Unexpected Encounter

Hi Shamal, 

I am the guy you had  chat with earlier, thank you for the interest and selfless effort you are putting in to make our country a better place. It is an uphill battle but a start had to be made and you are doing admirable work. Best wishes.

Stan

Salaam All

Sunday 6/23 In the early morning: Just the brushcutter & I cleaning up in front of ISA school. A Hindu woman met me and said she would like her daughter to attend the school seeing it did so well at the NGSA exams. She made me smile...nothing like success, eh!!!...Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result...She will go there on Monday to make enquiries.

 

The pics were taken today Sunday by a British guy who was just passing me raking grass on East St. avenue. He said a courteous good morning and I replied. You're doing a good job he said and I asked him if he drives and handed him a No Litter bumper sticker. From there 2 strangers alone in the quiet surroundings got to sharing views about this filthy city. As I spoke he said can I take some pics of you to share with my people in the UK...it's then I knew where he was from. He spoke about the graffiti problem in London and how he just came in from Barbados where it is so clean. For 1/2 hour under cloudy skies and a cool breeze we chatted about the local & global littering problem...then we shook hands and he said I am so thankful that I took this walk in this avenue. He had me laughing when he said he just walked with his camera and not his Iphone...or else he would have had these pics in London immediately telling them about this "one-man army"....He took my email from a flyer and sent the above.

 

We make our own destinies and meet interesting people when we leave our comfort zones for just a few hours and do what many regard as derogatory work. From Dec 2012 to June 2013 those of us who have gone to schools, ministries and on the road, yep, esp. on the road, have come into contact with some amazing persons. These people and their encouraging words have been the fuel that keeps the engines of this environmental work purring...thank you all.

 

ISA's schoolchildren were out on Friday as they are most Fridays doing some cleaning. Thank you so much...the govt turns a blind eye but God SEES.

 

This adoption of East St. and its continued maintenance is "PROTEST WORK" against the govt & m&cc that have failed miserably in cleaning and beautifying this city. It's to allow schoolchildren to "see" a pretty surrounding when they are at school...go there at 3:00pm and see how many of them are there playing in the avenue. We do NOT want a generation of children growing up and taking "nasty & ugly" environs as a given.

 

Ramadan starts around July 9th. Please Muslims CLEAN the areas around your mosque. God is Beautiful and loves beauty.

 

Let's rewind 27 YEARS...yes, 27 years... and read about this declaration.

 

The Assisi Declarations on Nature, 1986

In 1986, HRH Prince Philip, then President of the WWF International invited five leaders of five of the major religions of the world - Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism - to meet to discuss how their faiths could help save the natural world.

The meeting took place in Assisi in Italy, because it was the birth place of St Francis, the Catholic saint of ecology. From this meeting arose key statements by the five faiths outlining their own distinctive traditions and approach to the care for nature.

In the Assisi Declarations on Nature the Muslim statement was:

• The central concept of Islam is Tawhid or the Unity of God. Allah is Unity; and His Unity is also reflected in the unity of mankind, and the unity of man and nature. His trustees are responsible for maintaining the unity of His creation, the integrity of the Earth, its flora and fauna, its wildlife and natural environment. Unity cannot be had by discord, by setting one need against another or letting one end predominate over another; it is maintained by balance and harmony. There Muslims say that Islam is the middle path and we will be answerable for how we have walked this path, how we have maintained balance and harmony in the whole of creation around us.
• So unity, trusteeship and accountability, that is Tawhid, Khalifah and Akhirah, the three central concepts of Islam, are also the pillars of the environmental ethics of Islam. They constitute the basic values taught by the Qur’an. It is these values which led Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, to say: ‘Whoever plants a tree and diligently looks after it until it matures and bears fruit is rewarded.'
• For all these reasons Muslims see themselves as having a responsibility towards the world and the environment, all of which are the creations of Allah.
• Unlike many other religions, Muslims do not have any specific festivals in which they give thanks for the harvest or the world. Instead they give thanks to Allah regularly for his creation.

Ramadan is a month of ACTION...let's put the environmental ethics of Islam into ACTION...it's a battle we must win...as the Prophet (p) won so many of the battles forced upon him in the glorious WORKING month of Ramadan

Shamal...please make donations to keeping the environment clean

Salaam All

 

Here are what people say about Germany rated the #1 popular destination

 

1. I love Germany. Good food, clean and the people don't BS you.

 

2. Been to 10 countries so far. I loved Germany the best. Such a clean and beautiful country.

 

3. We have visited Germany twice. We found it scenic, friendly, prosperous, and clean.

 

4. Germany is a clean and safe country. Modern technology is everywhere...

 

5. What's not to love? Beautiful country, rich culture, low crime, strong, technologically advanced economy with emphasis on quality and domestic manufacturing, excellent healthcare and education.

 

6. It has family values, great healthcare, awesome school system, clean roads, great healthy food, and short work hours.

 

7. I used to travel quite a bit in Germany and what impressed me most was the cleanliness - whether cities, villages, farms or highways.

 

How would they rate a city that is the opposite of clean? Obviously at the bottom...such is Georgetown...and how would they rate the mayor of such a city...an abject failure, obviously. Then they would ask the obvious question...how come he's the longest running mayor in the history of the world...20 years...everytime he opens his mouth he speaks garbage...the lowest form of political culture--lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth 

 

 ohh shucks that's exactly what this city is renowned for...garbage...physical & verbal

 

garbage at every corner and a mayor who speaks garbage...a double tragedy of incredible proportions...we should declare a state of mourning for this beautiful city with incompetent leaders

 

Shamal

 

 

 

Salaam All

 

I look to the sea, the ocean and reflections in the waves spark my memory. Most are happy...I think of childhood friends, and the dreams we had.

 

I look to the flood in the yard this morning and hatred floods my mind for the "empty talking" politicians and stupid mayor. What crap they are!!! Do a google search and find out how many times since the 1990s we see articles on the  "govt cleaning the city..."empty talk" These are not trifling stories, but they are the straws, telling that the wind blows from the marsh-lands of inexactness—not from the mountain tops of truth. Once leaders lose the sense of the great value of absolute truthfulness, they blur the clear mirror of their souls. They are LIARS.

 

John the Baptist washed away the sins of people in water. Don't tell me you are pretending to be prophets by baptizing our homes, our lives!

 

Reflections in this dirty water are distortions...distortions of leadership. Lack of ideals; lack of principles.

 

God says: And We have sent down out of the rain-clouds, water cascading that We may bring forth thereby grain and plants, and gardens luxuriant.

As a teenager in the 1970s lying in bed and listening to the torrential rainfall...it was PURE JOY. Last night as I listened I trembled in fear...the greatest blessing from God has become the greatest curse by man.

 

So tell me Mr. Ministers, Mr. Mayor, how was your yard, how was your journey to work?  How people curse the salaries you get paid from the taxes you steal from us....for it becomes stolen if you cannot provide basic services to us. You are really professional burglars.

 

When we the ordinary people do one task bad we are fired...

You people do the whole job bad, year after year...and continue to hold your positions

 

Take a look at the few pics in Alberttown.  The gutters NOT even in the hottest weather are empty. It is near the top with the pavement every day of the year with "water" that has never drained for YEARS. Can you imagine the diseases just waiting for us...these gutters in GT are weapons of mass destruction. In the 1970s these gutters were always cleaned WEEKLY. Water flowing down them as the rains fell without any flooding ..but in 2013 our yards, then our homes are flooded...and we live in misery...speak of PROGRESS??? Take a look at the front page of SN of children going to school on a flooded street. Aren't you ashamed??? The world would be a better place should your kind cease to exist....this means none of you will be remembered as a great statesman...no matter how great your personal wealth...

 

Or maybe we the people should not demand of half-evolved human beings (politicians) what we would expect of wholly divine creatures (the Prophets).

 

Shamal...I edited & redited this mail to remove all the F words that punctuated almost every sentence. Losing my dignity behind the filth of this city & the filthy politicians is not worth it. Ahmed Deedat did lose a bit of his character when he quoted all those F words from Salman Rushdie's ugly book the Satanic Verses. Tread carefully...for the sake of God...and in this city to avoid leptospirosis...

 

May God guide us all...including the leaders

Salaam All

 

The very word "Islam" comes from a word meaning "peace". The most basic principle of the religion is Unity:- first the unity of God, who is One without equal, without associate, then the unity of His creation in which every element, however tiny, has its place and its function, and finally the unity achieved in every man and woman once they know who they are and where they are going, at peace with their Lord, at peace in the world, at peace with themselves.

That peace is closely bound up with the awareness of beauty. In one of his most famous sayings, Prophet Muhammad (p) told his people: "God is beautiful and He loves beauty!". Now that is not a statement about feelings or impressions. It is a statement about the nature of Reality. And that, in turn, suggests something very important. It suggests that ugliness – and, Yes!, there's plenty of that in the world in which we live – is not on an equal footing with beauty. It's not one of a pair, like hot and cold, black and white; it represents the spoiling of beauty, the unmaking of what had been well made, the denial of God or His seeming absence. You might compare it to a hole in the pattern, a stain on the fabric, and it belongs to that class of things which, so the Quran tells us, last for but a short time and are then wiped away, while beauty endures. To know this is to possess a sense of the sacred and so to be aware of the radiance that illuminates unspoilt nature from within and which may be found also in the things we make, when these are well and lovingly made. The tragedy of modern man, in the midst of his riches and his technological achievements, is that he has lost this sense of the sacred and lives in a world drained of light.

 

Politicians should be deeply ashamed of presiding over a city as ugly & nasty as Georgetown. They are people who have lost all sense of purpose, who live in a grey, monotonous world and who need contact with the splendours of virgin nature (of which we have vast swathes all across this beautiful country) if they are to be healed. But what we have to understand – and perhaps what they need to understand – is that their "grey" world is an illusion. The fault is not in their surroundings but in themselves. "It is not the eyes that grow blind," says the Quran in this context, "but the hearts that grow blind". So Parliament is an institution of the blind. Go figure where you are heading if you are being led by blind people. Blind also are the "cook & eat" leaders also known by the euphemism "religious" leaders...their stomachs are bloated and if you follow them you will topple into Hell via your gluttonous mouths. They overeat because they cannot think...of how to build a World of Nur (of light)...they have lost sense of the sacred. Jesus & Muhammad (p) called such "religious" leaders, hypocrites.

 

We live in a city from which beauty has been banished as an irrelevance, as though it were a luxury which we can do without, and this is an environment in which it is difficult to believe in God since it has been constructed in forgetfulness of Him; and – in Islam – to forget God is the greatest sin, or the root of all other sins. Those who have told us, over the past century, that "God is dead" should have had the honesty to complete the sentence:- "God is dead, therefore man is dead!" When nothing in our surroundings reminds us of Him, then He does – in a sense – die in our hearts, and all that makes life worth living dies with Him.

 

Shamal...enjoy reading Muslim Art...for God is Beautiful...if your heart is (still) alive then clean your surroundings...waiting on blind people is not an option

 

Salaam All

Today ISA school kids resumed their East St. Ave. cleanup after the rains.

Br. Akbar is the responsible teacher for keeping this environmental action going. He also mentioned that he has started the same initiative in Diamond New Scheme two weeks ago. Go bro Go. We need more committed souls like you.

Mr. Ishmael (a trainer of teachers) spoke to us yesterday asking about the campaign. He and his Canadian wife had seen us cleaning the Avenue 2 months ago and without any dialogue they just joined in. Only if we could have more spontaneous souls like them. He said that a project like this can become self-perpetuating if we keep the places in spic & span condition. You know the word...MAINTENANCE. Great words that boosted our spirits.

Br. Akram, the principal of ISA has procured some plants. These will be planted in about two weeks. We know the encouraging words of the Prophet (p) regarding such an activity. He also had words of encouragement for the project.

Two little Winfer Garden kids passed Abid & I this morning and excitedly said "you spoke to us on Littering" and they also said "we don't litter anymore". Hahaha...kids are so sweet. 

Mayor Green is still talking about Restoration GT...it's a pity his name is the same as the worldwide phenomenon like GOGREEN.org and other GREEN projects. Mayor...haven't you reached retirement age as yet or is your age as perennial as the green grass. You have outlived your usefulness two decades ago. There are young people capable of managing this city and bringing it into the 21st century...you have us in the 19th. And a repulsive 19th at that. Give it up Mr. Mayor and relax in your rocking chair and watch as young minds create a city that you would be proud of...within ONE year. And you spoke a few days ago of LeRepentir Cemetery...of cleaning it up. TALK again. You just are not able. Let the young clean it up so that when your time comes you will be happy to go and be buried in a classy cemetery. Right now I am sure you are thinking about cremation...you don't want to be surrounded by that terrifying bush that you are responsible for.

 

Please make contributions to the Guyana Islamic Trust (Haseeb Yusuf) or the CIOG (Sheik Zakir) so that we can buy brushcutters ($100,000 each). Thank you.

 

Shamal

 

Salaam All

This message originates from Haseeb Yusuf of GIT.

 

Please view the video

 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/april-19-2013/religion-and-the-environment/15953/

 

Then let's all make a commitment to this environment of ours...for our children's sake.

 

Come out this Saturday 27th 2013 from 8:00am to 12:00...for maintenance of the 4 streets we have adopted

Starting at Waterloo St....then East St....then Albert St...then Woolford Ave.

 

Each one of you please mobilize your friends and family. It's necessary to repeat that...

Each one of you please mobilize your friends and family.

Each one of you please mobilize your friends and family.

 

Thank you...May God Help us all in this struggle to make this city one that we can be proud of...

Shamal

 

 

Salaam All

 

Martin Luther King: “If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

 

Beautiful words. We are a world of words and little action. Theoreticians and NOT Practitioners. We are all SITTING Qurans, Bibles & Vedas.

 

All the Prophets did not have a huge GAP between their words and actions. Muhammad (p) whom Michael Hart in his book The 100, puts  as NUMBER ONE (#1)...like in UNO. WHY? It is to him who masters our minds by FORCE of TRUTH, and not those who enslave them by violence, that we owe our reverence. WHY? He was the only man, ONLY, man in history who was supremely successful on BOTH the religious and secular levels. WHY? He became an immensely effective political leader.

 

One can only laugh at the comedians we have as politicians. They are immensely INeffective. They need to study the WAY of Muhammad (p).

 

Back to the GAP...google from the 1990s to current to see all the drivel mentioned in cleaning the city. SHOCKED? Don't be...politics divorced from religion creates hypocrites.

 

Last week the Public Works cut the grass along the parapets on Vlissengen Road. I waited and waited...giving them a chance...for what? To see when they will come to clean up the ugliness of the now exposed bottles of all types, the food boxes and plastics etc. It still lies in open view...totally disgusting. To the Ministers (who are admittedly "busy" with other types of "cuts"): Is this a tourist attraction; is this environmental friendly; is this a job done as Martin Luther King spoke. Afraid not! All the hosts of heaven and earth are cursing a job badly done. A wonderful Nigerian brother studying in GT had this to say: "Keeping Guyana Clean rest mostly on the Government. Back in my country Nigeria, the Government makes everyone living in a certain district come out and clean their environment. Certain fines are paid by those who fail to come out and do the job. This exercise is once in every month and its highly monitored by government officials. I think the government might adopt this strategy." Put up a maintenance schedule on your website/publish it in the papers requesting folks in that ward to come out and lend a helping hand.

 

Now...St. Joseph's High School cleaned out their drain and brought a truck to remove the grass. It's that easy. How come the govt with all the money, materials & power cannot do a COMPLETE Job?

 

The leaders need to take lessons from the Number One Influential Person in Muhammad to understand how he was such an effective political leader. They also need to study what King said. Then they need to become practitioners rather than theoreticians. Religious leaders have forgotten that the Prophets were all who practiced what they preached. Today it's mostly preaching....yadayadayada...yawn. Another sermon...another lecture...another convention...another shuraa...another meeting...then another sermon....YAWN. We do not worship God with our lips, but with our actions.

 

Can we pause the words...and inject some quality action in there...

 

Shamal