1) Songs Of The Iraqi Women (The Land Of Mesopotamia) Poem by Otradom Pelogo

Songs of The Iraqi Women

Sharia Law
The Abrahamic Ethic
The Declaration of Independence
The U.S. Constitution
Unalienable Rights


Iraq is one of those peculiar situations, when you know that if you had the chance to meet them, that you would be the best of friends, and thus when I write, I take that into account, for when driving down the streets of Iraq, I try and notice each and every one of them, seeing who they are, what they look like, if I can, how they think, and the majority of the times, I feel that experience is a mutual one. There is a section called The People of Iraq, further below, which should be entertaining and equally as enlightening.
There are two beautiful women who work at the Iraqi airport, in a small café, that I usually stop by, where I get a cup of coffee and a bite to eat, just before boarding the plane, whom I somewhat have become incredibly infatuated with, and truly enjoy seeing them each time I pass through. And though I have pages of a journal on Iraq, I promised myself that I would paint a picture of them, in soul and words, having received through them and the rest of the beautiful people that I have seen and met in Iraq, to write voluminously about them, to try and capture what I had truly seen since arriving, though as if I had spent and extended amount of time with them on a regular basis.

One day I was driving down the road (while as a truck driver working for Haliburton) , I think towards Tikirt, when I saw about three or four women walking amongst a field lined with nice tall palm trees; it was late Spring, so the grass was nice and green also, and the phantasmagoric mirage of women, that you would normally see dressed in black abayas, now wore the vibrant shades of gold, black, green, blue red and yellow; that would only make you think of the matriarch of Africa; and you see it much more vividly only when her cohorts wear it thousands of miles away, even more so revealing the intense essence of the ascendancy of beautiful and strong, yet sensuous women. They made me think of women that I had fallen in love with, lived with, been infatuated and nurtured by and have admired all of my life back in America.

I have read a countless number of articles on Iraq in business journals, of course newspapers, and magazines, and have bought and read a few books on the country, explaining a lot of things from Ancient Mesopotamia, to early twentieth century Iraq, to the passing through of the French, Germans the British, Russians and Chinese, and many other great nations who have been inspired by the sons and daughters of The Garden of Eden.

I had found an incredibly enlightening statement in a few references, ‘that these so called strong men of Iraq is somewhat of a newly misunderstood phenomenon; not the men, but the place being run by these men, as they say, unjustly applying the wrong stigmas to the wrong aspects of such a complex situation. Now having the trouble associated with the country and its citizen rather than these radical / terroristic / strong-men of Islam. And thus these men, bringing with them, what a few of the great writers have also called radical Islam, the violent and turbulent aspect of Islam, which is caused by these strong-men; not ‘radical Islam' or liberated Islam but terroristic Islam, thus the difference being that it's looked at from the wrong perspective to try and understand what's going on and thus to try and deal with it appropriately. Applying the stigma or stereotype to all its peoples. But my latest indulged venture into a new world, Islam; I made a rather lucky pick and grabbed a book by (Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Called What's Right With Islam A new Vision for Muslims and the West) , where he describes and compares early and present Islam, using the ‘Abrahamic ethic', as the pivot, as he correlates main attributes in the designing of the foundation of American government; The Constitution and Declaration of Independence…

In 1776, a century and a half after the Pilgrims landed in the New World, America's founders gathered in Philadelphia and drafted the Declaration of Independence, which dissolved the political ties that had bound the American people to Great Britain. Eleven years later, many of the same founders met again to draft a plan for governing the new nation; the Constitution of the United States. Whereas the Declaration outlined the founders' moral vision and the government it implied, the constitution amplified and worked out the system of government that expressed the values of the Declaration. These two documents together describe the supreme values and fundamental laws of America. As such they are the set of overall beliefs, creed, or 'religion' under which all Americans operate.

Grounding itself in reason, just as the Quran and the Abrahamic ethic did in asserting the self-evident oneness of god, the Declaration opens with the most important line in the document. 'We hold these Truths to be self-evident.' The language evokes the long tradition of natural law, which holds that there is a higher law of right and wrong from which to derive human law and against which human laws may be-and ought to be-measured. It is not political will but moral reasoning accessible to all that is the foundation of the American political system.

To Muslims, the law decreed by God is called the Shariah, and therefore the 'Laws of Nature and of Nature‘s God'are by definition Shariah law. It is a law that has to appeal to human reason and be in accord with human nature, informing us that 'a community based on ideas held in common is a far more advanced manifestation of human location…'

What's right about America is its Declaration of Independence, for it embodies and restates the core values of the Abrahamic, and thus also the Islamic, ethic. Since human liberty is one of its aims, and reason the method by which we justify our political order, then the cardinal moral truths from the Declaration of Independence that flesh out the Abrahamic ethic are:

That all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness-that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just Powers from Consent of the Governed.

As defined by our rights, we are equal, no one human being has rights superior to those of another human… (Faesal Abdul Rauf)