From AsiaNews, with thanks to Kemaste:
In the past, Lebanon’s Grand Mufti, sheikh Mohammed Qabbani, had urged the Education Ministry “to require schools to set Friday aside as day of rest”. The request had hitherto been met with a chorus of criticism against what was perceived as interference by religious authorities in the internal affairs of the public school system.Recently, Education Minister Bassem al-Jisr, a member of the outgoing Hariri cabinet, told schools to consult with the clergy in their respective neighbourhoods and act accordingly.
Until now such a decision was instead the purview of school-parent councils, free to choose either Friday or Saturday according to their school’s needs on condition that they inform the ministry.
Moreover, the directive remains vague for Mr Bassem al-Jisr did not specify how many clergymen ought to be consulted, to which denominations they should belong and how any difference of opinion should be settled.
The directive did however generate bitterness and anger among Christian teaching staff. Some of them told AsiaNews that the “decision to close on Saturday and Sunday stems from educational and administrative considerations, that is practical reasons, not religious ones”. They urged whoever will be the minister in the new government not to make the school calendar another religious battleground. If the government wants to make Friday a day of rest, let it adopt a law that is national in scope and applies to all grades, schools and institutions, both public and private, not to just to one section of the capital. Some also object that as things are now in various schools in predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods the hour set aside for Christian catechism is not respected....
The Qu‘ran itself does not say that Muslims must stop work or study on Friday. All that it does say is that believers meet in the mosque for communal prayer on that day.
"The Qu‘ran itself does not say that Muslims must stop work or study on Friday. All that it does say is that believers meet in the mosque for communal prayer on that day."
The Qu'ran does specify many things that eventually became ritualized and tradition and convenience, like each and every human enterprise, eventually created rituals to suit community needs. In recent years, rituals have been created FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES. In this case, like the hijab, the Friday day of rest is being put upon the rest of the community for the political purpose of putting forward a play for power to impose the will of Islam on the rest of the community. The Qu'ran does specify that non-Muslims must be subdued and know that they are subdued which will begin to occur if Muslims win the day in this particular struggle.
One inquiry: where does this phrase "Grand Mufti" come from if not from the West? The same title, for some reason, was given by the British (or did he simply name himself) to Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Hitler supporter, always described as the "Grand Mufti" (a non-existent title) of Jerusalem.
While on this subject, it is amusing to see the various rulers of insignificant -- save for the accident of geology -- sheikhdoms continually giving themselves not only a raise, but a rise in rank. Thus the Ruler of Bahrain (as he was always known to the British) has gone from Emir to Prince to -- well, isn't he by now the "King of Bahrain"? Ditto with Qatar, the various components of the U.A.E., and so on. And in the West everyone is most impressed with these pashas and bashaws and beys and beglerbegs who rule, not quite easily, these "tribes with flags."
One even sees, from supposedly reputable people, all sorts of backdating of the rule of the Al-Saud family. But they did not "rule" what they renamed "Saudi" Arabia until this century. What about the Jabal Shammar, whom they did not succeed in conquering until 1920? Who controlled Mecca and Medina until this century if not the Hashemites who then helped themselves, or rather the British presented them with, the kingdom of Iraq and the "emirate of Transjordan" which was carved, in part, out of what for 2000 years had been eastern Palestine (and certainly the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations did not take kindly to this betrayal of the Mandate for Palestine intended for the Jewish National Home).
Really, is it so hard to look up something now and again -- even at the State Department? At Bush House (the BBC)? At The New York Times? What do these people do all day?
Just a teeny-weeny study of history, nothing too strenuous, maybe just a glance at Shepard's Historical Atlas and William Langer's nice list of dates since time began -- that would be a start in official Washington and pontificating New York.
Puh-leeze.
Off Topic - and probably going far out on a limb - but here’s a hot tip of what could become big, BREAKING NEWS.
A sketchy story’s leaked out of Ramallah overnight that doctors, flown in hastily (on the quiet) from Tunis, have diagnosed large, severely-inflamed, SUPREMELY-EXCRUCIATING kidney-stones in the reeking, raddled, repulsive body of the Most Experienced Terrorist on the face of the Earth, “President” of the PA/PLO, “el-Rais”, Yasir Arafat.
The closest (non-Israeli) hospital to treat him’s in Amman, Jordan; there’s now talk of him next being heli-lifted there. By repute, Israel’s assented to his return to his Muqata HQ in Ramallah, once this complaint’s been medically seen to - but that HARDLY means he’ll be heading back there in any hurry, instead of proceeding on to, say, Paris, Athens, Stockholm or Geneva (where his welcome could safely be expected to be positively exuberant, his reception grand indeed).
With Arafat on the loose again, SOON, basking maniacally in the idolization of the übercoolest soirées and salons of Europe (and, so handily, round the corner from the banks holding the bulk of his embezzled billions), predictably, some truly NASTY & SHOCKING CHANGES in the course of his “el-Aqsa Intefada” can be tragically, inevitably, anticipated in “Palestine”, and in the “War on Terror” (WWIV!) generally - arriving in the near future.
Obsessively undermining and sabotaging ALL peace-efforts in the Mideast, spreading his lies in every forum, advancing his machinations, securing his European assistance and consolidating his support from Iran, replenishing his Arab ties, lionized by the “international community” (that demented, purblind pack of appeasement-happy masochists), there’s no limit to the HARM that the devious, narcissistic, genocidal “Rais” could wreak, strutting the stage, refreshed.
How poor Mr Ariel Sharon - beyond everything - must rue the day, in Beirut, 1983, that he had Arafat lined up squarely in the cross-hairs of a sniper’s ‘scope… but (out of some misguided allegiance to an idealized convention) declined to shoot him on the spot - which likely would’ve SPARED immense grief, all around, for multitudes, through the following two decades....