And so far so good.

And yet it troubles me that I can break my fast while others, my own ‘country men’ cannot. They suffer under the disaster of the flooding in Pakistan.

May God have mercy on them. My neighbour came back from Pakistan just before Ramadan and said the situation was horrible! He was supposed to go up to Peshawar but they weren’t letting anyone through because of the damage.

I need to get my donation together for it.

But I did come across some good news about a situation that has been troubling me for years.

I guess it just shows the resiliency of a people, that no matter how bad it gets, they find a way to survive.

I’m talking about Gaza.

I often peruse different news sources and that includes Al-Jazeera. What I like about Al-Jazeera is that it’ll often carry news that other sources don’t touch.

Like the story in Germany of the Muslim woman who was killed in court by a racist who’d been harassing her family for a long time. He stabbed her in front of the guards and everything.

She died a martyr, and when her husband was trying to come to her aid, the authorities held him back, somehow thinking that he was the attacker (because he was Muslim I guess!).

Usually the news is bad, but this piece of news was good.

You can read it here: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/08/20108975319492772.html

I found it chilling that the Israeli authorities have been calculating the exact amount of food to let in so that the people are not officially malnourished.

“A key white paper, entitled Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines, meticulously details the minimum caloric intake required, based on age and sex, to keep Gazans hovering just above malnutrition levels, and specifies the corresponding grams and calories of each type of food allowed into Gaza.

The existence of the so-called Red Lines document has been known for several years, but was only confirmed by Israel during recent court proceedings.

The blockade policy is overseen by a unit of Israel’s defence ministry, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

The policy slogan, which has been repeated at several COGAT meetings attended by Israeli journalists, states: “No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.”

Wow!

That people would actually go to the trouble of calculating the precise amount of food per person to let in so that no one can accuse them of starving a people.

It boggles the mind.

And yet, the story is one of hope.

The Gazans have shown ingenuity under the circumstances, going organic and turning inward.

The old phrase, “Necessity is the mother of invention” has never been more apt!

I pray for them, and I pray for the victims of the mudslides in China, and for the fourteen million affected by the floods in Pakistan.

May God have mercy on them, may God relieve them of the burdens of their suffering.

And may He give us the means to help them.

Ameen.