Monthly Archives: April 2010

Paranormal Activity

Posted by jannah on April 23, 2010 18 comments

Have you ever walked into a building, met someone, or been in a situation where you felt every hair on your neck raise up. You feel panic, or that something’s not right. Or just scared, even though the situation is a completely normal one? You just have that intuition that everything is not as it seems? Do you feel like whatever happened in the past in a place can be felt by people now? Does the past give off vibrations or nuances that can be felt by people now, by just walking into a room maybe?

As Muslims, we do believe there is a whole host of activity outside our own senses. Such as the world of the Angels all around us, recording our actions, gathering together, charged with various tasks. The world of the Jinn seems to be right here as well. Not to mention the space-time continuum recording everything. Even in the world of the heart there is so much going on outside of what we know. The Quran describes things like a dead heart, a struggling heart, an ‘angelic’ heart. Things like evil eye exist in Islam and are very real.

I read not long ago about a study where they had people stare at someone in a concentrating manner for a certain period of time and then noted down if the person turned around to look at them. Their findings were never conclusive but they noted that there did seem to be some kind of correlation between someone staring at someone’s back and them turning around.

I used to work in an old office building here in downtown. It was our ‘temporary office’ until our beautiful new green building was completed. This old office building was ordinarily enough next to a few clothing and jewelery stores. A restaurant was near the corner. We were given passcards to enter and leave when we needed to. Our hours were in various shifts and sometimes that would be until 9pm at night. There was just something about this building that was so spooky. None of us wanted to be there alone. Even in the early morning at 8am I would always be turning around looking around me. At night I couldn’t wait to get out of there. After some time we found out that this building used to be an old-world nightclub in the ’30s and was always filled with gangsters, famous politicians and beautiful women of the time. But what it was most famous for we found out was many ‘assassinations’ at that location of politicians or mafia. Laugh if you want, but when we walked into our new quarters we didn’t feel anything. The place was brand new, clean and didn’t give off any vibes. Call that ambiance if you will, but I still feel like there is a lot going on that we can’t grasp but we sometimes feel.

WHY You Need to be Safe on Facebook

Posted by jannah on April 16, 2010 6 comments

aka Who is using your data

facebookprivacy

I originally thought about writing a post on how to change your Facebook settings to make things more private, but I think the real problem here is that people don’t understand WHY. (Also Facebook, clever as they are, change their privacy settings every week!) We are all used to emails and surfing the web and don’t see how Facebook or any other social network is any different. But it is different. HUGELY different. Social networking is a whole new world and with this world comes a lot of problems and issues. So why do we need to be careful? Why can’t we continue to believe Facebook is our own little lala world? Read on to see who’s using your data and how…

1. The FBI and law enforcement agencies – No kidding, last week new documents were finally released by court order that detail how government agencies do this. They create fake IDs on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn and anywhere else we are. They can even “friend” you using these fake accounts (although they are told they are “not allowed to lie”). They use this information to develop profiles on your habits, the organizations you’re into, your friends. They can even use whatever you post as evidence against you and have done so in court. Tweets can be alibis for or against you, pictures can as well. Even the IRS is using it to find and inviestigate people. Read more:

FBI’s Facebook status: snooping, checking pictures

2. Potential employers – I think I read a survey not long ago that said 9/10 potential employers use the web to do research on future employees. It’s so common but still people continue to put up crazy things, thinking no one but their friends is going to see it!

For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume

3. Current employers – If you think it was only potential employers you had to worry about, think again. Many companies now monitor who says what to make sure it doesn’t damage their company. They also can see if you are not really “sick” at home and what you are saying about your co-workers and boss! Many companies also monitor how much their employees use Facebook. Check out this article:

How To Monitor Your Employees’ Facebook Use

4. Paedophiles & sex offenders – The article I posted a few weeks ago on how a peadophile friended 17 year old Ashleigh only to rape, kill and dump her body in a field is chilling. Paedophiles actively trawl these social networks where young girls frequent. A recent report said 1 out of 10 sex offenders are using the web to “meet people”. Read more on how easy it is for a paedophile to lure a victim on Facebook:

Ashleigh Hall, 17, was killed by a rapist who groomed her online.

5. Potential rishtas – Perhaps not as serious as the others (unless you’re single and looking to get married!) More and more people are typing names into google and facebook and finding all kinds of information on a prospective spouse. While of course this is useful for us to find out more about the other person, like seeing pictures of the person drinking and clubbing. (HAS happenned!), a lot of false assumptions can be made. Putting up any type of shady pictures or even innocent one’s, know that your future spouse will possibly examine them and judge you by them. This is a funny spoof article on the subject:

Facebook Profile Ruins Marriage Proposal

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6. Advertising companies – Facebook of course uses your information as a base for their ads that appear on your popups. Your personal information is used. So if you’re a fan of suchandsuch thing you will get an ad related to that. Even worse is when they use your pictures and information to advertise to your friends! Or their lovely Beacon program last year that advertised your preferences and things you bought to your friends. But the future is even scarier. Facebook is looking to expand their advertising revenue and partnerships with other companies. In a few months (even now) they are rolling out new partnerships with other websites that will automatically Facebook Connect your data. So you don’t even have to be logged onto Facebook, you just go visit another site and they will connect all your data and “personalize your experience” there. Read more on the future:

Facebook planning to give away your data to partners

7. Whatever you put up they own – Facebook has continued to be extremely vague about ownership of what you put up. Who owns your pictures? Do they or do you? You’ll be surprised to know that it still isn’t clear. A year ago, people realized that Facebook’s terms of service (TOS) said that Facebook owned their content… FOREVER. Owned everything you put up and even if you delete them kept ownership of them in the archive they have. That caused a massive brewhaha that resulted in some changes in Facebooks TOS but still. See more:
Facebook’s New Terms Of Service:

“We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”

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8. Whatever you put up is there forever – Life changes and so do we. But whatever we put up on the internet is there forever. I think we should coin a new phrase ‘life changes, but data is forever’. Some people think if they delete something that means it’s gone. Think again my friend!! Once something is on the internet it is stored and cached and archived. That means Facebook has an archive of even things you’ve deleted. That means google cache keeps a copy of your previous incarnations of your profile. There are even bots that go aroudn on twitter and collect all tweets and this or that and store them… forever. Want to permanently delete your account? Not as easy as you think either:

How to permanently delete your Facebook account

9. Burglars - This is kind of funny. Burglars actually are using social networking to find out when people are not at home. There’s even a site that used to highlight this by posting twitter messages by people who posted their location/vacation/home addresses: PleaseRobMe.com. I guess people got mad and they stopped but it proved their point. Read more:

Facebook and Twitter users ‘could be targeted by burglars’

facebook_privacy

10. Identify thieves - There are actually three different settings you need to check on Facebook to make your birthdate not visible to others. A birthdate and a name is all some need to access all kinds of information, including your credit card!

18-to 24-year-olds most at risk for ID theft, survey finds

11. Stalkers – I don’t think I need to elaborate on this. Everyone who is online should be aware of this by now!!

I hope you can see that not all is well in lala land. Facebook isn’t your private island. It is a very public open never-ending-highway shady reststop. Anyone could be there, anyone could overhear, anyone could be lurking, stalking.

In the end:
–Keep privacy settings the highest you can.
–Be careful what you put up. Know that possibly anyone can see it and it could be there forever.
–Monitor who can see what always and check it every few months (because they do change and reset it without telling you!)
–Don’t friend people you don’t know are real ppl.

OK then, scared like crazy? You’ve realized Facebook and other social networks are not like your email? You’ll start to be careful now? Yay, my job is done here. Over and out

Of small victories

Posted by jannah on April 9, 2010 5 comments

Of small victories…

Few take up the burden of their own victory: most give up their dreams when they become impossible.
- Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage

Yesterday I attended a rally for Muslims prosecuted wrongfully. If you’re an old time blog reader, you know of the two men here who were lured by FBI agents and embroiled in an elaborate trap to convict them of terrorism. Yesterday a rally was organized by a non-Muslim group that is in solidarity with the Muslims. We all met in front of the main library in our town and heard a few speakers and marched with a plethora of signs all the way downtown to city hall. We yelled slogans like ‘hey hey, ho ho, entrapment must go’ and ‘who did the crime, fbi! who did the time, muslims!’

At city hall, a common council member was going to introduce a resolution asking the justice department to review all these cases targeting Muslims.

There were maybe a hundred supporters, including Muslims, non-Muslims, babies in carriages, little Muslim girls with hijabs and signs, every nationality and age and color, Muslims who wore hijab and didn’t, Muslims who looked like they were and looked like they weren’t. Many family members of Muslims prosecuted from various cases in other states and nearby came as well.

We all walked through the metal detectors, got wanded and went upstairs to the court hall. There, one by one different people went up to speak from their heart. Some tearfully, some passionately.

There was the lawyer on the case who talked about how in the first evidence given a document claimed a Muslim Imam was a “commander” but when they read the document they realized the FBI had mistranslated the word for “brother” as “commander” and totally had the wrong language even! The FBI admitted their mistake but all evidence after that was then made secret! Not even the defense lawyers who went through months of clearance were allowed to see the evidence. They were not able to challenge anything that could have been totally wrong like that. The judge at the beginning told the jury that there was “real evidence” why these men were targeted and completely prejudiced the jury. They were afraid to exonerate them even though they found them not guilty on all except one of the charges.

A little Albanian girl who was probably about 12 went up and spoke quite eloquently about how her father and his friends went to the Pochonos on vacation and went horseback-riding, played pool and then to a shooting range. Before they went to the shooting range they even asked the local cops if they could and were told it was fine. Long story short another person tricked and entangled, pro(per)secuted and convicted. She said she had two younger siblings who always ask about their father and she doesn’t know what to tell them and tries to comfort them. All from this little tiny girl! Hearts of stone would have melted.

A Palestinian mother went up and spoke about how her son was given life PLUS 30 years and he is only 21 years old over taking pictures at a reservoir. To see him in jail the family has to drive 19 hours and can only talk to him through glass in a highly secure CMU, a jail especially for Muslims. I thought about the pictures I took this summer at Lock 7.

A local Egyptian Muslim talked about how he came to the US 30 years ago because it was the land of opportunity, of fairness and justice. How Muslims want to be part of the society, to contribute and give back. And how he was appalled with what was happening in the U.S now.

A non-Muslim African-American mother went up and talked about how one day she looked at her Muslim son and realized that he was not well. After being tested they found out he had leukemia. The informant the FBI sent to him offered him money for treatment for his CANCER. And they later used this to convict him for terrorism.

An Indian Physics professor talked about how he came to the US so many years ago as an immigrant and hoped it would be a place of peace and prosperity. How these men, while they may have made mistakes, were not terrorists. How they were entrapped and prosecuted and taken from their families.

Case after case, community members, activists, peace advocates, civil rights supporters, family members, mothers, fathers, aunts, sisters, siblings, young sons and daughters, muslims, non-muslims, blonde, white, black, wearing jeans or jilbabs or suits went and spoke. I can’t even describe the beauty and eloquence and emotion of each speaker talking about things like injustice, anger, civil rights, love, family, faith and ideals.

I know for each activist, mother or child who spoke it was a cathartic experience. For the first time they were able to speak and be a witness to what had happened to them and what was happening around them.

Some council members cried as did we.

I was reminded of the story of the Christian king of Abyssinia. Who, when the enemies of Muslims came, asking him to hand over the Muslims taking refuge in his country, asked the Muslims about their case. The Muslims came forward and recited verses from the Chapter of Mary in the Quran. The king and his council members wept until their beards were wet and he said that the difference between Christianity and Islam was the difference between this line that he drew in the sand. He declared that he wouldn’t give the Muslims up for anything and would always give them protection.

Amazingly, a few council members got up and also talked. One with a heavy Russian accent talked about how even seeing the recent violent events in his country, he did not want the US to turn into the Soviet Union. He talked about the time his uncle was dragged away for nothing and put into a horrible gulag in Siberia. He talked about how his grandmother is still scared to even talk about anything political and about how people his parents knew just disappeared because of their political ideas.

Another talked about how the council now had a choice. What kind of America did they want to live in? The kind where secret evidence, illegal wiretaps, wrongful prosecution was OK or the kind where justice upheld. Did they want an America where people were arrested and jailed before they even committed a crime because of their beliefs?

One of the women council members talked at length about the tragedy of 9/11 and admitted how the US had gone too far in their treatment for Muslims and it was time to redress it now instead of 50 years from now like they did for the Japanese that were interred and all the other different groups that had been treated unfairly in the past.

Another council member said he thought that in being a representative here he’d just be working on things like parking and streets and building legislation. But he was so proud now to be part of something of great importance and wanted to represent the Muslims he knew in his own district that he saw everyday in their stores. He knew them and wanted to make sure they received the justice they deserved.

One of the council members objected to the wording of the resolution and they went into an unprecedented emergency mode to update it so that they could have more members support it.

One council member objected to ‘not having enough time’ to think over something so weighty. Another said he wanted to talk to his ‘elected officials’ to see what they thought before supporting something like this.

I wish someone had video recorded or taped it or I could somehow recall everything that had been said and convey it to you. I don’t think I will ever see an event like that again. It was unprecedented all around and just un-describable. I wish every person in the world could, like this council, witness and hear each individual Muslim like this. Just to see their face and hear them. What a difference it makes!

It had been a very long emotional meeting. People came in and out, some went to another courtroom to pray. The babies fell asleep and were taken home. Finally after everyone spoke passionately and all debate was over… the vote. At this time, the room went silent and everyone came in, sat in the floor and listened to hear the roll call. Yes, yes, yes, present (meaning no/abstain), yes, present…and on it went. Finally the tally… it was 10-4 We won!!

The resolution had passed. And for the first time, and in a very formal way a government body had made a very very very small concession. And sent a very very very small message to the justice department. Message: what they did might have been wrong and needed to be redressed.

A very small stone in a very huge pool of suffering. The men are still in jail. Their families are still torn apart. A resolution doesn’t change innocence or guilt, just asks them to review the “methods” used in prosecution. Still…

Still.

We all walked back in groups jubiantly through the night air the way we marched, to a little tiny pizza shop downtown that one of the wive’s of one of the Muslims in jail still ran after her husband had been taken away. Struggling, alone, with 6 children to support, she had prepared some food for all of us. There everyone took up every available booth and counter space. We passed around pizza and salad and biryani and ginger ale. Some council members came too! Everyone hung out and we ate and laughed and talked and celebrated. It was a little strange, a lot full of wonder, an amazing evening. For the first time in a long time we felt… happy.

…

I almost didn’t write about this event, because I kind of felt it was a special, private moment for those involved. But then I thought maybe someone out there could use a tiny bit of hope… Also I would like those who were not involved and who have never been involved, the Muslims sitting on their couch or the Americans who don’t care, to know of our little win of justice, of our happiness…of small victories. It is we who are blessed through this opportunity to help others, not the other way around. All praise and thanks be to God.

wsalam

UPDATE! Our wish has been granted!! Video of everyone speaking appears in the link below at Project Salam!!

Photos taken by Dan Van Riper