Flood-hit Southeast Asia awaits more rain (Video)

 People in South East Asia have been warned to prepare for more flooding, after days of heavy rain around the region that killed dozens of people and displaced tens of thousands in Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.According to officials, more than 200,000 people are homeless across the region because of the floods.

Documentary: The Pole of Cold (Video)

 This time James Brown is visiting Russia’s remote region Yakutia. This place is known as probably the coldest in the world – in winter, temperatures go down to minus 50 degrees Celsius. But people here are really warm and full of energy!
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Documentary: World War One Through Arab Eyes – Episode 3: The New Middle East (Video)

Episode 1 | Episode 2

 Episode three covers the secret Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France and the way the two imperial powers carved up the former Ottoman Empire between them, regardless of the rights and demands of rights and nationalist movements across the Arab world.

Despite the Egyptian Revolution and the Iraq Uprising, Arab subservience to Ottoman rule was replaced by a series of mandates across the region in which Britain and France seized control of the areas they prized most – to satisfy their own ambitions, interests and ultimately to gain access to region’s valuable oil resources.

The war gave birth to the Turkish nationalist movement which led to the founding of the modern Turkish state; and to Zionism, aided greatly by the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The Treaty of Versaillles, however, was referred to by one German-Ottoman military leader not as a peace but as ‘a twenty year armistice’ – and so it proved …
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Morocco flash floods leave dozens dead

At least 31 people washed away and dozens missing as storm hits southern part of the north African country.

Source: aljazeera.com

Flash flooding in southern Morocco has reportedly killed at least 31 people, with many others still missing.

Heavy storms have swept across several regions including tourist hub Marrakesh, where torrential rain destroyed many mud homes on Sunday.

Roads and highways were blocked off, making it hard for emergency crew to reach people.

HalalTrip wants to be every Muslim’s handy travel guide

Source: techinasia.com

By: Enricko Lukman

The Muslim tourism industry is huge. A study estimates that the “global Muslim tourism market in 2011 was US $126.1 billion in outbound expenditure 1” or 12.3 percent of the global outbound tourism expenditure in that year. It’s estimated that the Muslim tourism market will grow an average of 4.79 percent year-on-year until 2020.

This explains why Crescent Rating, a ratings company for halal friendly travel services behind that study, decided to launch a B2C Muslim tourism service called HalalTrip.

Launched in December 2013, HalalTrip will sell three travel services to Muslims online: the booking of flight tickets, hotels, and tour packages (to be launched this week). All three are offered in cooperation with travel companies Wego (flights), Booking.com (hotels), and Kuoni (travel packages).

What makes the site special however is that it offers travel recommendations based on the halal friendliness of each product 2. The “halal friendliness level” is derived from the parent company’s database of halal tourism ratings. The website also carries a directory of halal friendly restaurants and mosques.

Chefchaouen, Blue City of Morocco (IMAGES)

 Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chefchaouen

 It is the chief town of the province of the same name, and is noted for its buildings in shades of blue. Chefchaouen is situated in the Rif Mountains, just inland from Tangier and Tetouan. The city was founded in 1471, as a small fortress which still exists to this day, by Moulay Ali Ben Moussa Ben Rached El Alami (a descendant of Ibn Machich and Idris I, and through them, of the prophet Muhammad) to fight the Portuguese invasions of northern Morocco. Along with the Ghomara tribes of the region, many Moriscos and Jewssettled here after the Spanish Reconquista in medieval times. In 1920, the Spanish seized Chefchaouen to form part of Spanish Morocco. Spanish troops imprisoned Abd el-Krim in the kasbah from 1916 to 1917, after he talked with the German consul Dr. Walter Zechlin (1879–1962). (After defeating him with the help of the French force Abd el-Krim was deported to Réunion in 1926). Spain returned the city after the independence of Morocco in 1956.

As Fore Told By Prophet Muhammad – Najd The Cursed Region Where The Devil has Stood to Destroy Islam from Within

Source: najd2.wordpress.com

WHAT IS NAJD ? AND WHERE LIES THE NAJD ?

 Najd, also spelled Nejd,  region, central Saudi Arabia, comprising a mainly rocky plateau sloping eastward from the mountains of the Hejaz. On the northern, eastern, and southern sides, it is bounded by the sand deserts of Al-Nafūd, Al-Dahnāʾ, and the Rubʿ al-Khali. It is sparsely settled, except for the fertile oases strung along the escarpment of Jabal (mountains) Ṭuwayq and the Al-ʿAramah plateau. The arid region remained politically divided among rival peoples until the mid-18th century, when it became the centre of the Wahhābī, a fundamentalist Islamic movement. Led by the Muslim scholarMuḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb and the Āl Saʿūd family, the movement consolidated Najd and expanded into Mecca in 1803. This expansionist policy antagonized the Ottomans, who seized the provincial capital of Al-Dirʿiyyah. The Āl Saʿūd, however, quickly regained control, and, with Riyadh as the new capital from 1824, the dynasty has ruled Najd continuously, save for a brief period around the turn of the century when the Rashīd dynasty extended its power over the province. Ibn Saʿūd proclaimed the unified Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932, and his provincial capital of Riyadh became the national capital, although Jiddah continued as the diplomatic capital. Oases groups within Najd region include Al-Kharj, Al-Maḥmal, Al-Sudayr, Al-Washm, Al-ʿĀriḍ, Al-Qaṣīm, and Jabal Shammar.

India: delegating Qurbani to bring some happiness to the poor

Source: twocircles.net

Faridabad/Hyderabad: Barely 30 km from the national capital is a dingy colony in Dhauj, Faridabad called Sadiq Nagar, but more famous by the name of the community of people inhabited, Qalandar or Madari. Qalandars originally were nomads perhaps from present day Panipat region of Haryana, who accepted Islam centuries ago. They earned their living either by spreading across the country and showing plays of monkeys, or some magical tricks (Madari) or many others turned Fakirs and begged for food.

From Muhammad to ISIS: Iraq’s Full Story

Source: waitbutwhy.com

By: Tim Urban

On the morning of Saturday, August 2nd, I got in a taxi in Erbil, the regional capital of Kurdish Iraq, and asked the driver to take me to the Khazir refugee camp.

This was a scary-ish thing to do.

The “scary” part is a result of the fact that the Khazir camp is outside of the borders of the somewhat autonomous Kurdish region, one of the only secure parts of the country.

The “ish” part comes from the fact that the Khazir camp, though outside of Kurdish borders, is still in an area currently controlled by the Peshmerga—the Kurdish army.

Iraq has been a scary place for a while now, for a number of reasons, but it’s currently scary in italics because of the terrorist group we’ve all gotten to know about in the past three months—ISIS.