The First Eve
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
She was the biological and surrogate mother of the Orion Queen
All Reptoid empires are ruled by queens, including the Draco star system which most cosmic pundits mistake as being male dominated because of the male chauvinism that today pervades our world (it was not like that in ages past as we shall demonstrate at some stage) and the tendency of “The Devil” and demons to invariably manifest as men in satanic rituals when they are summoned from their base in the Lower Fourth Dimension of the Astral realm. Some worlds are ruled by kings but all these defer to the sovereign overall of that particular Reptoid empire, whether these be the Serpent Empire (such as the one presided over by the Queen of Orion) or the Lizard Empire (such as the one presided over by the Draco Queen).
Since Reptoids were the first to arise in this holographic (Internet-like) universe which was designed by a fallen archangel generally referred to as Lucifer and in view of the fact that Reptoids are ruled by queens who have been worshipped since days immemorial, the result is that the universe has a dominant female energetic frequency. Indeed, all life in this universe as we showed in some earlier articles begin as a female form. All this has led many a people to hold the belief that the creator of the universe is female – a creatrix. That is totally mistaken. A spirit is genderless: it has no sex. Lucifer, who is spirit, cannot therefore be said to be female. Nor can the First Source, God Proper, be presumed to be female too. Female energy is simply more expressive than male energy in our universe and that by no means translates to Lucifer being a “she” .
The SSS World was a Reptoid domain and as such females ran the show. The planet was ruled by a queen and overwhelmingly populated by females. Much of the administration was done by females. Only the armed forces and blue collar work were dominated by males. But even in the army, the crack forces, such as the commando units, and the royal security detail were all females.
THE UNIFORMED PEOPLE AROUND THE QUEEN
The BDF of the SSS World was locally known as the TAKH Forces. How did this name come about? It is important that we know because the ancestor word of this term gave rise to another very significant term that is very commonly invoked today in cosmic parlance.
The SSS World’s warriors were initially known as the SAKH Warriors. SAKH meant “death from reptiles”. In the primeval days of the SSS World when warfare was conducted not with the use of weapons of any kind but by mano-o-mano combat (the way animals fight – with limbs, teeth, claws, horns, and other parts of their own bodily constitution), the SAKH Warriors, who constituted both males and females, let out two alternating intimidating cries at their enemies. The first was a fierce hiss, “sss-sss”, like the very snakes from which they evolved. The second was a guttural (throaty) rush of air from deep within their bodies (The legendary Bruce Lee, a Reptilian, used to make a similar sound when he fought). When this was issued, the sound came out as “Kggghaaaa”, very similar to the kind a Komodo dragon makes. This sound was produced just before the strike that resulted in the immediate death of the enemy.
The sound “Kggghaaaa” gave birth to the SSS people’s word “KHAA”, which came to stand for death itself. But there was another spin-off meaning of the same word. This was the “Breath of the Void”. The Breath of the Void was mistakenly said to be the first breath the supernatural essence we call God issued when he created this universe to populate it with stars, planets, black holes, and other cosmic bodies and the life forms that eventually arose. Thus KHAA also came to mean “void of space”, or simply space. To this day, cosmic historians and metaphycists refer to space as the “Ocean of the Khaa”.
Now, we did elucidate last time around that one of the Orion Queen’s titles was TT-TT. As a royal military, the combined forces of the SSS World were known as TT-TT-KHAA, the latter part of the name deriving from the original “Kggghaaaa” warning sound as well as the fact that the queen was deemed to be the humanoid embodiment of the creatrix who brought the cosmos into being through her breath of the void. TT-TT-KHAA when shortened became … TAKH. It was the SAKH Warriors who eventually became known as the TAKH Warriors.
Of the TAKH Warriors, the very finest who had already excelled in battle were assigned round-the-clock vigil over the Queen. Since the most evoked title of the Queen was MA, this elite guard was known as the MAKH Warriors (On the SSS World, the letter “K” primarily connoted death or destruction of some sort. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that almost all words that stand for death in East Asian languages begin with the letter K.) They were Secret Service, bodyguards, and soldiers rolled into one and were made up of both males and females. But in the SSS World, males were not very trusted. It was feared that if they were allowed too much leeway, they might assassinate the Queen, take over her domain, and lord it over the female race (there were numerous assassination attempts on the Queen which were instigated, largely, by the male race). As such, the Queen at some stage decided that her security detail should comprise of females only. These elite female warrior guardians of the Queen, who were equipped with the most sophisticated weaponry, became known as the Royal TT-TT-AN-US. But they were often referred to as the TT-TT-ANS. It is this term from which the English word “Titans” originate.
In addition to the Titans, the Queen had a crack squad, equivalent to the US’s Delta Force or the Navy Seals who killed Osama bin Laden, whose fundamental role was to liquidate perceived enemies of the Crown. This other elite unit was known as the ASS-ASS-IM. The unit was named after a drug known as HASHASHIM, on which the Queen constantly kept members of the unit so that they could be ruthless and unscrupulous in their assignments. It is ASS-ASS-IM and HASHASHIM which give us the English words “assassin” and “hashish” respectively.
THE HUMANOID QUEEN BEE
If you recall what we said at some stage, the Serpent race on the SSS World in the earlier stages of its evolution arose from an insect that had features both of a dragonfly and a bee. As humanoids (human-like Reptoids), the SSS race retained the reproductive characteristics of a bee. How does a bee reproduce?
A bee reproduces both sexually (with male involvement) and asexually (without male involvement). In a beehive, the reproductive machine is the Queen Bee. The Queen Bee mates only once in her life time and carries the seed of her mate in her pouch throughout her life (the seed neither degrades nor loses its potency: it’s like it’s preserved cryogenically). Every time she lays eggs and she wants them fertilised , she simply taps into the stored male seed. All eggs that are fertilised result in female offspring only. That’s the only way a Queen Bee can produce females – through sexual reproduction. On the other hand, the Queen Bee’s male offspring arise from eggs that are not fertilised. In other words, male bees, called drones or worker bees, are the result of asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction is what in science is termed parthenogenesis or simply virgin birth Jesus style.
On the SSS World, humanoid females continued to reproduce the way they used to when they were at the insect stage of their evolution, when they were dragonfly-bee KHEBs. They all carried the semen of every male they had ever mated with in their life somewhere in their reproductive apparatus. But it was the Queen’s offspring who were special. Princesses had fathers thanks to sexual reproduction but princes had no fathers thanks to asexual reproduction. It is important that you mark this point as it will be of particular relevance when we come to talk about Anunnaki politics here on Earth. The female royal offspring were also distinct from those of commoners in that they were born with a certain aura and scent that was peculiar to them. The scent and aura added to their allure to males.
Now, you will recall that the Orion Queen never married. One reason was that she didn’t want to put a male in a kind of spotlight. The other, and the main reason, was that she was very sexual and wanted to indulge in sexual recreation without undue inhibitions. As we once related, the Queen had a harem of heartthrob males called the KHARIM who took turns to serve her sexually (could she have been the inspiration to King Solomon who had more than 700 wives in addition to 300-plus concubines?) But not every one of these males was entitled to producing offspring with the Queen. In order to merit such a privillege, the horde of hunks had to compete in a physical contest, just like the KHEB insect queen soared into the air in a bid to get the strongest and most able males to compete for her by reaching up to her.
The KHARIM members were made to enter a tournament and perform certain feats of strength against each other to produce a kind of superman for the superwoman that was the Queen. This was a cocktail of combative, athletic, acrobatic, and strongman activities. All this was done in the nude so as to put the nether regions of the body on parade to see who was man enough to make the Queen shed tears of ecstasy. But it was not all about vigorous and enduring royal sex: it was also about the imperative of having royal offspring with the finest genetic material in their make-up.
The last man standing at the conclusion of the tournament was the one who won the right to sire children, that is females, for the Queen. Every time the Queen wanted female offspring, she would sleep with this one man for that purpose only or simply tap into the seed she had retained somewhere in her reproductive system from him. But he was not put on a kind of pedestal. He never won any special royal titles other than the accolade of triumph. He was little more than a reproductive instrument.
If you delve into the archives of even Earthly history, you will find that the earliest contact sport was a wrestling- type contest in which participants competed stark naked. This was a trickle-down from what used to happen eons ago on the SSS World, when a competition was organised to choose a fitting reproductive mate for the Great MA. As above, so below.
QUEEN EVE SIRES “E-LIZARD-BETHs”
On the SSS World, as in all Reptoid worlds, coup de tats were far the norm than the exception. Typically, it was a princess who deposed her own mother, the Queen. The practice was to eliminate the Queen once she was overthrown, thus denying her the chance to mount a counter-coup to reclaim power.
In order to put a stop to this endless spiral of machinations, the Queen decreed a new law. The Queen was to step down from the throne whilst she was still of child-bearing age and assume a new status – that of Queen Mother. This was not simply a symbolic title as it is in the UK. The Queen Mother had a specific, vital role to play – that of bearing children on behalf of the Queen. In other words, she was a surrogate mother.
What used to happen was that the germ cells (the eggs and semen) the Queen carried in her reproductive mechanism were transplanted into the womb of the Queen Mother. The Queen Mother then carried the pregnancy to term and delivered the offspring on her daughter’s behalf. That way, the office of the Queen Mother became an indispensable institution in the SSS World. Note that bearing children was quite an onerous task for the Queen. The Queen presided over not only her own world but a whole empire spread across the 9th Passageway of the Milky Way Galaxy. The administrators of all the worlds that were under her jurisdiction had to be her own offspring if the worlds were to remain within her imperialistic orbit. She was therefore obliged to produce children in numbers that took a heavy toll on her physical wellbeing. The office of the Queen Mother thus freed the Queen from this albatross so that she could concentrate on directly running the affairs of her empire rather than doing so by proxy.
Because of her surrogate role, the Queen Mother went by the title Queen BI, pronounced “BEE”. On the SSS World, the letter "B" on its own meant “container of”, as indeed the Queen Mother’s womb encased her daughter’s issue. The word BI had two meanings. In one sense, it meant “the birther”; in another, it meant “one who is birthed”. Now, if you recall, the royal females of the SSS World were amongst other titles known as TT-TT (doubling of a title signaled seniority). Therefore, it logically follows that a daughter born to the Queen Mother would go by the title “BI-TT-TT”, pronounced “BEE-T”. On Earth, this is the name “Betty”, the short form of “Elizabeth”, which is actually “E-lizard-beth”, or Royal Reptilian Princess. When we keep telling you the Queen of England is a Reptilian, we’re not simply uttering drivel.
On the SSS World, the letter V was a lighter and inferior version of the letter B. That is to say, it carried a toned-down meaning. V meant “the bearer of”, or “the carrier of”, whereas B as we have seen above meant “the container of”. Since the Queen Mother carried the reproductive seed of the Queen, she was also known as Queen V. On other words, including Earth, this was pronounced as Queen EVE, Queen AVA, Queen AYA, or Queen EA. Do you know now why Adam’s wife was named Eve by Enki? It was because she gave birth to Cain, who was the son of the Orion royal Enki! (more on the subject in due course.) In other words, she carried the seed of the Serpent (SURBAH) Prince.
Also on other worlds, including Earth, the daughters of the Queen of Orion who were borne her by the Queen Mother through the surrogacy arrangement were known as N-TT-TT, abbreviated N-TT or simply NUT. If you read the Sumerian as well as the Egyptian chronicles, you will find that one of Enki’s great granddaughters was Nut and she was known in Egypt, the domain of Enki’s clan, as the Goddess of the Sky. Why? Because as we explained at one stage, on the SSS World “N” stood for Heaven, meaning the Orion star system.
The history of Earth folks is very much intertwined with the history of Orion.
NEXT WEEK: EVERLASTING LIFE FOR ORION QUEEN!
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!
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“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
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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.