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Bismillah, We Twelver Shias commonly claim that the Takfiri/Salafi/Wahhabi propagandists are funded by the Saudis and their petro dollars. Do we have any proof of this? Thanks. JazakAllah Khair.

I don't know whether this was posted here before or not, so if repetitive, forgive me for sharing it . This was made in memory of those who died by the missile of US navy force to the none military Iranian airplane, which was intentionally because the commander of the battle ship which did it was awarded with medal of honor(dishonor)

As salam alaikum, I have studied international development and am thinking of ways to start a venture that can help people....I live in the UAE and our options are very limited (maybe just laborers and domestic helpers) I was looking into microfinance solutions - I do not have a job yet, and that is why I want to start my own thing...but unfortunately I do not know too much about banking and finance - though I can get my parents help on that one...i'm pretty sure my dad will tell me its going to be a waste of time and doesn't generate much money. I want something that it profitable - atleast a bit- so that it can sustain my living....but my main aim is to allow these people to take loans...unfortunately since they are all expatriate, many of them cannot start their own businesses while working (unless I target house wives and poorer women on their husbands' visas...which is a possibility too)..But they need loans for children's education and basic needs back home as well..especially as so many don't get paid their salaries for months (yes its against labor law but a fair amount of companies get away with it..atleast as per the news published outside the country) But my main question is...how do I make it Shariah-compliant (as per UAE Sunni law...and Shia law both)...while making it profitable....since interest is not allowed.....so how would it work? Ofcourse I still need to do a lot more research but was just thinking if anyone here knows about banking and financial services, maybe it would be nice to get some input.... I really really want to start my own venture, any other ideas will also help - i'm just at a loss when there's soooo much to do but I don't know where to start...the problem is that I can't leave the UAE - and that makes it more difficult to do something like this.. The usual stuff like providing food and water to laborers is normal..i thought of educating them but 1-i'm a girl so surely not a good idea to be the only one teaching desi construction workers, without others support.. and 2- i would need to know to read and write their languages, which i don't.......so any other thoughts? JazakAllah

Our dear old Fiskie with is withering salvo on Arabs for their rampant, and criminal, racism. ********* How many tracts, books, documentaries, speeches and doctoral theses have been written and produced about Islamophobia? How many denunciations have been made against the Sarkozys and the Le Pens and the Wilders for their anti-immigration (for which, read largely anti-Muslim) policies or – let us go down far darker paths – against the plague of Breivik-style racism? The problem with all this is that Muslim societies – or shall we whittle this down to Middle Eastern societies? – are allowed to appear squeaky-clean in the face of such trash, and innocent of any racism themselves. A health warning, therefore, to all Arab readers of this column: you may not like this week's rant from yours truly. Because I fear very much that the video of Alem Dechasa's recent torment in Beirut is all too typical of the treatment meted out to foreign domestic workers across the Arab world (there are 200,000 in Lebanon alone). Many hundreds of thousands have now seen the footage of 33-year-old Ms Dechasa being abused and humiliated and pushed into a taxi by Ali Mahfouz, the Lebanese agent who brought her to Lebanon as a domestic worker. Ms Dechasa was transported to hospital where she was placed in the psychiatric wing and where, on 14 March, she hanged herself. She was a mother of two and could not stand the thought of being deported back to her native Ethiopia. That may not have been the only reason for her mental agony. Lebanese women protested in the centre of Beirut, the UN protested, everyone protested. Ali Mahfouz has been formally accused of contributing to her death. But that's it. The Syrian revolt, the Bahraini revolution, the Arab Awakening, have simply washed Alem Dechasa's tragedy out of the news. How many readers know – for example – that not long before Ms Dechasa's death, a Bengali domestic worker was raped by a policeman guarding her at a courthouse in the south Lebanese town of Nabatieh, after she had been caught fleeing an allegedly abusive employer? As the Lebanese journalist Anne-Marie El-Hage has eloquently written, Ms Dechasa belonged to "those who submit in silence to the injustice of a Lebanese system that ignores their human rights, a system which literally closes its eyes to conditions of hiring and work often close to slavery". All too true. How well I recall the Sri Lankan girl who turned up in Commodore Street at the height of the Israeli siege and shelling of West Beirut in 1982, pleading for help and protection. Like tens of thousands of other domestic workers from the sub-continent, her passport had been taken from her the moment she began her work as a domestic "slave" in the city; and her employers had then fled abroad to safety – taking the girl's passport with them so she could not leave herself. She was rescued by a hotel proprietor when he discovered that local taxi drivers were offering her a "bed" in their vehicles in return for sex. Everyone who lives in Lebanon or Jordan or Egypt or Syria, for that matter, or – especially – the Gulf, is well aware of this outrage, albeit cloaked in a pious silence by the politicians and prelates and businessmen of these societies. In Cairo, I once remarked to the Egyptian hosts at a dinner on the awful scars on the face of the young woman serving food to us. I was ostracised for the rest of the meal and – thankfully – never invited again. Arab societies are dependent on servants. Twenty-five per cent of Lebanese families have a live-in migrant worker, according to Professor Ray Jureidini of the Lebanese American University in Beirut. They are essential not only for the social lives of their employers (housework and caring for children) but for the broader Lebanese economy. Yet in the Arab Gulf, the treatment of migrant labour – male as well as female – has long been a scandal. Men from the subcontinent often live eight to a room in slums – even in the billionaires' paradise of Kuwait – and are consistently harassed, treated as third-class citizens, and arrested on the meanest of charges. Saudi Arabia long ago fell into the habit of chopping off the heads of migrant workers who were accused of assault or murder or drug-running, after trials that bore no relation to international justice. In 1993, for example, a Christian Filipino woman accused of killing her employer and his family was dragged into a public square in Dammam and forced to kneel on the ground where her executioner pulled her scarf from her head before decapitating her with a sword. Then there was 19-year old Sithi Farouq, a Sri Lankan housemaid accused of killing her employer's four-year-old daughter in 1994. She claimed her employer's aunt had accidentally killed the girl. On 13 April, 1995, she was led from her prison cell in the United Arab Emirates to stand in a courtyard in a white abaya gown, crying uncontrollably, before a nine-man firing squad which shot her down. It was her 20th birthday. God's mercy, enshrined in the first words of the Koran, could not be extended to her, it seems, in her hour of need. Weblink

An Iranian warplane has spotted a US aircraft carrier during Tehran's ongoing navy drill in the Persian Gulf, reports IRNA news agency. The US fleet's maneuvers come after Iran threatened to block the oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran's surveillance jet has shot a video and pictures of the American carrier, which was later identified as John C. Stennis. The US Fifth Fleet keeps a military base in Bahrain, while the ship was spotted in the Gulf of Oman after crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian state TV also showed images of the Iranian exercise, which is taking place in international waters near the Strait of Hormuz - the passageway for one-sixth of the world's oil supply. The US Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet is also active in the area, as are warships of several other countries that patrol for pirates there.