Final Word on Constantine
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
We begin with questions on Constantine, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity
WHY IS CONSTANTINE KNOWN AS CONSTANTINE THE GREAT? WHAT EPIC DEEDS ARE ASSOCIATED WITH HIS NAME?
His original name was Flavius Valerius Constantinus. “The Great” derives from his own self-conferred cognomen as Invictus Constantinus Maximus Augustus, meaning, “His Majesty the Great, Unconquerable Constantine”, as evidenced by a coin that was minted in 313 AD. He was nonetheless a great man in his own right. He united an empire that had been fragmented for ten years.
At the time he acceded to the throne in July 306 AD, two other rulers laid claim to parts of it. He first became King of Britain, Gaul (modern-day France, Belgium, and Luxemburg) and Spain and after a series of victorious battles ensconced himself as undisputed emperor of the entire Roman Empire in 324 AD.
He was emperor for 31 years (306-337), the second longest reign in the Roman Empire: only Augustus (Gaius Octavius) ruled longer at 40 years. Ten emperors who came after him proudly carried his name.
YOU SAID CONSTANTINE WAS A CHRISTIAN ONLY OPPORTUNISTICALLY. COULD YOU FURTHER SUBSTANTIATE YOUR ARGUMENT AS AMONG CHRISTIANS HE IS ONE OF THE BEST THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO THEIR FAITH?
The Christians who salute Constantine as one of Christianity’s greatest mascots are horribly misinformed. Constantine never became a Christian. The Catholic Encyclopaedia itself says tales of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity are legendary.
Constantine was a Catholic – kataholos in Greek, meaning a “universal faith”. He founded Catholicism, not Christianity. Catholicism was a blending of several faiths that included pagan faiths. Just look at the ritualistic garbs and protocols of the Vatican papacy today and you will agree with me that Catholicism is replete with pagan elements.
Catholicism was a political manouvre. Constantine wished to unite his empire because it was torn apart by religious factions and feudings. In order to unite his empire, he decided to forge a syncretic religion that artificially fused all of them into one.
In so doing, he decided to project Christianity – which itself was riven with antagonistic sects – simply because it was the most docile and had made a lot of headway in Europe and was practically the main religion of the day there.
IT IS SAID CONSTANTINE WAS BAPTISED ON HIS DEATHBED. WHO BAPTISED HIM?
It is not certain who performed the rite or when. There are actually two versions of the emperor’s alleged baptism. One says he was baptised by Pope Sylvester I of Rome in 326 AD after he cured him of leprosy. The other version, which we encounter in the writings of Eusebius of Caesaria, is that he was baptised a few days before his death by Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia (Izmit in today’s Turkey).
IS IT TRUE THAT IT IS CONSTANTINE WHO CHANGED THE CHRISTIAN DAY OF WORSHIP FROM SATURDAY TO SUNDAY?
No it is not. The gospels themselves make it resoundingly clear that the early church, the one that was first led by Simon Peter and subsequently by James the brother of Jesus, met on “the first day of the week”, which is Sunday.
Of course the Jewish establishment frowned upon this setup. It was one reason the establishment persecuted the leading lights of the early church such as Simon Peter and the brothers John and James the “Sons of Zebedee”.
The misconception that Constantine changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday arises from his decree of March 7 321 AD. On that day, he declared that, “On the venerable Day of the Sun, let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed.”
Throughout his reign, Constantine worshipped Apollo, the “Saviour Sun God”. Apollo was the Greek name for the Anunnaki god Utu-Shamash, the son of Nannar-Sin (Zeus) and the grandson of Enlil, the Jehovah of the Bible.
Constantine never worshipped Jesus whatsoever. So his decree of March 7 was in honour not of Jesus but of his own Sun-God Apollo. Note that Constantine simply hallowed Sunday; he did not proscribe the Sabbath. The person who proscribed the Sabbath was Pope Sylvester I (reign: 314-335). It was he who decreed that “the rest of the Sabbath should be transferred to the Lord’s Day (Sunday).
HOW COULD CONSTANTINE HAVE BEEN A PAGAN WORSHIPPER WHEN ALL RELIGIONS OF THAT DAY AND EVEN OUR DAY WORSHIPPED/WORSHIP THE SAME ANUNNAKI GODS BUT IN DIFFERENT GUISES?
Humans have always been played by the Anunnaki. The idea of the same Anunnaki gods posing as a distinct god of a particular religion was their strategy of divide and rule. Let us take Nannar-Sin, the second-born son of Enlil, the Bible’s Jehovah predominantly.
As god of the Jews, he was called Yahweh. As god of the Ishmaelites, he was called Allah. As god of the Greeks, he was called Zeus. As god of the Romans, he was called Jupiter. But as far as Christians and the Jews were concerned, Zeus, Jupiter, and Allah were little more than idols. Of course the Romans and Greeks had the same view of Yahweh. Yet unbeknown to all, such was the foolproof wool pulled over their eyes by the Anunnaki, all these were one and the same god.
You are therefore right when you say in deifying the Sun-God Apollo, Constantine was no different from any other person who claimed to worship Yahweh, Jupiter or Allah. I suppose Constantine was aware of such a subterfuge, as a result of which he decided to take political advantage of this blindfold.
YOU SAID JESUS WAS BORN IN MARCH 7 BC. WHY THEN DID CONSTANTINE CHOOSE DECEMBER 25 AS THE BIRTHDAY OF JESUS?
It was not Constantine who declared December 25 as the birthday of Jesus; rather, it was the Catholic papacy. Constantine chose December 25 to honour his Anunnaki Sun God Apollo. Like most Anunnaki gods, Apollo was worshipped as a Saviour Sun God.
The sun element stemmed from the fact of the sun being the sustainer of life on our planet. In ancient times therefore, the Sun was referred to as the Saviour. As such, Sun Gods like Apollo were called Saviour Sun God because they were deemed as indispensable as the sun.
December 25 was particularly chosen by Constantine as the ceremonial birthday of the god Apollo because astrologically, the Sun reaches its lowest point (from the point of view of the northern hemisphere) in the sky on December 22, the so-called winter solstice. From December 22 to 24, it is basically stationary: the metaphor is that it has “died”.
Then on December 25, it begins to move to bring with it the season of spring. Thus on December 25, the sun was said to have “risen” or be “born again”. That’s the reason Constantine chose the day as a ceremonial birthday of his god Apollo. The first such birthday was celebrated in 336 AD. A few years later, Pope Julius I (Bishop of Rome from 6 February 337 to his death in 352 AD) declared that Jesus’s birthday would also be celebrated on December 25. The finger of indictment should therefore point to the Vatican and not to Constantine.
WHAT GREAT THINGS DID CONSTANTINE DO FOR CHRISTIANITY?
Granted, Constantine was a counterfeit Christian but what he did for the faith was epoch-making: without him, Christianity would not be the pervasive and authoritative faith it is today. The watershed event was the promulgation by the emperor of the 313 Edict of Milan which allowed freedom of religious expression in his empire.
Christianity was of course just one of the many religions that benefited from the edict but this augured well for the faith all the same. Before the advent of Constantine, Christians had been at the mercy of institutionalised harassment and persecution. Emperor Dioclesian for one instituted what was to become known in history as the Great Persecution, which lasted from 303 to 311 AD.
Christian assembly buildings were razed down and every Christian who refused to offer a sacrifice to the emperor (who fancied himself as a demi-god) or his god faced death. Constantine put an end to all this with the Edict of Toleration in 311. One chronicler further underscores the emperor’s invigoration of Christianity thus: “Constantine took over the role of patron of the Christian faith.
He supported the Church financially, had an extraordinary number of basilicas built, granted privileges (e.g., exemption from certain taxes) to clergy, promoted Christians to high-ranking offices, returned property confiscated during the Great Persecution of Diocletian, and endowed the church with land and other wealth.” And of course it was the 325 Nicene Council – decreed and wholly financed by Constantine – that marked the birth of the canon we today call the Bible. If Christianity is today a leading cultural force, it is because Constantine put it on a pedestal at the expense all other religions which at the time were vying for preeminence.
IF CONSTANTINE WAS SUCH A GREAT CHAMPION OF CHRISTIANITY, WHY DIDN’T HE OUTRIGHTLY DECLARE IT AS THE SOLE STATE RELIGION? WHY DID HE EQUIVOCATE? ISN’T HE OVERATED IN THAT REGARD?
True, it was not Constantine who designated Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire. The person who did that was Theodosius I, the 67th Emperor of the Roman Empire, when on February 27 380 AD he issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which ordered all subjects of the empire to “profess the faith of the Nicene Council”. As much as Constantine valued Christianity, he was not prepared to exalt it above every other faith.
This was because Catholicism, its main expression, was a hybrid religion that drew from Western, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern faiths. Even more important, Constantine as an individual never fully embraced Christianity: he worshipped the Sun God Apollo.
Throughout his rein, he continued to mint coins bearing symbols of Apollo with the inscription “Sol Invictus”, meaning the “Unconquerable Sun”, that is, his Sun God Apollo. Even if he did perchance profess to be a Christian, he was far from exemplary virtue-wise. He had his own firstborn son executed; a nephew strangled; and his wife cooked alive in boiling water. Goodness knows how many other ancillary family members and friends he secretly sacrificed to his god.
YOU SAID CONSTANTINE KILLED HIS WIFE AND HIS OWN SON. WHAT SIN DID THEY COMMIT?
The son was Julius Valerius Crispus, his firstborn. Constantine had Crispus by his first marriage with Minervina. Crispus was an illustrious general and was described by all and sundry as “a prince of the highest merit” and therefore a worthy successor to the throne.
His rock-star popularity had his step mother and empress Fausta green with jealousy. Constantine had divorced Minervina in 307 to tie the knot with Fausta in a politically expedient union: Fausta was the daughter of former emperor Maximian who was still politically influential (Maximian had ruled jointly with Dioclesian).
Fausta had three sons with Constantine. They were Constantine Jr, Constantius, and Constans, none of whom were in their teens yet. Fausta thought Crispus stood in the way of his sons, particularly her eldest Constantine Jr.
According to the Byzantine historian Zosimus, who lived at the time of Emperor Constantine, Fausta first tried to endear herself to Constantine Jr by making sexual overtures to the handsome heir 27 years her junior. When Crispus politely rejected her, she set about poisoning him to his father – that he had designs on the throne and so posed a threat to the emperor’s continued occupancy of it. Although there was no evidence of any disloyalty on the part of Crispus to his father, the emperor was swayed by his scheming wife.
First, he stripped Crispus of rulership of Gaul in 323 AD and summoned him back to Rome, where he could keep close watch on him, and Constantius at only 9 years old was declared the new Caesar, that is, deputy to his father, whose title was Augustus. Then in August 326, Crispus was arrested, banished to Pola in Istria (today part of Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy), and executed after a sham trial. That Crispus’s death was the result of sheer spite on the part of Fausta is evidenced by the fact that his cousin Licinianus, the son of the emperor’s sister Constantia and who was only 12 years old, was also killed in cold blood.
Clearly, Fausta instigated the murders to ensure that there was no viable potential contender to the throne other than her own sons. The emperor was to rue his act. His 80-year-old mother Helena confronted him and bitterly reproached him for killing an innocent child. Constantine indeed confirmed this, as a result of which he had Fausta murdered by suffocation in an over-heated bath later the same year. As for the death of his son, the emperor was genuinely contrite.
According to another Byzantine historian Codinus, Constantine “raised to the memory of Crispus a golden statue, which bore the inscription, ‘To the son whom I unjustly condemned’, and fasted and refused the comforts of life for forty days.” This obviously sincerely remorseful gesture did not placate the bishops a jot, who stoutly refused to “purify” him from his crime. The philosopher Sopater, to whom he desperately turned for comfort, also told him to his face that he would have nothing to do with a “heinous sinner”. That was who Constantine was to his subjects and not the god-fearing icon Christendom misrepresents him as.
NEXT WEEK: QUESTIONS ON THE SECT THAT PRODUCED JESUS
Columns
THE KEY TO HAPPINESS
Speaking at a mental health breakfast seminar last week I emphasised to the HR managerial audience that you cannot yoga your way out of a toxic work culture. What I meant by that was that as HR practitioners we must avoid tending to look at the soft options to address mental health issues, distractions such as yoga and meditation. That’s like looking for your lost bunch of keys, then opening the front door with the spare under the mat. You’ve solved the immediate problem, but all the other keys are still missing. Don’t get me wrong; mindfulness practices, yoga exercise and taking time to smell the roses all have their place in mental wellness but it’s a bit like hacking away at the blight-ridden leaves of the tree instead of getting to the root cause of the problem.
Another point I stressed was that mental health at work shouldn’t be looked at from the individual lens – yet that’s what we do. We have counselling of employees, wellness webinars or talks but if you really want to sort out the mental health crisis that we face in our organisations you HAVE to view this more systemically and that means looking at the system and that starts with the leaders and managers.
Now. shining a light on management may not be welcomed by many. But leaders control the flow of work and set the goals and expectations that others need to live up to. Unrealistic expectations, excessive workloads and tight deadlines increase stress and force people to work longer hours … some of the things which contribute to poor mental health. Actually, we know from research exactly what contributes to a poor working environment – discrimination and inequality, excessive workloads, low job control and job insecurity – all of which pose a risk to mental health. The list goes on and is pretty exhaustive but here are the major ones: under-use of skills or being under-skilled for work; excessive workloads or work pace, understaffing; long, unsocial or inflexible hours; lack of control over job design or workload; organizational culture that enables negative behaviours; limited support from colleagues or authoritarian supervision; discrimination and exclusion; unclear job role; under- or over-promotion; job insecurity.
And to my point no amount of yoga is going to change that.
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
Micromanagement and/or failure to reward or recognize performance are the most obvious signs of toxic managers. These managers can be controlling, inflexible, rigid, close-minded, and lacking in self-awareness. And let’s face it managers like those I have just described are plentiful. Generally, however there is often a failure by higher management to address toxic leaders when they are considered to be high performing. This kind of situation can be one of the leading causes of unhappiness in teams. I have coached countless employees who talk about managers with bullying ways which everyone knows about, yet action is never taken. It’s problematic when we overlook unhealthy dynamics and behaviours because of high productivity or talent as it sends a clear message that the behaviour is acceptable and that others on the team will not be supported by leadership.
And how is the HR Manager viewed when they raise the unacceptable behaviour with the CEO – they are accused of not being a team player, looking for problems or failing to understand business dynamics and the need to get things done. Toxic management is a systemic problem caused when companies create cultures around high-performance and metrics vs. long-term, sustainable, healthy growth. In such instances the day-to-day dysfunction is often ignored for the sake of speed and output. While short-term gains are rewarded, executives fail to see the long-term impact of protecting a toxic, but high-performing, team or employee. Beyond this, managers promote unhealthy workplace behaviour when they recognize and reward high performers for going above and beyond, even when that means rewarding the road to burnout by praising a lack of professional boundaries (like working during their vacation and after hours).
The challenge for HR Managers is getting managers to be honest with themselves and their teams about the current work environment. Honesty is difficult, I’m afraid, especially with leaders who are overly sensitive, emotional, or cannot set healthy boundaries. But here’s the rub – no growth or change can occur if denial and defensiveness are used to protect egos. Being honest about these issues helps garner trust among employees, who already know the truth about what day-to-day dynamics are like at work. They will likely be grateful that cultural issues will finally be addressed. Conversely, if they aren’t addressed, retention failure is the cost of protecting egos of those in management.
Toxic workplace culture comes at a huge price: even before the Great Resignation, turnover related to toxic workplaces cost US employers almost $50 billion yearly! I wonder what it’s costing us here.
QUOTE
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
Columns
Heartache for Kelly Fisher
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o date, Princess Diana, General Atiku, had destroyed one marriage, come close to ruining another one in the offing, and now was poised to wreck yet another marriage that was already in the making. This was between Dodi Fayed and the American model Kelly Fisher.
If there was one common denominator about Diana and Dodi besides their having been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, General, it was that both were divorcees. Dodi’s matrimonial saga, however, was less problematic and acrimonious and lasted an infinitesimal 8 months. This was with yet another American model and film actress going by the name Susanne Gregard.
Dodi met Susanne in 1986, when she was only 26 years old. Like most glamourous women, she proved not to be that easy a catch and to readily incline her towards positively and expeditiously responding to his rather gallant advances, Dodi booked her as a model for the Fayed’s London mega store Harrods, where he had her travel every weekend by Concorde. They married at a rather private ceremony at Dodi’s Colorado residence in 1987 on New Year’s Day, without the blessings, bizarrely, of his all-powerful father. By September the same year, the marriage was, for reasons that were not publicised but likely due to the fact that his father had not sanctioned it, kaput.
It would take ten more years for Dodi to propose marriage to another woman, who happened to be Kelly Fisher this time around.
DODI HITCHES KELLY FISHER
Kelly and Dodi, General, met in Paris in July 1996, when Kelly was only 29 years old. In a sort of whirlwind romance, the duo fell in love, becoming a concretised item in December and formally getting engaged in February 1997.
Of course the relationship was not only about mutual love: the material element was a significant, if not vital, factor. Kelly was to give up her modelling job just so she could spend a lot more time with the new man in her life and for that she was to be handed out a compensatory reward amounting to $500,000. The engagement ring for one, which was a diamond and sapphire affair, set back Dodi in the order of $230,000. Once they had wedded, on August 9 that very year as per plan, they were to live in a $7 million 5-acre Malibu Beach mansion in California, which Dodi’s father had bought him for that and an entrepreneurial purpose. They were already even talking about embarking on making a family from the get-go: according to Kelly, Dodi wanted two boys at the very least.
Kelly naturally had the unambiguous blessings of her father-in-law as there was utterly nothing Dodi could do without the green light from the old man. When Mohamed Al Fayed was contemplating buying the Jonikal, the luxurious yacht, he invited Dodi and Kelly to inspect it too and hear their take on it.
If there was a tell-tale red flag about Dodi ab initio, General, it had to do with a $200,000 cheque he issued to Kelly as part payment of the pledged $500,000 and which was dishonoured by the bank. Throughout their 13-month-long romance, Dodi made good on only $60,000 of the promised sum. But love, as they say, General, is blind and Kelly did not care a jot about her beau’s financial indiscretions. It was enough that he was potentially a very wealthy man anyway being heir to his father’s humongous fortune.
KELLY CONSIGNED TO “BOAT CAGE”
In that summer of the year 1997, General, Dodi and Kelly were to while away quality time on the French Rivierra as well as the Jonikal after Paris. Then Dodi’s dad weighed in and put a damper on this prospect in a telephone call to Dodi on July 14. “Dodi said he was going to London and he’d be back and then we were going to San Tropez,” Kelly told the interviewer in a later TV programme. “That evening he didn’t call me and I finally got him on his portable phone. I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he said he was in London. I said, ‘Ok, I’ll call you right back at your apartment’. He said, ‘No, no, don’t call me back’. So I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he admitted he was in the south of France. His father had asked him to come down and not bring me, I know now.”
Since Dodi could no longer hide from Kelly and she on her part just could not desist from badgering him, he had no option but to dispatch a private Fayed jet to pick her up so that she join him forthwith in St. Tropez. This was on July 16.
Arriving in St. Tropez, Kelly, General, did not lodge at the Fayed’s seaside villa as was her expectation but was somewhat stashed in the Fayed’s maritime fleet, first in the Sakara, and later in the Cujo, which was moored only yards from the Fayed villa. It was in the Cujo Kelly spent the next two nights with Dodi. “She (Kelly) felt there was something strange going on as Dodi spent large parts of the day at the family’s villa, Castel St. Helene, but asked her to stay on the boat,” writes Martyn Gregory in The Diana Conspiracy Exposed. “Dodi was sleeping with Kelly at night and was courting Diana by day. His deception was assisted by Kelly Fisher’s modelling assignment on 18-20 July in Nice. The Fayed’s were happy to lend her the Cujo and its crew for three days to take her there.”
Dodi’s behaviour clearly was curious, General. “Dodi would say, ‘I’m going to the house and I’ll be back in half an hour’,” Kelly told Gregory. “And he’d come back three or four hours later. I was furious. I’m sitting on the boat, stuck. And he was having lunch with everyone. So he had me in my little boat cage, and I now know he was seducing Diana. So he had me, and then he would go and try and seduce her, and then he’d come back the next day and it would happen again. I was livid by this point, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. When he was with me, he was so wonderful. He said he loved me, and we talked to my mother, and we were talking about moving into the house in California.”
But as is typical of the rather romantically gullible tenderer sex, General, Kelly rationalised her man’s stratagems. “I just thought they maybe didn’t want a commoner around the Princess … Dodi kept leaving me behind with the excuse that the Princess didn’t like to meet new people.” During one of those nights, General, Dodi even had unprotected sexual relations with Kelly whilst cooing in her ear that, “I love you so much and I want you to have my baby.”
KELLY USHERED ONTO THE JONIKAL AT LONG LAST
On July 20, General, Diana returned to England and it was only then that Dodi allowed Kelly to come aboard the Jonikal. According to Debbie Gribble, who was the Jonikal’s chief stewardess, Kelly was kind of grumpy. “I had no idea at the time who she was, but I felt she acted very spoiled,” she says in Trevor Rees-Jones’ The Bodyguard’s Story. “I remember vividly that she snapped, ‘I want to eat right now. I don’t want a drink, I just want to eat now’. It was quite obvious that she was upset, angry or annoyed about something.”
Kelly’s irascible manner of course was understandable, General, given the games Dodi had been playing with her since she pitched up in St. Tropez. Granted, what happened to Kelly was very much antithetical to Dodi’s typically well-mannered nature, but the fact of the matter was that she simply was peripheral to the larger agenda, of which Dodi’s father was the one calling the shots.
On July 23, Dodi and Kelly flew to Paris, where they parted as Kelly had some engagements lined up in Los Angeles. Dodi promised to join her there on August 4 to celebrate with her her parents’ marriage anniversary. Dodi, however, General, did not make good on his promise: though he did candidly own up to the fact that he was at that point in time again with Diana, he also fibbed that he was not alone with her but was partying with her along with Elton John and George Michael. But in a August 6 phone call, he did undertake to Kelly that he would be joining her in LA in a few days’ time. In the event, anyway, General, Kelly continued to ready herself for her big day, which was slated for August 9 – until she saw “The Kiss”.
THE KISS THAT NEVER WAS
“The Kiss”, General, first featured in London’s Sunday Mirror on August 10 under that very headline. In truth, General, it was not a definitive, point-blank kiss: it was a fuzzy image of Diana and Dodi embracing on the Jonikal. A friend of Kelly faxed her the newspaper pictures in the middle of the night and Kelly was at once stunned and convulsed with rage.
But although Kelly was shocked, General, she was not exactly surprised as two or three days prior, British tabloids had already begun rhapsodising on a brewing love affair between Dodi and Diana. That day, Kelly had picked up a phone to demand an immediate explanation from her fiancé. “I started calling him in London because at this time I was expecting his arrival in a day. I called his private line, but there was no answer. So then I called the secretary and asked to speak to him she wouldn’t put me on. So Mohamed got on and in so many horrible words told me to never call back again. I said, ‘He’s my fiancé, what are you talking about?’ He hung up on me and I called back and the secretary said don’t ever call here again, your calls are no longer to be put through. It was so horrible.”
Kelly did at long last manage to reach Dodi but he was quick to protest that, “I can’t talk to you on the phone. I will talk to you in LA.” Perhaps Dodi, General, just at that stage was unable to muster sufficient Dutch courage to thrash out the matter with Kelly but a more credible reason he would not talk had to do with his father’s obsessive bugging of every communication device Dodi used and every inch of every property he owned. The following is what David Icke has to say on the subject in his iconic book The Biggest Secret:
“Ironically, Diana used to have Kensington Palace swept for listening devices and now she was in the clutches of a man for whom bugging was an obsession. The Al Fayed villa in San Tropez was bugged, as were all Fayed properties. Everything Diana said could be heard. Bob Loftus, the former Head of Security at Harrods, said that the bugging there was ‘a very extensive operation’ and was also always under the direction of Al Fayed. Henry Porter, the London Editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, had spent two years investigating Al Fayed and he said they came across his almost obsessive use of eavesdropping devices to tape telephone calls, bug rooms, and film people.”
Through mutual friends, General, Porter warned Diana about Al Fayed’s background and activities ‘because we thought this was quite dangerous for her for obvious reasons’ but Diana apparently felt she could handle it and although she knew Al Fayed could ‘sometimes be a rogue’, he was no threat to her, she thought. “He is rather more than a rogue and rather more often than ‘sometimes,” she apparently told friends. “I know he’s naughty, but that’s all.” The TV programme Dispatches said they had written evidence that Al Fayed bugged the Ritz Hotel and given his background and the deals that are hatched at the Ritz, it would be uncharacteristic if he did not. Kelly Fisher said that the whole time she was on Fayed property, she just assumed everything was bugged. It was known, she said, and Dodi had told her the bugging was so pervasive.
KELLY SUES, ALBEIT VAINLY SO
To his credit, General, Dodi was sufficiently concerned about what had transpired in St. Tropez to fly to LA and do his utmost to appease Kelly but Kelly simply was not interested as to her it was obvious enough that Diana was the new woman in his life.
On August 14, Kelly held a press conference in LA, where she announced that she was taking legal action against Dodi for breach of matrimonial contract. Her asking compensation price was £340,000. Of course the suit, General, lapsed automatically with the demise of Dodi in that Paris underpass on August 31, 1997.
Although Kelly did produce evidence of her engagement to Dodi in the form of a pricey and spectacular engagement ring, General, Mohamed Al Fayed was adamant that she never was engaged to his son and that she was no more than a gold digger.
But it is all water under the bridge now, General: Kelly is happily married to a pilot and the couple has a daughter. Her hubby may not be half as rich as Dodi potentially was but she is fully fulfilled anyway. Happiness, General, comes in all shades and does not necessarily stem from a colossal bank balance or other such trappings of affluence.
Pic Cap
THE SHORT-LIVED TRIANGLE: For about a month or so, Dodi Al Fayed juggled Princess Diana and American model Kelly Fisher, who sported Dodi’s engagement ring. Of course one of the two had to give and naturally it could not be Diana, who entered the lists in the eleventh hour but was the more precious by virtue of her royal pedigree and surpassing international stature.
NEXT WEEK: FURTHER BONDING BETWEEN DIANA AND DODI
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EXTRAVAGANCE One of The Scourges in Society.
Extravagance in recent times has moved from being the practice of some rich and wealthy people of society in general and has regrettably, filtered to all levels of the society. Some of those who have the means are reckless and flaunt their wealth, and consequently, those of us who do not, borrow money to squander it in order to meet their families’ wants of luxuries and unnecessary items. Unfortunately this is a characteristic of human nature.
Adding to those feelings of inadequacy we have countless commercials to whet the consumer’s appetite/desire to buy whatever is advertised, and make him believe that if he does not have those products he will be unhappy, ineffective, worthless and out of tune with the fashion and trend of the times. This practice has reached a stage where many a bread winner resorts to taking loans (from cash loans or banks) with high rates of interest, putting himself in unnecessary debt to buy among other things, furniture, means of transport, dress, food and fancy accommodation, – just to win peoples’ admiration.
Islam and most religions discourage their followers towards wanton consumption. They encourage them to live a life of moderation and to dispense with luxury items so they will not be enslaved by them. Many people today blindly and irresponsibly abandon themselves to excesses and the squandering of wealth in order to ‘keep up with the Joneses’.
The Qur’aan makes it clear that allowing free rein to extravagance and exceeding the limits of moderation is an inherent characteristic in man. Allah says, “If Allah were to enlarge the provision for his servants, they would indeed transgress beyond all bounds.” [Holy Qur’aan 42: 27]
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, “Observe the middle course whereby you will attain your objective (that is paradise).” – Moderation is the opposite of extravagance.
Every individual is meant to earn in a dignified manner and then spend in a very wise and careful manner. One should never try to impress upon others by living beyond one’s means. Extravagance is forbidden in Islam, Allah says, “Do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
The Qur’aan regards wasteful buying of food, extravagant eating that sometimes leads to throwing away of leftovers as absolutely forbidden. Allah says, “Eat of the fruits in their season, but render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered. And waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters.” [Holy Qur’aan 6: 141]
Demonstrating wastefulness in dress, means of transport, furniture and any other thing is also forbidden. Allah says, “O children of Adam! Wear your apparel of adornment at every time and place of worship, and eat and drink but do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
Yet extravagance and the squandering of wealth continue to grow in society, while there are many helpless and deprived peoples who have no food or shelter. Just look around you here in Botswana.
Have you noticed how people squander their wealth on ‘must have’ things like designer label clothes, fancy brand whiskey, fancy top of the range cars, fancy society parties or even costly weddings, just to make a statement? How can we prevent the squandering of such wealth?
How can one go on spending in a reckless manner possibly even on things that have been made forbidden while witnessing the suffering of fellow humans whereby thousands of people starve to death each year. Islam has not forbidden a person to acquire wealth, make it grow and make use of it. In fact Islam encourages one to do so. It is resorting to forbidden ways to acquiring and of squandering that wealth that Islam has clearly declared forbidden. On the Day of Judgment every individual will be asked about his wealth, where he obtained it and how he spent it.
In fact, those who do not have any conscience about their wasteful habits may one day be subjected to Allah’s punishment that may deprive them of such wealth overnight and impoverish them. Many a family has been brought to the brink of poverty after leading a life of affluence. Similarly, many nations have lived a life of extravagance and their people indulged in such excesses only to be later inflicted by trials and tribulations to such a point that they wished they would only have a little of what they used to possess!
With the festive season and the new year holidays having passed us, for many of us meant ‘one’ thing – spend, spend, spend. With the festivities and the celebrations over only then will the reality set in for many of us that we have overspent, deep in debt with nothing to show for it and that the following months are going to be challenging ones.
Therefore, we should not exceed the bounds when Almighty bestows His bounties upon us. Rather we should show gratefulness to Him by using His bestowments and favours in ways that prove our total obedience to Him and by observing moderation in spending. For this will be better for us in this life and the hereafter.