The ‘false’ pandemic: Drug firms cashed in on scare over swine flu, claims Euro health chief

By Fiona Macrae

The swine flu outbreak was a ‘false pandemic’ driven by drug companies that stood to make billions of pounds from a worldwide scare, a leading health expert has claimed.

Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, accused the makers of flu drugs and vaccines of influencing the World Health Organisation’s decision to declare a pandemic.

This led to the pharmaceutical firms ensuring ‘enormous gains’, while countries, including the UK, ‘squandered’ their meagre health budgets, with millions being vaccinated against a relatively mild disease.

Trapped: British family Neil, Maria, Samuel and Abigail Willis were quarantined in their hotel in Beijing, China, at the height of the swine flu scare
A resolution proposed by Dr Wodarg calling for an investigation into the role of drug firms has been passed by the Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based ‘senate’ responsible for the European Court of Human Rights.

An emergency debate on the issue will be held later this month.

Dr Wodarg’s claims come as it emerged the British government is desperately trying to offload up to £1billion of swine flu vaccine, ordered at the height of the scare.

Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson last year ordered the NHS to plan for up to 65,000 deaths
The Department of Health warned of 65,000 deaths, set up a special advice line and website, suspended normal rules so anti-flu drugs could be given out without prescription and told health and local authorities to prepare for a major pandemic.

Planners were told to get morgues ready for the sheer scale of deaths and there were warnings that the Army could be called in to prevent riots as people fought to obtain drugs.

But with fewer than 5,000 in England catching the disease last week and just 251 deaths overall, Dr Wodarg has branded the H1N1 outbreak as ‘one of the greatest medical scandals of the century’.

He said: ‘We have had a mild flu – and a false pandemic.’

He added the seeds of the scare were sown five years ago, when it was feared the much more lethal bird flu virus would mutate into a human form.

The ‘atmosphere of panic’ led to governments stockpiling the anti-flu drug Tamiflu and putting in place ‘sleeping contracts’ for millions of doses of vaccine

Dr Wodarg said: ‘The governments have sealed contracts with vaccine producers where they secure orders in advance and take upon themselves almost all the responsibility.

‘In this way the producers of vaccines are sure of enormous gains without having any financial risks.

‘So they just wait, until WHO says “pandemic” and activate the contracts.’

He also claims that to further push their interests, leading drug companies placed ‘their people’ in the ‘cogs’ of the WHO and other influential organisations.

Sue Armitage with her children Daisy and Ralph who could not go on holiday after catching swine flu
He added that their influence could have led the WHO to soften its definition of a pandemic – leading to the declaration of a worldwide outbreak last June.

Dr Wodarg said: ‘In order to promote their patented drugs and vaccines against flu, pharmaceutical companies have influenced scientists and official agencies, responsible for public health standards, to alarm governments worldwide.

‘They have made them squander tight healthcare resources for inefficient vaccine strategies and needlessly exposed millions of healthy people to the risk of unknown side-effects of insufficiently tested vaccines.’
He does not name any Britons with conflicts of interest.

But last year, the Daily Mail revealed that Sir Roy Anderson, a scientist who advises the Government on swine flu, also holds a £116,000-a-year post on the board of GlaxoSmithKline.

GSK makes anti-flu drugs and vaccines and is predicted to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic.

A young girl is given an inoculation at a medical centre in Cockermouth, England. Millions were given vaccines against swine flu, with pharmaceutical companies being paid huge sums by the government
The Department of Health says that although the disease appears to be on the wane, it cannot rule out a third surge and urges all those entitled to the jab to have it.

Professor David Salisbury, the Government’s head of immunisation said there were ‘no grounds whatsoever’ for Dr Wodarg’s claims, saying people with conflicts of interest were kept out of the decision-making process.

A GSK spokesman said: ‘Allegations of undue influence are misguided and unfounded. The WHO declared that H1N1 swine flu met the criteria for a pandemic.

‘As WHO have stated, legal regulations and numerous safeguards are in place to manage possible conflicts of interest.’

The company, which still employs Sir Roy, said he had declared his commercial interests and had not attended any meetings related to the purchase of drugs or vaccine for either the Government or GSK.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242147/The-false-pandemic-Drug-firms-cashed-scare-swine-flu-claims-Euro-health-chief.html#ixzz0cIUWvXKy

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Hot Dogs Need Anti-Cancer Warning: Group Sues Hot Dog Makers to Force Honest Labeling

Hot Dogs Need Anti-Cancer Warning: Group Sues Hot Dog Makers to Force Honest Labeling

by David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) In a lawsuit filed against hot dog manufacturers, the nonprofit Cancer Project is seeking to force all hot dogs sold in the state of New Jersey to carry a label reading, “Warning: Consuming hot dogs and other processed meats increases the risk of cancer.”

“Just as tobacco causes lung cancer, processed meats are linked to colon cancer,” said Cancer Project President Neal Barnard, of George Washington University Medical School. “Companies that sell hot dogs are well aware of the danger, and their customers deserve the same information.”

The Cancer Project is a project of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which promotes a vegan diet and condemns animal research.

The lawsuit cites numerous studies that have implicated processed meat consumption in a higher cancer risk, including a recent report by the American Institute for Cancer Research. According to this report, eating just one 50 gram serving of processed meat per day (the equivalent of one hot dog) increases a person’s risk of colorectal cancer by an average of 21 percent.

The Cancer Project largely blames hot dogs’ cancer-causing effects on nitrites, a class of preservatives that break down into carcinogenic compounds when digested. Other researchers have argued that the high fat content of processed meat is much more likely to cause cancer, but the Cancer Project argues that this debate is not relevant to its lawsuit.

“This situation is similar to the link between the smoking of tobacco products and lung cancer: While all the molecular events linking the smoking of tobacco to the development of lung cancer are not known, the link cannot be disputed,” the legal complaint says.

According to nutritionist Keith-Thomas Ayoob of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, focusing too much on hot dogs might be missing the point.

“The stuff people typically have with a hot dog may be a more immediate concern: too many calories from all the fat-laden potato and macaroni salads, sugary drinks and sweet desserts,” he said.

Sources for this story include: http://www.google.com; http://www.latimes.com.

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New research: natural exposure to everyday germs may protect kids from disease as adults

by S. L. Baker, features writer

(NaturalNews) Gone are the days when play time for kids often meant getting dirty making mud “pies”, splashing in mud puddles and creeks, and climbing trees — and when children washed their hands, mostly just before a meal, it was with plain soap and water. Modern day parents often take pride in keeping their little ones squeaky clean and as germ-free as possible, dousing them with antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizers. But new Northwestern University research suggests that normal exposure to everyday germs is a natural way to prevent diseases in adulthood.

The study, published in the December 9th edition of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, is the first to investigate whether microbial exposures early in life affect inflammatory processes related to diseases in adulthood. Remarkably, the Northwestern study suggests exposure to infectious microbes in childhood may actually protect youngsters from developing serious illnesses, including cardiovascular diseases, when they grow into adults.

“Contrary to assumptions related to earlier studies, our research suggests that ultra-clean, ultra-hygienic environments early in life may contribute to higher levels of inflammation as an adult, which in turn increases risks for a wide range of diseases,” Thomas McDade, lead author of the study, said in a statement to the media. McDade is associate professor of anthropology in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research.

He added that humans have only recently lived in super clean environments and it could well be time to put down the antibacterial soap. That’s because the new research suggests that inflammatory systems need a reasonably high level of exposure to common everyday germs and other microbes to develop and work properly in the body.

“In other words, inflammatory networks may need the same type of microbial exposures early in life that have been part of the human environment for all of our evolutionary history to function optimally in adulthood,” stated McDade.

The Northwestern University researchers specifically studied how environments early in life might affect production of C-reactive protein (CRP), a protein that rises in the blood due to inflammation, in adulthood. Research concerning CRP, which is an important part of the immune system’s fight against infection, has primarily focused on the protein as a possible predictor of heart disease. Scientists previously have mostly conducted CRP research in affluent settings, including the U.S., where there are relatively low levels of infectious diseases.

McDade and colleagues were interested in what CRP production looks like in the Philippines where residents have with a high level of infectious diseases in early childhood compared to Western countries. However, compared to Western countries, the people of the Philippines have relatively low rates of obesity (which is associated with CRP) and cardiovascular diseases.

How the research was conducted
The research team worked with data from a longitudinal study of Filipinos which began in the 1980s with 3,327 Filipino mothers in their third trimester of pregnancy. The mothers were interviewed about breast feeding and care giving and their households were assessed for socioeconomic levels, hygiene (including whether homes included domestic animals) and how many people lived in the home.

Researchers also visited with the mothers after their babies were born and then every two months for the first two years of the children’s lives. From that point on, the researchers followed up with the children every four or five years until the research subjects were approximately 22 years of age. During this entire period, records were kept on the children documenting their height and weight and any infectious diseases they contracted.

Blood tests revealed Filipino participants in their early 20s had CRP concentrations on average of .2 milligrams per liter — that’s about five to seven times lower than the average CRP levels for Americans of the same age.

“In the U.S we have this idea that we need to protect infants and children from microbes and pathogens at all possible costs,” McDade concluded. “But we may be depriving developing immune networks of important environmental input needed to guide their function throughout childhood and into adulthood. Without this input, our research suggests, inflammation may be more likely to be poorly regulated and result in inflammatory responses that are overblown or more difficult to turn off once things get started.”

For more information:

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscen…

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How to Heal Yourself in 15 Days

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) Can you really heal yourself in 15 days? Without using prescription drugs, vaccines, chemotherapy or surgery? Absolutely!

Your body strives to heal itself automatically, every single day. The only thing that really needs to happen for your body to begin healing itself is for you to remove the barriers to healing — the barriers that are holding you back right now.

That’s why you’ll greatly enjoy this 15-part article series by the Health Ranger, published here on NaturalNews over the next three weeks or so. This isn’t a rehash of the health tips you already know — eat right, exercise more, hydrate yourself, and so on — it’s a completely new way to look at how to unleash the healing potential you already possess.

This information was originally planned for a book to be published by a major publishing house. But the time requirements for mainstream publishing meant that this information wouldn’t appear on bookshelves for roughly one year, during which time many people would have missed out on the phenomenal benefits of this program. So I’ve passed on the conventional publishing route and decided to bring this program directly to you right here on NaturalNews.

So let’s get right to it!

Day 1 – Rethink “health”
For many people, the first barrier to healing is found in their mental definition of “health.” A lot of people believe that health is defined by having blood certain tests return results within a specific range: Your LDL cholesterol needs to be between X and Y, for example, and your blood pressure needs to be lower than Z. Conventional doctors tend to define health in this way, too, only spreading this misconception even further.

Health isn’t defined by a range of numbers. It doesn’t mean merely shrinking the physical size of a tumor while the patient continues to waste away. Health isn’t measured solely by the number of days someone is kept alive on life support equipment…

Health means exactly what you intuitively thought it meant before you were subjected to so much influence and misinformation by drug company advertisements, conventional doctors and friends or family members — health means quality of life.

And what is quality of life? Being able to sleep at night, walk without pain, eat and enjoy food, have a working memory, and achieve things in your life that mean something to you. Health means time with family, a walk in the woods, a positive mental outlook and an ability to handle stress without flipping out. Health means treating your body with respect and experiencing the joy of feeling it work well in return. Health means vibrant energy, daily optimism and even good sexual energy, too (and much more).

These are important elements of health and yet none of them are really answered by western medicine. Most of them aren’t even considered in the medical textbooks. Modern medicine does not believe it really has any concern about the quality of your life. If you have a problem sleeping, the conventional medical approach is to simply overload your brain with pharmaceutical chemicals that force you to lose consciousness — and then they call it “sleep.” But it isn’t really sleep. It’s not quality sleep, and it doesn’t create quality living.

And that’s why if you wish to achieve real quality of life, you must broaden your horizons beyond the limiting laboratory numbers of conventional medicine and explore what “health” really means to you. This doesn’t mean laboratory tests can’t be useful diagnostic tools; it just means to be cautious of letting the chemical measurement approach to health be your one source of answers for attempting to achieve health and happiness in your life.

So today, I’d like you to think about this for yourself: How do YOU define health? What would you like to do in your day, or FEEL in your day, or experience day to day that would equate to the concept of “health” in your own mind?

Once you have a clear picture of that element, you’ll quickly come to realized that pharmaceuticals will never provide that for you. The real answers to health must come from somewhere else… somewhere that’s more aligned with the real definition of health that you intuitively know to be more meaningful.

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Heal yourself in 15 days by recognizing your innate healing power (part two)

Heal yourself in 15 days by recognizing your innate healing power (part two)

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) This article continues our 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part one, we looked at why the real secret to rapid healing is to remove the barriers to healing (http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_s…). In part two, we look at why your healing potential is so powerful that you can’t even turn it off!

When you scrape your elbow, a bit of blood oozes out to clean the wound and wash away bacteria. It then forms a protective scab that keeps out invading microorganisms while your skin has a chance to heal underneath. There, some real magic takes place: Your skin cells innately recognize the need to divide and grow to fill the wound. A cancer-like process is unleashed at the cellular level, activating nearby cells to divide and grow. Your DNA is replicated in the nucleus of each cell with the help of some of the most astounding nanotechnology every witnessed in human civilization. (The best scientists in the world can’t even come close to recreating it.)

As your cells multiply, nutrients and building blocks are carried to them through a blood supply that adapts to the particular size and shape of the wound. If a blood vessel was destroyed in your accident, the growth of new blood vessels is spontaneously initiated to take their place, and they grow into the tissues within mere hours.

As your skin cells fill in the previous wound, the replication effort is delicately turned off, one by one, so that replicating skin cells don’t keep replicating beyond what they need to — a process that would cause the creation of a skin tumor. Your body’s cells know exactly when to grow and exactly when to turn off, and when it’s all said and done, you’re left with a perfect replacement for the skin you previously lost.

Completely automatic healing
The truly amazing part of all this is not the cancer-like processes that are delicately controlled by your body wisdom; it’s not even the fact that your body has the ability to re-grow lost cells — it’s the fact that all this takes place without any conscious involvement on your part.

Healing yourself is automatic, in other words. You don’t have to direct blood to the wound, direct the cells to start replicating, direct the molecular waste products to be carried away and decide when cell replication should be stopped. All this happens without your involvement — even without your awareness! Much of it happens while you sleep, in fact. While your conscious mind is dreaming, your innate body wisdom is working the biochemistry and energetic transformations necessary to repair your tissues.

You can’t stop this process even if you wanted to. You could try to focus all your mental power on your skin not healing, and yet your skin would heal itself anyway.

That’s because your body is a powerful self-healing organism. It heals itself automatically, innately, without your conscious awareness or involvement. Your ability to heal yourself is so powerful that you can’t stop yourself from healing!

Why we don’t always heal
If this is true, then why aren’t you healing everything else? Why aren’t you always in perfect health? The answer, as you’ve seen throughout this article series, is because we tend to erect barriers to our own healing. And we often misread the symptoms of sickness that are asking for help, “treating” them in a way that makes the situation worse.

Fact: Many “symptoms of disease” are actually the result of your body’s attempt to heal itself.

For example, most people are chronically dehydrated. They don’t consume enough high-quality water. Because water is so vital for proper blood composition, when your body lacks sufficient quantities of water intake, it begins to take action to reduce water loss.

A significant portion of the water loss experienced by the body each day is lost through respiration — a bit of water vapor is exhaled with each breath. So to conserve water, your body attempts to reduce water loss during respiration by constricting your bronchial tubes through the creation of histamines.

These histamines constrict breathing, making it more physically difficult. Modern (western) medicine misdiagnoses this as a disease called “asthma” rather than the true underlying cause which is often simply dehydration. So instead of prescribing water, which would solve the underlying water shortage and end the body’s creation of histamines, western doctors prescribe anti-histamine drugs that force the bronchial tubes to relax and ease air flow. This, of course, promotes further dehydration, leaving the patient in a more severe state of water loss.

So you see, the body is attempting to heal itself, and the symptom of histamine production is a mechanism by which the body is attempting to heal, but it is misinterpreted by western medicine and then made worse by misguided interventions.

Blood pressure
Another good example of this is high blood pressure. High blood pressure is often caused by something I refer to as “sludge blood” — blood that’s too thick and viscous to flow freely through the body’s small capillaries. So in order to make sure good circulation is taking place, the heart has to pump harder, thereby raising blood pressure. This is the body’s way of making sure this thick blood reaches all the cells throughout the body (cells that don’t receive blood will die, and that’s bad).

But healthy blood shouldn’t be so viscous. It should flow more freely, with less friction. When blood is properly hydrated and nourished with the right fatty acids (more omega-3s in particular), the heart does not need to work as hard to pump it throughout the body, so blood pressure automatically drops. (It’s like the difference between sucking water through a straw versus sucking honey through a straw… the more sticky and thick the honey, the more pressure it takes to move it.)

Western medicine completely misdiagnoses this situation and says that “high blood pressure” is itself a disease. And this high blood pressure is attacked with drugs that artificially lower blood pressure by forcing artery walls to relax.

As you might have guessed, this then immediately causes circulation problems because the thick sludge blood is no longer reaching all the cells it needs to reach. That’s why people who take high blood pressure medications very often end up with circulation problems. Their underlying problem of “sludge blood” remains unresolved.

Symptoms such as high blood pressure as your body’s way of communicating with you to address the underlying causes. In the majority of cases, patients with high blood pressure simply need more water, more living nutrients (such as raw living plant juices), more omega-3 fatty acids and a sharp reduction in the consumption of animal products. Within as little as five days after embracing such changes, blood pressure normalizes as the blood itself becomes more hydrated and free to flow throughout the circulatory system.

Your body knows all this. Western doctors know none of it. High Blood Pressure is treated as a disease unto itself with virtually no thought given to what underlying causes might be creating this measurable symptom.

Your body is trying to heal itself all the time
Both “asthma” and “high blood pressure” are fictional diseases. In other words, they don’t really exist as self-contained, standalone diseases. They are merely symptoms of something else that your body is attempting to balance.

In order to activate your body’s innate healing potential, you must learn to listen to what your body is really asking for and give it those things instead of intervening with chemical medications, surgeries and toxic therapies like chemotherapy.

Western medicine misinterprets virtually all expressions of physiology. If you wish to be healthy, you must learn to reinterpret your body’s messages in alignment with the true principles of health. Difficulty in breathing, for example, may simply be a sign of dehydration. High blood pressure may be a sign of dehydration or poor diet.

Cancer is a sign of cellular miscommunication. A tumor is a sign that cells in your body aren’t getting the right message of when to stop dividing. (A tumor is merely a wayward cell that keeps dividing.) Cellular communication can be reestablished through changes in diet, environment, mental state and proper exposure to sunlight (among other things).

So keep in mind that your body is always trying to heal itself. “Symptoms” of disease are often just cries for help from your own biology. The wise patient listens to those cries for help, attempts to understand what they mean, and addresses them through self-care. The unwise patient attempts to silence symptoms through chemical intervention: Pain killers, chemical pharmaceuticals, surgery and other interventions. Western doctors are not trained in proper symptom interpretation and rebalancing. They are only trained in symptom “management” which means reducing symptoms through artificial intervention.

Why you are such a self-healing miracle
Your body is one of Mother Nature’s most miraculous accomplishments. You possess unbelievably complex nanotechnology in your immune system. Your neurology exceeds the capabilities of the most advanced supercomputers in the world. Your sensory systems contain technology so advanced that even the most well-funded laboratories in the world don’t have machines that can match what you have right in your nose.

Your reproductive system is a miracle of life; your bones are astounding structural engineering feats (or feets!); and your internal organs such as your heart and liver actually store their own memories and emotions. We know this because organ donor recipients often take on the memories and experiences of those from which the organs were originally harvested.

In other words, you are a miracle of nature, and your body has such powerful healing potential available to itself right now that the only way you can even stop the healing is to interfere with it (with pharmaceuticals, for example).

And yet, sadly, that’s what most people do: They numb their bodies with painkiller medications. They shut down their immune systems with chemotherapy. They shock their neurology with vaccines containing inflammatory chemicals. They interfere, override and interject all sorts of artificial chemicals, procedures and unnatural therapies. This is what shuts off healing. This is what leaves patients unable to heal in the way they are capable of healing — automatically, unconsciously and with zero effort.

So if you really want to heal yourself, first recognize that you are a miraculous self-healing organism. And secondly, recognize that if healing is not happening, it may very well be because you have inadvertently interfered with the healing process by introducing artificial chemicals or other elements that hold your healing potential prisoner.

Attaining health requires allowing healing to take place
Healthy people aren’t healthy just because they eat superfoods and drink living juices all day long. They are healthy because they avoid poisoning their bodies with pharmaceuticals, artificial sweeteners, MSG and other processed food ingredients. They avoid the chemicals in cosmetics, personal care products, household cleaning products and lawn care products. They avoid consuming meat from animals who have been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. They keep their bodies as free from pollution as possible, and as a result, their innate healing powers are always working for them!

You have exactly the same healing potential as I do. Your body can heal itself from cancer, from diabetes, from heart disease and from other “made-up” disease names like asthma and high blood pressure. All that’s really required is for you to embrace the healing potential you already possess, and then avoid all those things that interfere with it.

If you believe in God and Creation, then take comfort in the idea that your body is created in God’s image, meaning that you are a perfect healing being as is He.

If you believe in evolution and Darwinism, then take comfort in the idea that your body is the result of millions of years of evolution that have given you a successful, proven DNA blueprint for preventing sickness and disease — long before vaccines and western medicine ever came along.

No matter what your philosophical approach, either way you still believe that your body is an amazing self-healing organism. And that’s good news because it means you already have the blueprint for powerful healing.

Now simply activate it!

This article series “Heal yourself in 15 days” continues in part three, right here on NaturalNews.

In case you missed it, here’s part one:

http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_s…

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Christian Missionaries

Question:
As we know the Christian Missionaries are always on the attack against Islam and our Prophet trying to even misguide the Muslims or put doubts in their heads.
I recently came across an email from a Christian referring to a hadith. Could you please let me know if the hadith is Sahee and what can we learn from such a Hadith? What was the hadith trying to show?
Volume 5, Book 59, Number 459: Narrated Ibn Muhairiz: I entered the Mosque and saw Abu Said Al-Khudri and sat beside him and asked him about Al-Azl (i.e., coitus interruptus). Abu Said said, “We went out with Allah’s Apostle for the Ghazwa of Banu Al-Mustaliq and we received captives from among the Arab captives and we desired women and celibacy became hard on us and we loved to do coitus interruptus. So when we intended to do coitus interrupt us, we said, ‘How can we do coitus interruptus before asking Allah’s Apostle who is present among us?” We asked (him) about it and he said, ‘It is better for you not to do so, for if any soul (till the Day of Resurrection) is predestined to exist, it will exist.”

The note on 2167 says: “This means that the Companions wanted to have intercourse with the slave girls, but they were afraid of conception. In case they were pregnant and gave birth to a child they could not be sold as it was prohibited that a slave mother should be sold. So they practised coitus interruptus. By this they meant to sell the slave girls and obtain the ransom.”

The Christian is trying to show that rape took place and the Prophet allowed it.
What’s the best way to respond to people or Christians when this incident is brought up?
Please answer my question as I have sent questions before without being replied.
Jazakhallah.

Anwser:In the name of Allāh, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Assalāmu ῾alaykum wa Rahmatullāhi Wabarakātuh

The hadith refered to in the query is an authentic hadith and is in the Sahih Bukhari in a few different chapters including the chapter on azl (coitus interruptus).

In regards to your question “What was the hadith trying to show?” Well, the hadith shows many things including the piety and taqwa of the sahaba. It shows that the sahaba would not do anything until they were sure of its permissibility according to the Shariah. There are many injunctions that the fuqaha have derived from the hadith; however, since that is not what is being asked here, it will not be mentioned. (For details see: Fathul Baari vol. 11 pg 387 and vol. 6 pg. 212 Al-Ilmiyyah)

In regards to your query about the claim of the Christians, well their claim is illogical. Why would the sahabah (radiyallahu anhum) worry about seeking permission for doing coitus interruptus if they intended to do a haraam act (al-iyaazu billah) and a major sin by committing rape? That would be just as silly as it would be for robbers to worry about getting formal permission to enter the house of the victim they intend robbing.

The captives referred to in the hadith were distributed to the Sahabah (Radiyallaahu Anhum) by Rasulullah (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam). Therefore, they were their slave women. Hence, the attempt of some Christians to use the incident to try to prove firstly that rape took place and secondly that the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam) allowed rape to happen is preposterous because the claim would mean that having intimate relationship with ones slave woman is tantamount to rape. The Christians know that their own bible demonstrates that having intimate relationship with ones slave woman is permissible. For example, the bible says about Ibrahim (alahis salaam) that he had a slave woman from whom he had a son. In the words of the bible: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman.” (Galatians 4:22).

The truth of the matter is that having intimate relationship with ones slave woman is permissible (with conditions) — just as it is permissible with ones wife — according to both the Islamic teachings and the teachings of the Bible. For more information on this from the Islamic perspective click on this link: http://askimam.org/fatwa/fatwa.php?askid=1834802f7035099c811692455dcdb228

Since it was some Christians that made the deceptive and misleading claim, let us have a little more look at their Bible to see what it teaches concerning slave women and rape.

Contrary to the teachings of Islam – which greatly encourages freeing slaves – it seems that not only does the Bible encourage slavery in general, it even permits fathers to sell their own daughters as slaves. And on top of that, it seems, such daughters can never be set free! The verse in reference:

“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are.” (Exodus 21:7)

The bible not only gives permission to make women slaves, it orders it. The verse below suggests that when an army attacks and defeats their enemy, only their virgin girls are worth keeping alive (for what other purpose but to make them their slaves); whereas their non-virgin women and boys do not deserve anything but death.

“Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.” (Numbers 31:17)

And the result….

“The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, 72,000 cattle, 61,000 donkeys and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.” (Numbers 31:32)

It would seem that according to the bible, the easy way to marry a virgin girl of ones dreams would be to … rape her! Because it will only cost him 50 shekels of silver (which only comes to around $300) which he must pay her father; and in return he will get to keep her for as long as he lives. She has no say in this! The verse in reference:

“If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.” (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)

The gist of the verse above is that the rapist gets to keep the girl; the girl’s father gets 50 shekels of silver; and the girl is forced to be married to her rapist for life. If this is not encouraging rape and oppression to women then what is!

We ask Allah Ta’ala to give us the understanding of our deen, the ability to stay firm upon it, and to protect us from forces of baatil.

And Allāh Ta῾āla Knows Best
Wassalāmu ῾alaykum
Ml. Faizal Riza
Correspondence Iftā Student, Australia

Checked and Approved by:

Mufti Ebrahim Desai
Dārul Iftā, Madrasah In῾āmiyyah

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Mainstream Drugs are Neither Safe nor Effective, Part I to III

Mainstream Drugs are Neither Safe nor Effective, Part III

by Tony Isaacs, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Over 95% of the 24,000 plus FDA approved medicines have side effects. In many instance those side effects lead to further conditions requiring still more drugs with more side effects in a never ending cycle. Millions of serious adverse reactions are reported each year and over 140,000 deaths in hospitals and homes happen each year even when the drugs have been properly prescribed and administered.

We are told that there is always risk versus reward to be considered. But it appears that often a great deal of the “reward” is drug company profits regardless of risks. Such was the case when the makers of Vioxx (Merck) reaped billions of dollars of profit while the body count piled up even higher than all the lives we lost in the Vietnam War. The same thing appears to be happening now with Paxil:

http://www.naturalnews.com/027962_P…

Meanwhile, major side effects caused by natural herbs are rare and deaths almost non-existent.

Often we see the supporters of mainstream medicine refer to natural healing as “woo” and sometimes they liken belief in natural herbs as more akin to some kind of religion instead of “real science”. Yet, true science is based on observation and mankind has observed nature to work and has used nature for healing for thousands of years. Most of the people around the world continue to rely on such observation and history of us to make herbal and natural healing their top choices for addressing health issues. Among those countries are several countries ranked above the U.S. (the world`s most medicated country) in health rankings, including two of the top three ranked countries. Our life expectancy ranks below 40 plus other countries and is closer to that of Mexico than it is the top 10 countries.

To claim that nature, from whence life itself came, is “woo” is patently absurd. Of course most of us would like to see scientific proof that anything we take is safe and effective, but when medical science has been sold off to the highest bidder far too often, choosing what others have observed to work time and again through the ages often appears to be a safer bet than taking the word of what medical science tells us will work and is safe.

History has taught us over and over that the science of today has but a fraction of the answers and is often overturned tomorrow. When you combine the record of safety and effectiveness of approved drugs with the lessons of history, one might well conclude that blind belief in mainstream medicine is much more of a religion than belief in nature.

Granted, just because something is natural does not mean that it will work or even that it is safe, but the fact that something has been approved by medical science provides no assurances either. According to Doctor Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline and academic geneticist from Duke University, “The vast majority of drugs – more than 90 per cent – only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people.”

Despite the conflicting and incomplete studies on herbs, natural remedies, vitamins and minerals, studies largely agree on one thing: a great many of our health problems can be traced to vitamin and mineral deficiencies. On the other hand, no one ever became ill due to a deficiency in pharmaceuticals.

Sources included:

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/…

http://www.naturalnews.com/027962_P…

The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, July 26th 2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o…

Mainstream Drugs are Neither Safe nor Effective, Part II

(NaturalNews) Mainstream medicine assures us that their drugs are more effective than nature and that they have been scientifically proven to be both effective and safe. What mainstream medicine does not tell us is how they have rigged studies, withheld evidence of harm and paid doctors to prescribe their drugs.

The drug industry has been riddled with scandal again and again – including faked studies, rigged studies, hidden evidence of dangers, ghostwritten articles, fake medical journals, sex scandals, and much more. Merck, Vioxx. Pfizer, Avantis, GlaxoKilineSmith, Baxter Labs, the list goes on and on and on and leaves virtually no major pharmaceutical company untouched:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/f…

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extr…

All one has to do to get an idea of how riddled with scandal the drug industry has been is to do a simple internet search for “drug company scandals”. Absolutely shameful!

The latest example:

http://www.healthiertalk.com/pfizer…

Another problem with mainstream drugs is the influence peddling of the pharmaceutical companies to get doctors to prescribe their medicines. Many doctors receive incentives for prescribing drugs – such as honorariums, free lunches and other gifts, and even free massages and cruise trips, to name a few. There have been a number of scandals concerning drug companies essentially bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs, and there have been many cries for reform to insure that drugs are prescribed according to the patient’s best interests and not the financial interests of doctors and drug companies.

Besides all the incentives, some doctors make profits directly from the drugs they prescribe, often with unhealthy consequences for their patients. In an article that appeared in the New York Times in May 2007 it was revealed that two of the world’s largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines, which regulators now say may be unsafe at commonly used doses.

The same article noted that:

“Federal laws bar drug companies from paying doctors to prescribe medicines that are given in pill form and purchased by patients from pharmacies. But companies can rebate part of the price that doctors pay for drugs, which they dispense in their offices as part of treatment. Doctors receive the rebates after they buy the drugs from the companies. But they also receive reimbursement from Medicare or private insurers for the drugs, often at a markup over the doctors purchase price.”

See: http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/…

No wonder a Harris Poll found that only 13% of Americans believe that pharmaceutical companies are “generally honest and trustworthy”.

Sources included:

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/…

http://www.naturalnews.com/027962_P…

The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, July 26th 2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o…

Mainstream Drugs are Neither Safe nor Effective, Part I

(NaturalNews) For generations we have been told by mainstream medicine that their drugs are safer and more effective than natural alternatives such as those man has used for healing for thousands of years. Similarly, we have been told that herbs and other natural alternatives are unproven, usually of little or no value and often may be dangerous. History tells us an entirely different story.

Proponents of mainstream drugs and critics of natural healing usually cite the lack of scientific studies proving the effectiveness or safety of herbs and natural alternatives. Likewise, mainstream drug advocates point to the wealth of studies which prove the effectiveness and safety of patented mainstream drugs. However, relatively few comprehensive studies have been conducted on herbs other than to find a compound that can be synthesized or uniquely isolated so it can be patented and profited from by the drug companies. Drug companies are by far the largest source of funding for medical studies and the cost of such studies is a huge barrier for natural alternatives. The FDA trial process costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one can afford to get a natural item approved that they cannot control. Whole herbs and extracts of herbs that contain multiple compounds found in nature cannot be patented.

Despite the complicated, expensive and time consuming process of getting FDA approval, many point to all the harmful drugs that have been approved as an indication that the system is deeply flawed and rigged in favor of those who have the money. It has been shown that studies tend to return positive results for the funders up to eight times more often than independent studies on the same item.

The FDA approval process did not prevent us from having rigged studies on Vioxx. Nor did it prevent rigged studies for decades on the safety – and even claimed health benefits – of smoking cigarettes. Those are just two examples in a very long list of drugs and other items mainstream science told us were safe but weren`t. For example: thalidomide, heroin, opium, cocaine, Avandia, Fosamax, Prozac, Paxil, Aleve, Bextra, Aspartame . . the list goes on and on.

Another problem with mainstream medical studies is the apparent lack of quality standards employed by pharmaceutical companies in selecting doctors who oversee drug testing. A New York Times investigation in 2007 found that in Minnesota alone at least 103 doctors who had been disciplined or criticized by the state medical board received a total of $1.7 million from drug makers between 1997 to 2005. The median payment over that period was $1,250; the largest was $479,000.

One such doctor was Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab, whom the Minnesota Medical board accused of a “reckless, if not willful, disregard” for the welfare of 46 patients, 5 of whom died in his care or shortly afterward. The board suspended his license for seven months and restricted it for two years after that. One of Dr. Abuzzahab`s patients was David Olson, whom the psychiatrist tried repeatedly to recruit for clinical trials. Drug makers paid Dr. Abuzzahab thousands of dollars for every patient he recruited. In July 1997, when Mr. Olson again refused to be a test subject, Dr. Abuzzahab discharged him from the hospital even though he was suicidal, records show. Mr. Olson committed suicide two weeks later.

To be continued . . .

Sources included:

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/…

http://www.naturalnews.com/027962_P…

The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, July 26th 2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o…

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Heal yourself in 15 days by transforming your blood (part four)

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor

(NaturalNews) This article continues part four of the 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part three, we explored how you are what you absorb, not merely what you eat (http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_s…). Today, in part four, we take a closer look at how to transform your health by changing your blood.

Your blood is a useful focal point for exploring your health. Whatever health outcome you are experiencing today, it is largely a result of what’s in your blood.

Think about it: Your blood bathes your cells in nutrients 24 hours a day. Blood not only brings vital nutrients to your cells; it also carries away metabolic waste products. It is the superhighway of nutrition and detoxification that reaches into (virtually) every organ and cell in your entire body.

It stands to reason, therefore, that altering your health outcome depends largely upon altering the composition of your blood. If you want to make someone really healthy for a short time, for example, you can give them blood from a healthy person. Research has already documented that when you take blood from people whose bodies prevent cancer and then inject that blood into people who are suffering from cancer, the anti-cancer benefits of the blood are immediately reflected in the cancer patient (through tumor shrinkage, for example). There is such a thing as anti-cancer blood. And if you eat an anti-cancer diet, you’re making anti-cancer blood every single day.

I eat a very strong anti-cancer diet. Most vegans do, too. They could theoretically help heal cancer patients by simply giving them some of their blood. The anti-cancer effects would be immediate and powerful. The FDA, not surprisingly, prohibits you from selling your own blood as “medicine,” so don’t think you can make money by eating a healthy diet and then selling your blood for $1,000 / pint (although it might very well be worth that much in a truly free market).

The other limitation with this idea is that the benefits from receiving donated blood are short-lived. If the blood recipient does not alter his or her lifestyle in some meaningful way, the anti-cancer properties of the “healthy” blood will, within just a few days, be erased and overpowered by the blood that person is manufacturing on their own.

And this leads me to the important question: How is your blood made?

How your body makes your blood
A typical human red blood cell only survives about 4-5 months. Your body is constantly producing new blood and releasing it into the bloodstream to do important work — the work of carrying nutrients, hormones, water, chemical messages and even information throughout your body.

Blood is primarily made of three things: Red blood cells (oxygen carriers), white blood cells (immune function) and blood plasma (a liquid solution that carries everything else).

When more red blood cells are needed, your body (with its infinite healing wisdom) automatically generates new ones. Naturally, it must create those red blood cells using the materials that are available: Materials that are circulating in your blood at the time.

Got that? So the blood cells you make TODAY, which circulate throughout your body for the next four months, are made out of the materials being carried in your blood right now.

So what’s in your blood right now?

Your blood is largely comprised of the things you ate, drank and absorbed over the last several months.

So if you ate a McDonald’s cheeseburger today and chased it with a large Coke, the blood cells your body generates today are going to be made, in part, of materials from that cheeseburger and Coke. If you think about where cheeseburgers really come from — with all the cruelly slaughtered, hormone-injected animals, the ammonia-injected beef parts, the refined white flour in the bun, the processed cheese “food” substances, and so on, it’s not exactly the kind of thing you probably want coursing through your veins for the next few months.

If, on the other hand, you spent the last several days consuming fresh living juices, superfoods and clean, energized water, then guess what your new blood is going to be made of? It will be super blood that’s energized with the elements and vibes of all the good stuff you’ve been consuming!

Bad blood leads to bad health results. It leads to angry, moody mental function and chronic disease. But good blood results in happy, healthy outcomes. Good blood improves your sleep, your sex, your moods and cognitive function. Good blood keeps your body free from cancer, youthful, energized and actively healing itself at multiple levels.

Once you understand all this, it only seems natural to work consciously towards creating good blood every single day.

Amazing facts about your red blood cells
• A whopping one-quarter of the human cells in your body are red blood cells. But most cells in your body are actually non-human cells (bacteria).

• A red blood cell circulates around your body in about 20 seconds. The same red blood cell makes tens of thousands of trips around your body, transporting oxygen to cells, before it is recycled by your own immune system.

• Red blood cells in humans are molecularly quite similar to chlorophyll cells in plants.

• Your red blood cells are made partially of cholesterol. Although the drug industry has tried to label cholesterol a villain, in truth you couldn’t survive without it!

Check out this amazing real-time animation of a red blood cell in a human body:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:E…

Cleaning your blood
Having good blood means keeping it clean! Your blood is cleaned primarily by your kidneys and liver, but some additional “cleaning” functions are also accomplished by your lungs (through respiration) and even through your skin.

Ask anyone on a dialysis machine and they’ll tell you what a huge difference it makes to keep your blood clean. Your kidneys normally do this for you, but in many people, kidney function is impaired and kidney cells don’t work as well as they should to remove waste products from the blood. (Drinking sodas can impair kidney function, by the way…)

Hence the thinking behind an occasional kidney cleanse or liver cleanse. Keeping these organs functioning smoothly and efficiently helps keep your blood clean, and that translates into improved health for both body and mind. The two best cleansing product lines I know of are offered by Ed Group’s Global Healing Center (www.GlobalHealingCenter.com) and Baseline Nutritionals (www.BaselineNutritionals.com).

How to create good blood
You are your own blood bank. You manufacture and distribute all your own blood. Given that your life depends on your own blood, doesn’t it make sense to manufacture the healthiest, most life-giving blood possible?

In fact, you can! You have conscious control over the qualities of the blood you manufacture. Because your blood is made of what you eat, drink, breathe and absorb, you can alter the composition of your blood by consciously choosing healthier things to eat, drink, breathe and absorb.

Here are some of the most powerful pointers for making healthy blood:

Healthy blood needs healthy fats
You must consume healthy fats in order to create healthy red blood cells. This means consuming healthful omega-3 fatty acids. From the world of plants, healthful fats come from coconuts, avocados, flaxseed, Chia seeds and other similar sources. From the animal world, the best source for omega-3 fatty acids is, in my opinion, the green-lipped mussels oils in Moxxor, which come from a pristine marine environment. To learn more about Moxxor, check out Jonathan Landsman’s Moxxor page at: http://moxxbiz.com/clients/getVideo…

There are other quality sources, too, including fish oil supplements from companies like Nordic Naturals or Carlson Labs. Some people take krill oil to get their omega-3s, and companies like Living Fuel (www.LivingFuel.com) offer high-end fish oil supplements. This isn’t a complete list of good sources for omega-3s. Do your research and use what works best for you. The more healthful omega-3 fatty acids you take, the healthier your blood will be (to a point, of course).

Consuming damaging fats will harm the health of your blood. Damaging fats include trans-fatty acids and fried fats (such as those used in fried foods).

Making healthy blood also requires the right minerals. Red blood cells themselves need iron, but you’ll want all the trace minerals, too, so they can be delivered by your blood to your cells. When you lack sufficient quantities of minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc and selenium, biological functions start to go awry.

Healthy blood also needs plenty of water, of course. Water is the primary fluid of your blood plasma — it’s a solvent that can dissolve and transport all sorts of crucial building blocks for health including water-soluble vitamins like Vitamin C. Without adequate water, your blood turns to sludge blood — sticky, gooey blood that your heart can’t easily pump through your circulatory system. The forceful pumping required to push this blood through your system is frequently diagnosed as high blood pressure.

Human blood also needs many other elements, all of which can be found in a plant-based diet (including the proteins needed for blood).

You can make what modern science can’t
When thinking about the health-enhancing qualities of your blood, remember this astonishing fact:

Modern science cannot make human blood. But YOU can.

Sure, they can try to make artificial blood. But clinical trials have shown that artificial blood doesn’t work very well. It carries only a fraction of the oxygen of real blood, and it’s no long-term replacement. YOU can manufacture blood that’s more technologically advanced than anything ever invented by modern medicine. The only question you need to ask yourself is: What kind of blood will I make today? (And tomorrow…)

Will you manufacture blood out of trans fats, Gatorade, pharmaceuticals and junk food proteins? Or will you make your blood out of living fruits and vegetables, healthful omega-3s and positive energies from Mother Nature?

It’s your choice, each and every day. You can have good blood or bad blood, and the health results you get will directly reflect the quality of your blood.

Want to transform your health? Transform your blood and your health results will automatically follow.

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Should a woman change her name to her husband’s when she marries or keep her fathers/maiden name?

Question:
Should a woman change her name to her husband’s when she marries or keep her fathers/maiden name?

ANSWER:

ASSALAMU ALAIKUM

10 Safar 1431 (26-01-2010)

Respected Brother,
Your e-mail pertaining to the maiden name of a woman refers.
While there is no Shar’i incumbency for a woman to adopt the surname of her husband, it is not prohibited. There is also no Shar’i incumbency on a woman to go through a kaafir legal process and spend a large sum of money to have her adoptive (husband’s surname) changed.
In this era, more especially in non-Muslim countries where we live, a woman takes to her husband’s surname merely as a convenience in the same way as we make use of the Christian calendar. In fact, it is haraam to expunge the Islamic calendar. It is Waajib for Muslims to keep alive the Islamic calendar. Many important Shar’i masaa-il are linked to the Islamic calendar. Yet most Muslims even the anonymous author calling for the compulsory cancellation of the husband’s surname, do not use the Islamic dates.
Non-Arab Muslims all over the world from the very early epoch of Islam did not adopt the Arab custom of naming themselves , e.g. Abdullah Ibn Muhammad ibn so and so…, despite the fact that it was Rasulullah’s style and the style of the Sahaabah. There is no incumbency to adopt an Arab style which the Shariah does not impose on us.
If we are going to write only Islamic dates on cheques and other legal documents in the kuffaar country, it will create serious problems. Despite Islamic dates being Waajib, circumstances constrain us to adopt the Christian calendar. In a single city there may be 10 families, all having the same surname, e.g. Ahmad, since Ahmed was their father. In every Ahmed family there is a Maryam, Aisha, Faatimah, etc. Every Maryam thus is ‘Maryam Binti Ahmed’. We have therefore ten women with the name ‘Maryam Binti Ahmed’. Now when one of them dies, if it is announced only that Maryam Binti Ahmad has passed away, no one will know to whom the reference is made. Thus, circumstances constrain us to say: “The Maryam Binti Ahmed died who is the wife of Abdullah Qaasim. Instead of saying or writing on the notice board, ‘Maryam Binti Ahmed, the wife of Abdullah Qaasim, there is no Shar’i restriction to stating the same long sentence in an abbreviated form such as ‘Maryam Qaasim’. Everyone in the town/neighbourhood will know exactly who this particular Maryam who has died is.
Instead of each time when there is a need, to say “Aishah Binti Abdullah, the wife of Husain Patel”, the abbreviation, Aishah Patel is used. This merely conveys the information that Aishah is Husain Patel’s wife, and nothing more. If ‘Aishah’ Patel’ is haraam, then saying ‘Aishah is the wife of Husain Patel’ will likewise be haraam. But just as this is drivel, so too is the former drivel.
With regard to the wife adopting the husband’s surname, it was never ‘eagerness to copy the West’ which led to this. Copying the West on this issue is the furthest from the minds of Muslims, even modernist Muslims. Yes, dress-styles, eating from tables, with knives and forks, shaving the beard, kuffaar hair styles and many other practices which Muslims have adopted are undoubtedly in imitation of the kuffaar West, hence haraam.
It is a pity that the writer of the article has selected to remain anonymous. If he reveals himself then we could direct a number of questions to him to ascertain the degree of his adoption of western life styles. From the style of his writing and thinking it is almost certain that he is a Salafi. If so, then his permanent practice will be to strut around with a bare head in public. They don’t believe in Rasulullah’s headgear. Salafis have adopted the western haraam practice of shunning headgear. Another salient practice of almost all Salafis is to dress exactly like kuffaar with jeans, T-shirts and the like. While they turn a blind eye to such haraam, futile and destructive practices which they have copied from the West, they harp on non-issues which have been adopted for convenience without the intention of emulating the west.
It is not contended that Islam requires a woman to change her name at marriage. By the same token, Islam does not prohibit a woman from adopting her husband’s surname. The imagined prohibition is a figment of someone’s mind. While there may be “nothing in the Sunnah to indicate that a woman should take her husband’s name after she gets married”, there is also nothing in the Sunnah to indicate that we should ride or not ride in cars and planes, and use or not use phones and adopt and use or not the innumerable amenities and practices which have become part of life. Is there anything in the Sunnah to indicate that Muslims should not wear headgear and strut around in public with bear heads like the kuffaar?
The absence of an indication in the Sunnah is not a principle for prohibition. There are principles in Fiqah – in the Shariah – on which the ahkaam are formulated. Wildly fluctuating personal opinion has no share in formulating Shar’i rulings.
Adopting the husband’s surname was simply not a practice among the Arabs. This is not a basis for prohibition. The objector should produce a Shar’i daleel for prohibition.
When a woman adopts her husband’s surname, she is not concealing her lineage. She is not denying that a certain man is her father. The entire community is fully aware of her lineage. Her lineage is not lost by adopting her husband’s surname.
The Qur’aanic verse cited by the anonymous objector has no reference to a woman adopting her husband’s surname. It pertains to an adopted child. In this regard there is an imperative need to retain and publicize the adopted child’s surname to avoid confusion. If this is not done, the child could end up marrying his own sister or sister marrying her own brother. Since concealing the child’s lineage leads to confusion, deception and possible haraam, it is essential to declare the child’s lineage. But there is no such concealment and confusion in the case of a woman adopting her husband’s surname.
The adoption of the husband’s surname is not motivated by any idea of ‘honour’. It is simply an issue of convenience like the adoption of the Christian calendar, nor is it an expression of love as the objector reads into the issue.
While originally she is the daughter of so and so, we shall go further and say that she forever remains the daughter of so and so. But, at the same time she has become the wife of so and so. There is no prohibition in saying that she is the wife of so and so. This is the reality.
When her husband dies or she is divorced and marries another man, what Shar’i prohibition is there to prevent her from taking the new surname? This question of the objector is superfluous.
The rulings to which the objector refers, are not attached to her name as he alleges. The rulings are related to her physical being. Her name change brings no change to the rulings pertaining to inheritance, her mahram, etc. Everything remains exactly the same despite her assumption of her husband’s surname. It is palpably drivel to say that “taking her husband’s name overlooks all that”. It overlooks nothing at all.
The claim: “Besides, the husband has nothing that makes him better than his wife’s father.” , is erroneous. The husband has much which makes him better than her father with regard to her. After marriage, her greater obedience shifts from her parents to her husband. In relation to the wife, the husband has greater say and authority over her than her father. She is subservient to her husband to a far greater degree than to her father. Now when her entire being is subordinate to her husband, what wrong is there if her name too becomes subordinate to her husband? What Shar’i argument is there to prohibit the subordination of her name?
The fact that we shall be called by our father’s name in the Hereafter is no prohibition for adopting the husband’s surname. Some prohibited things in this world will become permissible in Jannat. And, some permissible things of the Hereafter are prohibited for us here in this world.
The argument of the objector is without merit. It is permissible for a woman to adopt her husband’s name. Such adoption is devoid of emulation of the West or any other haraam factor. And Allah knows best.
Was-salaam
A.S. Desai
For
Mujlisul Ulama of S.A..

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Cheap B vitamin beats Big Pharma’s Zetia cholesterol drug

Cheap B vitamin beats Big Pharma’s Zetia cholesterol drug

by E. Huff,

(NaturalNews) A recent study found that niacin, a form of vitamin B, is far more beneficial to heart patients with high cholesterol than is the popular cholesterol drug Zetia. Dr. Anthony DeMaria, a leading cardiologist and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology stated that the findings will eliminate Zetia from the preferred treatment options list.

Though Zetia is touted as being highly effective at reducing the levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), often called “bad cholesterol”, niacin is much more effective at boosting the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL), commonly termed “good cholesterol”.

Evidence reveals that niacin significantly reduces plaque buildup on arterial walls, improving blood supply to the brain, while Zetia, also known generically as ezetimibe, can slightly increase arterial plaque buildup. For this reasons, doctors and experts agree that niacin is the preferred choice in maintaining proper cholesterol levels and a healthy heart.

In addition to being more effective, niacin is also a much more affordable option. Though the trial utilized a time-released prescription form of niacin, quality niacin supplements are available over the counter that work equally as well if not better than the prescription form.

Zetia is often prescribed to lower bad cholesterol and maintain heart health, yet its track record seems to indicate the opposite effect for some. Out of the 208 participants who engaged in the study, nine of the patients on Zetia experienced heart attacks, stroke, or they died from heart disease. Only two on niacin bore such an outcome.

Dr. Jim Stein of the University of Wisconsin was one of several who emphasized over-prescription of Zetia, stating that doctors fail to practice evidence-based medicine when using the drug. He recommends utilizing safer, more effective alternatives like niacin that are proven to reduce incidences of heart attack, stroke, and death.

Studies consistently show that therapeutic doses of niacin alone can raise HDL levels by up to 35 percent and lower LDL levels by 20 percent. When incorporated into a well-balanced diet with regular exercise, the benefits increase even more. Proper diet and exercise will actually cause arterial plaque to dissipate over time, unlike statin drugs which have never been proven to break up arterial plaque.

Niacin is naturally found in dairy products, lean meats, fish and poultry, nuts, eggs, and whole-grain or sprouted breads. Diets rich in plant-based sterols, soluble fiber, and balanced sources of omega-3 and omega-6 oils will also contribute significantly to maintaining proper cholesterol levels and a healthy heart.

Sources for this story include

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartD…

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/ni…

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