ARI-AN Realm Expands
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER…
Let us at this juncture pause to recap on what we have learnt so far about the SSS World of the Orion star system in case some of you may have lost track along the way.
The SSS race arose on a world that revolved around a sun in Orion known as the Suriya star. They evolved from a snake-like creature, which in itself had evolved first from an insect that here on Earth we could call a dragonfly bee because it had features both of a dragonfly and a bee. This insect came to be known as a KHEB. The KHEB insect in turn evolved into a more advanced insect that resembled a mantis. It was the KHEB mantis that developed into full-fledged reptiles that specialised as lizards, dinosaurs, and snakes, and it was the KHEB snake that eventually metamorphosed into humanoids who came to be known as the SSS race. The SSS race were the first humanoids to evolve in the Milky Way Galaxy.
“SSS race” was how they were known on the planets which they later conquered. The name derived from a hiss sound that was a distinctive feature of their language, a legacy of their snake ancestry. On their own world, however, they referred to themselves as the NEHK race, which meant “Fearsome Black (mean-spirited) Ones” because of their reputed prowess as formidable warriors. But in the early ages of their evolution as humanoids, the NEHK race were not a mean and belligerent race. In the UDU-U age, the Second Age of the Heavens (that is, the cosmos) during which higher-order life forms (humanoids) began to emerge in the Milky Way Galaxy, the SSS Race were very spiritual. They were then known as the SURBAH, meaning “Royal Race”, being the pioneering race in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is from SURBAH we get the Sanskrit word sarpha; the Latin word serpens; and the English word serpent. You will now appreciate that serpent did not originally mean snakes: it was a unrelated name of a race of beings that happened to have evolved from snakes.
Over the ages, the SURBAH disappeared from the scene and in the Third Age of the Heavens, known as the OMAHK, their descendants, who were far more carnal than spiritual, were born. This generation became known on other worlds as the ARI-AN beings, meaning “The Holy Ones of Heaven” because the people of other worlds regarded them as gods owing to their longer lives and sophisticated technology which were “miraculous” in the eyes of primitive races. It is ARI-AN which gives us the English terms “Aryan” and “Alien”.
On the ARI-AN/SSS World, females dominated. They outnumbered men by a huge factor. Females not only ran the show but they were better warriors than males. Males were looked at in the same patronising way we look at females on our planet. In the course of time therefore, it were females who took the reins after a series of wars. All the thrones of the planet’s seven major regions were occupied by queens. Finally, when it was decided to cement global peace and therefore put an end to wars, the seven queens, who were also known as the SUU-SUU, meaning superior matriarchs, chose one overall Queen of Queens, who went by several titles, with the main ones being MA and AYA, her throne now being known as the AST-AST. The resulting one world government was called the Royal Aghar of the Seven EKE-ENEs, meaning the Royal Realm of the Seven Queens. It is from the term EKE-ENE we get the English word “queen”, the Greek word “gyne”, and the biblical name Cain.
The Queen of Orion presided over not only the affairs of the SSS World but over a sprawling empire straddling the 9th region of the Shagari Stars (the SSS race’s term for the Orion Empire), which included our Solar System. How did this empire come about?
REPTILIAN WORLDS MAKE DETENTE
After the SSS World had become a one world government and peace overall prevailed and was sustained, the focus now shifted from making armaments to civil technology with a view to advance the standard of living on the planet, to assist with scientific breakthroughs, and to investigate space. Typically, the first space-related technology a civilisation develops is the kind that can launch them into orbit – rockets or spaceships. We Earthlings did likewise. Official history will tell you the first man to fly in space was the Russian pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12 1961. That is all bollocks (see Zeta Series). The first person to journey into space was a German. His name was Raul Streicher. Streicher was one of a squadron of 100 to 500 military pilots who were trained to become astronauts at the orders of Adolf Hitler early in 1944. Streicher orbited Earth on February 24 1945 and touched down in the Sea of Japan.
The next cosmic destination a civilisation wishes to explore is its nearest satellite, what we call the moon here on Earth. Since it is always the nearest heavenly body, a satellite is the first to exercise the fascination of a planetary civilisation. It is the first cosmic body a civilisation seeks to investigate. Of course, unmanned probes are dispatched there first: manned ones follow thereafter. Again, we did the same here on Earth. Our first venture to a cosmic body was to the moon. Now, forget about the hogwash that our first foray to the moon was Apollo 11 led by Neil Armstrong. I know you are not aware of this, but the first manned mission and landing on the moon took place in 1958. It was a joint venture between the Soviets and the US’s National Security Agency (not NASA). In 1961, a permanent human settlement was established on the moon (more on the subject in a future dedicated series on the moon).
Once a satellite has been explored, a civilisation now looks to venture further afield – to a nearest planet. In our case, that is Mars. Again in case you didn’t know folks, we have long been to Mars. It were the Nazis, again, who set the pace. They sent a team to Mars in mid-1945 using a flying saucer they had constructed (with the help of schematic technology supplied them by the Aliens from the Aldebaran star system) known as the Haunebu IV. The Haunebu IV took off from a new Nazi colony in Antarctica (again see Zeta Series). We will at some stage in the future do a dedicated series on the Mars mission, which even the late US president Ronald Reagan confirmed during a high-level meeting that took place at Camp David on March 16 1981 (see Zeta Series).
The SSS World first colonised its moons, established bases there, and mined its mineral resources. Their moons now became a stepping stone to the exploration of other planets and moons of the Suriya star system with a view to garner further knowledge about the universe and to prospect for mineral resources. Later, when they became stronger and much more technologically advanced, they began to explore other worlds of the Shagari Stars in the process establishing further bases and further colonies. What happened was that as they spacefared, they encountered other Reptilian races who were similarly advanced and turf interplanetary wars ensued. Each Reptilian civilisation wanted to conquer and colonise another. In some cases, a number of strong Reptilian worlds fought for the seizure of one or two weak ones. Eventually, after eons of warring against each other, they sat down and hammered out a peace accord. They called it the Association of Reptilian Worlds. Under the treaty, Reptilian worlds were not to go to war with each other and if war arose between one Reptilian race and a non-Reptilian race, the Association members were to reinforce a fellow Reptilian race if called upon. The Association of Reptilian Worlds was chaired by the Orion Queen since the SSS World was the most powerful of them all. In the aftermath of the peace treaty, trade flourished among the Association members.
THE MATTER OF THE MATA
What kind of technology did the SSS race, the most advanced and the most powerful race in the Milky Way Galaxy, use to voyage to worlds in the vast expanse of the 9th Region of the Shagari Stars? They had spaceships, or what the Sumerians referred to as the Celestial Boats, but these were not their principal space vehicles. The SSS race had learnt from the ancient records of their SURBAH ancestors that there was a unseen dark wind that moved between the stars and the worlds and on which they could ride. This unseen dark wind was known as the EKEI-ACI wind (meaning “Wind that Carries”) or simply the EKICI wind in short. The EKICI wind was not made of air: it was made of certain matter that was very different from the familiar planetary matter. The ancient records do not make clear what kind of matter this was but I suspect it was Worm Hole-type matter.
Since the SURBAH were a very spiritual people, they were able to ride the EKICI wind directly. All they did was call up a “Summoning Circle” called the URI (something Luciferians even today to do when they want to call up demons from the Lower Fourth Dimension of the Astral realm), step into that circle, and immediately they would feel themselves being propelled through space by the EKICI wind to wherever in the Milky Way Galaxy they wanted to go. However, the present SSS generation were too canal and temporal and so could not summon up the URI circle. They could only do so if they used the power of dark forces, which meant whatever mission they wanted to fulfill would be in the service of these dark forces.
Of itself, however, the EKICI wind was not spiritual: it was physical and therefore was accessible by any beings for as long as they had the means to access it. In order to utilise the EKICI wind, the SSS race needed high-tech space vehicles but when you are going on a conquest mission which could take decades or even scores of years, space ships are not sufficient: they are too small, even if some of them may be the size of a city. So what the SSS race did was to harness what they called the MATA, or mother ship. The MATA were hollowed-out rocks the size of an asteroid, a meteor, or even a mini-planet – a miniature world effectively that “bent and curved” as it drifted through space. It was the MATA they turned into a mega spaceship, a drifting world equipped with everything they needed to survive for countless years and accommodate all the weaponry required to conquer or even destroy a planet. MATA is the original source of our English words such as meteor, metal, metastasise, etc, not what official etymological dictionaries tell you.
How did the SSS race make these MATAs? In our solar system, we could make one from a captured asteroid. For example, the two moons of Mars, called Phobos and Deimos, are captured asteroids, we now know. If our planet were close enough to the Oort Cloud, the ring of floating rock debris that encircles our Solar System, we could also convert one of these mega rocks in there into a MATA. But asteroid objects do not begin as such: they are fragments of a huge cosmic body that for one reason or the other disintegrated. We know, for example, that our Asteroid Belt arose from the break-up of a huge planet that lay between Mars and Jupiter known as Maldek.
If the SSS race could afford a MATA, it could be that they too had an asteroid-like or Oort Cloud-like belt in the Suriyar solar system which they harnessed, or they were so phenomenally advanced that they were capable of creating matter. Yes; you heard me right folks: there are civilisations in our universe who are capable of creating even a whole solar system. That capacity takes billions of years to attain and if the SSS World was the first planet to evolve life in the Milky Way Galaxy, it follows that they have long reached that ability considering that according to the Andromedans (an Alien, humanoid race from the Andromedan star system that enlightens a select few of Earthlings), the universe is 21 trillion years old.
TAKING OVER A PLANET
The overwhelming majority on the SSS race’s expeditionary force comprised of males. But they were accompanied by a superintending, two-tier corps of females.
The first tier comprised of females who had what we would ordinarily term supernatural abilities but which were actually based on occultic (secret) science. These females were known as the OKIN Maidens. OKIN was a diminutive of the term EKE-ENE, or Queen in today’s English. The OKIN maidens came from the SSS World’s nobility and supervised the entire expedition.
The second tier was made up of females called the AMI-SU-EN Warrioress Maidens. AMI-SU-EN was a compound word which meant “The Queen’s Priestesses”. The AMI-SU-EN Warrioress Maidens were the best and most accomplished fighters in the entire NEHK army, as the SSS World army was called. It is from AMI-SU-EN we derive the English world “amazon”. The Amazons are said to be a race of formidable women warriors of Greek mythology but they are not mythical beings: they were real, only they were not from this planet but from Orion.
Some of the planets the SSS expeditionary force came upon were barren and lifeless. It was easy therefore for them to plant the ARI-AN flag their and establish a settlement. Others were already inhabited by primitive beings who were at various stages of development. Again, these were easy pickings for them. But there were those planets that were already inhabited by civilised beings but were so resource-rich the SSS race wanted to occupy and colonise them. Here they faced fierce resistance. To subdue such people, the OKIN Maidens used two methods.
One was outright war, using their sophisticated weaponry. That’s what they did in the early days. But over time, they abandoned this method and instead resorted to psychological warfare. They called this AMI-KIRU, which meant “Break the Spirit”. This was essentially a mind-control programme which they administered to the leaders of these planets. To do this, they used cloaking technology which rendered them invisible and then worked on the minds of the leaders using telepathy. Suddenly, the leaders who were hell-bent on resisting them now became docile and received them respectfully and with awe. Now they offered to subordinate themselves to Her Divine Majesty Queen Aya of the Shagari Empire.
As for the rest of the population of the occupied world, OKIN Maidens used vaccines as a ruse. The vaccines were laced with chemicals that made the population docile and subservient and therefore easily manipulable, just as the Reptilians have done to us here on Earth. The OKIN Maidens also used water as a means to further dumb-down the psyche of their subjects. They strafed rivers with chemicals that targeted the brain. As a result, their subjects became even more tame and submissive to a point where they actually worshipped the OKIN Maidens and their Queen. And so using all this cocktail of mind-numbing tactics, the Royal Aghar of the Seven EKE-ENEs became the largest and most powerful empire in the 9th Region of the Shagari Stars, which included our Solar System.
NEXT WEEK: MUTINY AGAINST QUEEN
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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.