in Baluchistan, officials said.

Islamist militants have also attacked Chinese workers in Pakistan. And China worries about Muslim separatists from Xinjiang, whom it blames for a series of attacks across China over the past year, getting training from Pakistani militants.

Lotta freedom fighters, unless you call them terrorists.

(Additional reporting byMehreen Zahra-Malik; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Alex Richardson)