Queen of Bonk
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
Much of the language we speak today on Earth originate not from here but from the stars, in particular the Orion and Sirius star systems. We too originate from there, at least partly, as we shall set down in detail at an appropriate time.
On the SSS World, the throne planet of Orion, the language they spoke had certain suffixial terms (word endings) which I wish to draw attention to if we are to understand the significance of the manifold titles of the Orion Queen, who was the overall monarch as being a predominantly matriarchal society, the Orion empire is not headed by a King. I will dwell on only five.
The suffix UR meant “the first and foremost” or “the original”. The suffix US meant “one who is of or belongs to …” The suffix U meant “those who are of …” The suffix I meant “one who is at the side of …” Finally, the suffix IM meant “those who are at the side of …”
It is curious that the Illuminati of our day use the same suffixes in their coded language but in a subtle way so that we don’t get the picture. The best example is the acronym USA. This is United States of America in full. But that is simply the surface connotation. The underlying meaning is something else.
The official version of how the name America came about is that it was in honour of the pioneering Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512). However, researchers have now debunked this claim. It has been found that Vespucci actually changed his first name from Alberigo, his original name, to Amerigo after his return from the Americas (North and South America). In other words, the continents were already known by the name America long before he turned up there. In any case, if the two continents were to be named after him, they would have been called Vespucca, after his surname. Landmarks are named after a legend’s surname (or both names in some cases) and not his first name. One example is America’s political capital, which is known as Washington and not George.
In their 1997 book, The Hiram Key, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas aver that America is derived from the term “Merika”. Merika, the two authors allege, was the name given by the Mandeans (the first century religious grouping that emerged from the apostolate of John the Baptist) to a prospective paradise to the far west of the globe. This paradise was marked by the evening star, the planet Venus, which Mandeans called Merika. However, the two authors did not explicitly cite a source for such a notion. Even today when they are pressed to do so, they are evasive if nor bluntly dismissive. Authors who quote The Hiram Key attribute the idea of the US being Merika to Flavius Josephus but in none of his writing does Josephus employ the term “Merika” anywhere. In any case, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, in his 2002 book titled The Mandeans, demonstrate that the Mandeans believed that their paradise was to be found at the North Pole and not in the West. Having said that, where then did the name America stem from?
Well, one has to scour not modern history to find the answer but ancient history etched on clay tablets. America was named after Ningishzidda – Enki’s genius son who was also known as Thoth – who was the first Anunnaki to colonise the Americas along with his dark-skinned African aides known as the Olmecs. The Mayans of Central America, where he was headquartered, referred to Ningishizidda as the god Quetzalcoatl, meaning “The Winged/Feathered Serpent” (“Serpent” because he was of Orion origin and “Winged” because he flew in an aircraft). The Peruvians, however, called him Amaruca. Amaruca derived from the ancient compound word OME-ORI-EKE, which meant “Divine Creator Spirit”, or simply God. It was Amaruca which through a linguistic twist and the evolution simply of words became America.
This then cracks the code for the acronym USA. When the founding fathers (all Freemasons) assigned such a name to the country, what they were declaring to the Masonic fraternity was that they were dedicating the country to the Anunnaki gods. They were saying, “We belong to Amaruca’s race” (US = belongs to as we have stated above and A = Amaruca), or even more importantly that, “We are Reptilians”. It all makes sense really since the motto of America is “In God We Trust”. Which God? Not the First Source, the real creator, but impostor Reptilian gods! It all harps back to the Orion Queen folks.
THE ORION QUEEN’S VERY FAMILIAR TITLES
Sovereigns go by various titles, most of which tributary. There’s no single monarch who goes by only one title. By the same token, the Orion Queen had a slew of titles, some of which have carried over into the languages we speak here on Earth.
On the SSS World, motherhood was denominated by the term MA. Every mother was a MA. Since the Queen was a mother, she too was a MA. She was actually called “THE MA”. But she was not only a mother: she was the mother of the global nation. She was therefore addressed as Her Majesty Queen MA-MA. As we have pointed out before, doubling a name or title indicated seniority. The Queen was the Big Mama, the global Mummy.
The Queen was the First Citizen of the Orion Empire. As such, she was called THE MA-UR, meaning “First Lady”. Abbreviated, this became THE GREAT MAR. But because of the tendency on the SSS World to double titles of eminent personages, the Queen was called Her Majesty Queen MAR-MAR.
Now, in the Orion Empire, that is the SSS World plus other planets and star systems it had colonised in the 9th Sector of the Milky Way Galaxy – arguably the most powerful realm in the galaxy – the Orion Queen was recognised as the Queen of the Galactic Waters. The other name for Galactic Waters is the Ocean of the Khaa. Both these terms simply mean “cosmic space”. Since the Orion Queen was the Queen of the galactic space, the galactic space also went by the name THE GREAT MAR. This is the true origin of the Latin word Mar, which means “ocean” and from which we get such ocean-related terms as “marine” and “maritime”.
In an earlier article, we called attention to the fact that the females of the KHEB race (as the people of the SSS World called themselves) were on other worlds known simply as TT because of an aspect of their speech patterns. Their Queen, being foremost of women in the empire, was therefore referred to as Queen MA-TT, or Queen MA-TT-UR. MA-TT-UR is the true origin of our English word “mother”. As we all know, mother does not only refer to the most important woman in a nuclear family unit; it also refers to a matriarch such as “Mother Superior” in the Catholic orders for instance. All female-centred terms such as maternal, matriarch, matron, maternity, matricide, etc, stem from MA-TT or MA-TT-UR.
The same Queen of Orion was in other worlds also called Her Majesty Queen TT-TT, or Queen TTI-TTI (the true source of the English word “tit”). This was meant to emphasise the fact that she was the leading KHEB female. On the Earth of old, TTI-TTI was also pronounced as TTA-TTA – Ntate in Setswana/dad in English. In most Bantu languages, Tata or something like that is the way a father, grandfather, or a respected senior citizen is addressed. This is just one example of a term which originally meant one thing but was with time turned around to mean the direct opposite. Ntate was the Queen of Orion folks, not the King of Orion. I will be giving more examples of such words with reversed contemporary meanings as we go along.
The female population of the SSS World as we have already learnt were known in full as SSS-TT. A title of the Queen that derived from this term had to be doubled as per custom, so that she was called Queen SSSTT-SSSTT, or simply SST-SST when shortened. This was also pronounced as AST-AST. Throughout the Orion Empire, the Queen therefore became famously known as Queen AST-AST, with her throne referred to as the AST and the entire Orion Empire as the AST Empire. It is easy to understand then why the most famous Queen/Goddess of Egypt, Isis (her Greek name which was a shortened form of SSS-SSS) was known as Ast. It was clearly in honour of the Orion Queen, from which her lineage directly descended.
The people of Orion as mentioned above were known on other worlds as the SSS people (by virtue of repeated hiss sounds in their speech), indeed the reason the throne planet was called the SSS World. To denote that the Queen was the SSS sovereign, the people of the conquered worlds referred to her as Her Majesty Queen SSS-SSS. On some worlds, this was pronounced as SS-A-SS. As the First Citizen of the whole empire, her full title in this regard was shortened and rendered as SSA-UR, or simply SSAR. Does that ring a bell? Yes it does. In Russia, the King’s title was Tsar or Czar! This derived from SSAR no doubt.
It’s time you became aware folks that a great deal of the words we use in the languages of our day originate not from our world but from the world of an ancient Reptilian Queen.
HEAD OF SUPREME COURT
Like all sovereigns, the Orion Queen had a phalanx of royal assistants at the palace. As a group, the royal assistants (overwhelmingly female) were known as the SS-SS-IM, which simply meant those at the side of the Queen of the SSS World. When transposed, this gives us the English word “Miss”, whose meaning in one sense is a female assistant or deputy of some kind. The most loyal of these royal assistants were known as the SSI, or SS-US as a singular. SS-US is what eventually became Zeus in Greek, a title for their chief “god” who happened, now we know, to be the second-born son of the Anunnaki god Enlil (the Jehovah of the Bible) known as Nannar-Sin.
The entire Orion Empire had a supreme court which was the court of last resort. This court, which was based on the SSS World, was known as the N Court or the AN Court, which simply meant the Court of Heaven. The N Court was presided over by the Orion Queen herself. The bench comprised of 9 members – seven females and two males and all were royals. The seven females were the seven queens of the SSS World. Each of these queens went by the title N-N, NAN (maybe the source of “Nanny”?), or simply NIN. It explains why all the leading Anunnaki females had names that began with Nin – Ninmah (Enki and Enlil’s sister) and Ninaka (Inana, the notorious granddaughter of Enlil). On the other hand, the title of the two male members was EN, meaning Lord in this context. Again we see an echo of this in the names of the leading Anunnaki men such as Enki and Enlil for instance.
Here on Earth, we address judges as “My Lord”. The US Supreme Courts both at state and federal level have nine members. The expression “To the Nth Degree” is used to mean “to the utmost degree”. All these features of our nomenclature originate from Orion.
QUEEN OF SEXUAL BLING
The Orion Queen went by another title, KHAR (KH being an abbreviation of Eke, meaning sovereign, and AR being a shortened form of Ari, meaning spirit/master). This appellation entitled her to gratify herself in any way she desired. One of these ways was sexual pleasure.
In our world, particularly in modern times, sex is generally portrayed as harmful and in some cases even taboo. There are some who even consider it as desecrating and make a vow of lifelong abstinence from it, such as the monks and nuns of the Catholic faith. In the Reptilian worlds, however, sex (between opposite sexes) is a hallowed thing for as long as it is done out of genuine love and with mutual consent (Enki and Inanna, who were famed for being very sexually expressive, were not promiscuous folks: they were simply acting out the everyday culture of the place of their origin). In the Reptilian worlds, it is permitted to have sex with anybody – daughter, sister, aunt, in-laws, etc – for as long as they consent.
This is because Reptilians know the secret of sex. When it is done with mutual affection and unselfishly, it produces an electrical connection that opens new vistas of illumination, insight, and spiritual wisdom and therefore edifies both participants. It explains why another term for sexual intercourse is “knowing”. This is supposed to be deeper spiritual knowledge as opposed to superficial temporal knowledge. The electrical spark also boosts aspects of physical health in general. Sex should not simply be physical and emotional folks: it should primarily be mental and spiritual. Women, who are innately more spiritual than men, have a better approach to it than men because in their case it is largely mental.
In order to indulge the joy of sexual pleasure, the Queen of Orion had carefully selected, gigolo-type men who were dedicated to serve her on demand on a round robin basis and not orgiastically, which was more routine than seldom. These men were in youthful bloom, healthy, exceptionally good-looking, and fine physical specimens. They were KHAR-ISMATIC (yes, that is the true source of the English word “charisma”). Since they had such a privilleged status in the Queendom, they were known as the “Chosen Ones” or the “Anointed Ones”, what you would literally call “Christs” (more on this subject at a future date). They were said to be anointed ones because by sleeping with the Queen, their members were bathed in her womanly fluids – the highest treat any male could wish for and therefore his greatest aspiration in life. They were the Supreme Males of the empire.
The official title of these alpha males was KHARIM. Besides giving us the modern word charisma, KHARIM also supplied the English words “harem” (a string of women for a single man) and “harlot” (a woman with the habit of sleeping with different men). Here on Earth, it is women who have a unsavoury sexual reputation. On the SSS Reptilian World, it were men because they were very few and far between in a female dominated realm.
But although the KHARIM had the loftiest, most envied status among men, they also faced a certain peril. Failure to satisfy the Queen in any bout of intimacy invited serious reprisals. It entailed instant termination of office and automatic exile to another planet. You never gave the Mighty Queen bad sex by simply fumbling and faltering and got away with it: that’s how much the Queen loved good sex folks. She wanted it in good measure, shaken together, pressed down, and running over: no less.
NEXT WEEK: THE EVE YOU DON’T KNOW
Columns
GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device). But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli. As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase, predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise – whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
Columns
“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
Columns
RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.