Some old photos of Makka:

Hint

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O mankind! A similitude has been
coined, so listen to it (carefully):
Verily! those on whom you call
besides Allah,cannot create
(even) a fly, even though they
combine together for the purpose.
And if the fly snatched away a
thing from them,they would
have no power to release itfrom
the fly. so weak are (both) the
seeker and the sought. Al-Qur'an: Ch.22 V.73 —/- - -

India tests nuclear missilethat can hit Beijing Updated: 04/19/2012 12:21am

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India announced Thursday that it had successfully test launcheda new
nuclear-capable missile that would give it,for the first time, the
capability of striking the major Chinese cities of Beijing and
Shanghai.
The government has hailed the Agni-V missile, with a range of 5,000
kilometers (3,100 miles), as a major boost to its efforts to counter
China's regional dominance and become an Asian power in its own right.
The head of India's Defense Research and Development Organization,
Vijay Saraswat, said the missilewas launched at 8:07 a.m. from Wheeler
Island off India's east coast.
It rose to an altitude of more than 600 kilometers (370 miles),
itsthree stages worked properly and its payload was deployed as
planned,he told Times Now news channel.
"India has emerged from this launch as a major missile power," he said.
The window for the launch opened Wednesday night, but thetest had to
be postponed because of weather conditions.
Avinash Chandra, mission director for the test, said that when the
launch took place Thursday morning the missile performed as planned.
"We have achieved exactly what we wanted to achieve in this mission,"
he told Times Now.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed./- - -

AN ART CRITIC IN AFRICA The Great Mosque in Djenné, Mali

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The Great Mosque at Djenné in Mali at sunrise.
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: April 19, 2012
DJENNÉ, Mali - As in so much of the Islamic world,"insha'Allah" - "if
God wills it" - is how people punctuate conversations inthis
predominantly MuslimWest African country. If you speak of starting a
project, or taking a trip, or trying to pay a debt, the outcome is
always understood to be conditional.
Recently Malians have had to trust heaven more than usual. The year's
millet crop arrived too early and much too thin. In late fall and
winter there were attacks on Europeans by a Qaeda affiliate. The
military overthrow of the government in Bamako, the nation's capital,
left one of Africa's poorest nations shut off from the world.
Meanwhile Tuareg rebels and Islamist forces have seized the northern
half of the country, including Timbuktu.
Tourism, so vital to the economy, has been reduced to a trickle,
though West Africa has never attracted the kind ofmonument-hungry
crowdsthat flood into Egypt. Most travelers who come here are in
search of "black" Africa - the Africa of so-called tribal art - and
many are only dimly aware of the extraordinaryvitality of Islamic
culture, old and new, below the Sahara.
In modern cities like Bamako, Mali's capital, andDakar in Senegal,
this culture often assumes a pop voice, with religious phrases
spray-painted across walls and devotional music pounding and keening
over the airwaves. In the ancient pilgrimage city of Djenné, set
between two rivers in the country's center and accessible only by
ferry, the voice is quieter, tempered by tradition, but also shaped
and, some would say, distorted, by modern intervention./- - -