Today,s Khutbah (Islamic sermon)

Al-Baraqah 2 96

[96]

Und bestimmt wirst du sie unter allen Menschen am gierigsten nach Leben finden, und mehr noch als diejenigen, die Gِtzen anbeten. Manch einer von ihnen mِchte, daك ihm ein Leben von tausend Jahren gewنhrt wird; doch er hنlt sich dadurch von der Strafe nicht fern, (auch) wenn ihm ein hohes Alter gewنhrt würde. Und Allah sieht wohl, was sie tun.

[97]

"Sprich: ""Wer auch immer Gabriel zum Feind nimmt, so hat er ihn (den Qur'an) doch mit Ermنchtigung Allahs in dein Herz herabgesandt als Bestنtigung dessen, was vor ihm war, und als Rechtleitung und frohe Botschaft für die Glنubigen.""

[96]

Thou wilt indeed find them, of all people, most greedy of life, even more than the idolaters: each one of them wishes he could be given a life of a thousand years: but the grant of such life will not save him from (due) punishment. For Allah sees well all that they do.

[97]

Say: Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel for he brings down the (revelation) to thy heart by Allah's will, a confirmation of what went before, and guidance and glad tidings for those who believe.

[98]

Whoever is an enemy to Allah and His angels and prophets, to Gabriel and Michael, lo! Allah is an enemy to those who reject Faith.

1938 all over again

BERLIN (EJP)—- A tragedy was avoided on Sunday after a smoke bomb, thrown through a window of a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin, failed to ignite.However, the school, located in a northwest neighbourhood of the German capital, was not spared by the spray painting of swastikas, other Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic phrases, such as “Auschwitz,” “Juden Raus” (Jews, get out) and “Sieg Heil”, on its outer walls, as well as on toys that had been lying around in the school’s playground.

A police spokesman said the attack did not cause serious damage or endanger children or staff at the school.

Berlin’s Interior Minister Ehrhart Körting condemned the attack as a “cowardly act” and called it “a particularly brutal one…one that had taken anti-Semitic acts to a new dimension”.

Although individual Jewish children have occasionally been victims of anti-Semitism, it is the first time that an entire school had been targeted in Germany. So far, no suspects have been found. Police are still investigating when exactly the attack took place and appealed for witnesses. However, it seems as if it was planned to coincide with the inauguration of a new Torah scroll which took place on Sunday, several kilometres away, at the Chabad Lubavitch synagogue of the Jewish Family and Education Centre which runs the school. “It was a miracle that the smoke bomb did not get off,” Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal of Chabad Lubavitch in Berlin, said. The school is located in a villa, in a quiet park of the city’s Charlottenburg district. Because the location had only been considered as temporary, the property was not secured in the same way that other Jewish buildings. Instead of round-the-clock police protection, security guards came only in hourly intervals.