Minimum Amount Of Water Needed For Ablution

Question

I have one litre water. Can I use this water for wudhu before shalah? How much water minimum we use for wudhu?

Fatwa

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ) is His slave and Messenger.

One litre of water is sufficient for performing ablution; rather a Mudd (which equals 0.688 litre) is enough. It is confirmed that the Prophet sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ) used to perform ablution only using one Mudd and would perform Ghusl (ritual bath) using one Saa' (which equals 4 Mudds), as reported by Al-Bukhaari and Muslim may Allaah have mercy upon them. Therefore, whoever uses a Mudd properly in ablution; it will be enough for him.

As regards the minimum quantity of water which is sufficient for ablution, then most of the scholars may Allaah have mercy upon them are of the view that there is no minimum quantity of water. What should be considered is that the limbs which must be washed in ablution are washed. Therefore, if a person performs ablution and washes all the limbs that should be washed in ablution even with a quantity lesser than a Mudd, then his ablution is acceptable. Indeed it is confirmed that the Prophet sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ) performed ablution with a third of a Mudd. [Al-Haakim].

Ibn Qudaamah may Allaah have mercy upon him said: “This is the view of Ash-Shaafi'i and the view of the majority of the scholars may Allaah have mercy upon them.”

However, some scholars may Allaah have mercy upon them are of the view that less than a Mudd is not sufficient as the Prophet sallallaahu `alayhi wa sallam ( may Allaah exalt his mention ) said: “A Mudd is enough for ablution and a Saa' is enough for Ghusl.” [Ahmad and Ibn Maajah]. According to this view, the narration sets the estimation of the quantity of water which is sufficient for ablution and that anything less than that is not sufficient.

Any way, according to both views, if the limbs that must be washed in ablution are not properly washed with a Mudd, and there is a need for more water, then it is acceptable as long as there is no extravagancy.

Allaah Knows best.

Fatwa answered by: The Fatwa Center at Islamweb

NO AMERICAN PRESIDENT CAN STAND UP TO ISRAEL

By Paul Craig Roberts

"No American President can stand up to Israel."

These words came from feisty Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations (1967-1970) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1970-1974). Moorer was, perhaps, the last independent-minded American military leader.

Admiral Moorer knew what he was talking about. On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked the American intelligence ship, USS Liberty, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 173. The Israelis even strafed the life rafts, machine-gunning the American sailors leaving the stricken ship.

Apparently, the USS Liberty had picked up Israeli communications that revealed Israel's responsibility for the Six Day War. Even today, history books and the majority of Americans blame the conflict on the Arabs.

The United States Navy knew the truth, but the President of the United States took Israel's side against the American military and ordered the United States Navy to shut its mouth. President Lyndon Johnson said it was all just a mistake. Later in life, Admiral Moorer formed a commission and presented the unvarnished truth to Americans.

The power of the Israel Lobby over American foreign policy is considerable. In March 2006, two distinguished American scholars, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, expressed concern in the London Review of Books that the power of the Israel Lobby was bending US foreign policy in directions that serve neither US nor Israeli interests. The two experts were hoping to start a debate that might rescue the US and Israel from unsuccessful policies of coercion that are intensifying Muslim hatred of Israel and America. The Israel lobby was opposed to any such reassessment, and attempted to close it off with epithets: "Jew-baiter," "anti-semitic," and even "anti-American." Today Israeli citizens who oppose Zionist plans for greater Israel are denounced as "anti-Semites."

Many Americans are unaware of the influence of the Israel lobby. Instead they think of the US as "the world's sole superpower," a macho new Roman Empire whose orders are obeyed without question or the insolent nonentity is "bombed back to the stone age." Many Americans are convinced that military coercion serves our interest. They cite Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now they are ready to bring Iran and Pakistan to heel with bombs.

This arrogance results in the murder of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of men, women and children, a fate that many Americans seem to believe is appropriate for countries that do not accept US hegemony.

Coercion is what American foreign policy has become. Macho superpatriots love it. Many of these superpatriots derive vicarious pleasure from their delusions that America is "kicking those sand niggers' asses."

This is the America of the Bush Regime. If some of these superpatriots had their way every "unpatriotic, terrorist supporter" who dares to criticize the war against "the Islamofacists" would be sent to Gitmo, if not shot on the spot.

These Bush supporters have morphed the Republican Party into the Brownshirt Party. They cannot wait to attack Iran, preferably with nuclear weapons. Impatient for Armageddon, some are so full of hubris and self-righteousness that they actually believe that their support for evil means they will be "wafted up to heaven."

It has come as a crippling blow to Democrats that "their" political party is comfortable with Bush's America, and will do nothing to stop the Bush regime's aggression against the Iraqi people or to prevent the Bush regime's attack on Iran.

The Democrats could easily impeach both Bush and Cheney in the House, as impeachment only requires a majority vote. They could not convict in the Senate without Republican support, as conviction requires ratification by two-thirds of Senators present. Nevertheless, a House vote for impeachment would take the wind out of the sails of war, save countless lives and perhaps even save humanity from nuclear holocaust.

Various rationales or excuses have been constructed for the Democrats' complicity in aggression that does not serve America. Perhaps the most popular rationale is that the Democrats are letting the Republicans have all the rope they want with which to produce such a high disapproval rating that the Democrats will sweep the 2008 election.

It is doubtful that the Democrats would assume that men as cunning as Karl Rove and Dick Cheney do not understand the electoral consequences of a low public approval rating and are walking blindly into an electoral wipeout. Rove's departure does not mean that no strategy is in place.

So what does explain the complicity of the Democratic Party in a policy that the American public, and especially Democratic constituencies, reject? Perhaps a clue is offered from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune news report (August 1, 2007) that Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison will spend a week in Israel on "a privately funded trip sponsored by the American Israel Education Federation. The AIEF--the charitable arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)--is sending 19 members of Congress to meet with Israeli leaders. The group, made up mostly of freshman Democrats, has plans to meet with Isreali Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and [puppet] Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The senior Democratic member on the trip is House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who has gone three times. . . . The trip to Israel is Ellison's second as a congressman."

According to the Star-Tribune, a Republican group, which includes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R, Minn), led by Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Va) is already in Israel. According to news reports, another 40 are following these two groups during the August recess, and "by the time the year is out every single member of Congress will have made their rounds in Israel." This claim is probably overstated, but it does show careful Israeli management of US policy in the Middle East.

Elsewhere on earth and especially among Muslims, the suspicion is rife that the reason the war against Iraq cannot end, and the reason Iran and Syria must be attacked, is that the US must destroy all Muslim opposition to Israel's theft of Palestine, turning an entire people into refugees driven from their homes and from the lands on which they have lived for many centuries. Americans might think that they are merely grabbing control over oil, keeping it out of the hands of terrorists, but that is not the way the rest of the world views the conflict.

Jimmy Carter was the last American president who stood up to Israel and demanded that US diplomacy be, at least officially if not in practice, even-handed in its approach to Israel and Palestine. Since Carter's presidency, even-handedness has slowly drained from US policy in the Middle East. The neoconservative Bush/Cheney regime has abandoned even the pretense of even-handedness.

This is unfortunate, because military coercion has proven to be unsuccessful. Exhausted from the conflict, the US military, according to former Secretary of State and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, is "nearly broken." Demoralized elite West Point graduates are leaving the army at the fastest clip in 30 years. Desertions are rapidly rising. A friend, a US Marine officer who served in combat in Vietnam, recently wrote to me that his son's Marine unit, currently training for its third deployment to Iraq in September, is short 12-16 men in every platoon and expects to be hit with more AWOLs prior to deployment.

Instead of re-evaluating a failed policy, Bush's "war tsar," General Douglas Lute, has called for the reinstitution of the draft. Gen. Lute doesn't see why Americans should not be returned to military servitude in order to save the Bush administration the embarrassment of having to correct a mistaken Middle East policy that commits the US to more aggression and to debilitating long-term military conflict in the Middle East.

It is difficult to see how this policy serves any interest other than the very narrow one of the armaments industry. Apparently, nothing can be done to change this disastrous policy until the Israel Lobby comes to the realization that Israel's interest is not being served by the current policy of military coercion.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

Source :- Counterpunch.org

It is the Jewish lobby which chooses the US president, not the American people. But most Americans don't realize this.

kilamxx

A Troubling Case

By Fareena Alam
Date: 18 June 2007


In January 2002, Q-News carried an exclusive interview with a young American Muslim named Musa Abdun Nur Maguire speaking about his cousin, Sulayman. Both were converts to Islam. Both grew up in upwardly mobile, aspirational, West Coast liberal families who accepted their children's religious changes with genuine openness and respect. So far, so good. The trouble was that Sulayman's other name was John Walker Lindh, dubbed - in the throes of post-9/11 hysteria - the "American Taliban". It was a case that intrigued and troubled us then. It is a case that should trouble all of us now.

Taken prisoner by American forces in December 2001 in Afghanistan, "enemy combatant" John Walker Lindh was the focus of a campaign of disinformation from the start. Musa's description of John's intense spirituality, sensitive political awareness and desire to work for social justice bore little resemblance to the way he was painted in the American media. With the trail of Osama bin Laden going cold, the nation was searching in vain someone else to direct its collective anger and hurt towards. Finding John Walker Lindh was the next best thing. Reports portrayed him as a traitor who wanted to kill American troops, a henchman of al-Qaida, a confidante of OBL himself. In short: a Kurtz-like, brainwashed, terrorist killer. The allegations were so blatantly false that even the United States government couldn't prove them when the Lindh case came before the courts in October 2002. The true story is in fact emblematic of everything that has gone wrong in this so-called "war on terror".

Last week, Frank Lindh - John's father and a San Francisco-based lawyer - came to London to talk about the gross miscarriage of justice that followed his son's capture and the human rights implications of his continued incarceration. The event, Frank Lindh's first lecture in the United Kingdom, was brought together by Q-News in conjunction with Cageprisoners and with support from Islamic Circles and The City Circle. His deeply moving presentation is available as a podcast on iTunes.

Frank Lindh (a practising Catholic) is a warm, straightforward man. His campaign to clear his son's name and gain his release in the face of American public opinion that has been shaped by continued false allegations and reactionary, bully patriotism (of the Rush Limbaugh / Fox News variety) is courageous. The story he tells of John Walker Lindh's journey from the killing fields of Afghanistan to an American prison cell is extraordinary.

Having converted to Islam at the age of 16, after reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X, John Walker Lindh had travelled to Yemen and later Pakistan to study classical Arabic and Islamic studies - decisions he made with the blessing and permission of his parents and about which he was completely transparent. His parents respected their son's right to choose his own confessional path. His father remarked, reflecting on John's religious transformation, "Islam fit him. It was like he had always been a Muslim."

While in Pakistan, memorising the Quran at a madrassah, he decided that he would volunteer to spend the summer with Afghan armed forces controlled, at that time, by the Taliban who were fighting the Northern Alliance, the tribal warlords involved in their own campaign of murder and plunder. It seems like an unusual, even foolhardy decision. But it's no more a crime than that of thousands of American (and British) who went abroad to fight in the Spanish civil war, or in Bosnia. John later acknowledged: "I want the American people to know that had I realised then what I know now about the Taliban, I would never have joined them."

John's account of his time in Afghanistan has not been disputed by the American authorities who captured and later prosecuted him: John received basic infantry training at a camp funded by Osama bin Laden, who was actively supporting the Taliban government (as was the US government who in April 2001 gave the Taliban government $41 million in aid). The camp was not a terrorist training camp. Those camps were quite separate from the Taliban military infrastructure (for an inside view of what that variety of camp looked like, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's report on one-time Guantanamo detainee Abdur Rehman Khadr is instructive).

The real story of John Lindh's service in the Afghan army is less sexy than the hype that followed: he served sentry and cooking duty in Tahar on the frontlines of the confrontation with the Northern Alliance. It was only after the commencement of American bombing that the Taliban line was broken and John Lindh fled along with other Taliban troops to Kunduz, 60 miles away. American soldiers never served in the Tahar region. It was then that things turned really ugly.

Captured by the brutal warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, John Lindh and his comrades were at first offered safe passage through Northern Alliance territory. This shaky deal fell apart when some Taliban captives became nervous and revolted at the Qala-i-Jhangi fortress where they were being held. John was shot in the leg, but took refuge with the few other survivors in the basement of the fortress. The orders now changed: all the prisoners were to be killed. American (and British) forces looked the other way. After several unsuccessful attempts to take the prisoners, Dostum's forces finally flooded the basement where they were hiding, Most of the injured and weary prisoners drowned. Remarkably, John Walker Lindh survived. Enter the American forces who took possession of him.

Learning of the capture of an American among the Qala-i-Jhangi prisoners, defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered military interrogators to "take the gloves off". Locked up in a metal shipping container (similar to the one in which hundreds of Taliban prisoners had died earlier, suffocated and shot to death), blindfolded, duct-taped to a stretcher, taunted and threatened by US soldiers, denied a lawyer, denied access to medical treatment for a festering bullet wound in his leg, denied access to the Red Cross, photographed naked and blindfolded, John Walker Lindh was among the first to experience what post-9/11 American justice would feel like.

The administration relished the capture of Lindh. It was exactly the kind of symbol they needed to sell the "war on terror" to the American public. All kinds of outlandish and false statements were made. President Bush stated emphatically that, "Obviously, Walker is unique in that he's the first American al-Qaida fighter that we have captured." False. Rumsfeld, no doubt gleeful after having ordered the gloves off, said that John Walker Lindh was "captured by US forces with an AK-47 in his hands." False. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert declared Lindh a "terrorist" who belonged to "an organisation that took American lives and came against the American Constitution." False.

Bush's father (the former president) was near hysterical: "I thought of a unique penalty. Make him [John Lindh] leave his hair the way it is and his face as dirty as it is and let him go wandering around this country and see what kind of sympathy he would get."

Bush Sr was only outdone by "liberal-minded" Rudolph Giuliani, then-Mayor of New York: "When you commit treason against the United States of America, particularly at a time when the U.S. is in peril of attack and further attack, I believe the death penalty is the appropriate remedy to consider."

When he was finally brought to trial later that year, nine of the 10 indictments against John Lindh were eventually dropped. That didn't prevent Attorney-General John Ashcroft declaring that Lindh dedicated himself to "killing Americans" - though he must have known that the remaining indictment said nothing about this.

Although he was exonerated of all terrorism-related charges, John was forced into a plea bargain. Already tried and convicted by public opinion, a fair jury trial was deemed impossible and could have resulted in an even worse outcome. John Lindh finally agreed to plead guilty to one crime: breaking the economic sanctions imposed on the Taliban regime - by the Clinton administration. For this he was given a 20-year sentence. Attempts to force John's lawyers to agree to a lifetime travel ban eventually failed: John Lindh insisted that he wanted to leave the US at least once - to go on Hajj, the pilgrimage in Mecca.

John Walker Lindh is now housed in the highest security prison in the United States. He was initially forbidden to speak or pray audibly in Arabic. Even greeting other Muslim prisoners with "Salams" was prohibited. These were part of the "special administrative measures" placed on him. He is now in isolation. Visits with family are highly controlled. He spends his time studying religious texts, memorising the Quran and praying.

John Lindh's case is remarkably similar to that of Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen who also survived the massacre at Qala-i-Jhangi and captured. Hamdi was taken to Guantanamo, but once his US citizenship was discovered, he was shipped to a naval brig in Virginia where he was held as an "enemy combatant". Hamdi's case was finally heard by the Supreme Court last year, which ruled that Hamdi could not be held without charge and was entitled to a hearing. With no evidence against him, the US government released Hamdi, stripped him of his US citizenship and sent him to his country of origin, Saudi Arabia. If Hamdi is free, John Walker Lindh should be as well.

While the Lindh case has largely been forgotten, a few brave American voices have tried to keep it in the spotlight. Grammy award-winning (and politically progressive) country musician Steve Earle released the track John Walker's Blues, an imagined telling from Lindh's own perspective:

I'm just an American boy raised on MTV
And I've seen all those kids in the soda pop ads
But none of 'em looked like me
So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him."
(For the rest of the lyrics click here)

It was a powerful, humanising antidote to the disinformation campaign. Predictably, country music stations banned the song for being unpatriotic.

Tom Junod of Esquire Magazine reconstructed John (now Hamza) Walker Lindh's current life through extensive interviews and concluded: "He is a better person than you or I ... He has a spiritual presence ... He's very kind ... He's very concerned about the poor - so concerned that he's lived among them. He's committed to social justice, though he's the first to admit that he's made some bad decisions in that regard. But that's another thing about him. He never lies. He never changes his story, even when he has every reason to. He's very consistent, to put it mildly."

Frank Lindh's campaign deserves our support. Like the calls to close down Guantanamo, come clean on secret prisons and tell the truth about extraordinary renditions, the call to commute John Lindh's sentence is right and just.

Source :-yvonneridley.org

Further Reading:-

Free John Walker Lindh

Profile: John Walker Lindh

The Real Story of John Walker Lindh
by his father Frank Lindh

Who Will Stand Up For The Tortured And Gagged
by Dave Lindorff

Fasting : Scholars Reject Women Be Allowed To Work Half Day

From Utusan Malaysia Online

Translated by kilamxx

Scholars rejected the proposal by CUEPACS (Congress Of Unions Of Employees In The Public And Civil Services) that the government shortens the daily working hours of female employees by half during the fasting month of Ramadan.

The general opinion overall is that the proposal would raise problems in the workflow and in fact some see it as a way to exploit the holy month in avoiding work.

The excuse given by CUEPACS that the proposal would give female employee, especially those living in the Klang Valley, the chance to go home earlier to manage the housework including the preparation of food for the breaking of fast was dismissed as inadmissible.

The Perlis Mufti, Dr. Mohd. Asri Zainul Abidin, said the proposal was impractical and hoped the government would take into account the views from various quarters before deciding on the issue.

“There is nothing in the teachings which said that work should be set aside just for the breaking of fast, but instead the emphasis should be on performance of pious duties or worship,” he said when contacted here today.

He added, it would be better to encourage the reading of the Holy Quran, thus increasing the good deeds (pahala) and continue working to increase productivity.

Yesterday, CUEPACS President, Omar Osman proposed that the government shortens the working hours of female employees to half day during the Ramadan month which is expected to begin on 14^th September.

The excuse was that the traffic congestion during the fasting month exposes them to the risk of accidents besides the responsibility of managing the children and the preparation of food for the breaking of fast.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Mufti of Pahang, Datuk Abdul Rahman Osman said, religion has never differentiated the way of working within the month of Ramadan with any other month.

“There is no evidence or reasoning in Islam which compels us to shorten the work time during the fasting month just for the sake of preparing food for the breaking of fast.

“There are only some Hadiths which allow one to lessen the workload a bit but not to the extent of incurring difficulties on others,” he explained.

He said a compromise can be reached whereby the working hours for female employees may be slightly shortened.

“A one or two hour remission may be allowed but not until a half day.

“But this should be made up for by coming in to work earlier,” he said.

Free lance preacher Mohd. Daud Che Ngah described the proposal as an attempt to ‘evacuate’ the women from the ‘battlefield’.

“Why should they be allowed to get home early on the excuse of preparing food for the breaking of fast while the men are left to toil hard at the workplace?” he asked.

The breaking of fast should not be the highlight of the month of Ramadan. The emphasis should be on how we fill up the days and nights with our good deeds and piety.

kilamxx