title: Rajasthani languages

text: All 25 Members of Parliament elected from Rajasthan state, as well as former Chief Minister, Vasundhara Raje Scindia, have also voiced support for official recognition of the language.


title: Rajasthani languages

text: In India, Rajasthani is written in the Devanagari script, an abugida which is written from left to right. Earlier, the Mahajani script, or Modiya, was used to write Rajasthani. The script is also called as Maru Gurjari in a few records. In Pakistan, where Rajasthani is considered a minor language, a variant of the Sindhi script is used to write Rajasthani dialects.


title: Rajasthani languages

text: In common with most other Indo-Iranian languages, the basic sentence typology is subject–object–verb. On a lexical level, Rajasthani has perhaps a 50 to 65 percent overlap with Hindi, based on a comparison of a 210-word Swadesh list. Most pronouns and interrogative words differ from Hindi, but the language does have several regular correspondences with, and phonetic transformations from, Hindi. The /s/ in Hindi is often realized as /h/ in Rajasthani — for example, the word ‘gold’ is /sona/ (सोना) in Hindi and /hono/ (होनो) in the Marwari dialect of Rajasthani. Furthermore, there are a number of vowel substitutions, and the Hindi /l/ sound (ल) is often realized in Rajasthani as a retroflex lateral /ɭ/ (ळ).


title: Rajasthani languages

text: Rajasthani has 10 vowels and 31 consonants. The Rajasthani language Bagri has developed three lexical tones: low, mid and high.


title: Rajasthani languages

text: Rajasthani has two numbers and two genders with three cases. Postpositions are of two categories, inflexional and derivational. Derivational postpositions are mostly omitted in actual discourse.


title: Rajasthani languages

text: Linguists and their work and year: [Note: Works concerned only with linguistics, not with literature]


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: Hishammuddin bin Hussein (Jawi: هشام الدين بن حسين; born 5 August 1961) is a Malaysian politician and lawyer who served as Senior Minister of the Security Cluster and Minister of Defence from 2021 to 2022. A member of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), a component party of the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, he has been a Member of Parliament (MP) for Sembrong since 2004, having previously been an MP for Tenggara from 1995 to 2004.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: Hishammuddin was born in Johor Bahru to Hussein Onn and Suhailah Noah. His father was the third prime minister of Malaysia. He attended Malay College Kuala Kangsar, St. John's Institution, Alice Smith School, and Cheltenham College. He then graduated with a Bachelor of Laws from Aberystwyth University and a Master of Laws from the London School of Economics before working as a lawyer. After making partner at Scrine, he started his own firm, Lee Hishammuddin, which later merged with Allen and Gledhill to form Lee Hishammuddin Allen and Gledhill.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: On his return from UK, Hishammuddin joined UMNO. He was first elected to Dewan Rakyat in the 1995 election, winning the seat of Tenggara. He was later appointed deputy minister and was promoted to full minister in 1999. In 1999, he was elected as UMNO's youth chief, and subsequently as its vice president in 2009. Since then, he has held various ministerial positions until the defeat of BN in the 2018 election. Despite the defeat, he managed to retain his Sembrong seat.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: At the beginning of the political crisis that started in 2020, Hishammuddin returned to the cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs under Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition led by Muhyiddin Yassin. Amid the worsening political crisis in July 2021, Muhyiddin appointed Hishammuddin as Senior Minister of Security Cluster to replace Ismail Sabri Yaakob, who was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister. He briefly served in the office until August 2021, after Muhyiddin announced his resignation. Two weeks after that, Hishammuddin returned again to the cabinet under new Prime Minister Ismail Sabri, who re-appointed him as senior minister. He was also appointed as the Minister of Defence, an office he had held previously from 2013 to 2018.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: Hishammuddin was born on 5 August 1961, the fourth child and the eldest son of Hussein Onn, who became the third Prime Minister of Malaysia, and Suhaila Noah. He is the grandson of Onn Jaafar, a prominent Malay leader and the founder of UMNO, whose mother was a Circassian and born in the Ottoman Empire.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: Hishammuddin attended the Malay College Kuala Kangsar before his father became Deputy Prime Minister in 1973. Upon his father's appointment to the office, he attended St. John's Institution, and then the Alice Smith School, in Kuala Lumpur, before attending the English public school Cheltenham College in Gloucestershire.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: Hishammuddin graduated with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1984. He also attended the London School of Economics and received a Master of Laws (LLM) degree in Commercial and Corporate Law in 1988.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: After completing his studies in UK, Hishammuddin returned to Malaysia in 1989. He joined UMNO and began his career as a lawyer. He became a partner of Skrine & Co (present day Skrine), the largest law firm in Malaysia. In 1993, he left Skrine & Co to set up his own law firm with Thomas Mun Lung Lee, and the established law firm was known as Lee Hishammuddin (present day Lee Hishammuddin Allen & Gledhill).


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: Hishammuddin rose through the ranks of UMNO's youth wing in the 1990s, becoming its national chief in 1998. He assumed the position at a time when UMNO Youth had been torn apart by the sacking of Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who was popular among young UMNO members. Hishammuddin's predecessor, Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, had been a core supporter of Anwar.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: In 1995, Hishammuddin had been elected to the federal parliament for the Johor-based seat of Tenggara. He was immediately appointed as Parliamentary Secretary for International Trade and Industry in the government of Mahathir Mohamad. His rise to the leadership of UMNO Youth in 1998 coincided with his elevation to the full ministry the following year, as the Minister for Youth and Sport. He retained his parliamentary seat in the 1999 election.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: In 2004, the Barisan Nasional government, now led by Abdullah Badawi, was returned to power with Hishammuddin holding the newly created seat of Sembrong. Hishammuddin was re-elected as the leader of UMNO Youth and appointed Minister for Education.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: In 2009, the resignation of Abdullah Badawi as prime minister caused a shake-up in UMNO's senior leadership. Najib Razak, Hishammuddin's cousin, became UMNO's president and the prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin became Najib's deputy in both the party and the government, and the three UMNO vice-presidencies were up for election. Hishammuddin, vacating the leadership of UMNO Youth, contested the vice-presidencies, finishing in second place in an eight-man field. His ascension to the party's vice-presidency in turn guaranteed him a senior Cabinet post, and he was appointed as Minister for Home Affairs.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: After the 2013 election, in which Najib's government suffered further losses, especially among Chinese voters, Hishammuddin recontested the UMNO vice-presidency. He was barely re-elected in third place, finishing nine votes ahead of Mukhriz Mahathir. He switched ministries with Zahid, taking over the latter's portfolio of Defence. He also assumed the transport ministry on an acting basis; that ministry was normally reserved for the Malaysian Chinese Association, which had decided to withdraw from the Cabinet temporarily, having endured significant losses in the general election. As acting transport minister he was thrust into the international spotlight as the minister responsible for the investigation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The Sydney Morning Herald criticised Hishammuddin in this position, arguing that he had "struggled during daily press briefings to defend his country’s handling of the search and investigation". Najib, however, defended Hishammuddin's performance. His role ceased in June 2014, when Liow Tiong Lai assumed the ministry. Hishammuddin retained his substantive post as defence minister.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: In April 2017, Hishammuddin was appointed as Minister in the Prime Minister's Department for Special Functions. Prime Minister Najib Razak said that the appointment would enable Hishammuddin to carry out duties other than his responsibilities as Minister of Defence, he still however would remain as Minister for Defence.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: In March 2020, Hishammuddin was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs by newly-appointed Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin following the collapse of the previous Pakatan Harapan Government in February.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: In his second term as UMNO Youth's leader, Hishammuddin waded into controversy by brandishing the "keris", a Malay sword's and symbol of Malay nationalism, at UMNO's 2005 annual general meeting. In response to concerns over the racial rhetoric, then Vice-President Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said that "Although some sides were a bit extreme [this year], it is quite normal to voice feelings during the assembly." The racially provocative act was criticized by opposition politicians as well as some Chinese politicians from the Barisan Nasional coalition. In 2008, Hishammuddin conceded that the act had caused the coalition to lose support among non-Malay voters in that year's general election.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: On 6 August 2020, Hishammuddin apologised after being pinpointed by a netizen vaping during Parliament session.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: On 2 April 2021, Hishammuddin’s two-day working visit to China was overshadowed by a diplomatic gaffe. Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim skewered Hishammuddin for calling China a "big brother" during his joint address with his Chinese counterpart Minister Wang Yi. Anwar also saying it may have set Malaysia's foreign policy back by 25 years.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: On 3 April 2021, Hishammuddin defended using the term “Big Brother” to refer to his Wang Yi, saying it was a sign of respect. Former foreign minister Anifah Aman has told Hishammuddin to admit his error in making a "big brother" reference to China, instead of compounding the matter by disputing it.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: On 27 September 2021, the cabinet of Malaysia has sparked criticism after Hishammuddin announced a new equity policy for Bumiputera companies under the five-year development plan, Twelfth Malaysia Plan (12MP), which was tabled by him in Parliament. The policy is said to ensure sustainable equity holdings by Bumiputeras, an equity safety net would be launched to guarantee that the sale of shares or Bumiputera firms would only be sold solely to Bumiputera companies, consortiums or individuals. Syed Saddiq mentioned that the new rulings were unfair as they would be tantamount to taking equity from the non-bumiputeras and giving them to bumiputeras. Former Health Minister, Dzulkefly Ahmad had also described the policy as "suicidal" and claimed that the new policy would only kill the Bumiputera companies economically if that is their intention. He also said that based on the feedback from Malay businessmen, most were against the idea of the new Bumiputera-only policy being implemented. Ismail Sabri announced it after revealing that the government’s target to raise Bumiputera equity ownership to 30% had yet to be achieved. He also announced fundings to improve Bumiputera businesses’ sustainability to hit 15% contribution in gross domestic product (GDP) by Bumiputera micro, small and medium enterprises by 2025.


title: Hishammuddin Hussein

text: His wife, Tengku Marsilla Tengku Abdullah, is a princess from the state of Pahang. They married in 1986. He was diagnosed with COVID-19 on 22nd February 2022.


title: A. E. Housman

text: Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by publishing as a private scholar at first. Later Housman was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and then at the University of Cambridge. He is now acknowledged as one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars at any time. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius, and Lucan are still considered authoritative.


title: A. E. Housman

text: In 1896 he emerged as a poet with "A Shropshire Lad", a cycle in which he poses as an unsophisticated and melancholy youth. After a slow start, this captured the imagination of young readers, its preoccupation with early death appealing to them especially during times of war. In 1922 his "Last Poems" added to his reputation, which was further enhanced by the large number of song settings drawn from these collections. Following his death, further poems from his notebooks were published by his brother, Laurence. It was then too, though Housman had made no admission himself, that his sexual orientation began to be questioned.


title: A. E. Housman

text: The eldest of seven children, Housman was born at Valley House in Fockbury, a hamlet on the outskirts of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, to Sarah Jane (née Williams, married 17 June 1858 in Woodchester, Gloucester) and Edward Housman (whose family came from Lancaster), and was baptised on 24 April 1859 at Christ Church, in Catshill. His mother died on his twelfth birthday, and his father, a country solicitor, then married an elder cousin, Lucy, in 1873. Two of his siblings became prominent writers, sister Clemence Housman and brother Laurence Housman.


title: A. E. Housman

text: Housman was educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham and later Bromsgrove School, where he revealed his academic promise and won prizes for his poems. In 1877 he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, and went there to study classics. Although introverted by nature, Housman formed strong friendships with two roommates, Moses John Jackson (1858 – 14 January 1923) and A. W. Pollard. Though Housman obtained a first in classical Moderations in 1879, his dedication to textual analysis led him to neglect the ancient history and philosophy that formed part of the Greats curriculum. Accordingly, he failed his Finals and had to return humiliated in Michaelmas term to resit the exam and at least gain a lower-level pass degree. Though some attribute Housman's unexpected performance in his exams directly to his unrequited feelings for Jackson, most biographers adduce more obvious causes. Housman was indifferent to philosophy and overconfident in his exceptional gifts, and he spent too much time with his friends. He may also have been distracted by news of his father's desperate illness.


title: A. E. Housman

text: After Oxford, Jackson went to work as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman too. The two shared a flat with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885, when Housman moved to lodgings of his own, probably after Jackson responded to a declaration of love by telling Housman that he could not reciprocate his feelings. Two years later, Jackson moved to India, placing more distance between himself and Housman. When he returned briefly to England in 1889, to marry, Housman was not invited to the wedding and knew nothing about it until the couple had left the country. Adalbert Jackson died in 1892 and Housman commemorated him in a poem published as "XLII – A.J.J." of "More Poems" (1936).


title: A. E. Housman

text: Meanwhile, Housman pursued his classical studies independently, and published scholarly articles on Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He also completed an edition of Propertius, which however was rejected by both Oxford University Press and Macmillan in 1885, and was destroyed after his death. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered and accepted the professorship of Latin at University College London (UCL). When, during his tenure, an immensely rare Coverdale Bible of 1535 was discovered in the UCL library and presented to the Library Committee, Housman (who had become an atheist while at Oxford) remarked that it would be better to sell it to "buy some really useful books with the proceeds".


title: A. E. Housman

text: Although Housman's early work and his responsibilities as a professor included both Latin and Greek, he began to specialise in Latin poetry. When asked later why he had stopped writing about Greek verse, he responded, "I found that I could not attain to excellence in both." In 1911 he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life.


title: A. E. Housman

text: Between 1903 and 1930 Housman published his critical edition of Manilius's "Astronomicon" in five volumes. He also edited Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). G. P. Goold, Classics Professor at University College, wrote of his predecessor's accomplishments that "the legacy of Housman's scholarship is a thing of permanent value; and that value consists less in obvious results, the establishment of general propositions about Latin and the removal of scribal mistakes, than in the shining example he provides of a wonderful mind at work … He was and may remain the last great textual critic". In the eyes of Harry Eyres, however, Housman was "famously dry" as a professor, and his influence led to a scholarly style in the study of literature and poetry that was philological and without emotion.


title: A. E. Housman

text: Many colleagues were unnerved by Housman's scathing attacks on those he thought guilty of shoddy scholarship. In his paper "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921) he wrote: "A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motion of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas". He declared many of his contemporary scholars to be stupid, lazy, vain, or all three, saying: "Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders, and brains, not pudding, in your head".


title: A. E. Housman

text: His younger colleague A. S. F. Gow quoted examples of these attacks, noting that they "were often savage in the extreme". Gow also related how Housman intimidated students, sometimes reducing the women to tears. According to Gow, Housman could never remember the names of female students, maintaining that "had he burdened his memory by the distinction between Miss Jones and Miss Robinson, he might have forgotten that between the second and fourth declension". Among the more notable students at his Cambridge lectures was Enoch Powell, one of whose own Classical emendations was later complimented by Housman.


title: A. E. Housman

text: In his private life Housman enjoyed country walks, gastronomy, air travel and making frequent visits to France, where he read "books which were banned in Britain as pornographic" but he struck A. C. Benson, a fellow don, as being "descended from a long line of maiden aunts". His feelings about his poetry were ambivalent and he certainly treated it as secondary to his scholarship. He did not speak in public about his poems until 1933, when he gave a lecture "The Name and Nature of Poetry", arguing there that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than to the intellect.


title: A. E. Housman

text: Housman died, aged 77, in Cambridge. His ashes are buried just outside St Laurence's Church, Ludlow. A cherry tree was planted there in his memory (see "A Shropshire Lad" II) and replaced by the Housman Society in 2003 with a new cherry tree nearby.


title: A. E. Housman

text: During his years in London, Housman completed "A Shropshire Lad", a cycle of 63 poems. After one publisher had turned it down, he helped subsidise its publication in 1896. At first selling slowly, it rapidly became a lasting success. Its appeal to English musicians had helped to make it widely known before World War I, when its themes struck a powerful chord with English readers. The book has been in print continuously since May 1896.


title: A. E. Housman

text: The poems are marked by pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation (Housman had become an atheist while still an undergraduate). Housman wrote many of them while living in Highgate, London, before ever visiting Shropshire, which he presented in an idealised pastoral light as his 'land of lost content'. Housman himself acknowledged that "No doubt I have been unconsciously influenced by the Greeks and Latins, but [the] chief sources of which I am conscious are Shakespeare's songs, the Scottish Border ballads, and Heine".


title: A. E. Housman

text: Housman began collecting a new set of poems after the First World War. His early work was an influence on many British poets who became famous by their writing about the war, and he wrote several poems as occasional verse to commemorate the war dead. This included his "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries", honouring the British Expeditionary Force, an elite but small force of professional soldiers sent to Belgium at the start of the war. In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson could read them before his death. These later poems, mostly written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in "A Shropshire Lad" but lack its consistency. He published his new collection as "Last Poems" (1922), feeling that his inspiration was exhausted and that he should not publish more in his lifetime.


title: A. E. Housman

text: After Housman's death in 1936, his brother, Laurence published further poems in "More Poems" (1936), "A. E .H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother" (1937), and "Collected Poems" (1939). "A. E. H." includes humorous verse such as a parody of Longfellow's poem "Excelsior". Housman also wrote a parodic "Fragment of a Greek Tragedy", in English, published posthumously with humorous poems under the title "Unkind to Unicorns".


title: A. E. Housman

text: Sparrow himself adds, "How difficult it is to achieve a satisfactory analysis may be judged by considering the last poem in "A Shropshire Lad". Of its four stanzas, Housman tells us that two were 'given' him ready made; one was coaxed forth from his subconsciousness an hour or two later; the remaining one took months of conscious composition. No one can tell for certain which was which."


title: A. E. Housman

text: In 1942 Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson. Despite the conservative nature of the times and his own caution in public life, Housman was quite open in his poetry, and especially in "A Shropshire Lad", about his deeper sympathies. Poem XXX of that sequence, for instance, speaks of how "Fear contended with desire": "Others, I am not the first, / Have willed more mischief than they durst". In "More Poems", he buries his love for Moses Jackson in the very act of commemorating it, as his feelings of love are not reciprocated and must be carried unfulfilled to the grave:


title: A. E. Housman

text: His poem "Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?", written after the trial of Oscar Wilde, addressed more general attitudes towards homosexuals. In the poem the prisoner is suffering "for the colour of his hair", a natural quality that, in a coded reference to homosexuality, is reviled as "nameless and abominable" (recalling the legal phrase "peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum", "that horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians").


title: A. E. Housman

text: Housman's poetry, especially "A Shropshire Lad", was set to music by many British, and in particular English, composers in the first half of the 20th century. The national, pastoral and traditional elements of his style resonated with similar trends in English music. In 1904 the cycle "A Shropshire Lad" was set by Arthur Somervell, who in 1898 had begun to develop the concept of the English song-cycle in his version of Tennyson's "Maud". Stephen Banfield believes it was acquaintance with Somervell's cycle that led other composers to set Housman: Ralph Vaughan Williams is likely to have attended the first performance at the Aeolian Hall on 3 February 1905. His well-known cycle of six songs "On Wenlock Edge", for string quartet, tenor and piano, was published in 1909. Between 1909 and 1911 George Butterworth produced settings in two collections, "Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad" and "Bredon Hill and Other Songs". He also wrote the orchestral tone poem "A Shropshire Lad", first performed at Leeds Festival in 1912.


title: A. E. Housman

text: Ivor Gurney was another composer who made renowned settings of Housman's poems. Towards the end of World War I he was working on his cycle "Ludlow and Teme", for voice and string quartet (published in 1919), and went on to compose the eight-song cycle "The Western Playland" in 1921. One more who set Housman songs during this period was John Ireland in the song cycle, "The Land of Lost Content" (192021). Even composers not directly associated with the 'pastoral' tradition, such as Arnold Bax, Lennox Berkeley and Arthur Bliss, were attracted to Housman's poetry. A 1976 catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems. As of 2020, Lieder Net Archive records 615 settings of 187 texts.


title: A. E. Housman

text: The earliest commemoration of Housman was in the chapel of Trinity College in Cambridge, where there is a memorial brass on the south wall. The Latin inscription was composed by his colleague there, A. S. F. Gow, who was also the author of a biographical and bibliographical sketch published immediately following his death. Translated into English, the memorial reads:


title: A. E. Housman

text: From 1947, University College London's academic common room was dedicated to his memory as the Housman Room. Blue plaques followed later elsewhere, the first being on Byron Cottage in Highgate in 1969, recording the fact that "A Shropshire Lad" was written there. More followed, placed on his Worcestershire birthplace, his homes and school in Bromsgrove. The latter were encouraged by the Housman Society, which was founded in the town in 1973. Another initiative was the statue in Bromsgrove High Street, showing the poet striding with walking stick in hand. The work of local sculptor Kenneth Potts, it was unveiled on 22 March 1985.


title: A. E. Housman

text: The blue plaques in Worcestershire were set up on the centenary of "A Shropshire Lad" in 1996. In September of the same year a memorial window lozenge was dedicated at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey The following year saw the première of Tom Stoppard's play "The Invention of Love", whose subject is the relationship between Housman and Moses Jackson.


title: A. E. Housman

text: As the 150th anniversary of his birth approached, London University inaugurated its Housman lectures on classical subjects in 2005, initially given every second year then annually after 2011. The anniversary itself in 2009 saw the publication of a new edition of "A Shropshire Lad", including pictures from across Shropshire taken by local photographer Gareth Thomas. Among other events, there were performances of Vaughan Williams' "On Wenlock Edge" and Gurney's "Ludlow and Teme" at St Laurence's Church in Ludlow.


title: A. E. Housman

text: These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: Walter Karl Ernst August von Reichenau (8 October 1884 – 17 January 1942) was a field marshal in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. Reichenau commanded the 6th Army, during the invasions of Belgium and France. During Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, he continued to command the 6th Army as part of Army Group South as it captured Ukraine and advanced deep into Russia.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: While in command of the 6th Army during Operation Barbarossa in 1941, he issued the notorious Severity Order which encouraged German soldiers to murder Jewish civilians on the Eastern Front. Reichenau's troops cooperated with the SS "Einsatzgruppen" in the commission of the massacre of over 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar, and assisted with other crimes against humanity that occurred in areas under his command during the Holocaust.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: The son of Prussian Lieutenant General Ernst August von Reichenau (1841–1919), Walter von Reichenau was born in 1884, in Karlsruhe. One of his brothers was Ernst von Reichenau. Walter joined the Prussian Army as an artillery officer cadet on 14 March 1903. He then attended the Prussian War Academy, going on to serve as a staff officer to Max Hoffmann in the First World War. At the beginning of the war, Reichenau was Adjutant of the 1st Guards Field Artillery Regiment and in this position he was promoted to Captain on 28 November 1914 and awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class over the course of the year. The following year he was transferred to the German General Staff and in the course of 1915 he served as Second Staff Officer (Ib) of the 47th Reserve Division and then as First Staff Officer (Ia) of the 7th Cavalry Division.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: Reichenau's early years are described in conflicting terms, as both progressively minded but also brutal, with a history of executing soldiers who were AWOL, even in times of peace. Greatly unconventional, he was an avid outdoors man, spoke English at home and, in contrast to his later activities in Russia, insisted on supporting World War I Jewish veterans' events in full military uniform, even after Hitler came to power. In April 1919 he married the Silesian aristocrat Alexandrine Gräfin Maltzan Freiin zu Wartenberg und Penzlin (1895-1984).


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: After the war, he joined the "Grenzschutz Ost" Freikorps as a General Staff officer, serving in Silesia and Pomerania. In 1919 Reichenau joined in the newly established "Reichswehr" of the Weimar Republic. The officer corps of the new armed forces' was limited to 4,000, and there was to be no General Staff. Reichenau took a post in the "Truppenamt", which was the "underground" equivalent of the General Staff formed by Hans von Seeckt. He was promoted to Major in 1924, to Lieutenant Colonel on 1 April 1929 and Colonel on 1 February 1932. In 1930, Reichenau was appointed Chief of Staff to the Inspector of Signals at the Ministry of the Reichswehr. He was later introduced to Hitler in April 1932 by his uncle, a diplomat. Extremely ambitious, he saw the Nazi Party as a revolutionary vessel in which he could propel his career and so broke with the pro-Monarchist politics of the Prussian military caste and became a devoted Nazi.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: As an outspoken ally and advocate of Hitler and the Nazi Party, Reichenau soon ran afoul of cabinet member and eventual Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, who used his authority to have him transferred out of his prestigious posting in Berlin to the headquarters of the military district of East Prussia, a relative backwater. In East Prussia Reichenau served under General Werner von Blomberg, a fellow exile of Schleicher's. Reichenau and Blomberg became political allies within the army and it was Reichenau who introduced Blomberg to Hitler. Blomberg, who had a reputation of being manipulated by Reichenau, was captivated by Hitler and both men soon used their connections with the Nazi party to advance. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Blomberg became Minister of War. One of his first acts was to promote Reichenau to head the powerful Ministerial Office, acting as liaison officer between the Army and the Nazi Party. He played a leading role in persuading Nazi leaders such as Göring and Himmler that the power of Ernst Röhm and the SA must be broken if the army was to support the Nazi-led government. This led directly to the "Night of the Long Knives" of 30 June 1934.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: In 1935, Reichenau was promoted to lieutenant general ("Generalleutnant") and was also appointed to command the military forces in Munich. Reichenau was one of Hitler's favorite Generals and his first choice for commander-in-chief of the "Heer" in 1934, but internal army politics resulted in General Werner von Fritsch getting the post.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: Reflecting Reichenau's preference for assignments of political matter, Blomberg sent Reichenau to China in May 1934 to support General Alexander von Falkenhausen's existing military assistance mission. Konstantin von Neurath, the Foreign Minister, and German ambassador to Japan Herbert von Dirksen, raised objections to Reichenau's posting, fearing that the assignment of an officer of his stature could imperil Germany's relationship with Japan.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: In 1938, after the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, in which Fritsch was forced out of the Army command, Reichenau was again Hitler's first choice for head of the "Heer", but older leaders such as Gerd von Rundstedt and Ludwig Beck refused to serve under Reichenau, and Hitler again backed down.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: In September 1939, Reichenau commanded the 10th Army during the German invasion of Poland and was the first German to cross the Vistula river, which he swam across. After the campaign he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his role as commander of the 10th Army.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: In 1940 he led the 6th Army during the invasion of Belgium and France and later that year Hitler promoted him to "Generalfeldmarschall" (field marshal) during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, as commander of the 6th Army, he led his army into the heart of Russia during the summer of 1941. The 6th Army was a part of Army Group South, and captured Kiev, Belgorod, Kharkov and Kursk. During its offensive into the Soviet Union, the German army was confronted with a number of superior tank designs. Reichenau inspected the Soviet tanks he came across, entering each tank and measuring its armour plate. According to general staff officer Paul Jordan, after examining a T-34, Reichenau told his officers "If the Russians ever produce it on an assembly line we will have lost the war."


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: In November 1941 Hitler relieved Field Marshal von Rundstedt from his command of Army Group South and promoted Reichenau to take his place. At his personal recommendation to Hitler, Friedrich Paulus, a protege of Reichenau's and former member of his command staff, was promoted to take over his command of the 6th Army.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: Reichenau was a habitual cross-country runner and suffered a stroke after a routine run in cold weather on 14 January 1942. He then sustained severe head injuries when the flight carrying him back to Leipzig for medical attention crashed on landing in Lemberg. Whether he died from his stroke or from injuries sustained in the crash is unknown. He was replaced at Army Group South by Fedor von Bock and given a state funeral.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: Reichenau's uncle was an ardent Nazi and introduced him to Adolf Hitler in April 1932. Reichenau joined the Nazi Party, although doing so was a violation of the army regulations laid down by Seeckt to insulate the army from national politics. Reichenau was an anti-Semite who equated Jewry with Bolshevism and a perceived Asian threat to Europe. Having died in 1942, Reichenau was never convicted of war crimes, but he was part of the German General Staff and High Command of the Armed Forces collectively indicted at Nuremberg. Specifically cited in the indictment was his "Reichenau Order", commonly known as the Severity Order of October 1941, which supported Nazi genocidal policies and advocated for punishment against the “subhuman species” of Jews and the extermination of Jewish Bolshevism in Europe.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: The only objection Reichenau raised to the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in his sector was when they were killing so many Jews, so quickly, that they began to create ammunition shortages in his sector of operations, an issue he addressed by recommending that the SS and SD limit themselves to two bullets per Jew.


title: Walter von Reichenau

text: Reichenau was in charge of the area of operations in which SS, Einsatzgruppen, and Ukrainian auxiliaries committed the massacre of over 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar. Later that year in August, Reichenau also directly acted to ensure the execution of ninety Jewish children in the 1941 Bila Tserkva massacre, after Helmuth Groscurth petitioned him to avert the killings.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: "Aloha ʻOe" ("Farewell to Thee") is a Hawaiian folk song written circa 1878 by Liliʻuokalani, who was then Princess of the Hawaiian Kingdom. It is her most famous song and is a common cultural symbol for Hawaii.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The story of the origin of the song has several variations. They all have in common that the song was inspired by a notable farewell embrace given by Colonel James Harbottle Boyd during a horseback trip taken by Princess Liliʻuokalani in 1877 or 1878 to the Boyd ranch in Maunawili on the windward side of Oʻahu, and that the members of the party hummed the tune on the way back to Honolulu. Different versions tell of alternate recipients of the embrace—either Liliʻuokalani's sister Princess Likelike Cleghorn or a young lady at the ranch. According to the most familiar version of the story:


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: This tender farewell set Liliʻuokalani to thinking, and she began humming to herself on the homeward trip. Overhearing, Charles Wilson observed, "That sounds like "The Lone Rock by the Sea"," a comment with which Liliʻuokalani is said to have agreed. When the party paused to rest in an orange grove on the Honolulu side of the Pali, the others joined in the hummings, and the song was completed later at Washington Place.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The Hawaiʻi State Archives preserves a hand-written manuscript by Liliʻuokalani, dated 1878, with the score of the song, the lyrics, Liliʻuokalani's English translation, and her note evidently added later: "Composed at Maunawili 1878. Played by the Royal Hawaiian Band in San Francisco August 1883 and became very popular."


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The first known recording of the song was released by Berliner Gramophone in 1898. A catalogue issued by Columbia Records in 1901 mentioned two wax cylinders labeled "Vocal Solos in Hawaiian", containing some of the earlier recordings of "Aloha ʻOe" and "Kuʻu Pua I Paoakalani". However, it is uncertain if this was recorded in Hawaii or if the performer was Hawaiian and the cylinders are now lost. Columbia Records later recorded a duet of the song by Nani Alapai and Henry N. Clark in 1911.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: Parts of "Aloha 'Oe" resemble the song "The Lone Rock by the Sea" and the chorus of George Frederick Root's 1854 song "There's Music in the Air". "The Lone Rock by the Sea" mentioned by Charles Wilson, was "The Rock Beside the Sea" published by Charles Crozat Converse in 1857, and itself derives from a Croatian/Serbian folk song, "Sedi Mara na kamen studencu" (Mary is Sitting on a Stone Well). The "Aloha Oe" Chorus melody was also used as the counterpoint to the chorus of the jazz song, "Hula Lou" and also could be a counterpoint to Woody Guthrie's folk song, "This Land Is Your Land".


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: An instrumental rendition of the song is featured in many episodes of "SpongeBob SquarePants" as background music.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The song has appeared in several instances throughout Disney's "Lilo & Stitch" franchise. In "Lilo & Stitch" (2002), Nani sings it to Lilo as a farewell the night before they were to be separated. In the "" episode "Spooky" (2003), Lilo reveals to Stitch that she sings the song to herself as a coping mechanism, which leads to Stitch doing so for himself later in the same episode, to Lilo's approval. In "Leroy & Stitch" (2006), Jumba Jookiba uses Elvis Presley's cover of the song during the creation of Leroy to secretly program a fail-safe within him; this is exploited during the climax in Stitch (dressed up as Presley), Lilo, and Reuben (along with several of the Experiments near the end) play an upbeat rock version during the finale to shut Leroy and his clones down.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: In the episode "Cruise Cat" of "Tom and Jerry" (1952), a guitar version of this song plays in the background.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: In the first episode of the 1963 Hanna-Barbera cartoon "Top Cat" entitled "Hawaii, Here We Come", at the start of the episode, Benny the Ball sings the song, after winning a free trip to Hawaii, sometime later Officer Dibble also sings the song. They both however replace some of the lyrics with English ones.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: "Aloha 'Oe" appeared in the scores of many of Warner Bros.' classic "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons, as composer Carl Stalling's stock musical cue for Hawaii-themed gags. Usually instrumental, but Bugs Bunny actually sings one line of the refrain at the very end of "Case of the Missing Hare". In the 1953 cartoon short, "Duck Amuck" part of it is briefly sung by Daffy Duck when the scenery is changed to a Hawaiian setting, courtesy of a sadistic mystery animator and again in "A Squeak in the Deep". In the 1958 Oscar-winning short "Knighty Knight Bugs", the cartoon ends with an enchanted sword performing an instrumental version of the song (played by a musical saw).


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The chorus of the song serves as the intro for Spike Jones' interpretation of "Hawaiian War Chant". ("As the sun pulls away from the shore, and our boat sinks slowly in the west...")


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The song also appeared in the Popeye the Sailor short, "Alona on the Sarong Seas", where it was played in the beginning of the short, and after Popeye eats his spinach.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: In the Japanese anime "Space Dandy" (created in 2014), the eponymous main character is captain of a spaceship called the "Aloha Oe".


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: When Jiang Zemin, then-Chinese President and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, arrived at Hawaii at the beginning of his state visit to U.S. in October 1997, he played "Aloha ‘Oe" with a Hawaiian lap steel guitar and invited then Hawaiian First Lady Vicky Cayetano to sing the song at a dinner with the presence of Governor Ben Cayetano. Jiang recounted that he used to frequently play this song when he was in college in 1940s.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The castaways sing the song as a good luck charm to a robot toward the end of the "Gilligan's Island" episode "Gilligan's Living Doll", as it is about to walk from the island underwater all the way to Hawaii.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The song is played in the eighth episode of the 8th season of "The Simpsons", "Hurricane Neddy", when Ned Flanders drives away to the psychiatric hospital.


title: Aloha ʻOe

text: The song was heard in Alvin and the Chipmunks when Alvin was humming and using the towel rack as a Hula hoop.


title: FC Luzern

text: Fussball-Club Luzern (), or simply abbreviated to FCL, is a Swiss sports club based in Lucerne (). It is best known for its professional football team, which plays in the Super League, the top tier of the Swiss football league system, and has won the national title once and the national cup three times.


title: FC Luzern

text: The club colours are blue and white, derived from the City of Lucerne and Canton of Lucerne coats of arms. The club plays its home games at Swissporarena which was newly built in 2011 at the place of the old Stadion Allmend.


title: FC Luzern

text: FC Luzern was founded in 1901. It has non-professional departments for women's football, volleyball, boccia and gymnastics.


title: FC Luzern

text: FC Luzern's greatest success was winning the Swiss Championship in 1989. The club has also won the Swiss Cup three times (1960, 1992, 2021) and finished runners-up four times (1997, 2005, 2007, 2012).


title: FC Luzern

text: With a total of 17 "moves", FC Luzern has the highest number of promotions and relegations to and from the national first tier since the establishment of a single nationwide top division in 1933.


title: FC Luzern

text: The first known attempt to found a football club in Luzern dates back to 6 May 1867 when an announcement was published in the newspaper "Luzerner Tagblatt" advertising a meeting regarding the foundation of "FC Luzern" and invited "additional members". Even though the call did not have great resonance, this loose group of football friends can be described as a forerunner to FC Luzern.


title: FC Luzern

text: In 1901, a second attempt was initiated by friends Adolf Coulin, Ernst Haag and Hans Walter, who knew football from the Romandie, where the game was already very popular. They met on 8 July 1901 with other football enthusiasts at Floragarten – a restaurant at Seidenhofstrasse near the train station – to arrange the establishment of FC Luzern. Only four days later on 12 July 1901, the first training was held at Allmend, a large green space south of the city centre that would later become the club's home. The official foundation took place on 12 August 1901.


title: FC Luzern

text: The first match was held on 13 April 1902 away against SC Zofingen. In the 1–2 defeat, Albrik Lüthy became the first ever goal scorer for the club. The first match played on home ground was on 25 May 1902 with Zofingen as the opponent again. It ended with a 4–0 victory for the away side.


title: FC Luzern

text: On 13 September 1903, FC Luzern became an official member of the Swiss Football Association (SFA). At the time, clubs were allowed to freely choose the division to play in and the club decided to compete in the third tier Serie C. Despite winning only one match in its first season, the club chose to start in the Serie B for the 1904–05 season. After finishing second for three consecutive years from 1906 until 1909, Luzern was incorporated into the Serie A by the SFA in 1909. However, the task proved to be too big for the side, and Luzern finished the season at the bottom of the league table.


title: FC Luzern

text: Under new management, things turned to the better. For the first time, international matches were held, the first against Unione Sportiva Milanense in 1911, a 2–3 loss in Chiasso. In the second international encounter, Luzern drew 1–1 against Mulhouse, then won their first international match 4–2 over SV Stuttgart in 1912. After disappointing performances in the domestic league, Luzern finished bottom of the table in 1912 and 1913 and lost its right to play in the Serie A.


title: FC Luzern

text: Luzern also struggled in Serie B and was threatened to become the second club in the city. Between 1913 and 1915, Luzern was defeated five times by city rival FC Kickers. For a time, even a merger with 1907 founded Kickers was a realistic scenario, but the merger was rejected by only one vote.


title: FC Luzern

text: After five years in the second division Luzern returned to Serie A in 1918 after beating FC Baden. Dionys Schönecker, who joined FC Luzern from Austrian club Rapid Wien, became the first professional manager for the club in 1921. His appointment was an instant success as Luzern went on to win the central Swiss group of the Serie A and qualified for the final round of the championship. After defeating eastern Swiss champions Blue Stars Zürich 2–1, Luzern faced Servette Geneva in a title decider on 25 June 1922 in Basel. The hotly favoured and experienced Genevans won 2–0, even though the match could not be played to the end after Servette fans stormed the pitch due to a false signal by the referee. The followers could not be persuaded to leave the pitch and the Luzern side agreed to end the match to avoid further incidents.


title: FC Luzern

text: Luzern fell back into old patterns and only narrowly escaped relegation in the two subsequent seasons, but was unable to avoid relegation in 1925. From 1925 to 1930, the club played in the second division and was often close to promotion. Within the SFA, the late 1920s and early 1930s were marked by failed attempts for league reform and chaotic association meetings. After formally securing promotion with its third consecutive second division title in 1929, Luzern was barred from participating in the national first tier until the spring of 1931. However, in 1931, a drastic reduction of clubs in the top division was implemented, meaning forced relegation for no less than 15 clubs, including Luzern.


title: FC Luzern

text: A change in fortune saw Luzern promoted to the newly created Nationalliga in 1936. Despite sanctions by the SFA, the club managed to finish the 1936–37 season fourth, the side's best final league position until 1976. In the following years (which were heavily affected by World War II), FCL was not able to build on this success. Managers came and went but the club never ranked higher than the bottom four. When acclaimed international Sirio Vernati left Luzern in 1943, the team was deprived of its best player and was relegated in the spring of 1944.


title: FC Luzern

text: In the 1940s, Luzern became a typical second division club. In 1952–53, Luzern again had a bad start to the campaign, but improved significantly as the season progressed. Promotion could be secured in the final match against local rival SC Zug.


title: FC Luzern

text: The boom only lasted for two years and Luzern was relegated again in 1955. The club board appointed young German manager Rudi Gutendorf, whose managerial career would later span the entire planet. While Gutendorf saw the first years as a consolidation period, the team almost got instantly promoted after just one year in the second division. Promotion eventually came in 1958.


title: FC Luzern

text: While league performances in the Nationalliga A were erratic throughout the first half of the 1960s, Luzern won its first major national trophy by winning the Swiss Cup in 1960. The final was played against FC Grenchen. Luzern then participated in the first edition of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1960–61, but was comfortably defeated by Fiorentina (0–3, 2–6).


title: FC Luzern

text: The success did not last long and the chronically poor financial situation and average league performances led to many managerial changes. The club was relegated once again in 1966, and Luzern developed a reputation as a "yo-yo team". Promotion in 1967 was followed by relegation in 1969, promotion in 1970, relegation in 1972, promotion in 1974, once again relegation in 1975 and finally promotion in 1979. Eleven different managers stood at the sideline during this time, among them the 1960 cup winner, local legend and later manager of the Switzerland national team, Paul Wolfisberg. His second managerial spell from 1978 to 1982 marked the beginning of one of the most successful periods in the club's history.


title: FC Luzern

text: Luzern signed Ottmar Hitzfeld in the summer of 1980. (It was Hitzfeld's last station as a player before he started his successful managerial career in 1983.) With several mid-table finishes throughout the early 1980s, the club consolidated its position in the league. Friedel Rausch took over as a manager in 1985 and guided Luzern to their most successful era. In 1986, the club finished third and qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time in club history. After a remarkable 0–0 away draw against Spartak Moscow, the home leg was lost 0–1 through a late winner for the Soviet side.


title: FC Luzern

text: With a fifth-place finish in 1987 and 1988, Luzern, being widely viewed as an underdog team, sensationally won the Swiss championship in 1989. It is the single biggest success in the club's history to date. Luzern clinched the title race with a 1–0 home win against Servette in front of 24,000 fans. The deciding goal was scored by German striker Jürgen Mohr.


title: FC Luzern

text: The league triumph entitled Luzern to participate in the European Cup, the club's first (and so far only) appearance in this competition. However, Luzern was without a realistic chance against Dutch champions PSV and suffered another early halt to their European campaigns. Unable to defend the league title in 1990, Luzern qualified for the UEFA Cup and secured its first European win against MTK Budapest, but lost to Admira Wacker Vienna in the next round.


title: FC Luzern

text: In a sudden change of fortune in 1991–92, Luzern failed to qualify for the championship playoff group only due to goal difference and surprisingly suffered relegation after a hapless campaign in the relegation playoffs. Only days after the shock, Luzern won its third major trophy after beating FC Lugano 3–1 in the Swiss Cup final. Rausch left the club at the end of the season.


title: FC Luzern

text: Having returned immediately to the Nationalliga A in 1993, the club could not live up to the earlier successes and played a mediocre role in the following years, with the exception of a cup final appearance in 1997 that was lost against champions FC Sion. The late 1990s and early 2000s were marked by frequent managerial changes and renewed financial struggles. The club's longstanding chairman, Romano Simioni (1975–1998), was forced to step down after a prolonged power struggle between different factions in the club. This was followed by a chaotic and scandal ridden period of financial and sporting instability. In 1999, the club avoided the withdrawal of its playing license only with a last-minute rescue campaign to raise funds. In 2001, Luzern's centenary year, the club's ownership entity, FC Luzern AG, entered administration.


title: FC Luzern

text: After continuously precarious league performances, Luzern eventually got relegated in 2003. The fall went on and Luzern finished behind local rivals SC Kriens for the first time in club history in 2004. Luzern lost the Swiss Cup final in 2005 against FC Zürich. In 2006, under the management of former centre-back René van Eck, the team won the Swiss Challenge League and secured promotion with a 31-match unbeaten run.


title: FC Luzern

text: Luzern appointed former Swiss international Ciriaco Sforza as manager and qualified for another Swiss Cup final that was lost against FC Basel in 2007. The Luzern board of directors fell out of patience with Sforza in 2008 after winning only one point in six matches. Luzern avoided relegation after appointing Rolf Fringer and eventually beating FC Lugano 5–1 on aggregate in the relegation playoffs in 2009.


title: FC Luzern

text: The signing of star player Hakan Yakin in summer 2009 transformed the team into a successful side that finished third. The subsequent UEFA Europa League qualifiers were lost against Utrecht. After a mediocre 2010–11 season, Fringer was replaced with former Swiss international Murat Yakin, brother of Hakan Yakin. Luzern finished the 2011–12 season second – the highest finish since 1989 – but lost yet another Swiss Cup final for the fourth consecutive time. After a poor start to the 2012–13 season and the defeat to Genk in the UEFA Europa League playoff round, Murat Yakin was replaced with Carlos Bernegger. In similar fashion as his predecessor, Bernegger failed to confirm a good first season performance and was replaced by former German international Markus Babbel after a poor season start and a disappointing Europa League qualifier defeat against St Johnstone. Under Babbel's management, the club's performances stabilised as it finished fifth (2014–15), third (2015–16) and fifth again (2016–17). However, Luzern continuously failed to advance in UEFA Europa League qualifying rounds after aggregate defeats to Sassuolo in 2016 and Osijek in 2017.


title: FC Luzern

text: After a disappointing first half of the 2017–18 season, Markus Babbel was replaced with U-21 manager Gerardo Seoane. Seoane's appointment had an immediate positive impact and the club finished the season 3rd. Only weeks after the end of the season, Seoane joined new Swiss champion Young Boys Bern in a surprise move. On 22 June 2018, FC Luzern announced the appointment of former Anderlecht and Nuremberg manager René Weiler. In early 2019, following a sequence of bad results and atmospheric tensions between Weiler and the club's sporting director Remo Meyer, Weiler was replaced by former Swiss international Thomas Häberli who lead the team to a 5th place finish. Luzern progressed to the next round in a European qualifying encounter for the first time since 1992 by beating Faroese side KÍ Klaksvik 2-0 on aggregate but was subsequently eliminated by Espanyol. After a poor first half of the 2019-20 campaign, Häberli was replaced by former Marseille and Getafe midfielder Fabio Celestini.


title: FC Luzern

text: Although the club has only won four important national trophies, Luzern is one of the traditional football clubs in the country with a strong local supporter base. The club draws its support predominantly from Central Switzerland, leading the number of sold season tickets in the cantons of Lucerne, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Uri, Zug as well as in some parts of Aargau and Schwyz. Since moving to the new stadium in 2011, Luzern has always ranked within the top five in terms of average attendance in the Swiss Super League with an average crowd of 9,000 to 14,000.


title: FC Luzern

text: The local derby is played with SC Kriens, whose stadium is located about 1.3 kilometres from FC Luzern's facilities at Allmend. On 12 August 2017, Luzern beat SC Kriens 1–0 in the opening round of the 2017–18 Swiss Cup. It was the first encounter between the two sides in an official contest since 2006.


title: FC Luzern

text: Although there are no traditional and deep rooted rivalries, periods of intensified sporting competition have sparked rivalries between Luzern and Basel in the mid-1990s and with Sion in the mid-2000s. A majority of the fans, particularly Ultra groups, view FC St. Gallen as a major rival. Matches with FC Aarau are also by many considered as a local derby and attract big numbers of Luzern supporters, especially to away matches.


title: FC Luzern

text: Between 1934 and 2009, the club played its home games at the Stadion Allmend, which had a theoretical capacity of 25,000. For security reasons however, the Swiss Football Association did not allow more than 13,000 to attend in the final year of its existence in 2009. Until a new stadium was completed in 2011, Luzern temporarily played its home matches at the Gersag Stadion in Emmenbrücke.


title: FC Luzern

text: In August 2011, the club moved into the newly built Swissporarena, located at the former location of the old stadium. The opening match ended with a 0–0 draw against FC Thun.


title: FC Luzern

text: The greatest success in the club's history was winning the championship in 1989 under the management of German head coach Friedel Rausch. Furthermore, the club played in six Swiss Cup finals, winning two by defeating FC Grenchen 1–0 in 1960 and FC Lugano 3–1 (after extra time) in 1992. Later, the club lost four cup finals in a row: in 1997 against Sion (4–5 on penalties), in 2005 against Zürich (1–3), and twice against Basel, in 2007 (0–1) and 2012 (2–4 on penalties). Reaching the cup final in 2005 as a second-tier club, the promotion back to the Super League in 2006, reaching the cup finals in 2007 and 2012 and winning the cup in 2021 rank as the club's most recent successes.


title: FC Luzern

text: Due to formal licensing requirements, the professional football operations of FC Luzern are consolidated under FC Luzern Innerschweiz AG, a company that is legally and financially separated from the club FC Luzern which retains the non-professional sections of the sports club.


title: FC Luzern

text: FC Luzern Innerschweiz AG is ultimately owned by Bernhard Alpstaeg (52%) and Josef Bieri (48%) via their control of FCL Holding AG.


title: Islam and magic

text: In Islamic culture and Muslim communities throughout the world, magic is "widespread and pervasive". Magic or sorcery (which seeks to alter the course of events usually by calling on a supernatural force) and divination (attempts "to predict future events or gain information about things unseen"), or occultism, encompass a wide range of practices. These include protection from black magic, the evil eye, demons, and evil jinn, which are thought to bring "illness, poverty, and everyday misfortunes"; or alternately practices seeking to bring "good fortune, health, increased status, honor, and power". Techniques include evocation, casting lots, the production of amulets and other magical equipment. Magic have been called a "vital element of everyday life and practice" in both the contemporary and historical Islamic world, the topics generating a "staggering" amount of "literature.


title: Islam and magic

text: On the other hand, magic has also been declared by Islamic scholars to be "evil" in any and all of their forms, denying its practitioners entrance into heaven, and earning them a "divinely sanctioned" punishment of death. At least some of this dispute may be explained by how magic, or forbidden magic, is defined; whether natural, or sympathetic magic—which "makes use of the hidden properties (in Arabic: "khawass") of natural substances"—is included as forbidden magic.


title: Islam and magic

text: As of 2005, this division was on display in bookstalls in market places across the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, where "handbooks for practitioners of the occult" were found alongside "books full of warnings and condemnations" of the handbooks' contents.


title: Islam and magic

text: Over the centuries, magic has "become intricately interwoven with religious elements and practices" in Islamic culture—despite the efforts of orthodox Islamic scholars to stamp it (magic) out—so that the line between what is forbidden and what is allowed has become "blurred".


title: Islam and magic

text: The word usually translated as "magic" in the Quran is "siḥr". According to Adam Silverstein, the "Arabic word for 'magic' is "siḥr", ... in the Qur'an "Siḥr" means ... 'black magic,' but in modern Arabic the same word is used for 'entertaining magic. The Hans Wehr "Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic" defines "siḥr" as "bewitchment, beguilement, enchantment, fascination"; and the plural form ("ashar") as "sorcery, witchcraft, magic".


title: Islam and magic

text: Toufic Fahd gives a number of definitions of related terms in Encyclopedia.com. Magic/"sihr" is part of


title: Islam and magic

text: Some of "the more commonly used branches" of the art of magic listed by Dastghaib Shirazi and/or schools of the occult listed by the Ottoman-Turkic theologian Tasköprüzade


title: Islam and magic

text: Divination (i.e. "prediction of future events or gaining information about things unseen" by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual), has been called "a branch of magic" by "Muslim encyclopedists, such as al-Afkānī, Tāshköprüzade, and Ḥājjī Khalīfah", according to Fahd.


title: Islam and magic

text: Shia cleric Sayyid Abdul Husayn Dastghaib Shirazi of Al-Islam.com and historian Emilie Savage-Smith calls divination in Islam "Kaḥanat"—Dastghaib Shirazi specifying that it is where the one predicting uses knowledge obtained from "some groups of Jinns". ("All the jurists are unanimous in their opinion that "Kahanat" or soothsaying is Harām", according to Dastghaib Shirazi, and all those who go to "a sorcerer, a soothsayer or a liar and testifies to what he says" become infidels, according to the Holy Imam A.S. This is because "Allah the Almighty does not wish people to have knowledge of the future".)


title: Islam and magic

text: Toufic Fahd describes the difference between divination and magic as blurred. Both share a "practical and nontheoretical character"; use "supernatural means to predict natural elements", and share the technique of obtaining knowledge from "demonic inspiration"; but in "Islamic magical literature", the two "run parallel without mingling".


title: Islam and magic

text: Scholars of the history of religion have linked several magical practises in Islam with pre-Islamic Turkish and East African customs. Most notable of the Aftrican customs is the Zār. Other pre-Islamic cultures and practises that had influence on early Islamic belief were Jewish, Sabians of the city of Harran, Aramaic, Iraqi practises; the danger and prevention of the evil eye, the astrology and the "special occult properties of plant, animal, and mineral substances" of late antiquity,


title: Islam and magic

text: Sixty six Quranic verses reportedly relate to the subject of magic. but the verse dealing with magic in the most detail is Q.2:102. The Quran recognizes the belief in magic and sorcery. The Quran forbids magic. The Quran punishes magicians. Most magical descriptions were written in Arabic, because Arabic was assuemed to be sacred. In Verse Q.10:2 Muhammad is falsely accused of being a magician by his opponents ("Yet the disbelievers said, 'Indeed, this ˹man˺ is clearly a magician!). Hadiths likewise indicate that magic is not bad per se, but "islam" is superior to magic. A magician from Mecca heard that Muhammad was called a "majnun" (possessed by a spirit). When Muhammad proved to him, that he relies on God only and that he is God's messenger, the magician converted to Islam.


title: Islam and magic

text: Surah al-Isra suggests that the Quran itself bestows barakah (magical blessings) upon hearers and heals them. In An-Naml (Surah 27), Solomon is described as having the power to speak with animals and jinn, and command birds and devils, (which according to Islam, he only possesses with God's permission). Surah Al-Falaq (Surah 113) is used as a prayer to God to ward off black magic, and according to hadith-literature, was revealed to Muhammad to protect him against Jann, the ancestors of the jinn.


title: Islam and magic

text: Q.2:102 verse describes magic in a negative light. Its practices are secrets that the humans "ought not to have known".


title: Islam and magic

text: The description in Q.2:102 of magic as revealed by a pair of Fallen angels (Hārūt and Mārūt), suggests it is, (in the words of Toufic Fahd), a "fragment of a celestial knowledge ...":


title: Islam and magic

text: Based on the verse, Irmeli Perho describes magic as "part of God’s creation, like good deeds and bad deeds; like belief and unbelief". Since the magicians "evil actions will only take place if God allows it", magic is accommodated in the Islamic doctrine of "an omnipotent God".


title: Islam and magic

text: In a examination of hadith on magic and witchcraft, Irmeli Perho writes that "magic is seen as a power distinct from God, whereas in the Qurʾān magic is a power that is ultimately subject to God’s will".


title: Islam and magic

text: A sahih hadith from Jamiʽ al-Tirmidhi has Muhammad condemning users of magic to death—"The punishment of the "Sahir" [one who practices magic] is a strike of the sword."


title: Islam and magic

text: Witchcraft or black magic is mentioned in "sira" (biography of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad) and hadith (reports about what Muhammad said and did), where Muhammad becomes ill because of an evil doer who uses a magic charm which is hidden "in a well" (in some versions of the story "hair left on the Prophet's comb" and "some other objects" are the charm, in another version "a string with a number of knots upon it"); the Prophet suffered from the magic but prays and receives a dream or a visit from Gabriel to tell him what to do, in the end he is cured through God's power.


title: Islam and magic

text: One scholar, (Irmeli Perho), notes that all versions of the hadith (and all hadith dealing with witchcraft) signify Islamic belief in the power of magic to harm even so great a man as the Prophet of Islam, but the many different variants of the hadith include different solutions to the curse of the charm—in some God's power against the charm is so great Muhammad does not bother to take the magic object(s) out of the well; in others he is asked if he took them out, if he burned them, if he made a counter spell against the charm. In many hadith he answers “God, He is powerful and great, has already cured me", but in one version that statement is absent and Muhammad is only cured after the charm (a knot) is taken and disassembled—these variients representing (to Irmeli Perho) how Muslims don't all believe magic has the same level of power. In the hadith where Muhammad says "God has already cured me", God’s power is described as "sufficient to counter the power of magic" and only an outsider/enemy is involved in magic, whereas in the latter hadith "human action" was required to counter the magic. Believers in human action against harmful witchcraft will indicate support for use of "protective spells" and counter spells.


title: Islam and magic

text: Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) brands sorcery, talismans, and prestidigitation as forbidden and illegal. He states that magician's actions are all evil and done for evil, and that they should be put to death. Al-Ghazali, although admitting the reality of magic, regards learning any sort of magic as forbidden. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (c.1150–1209) "includes under sorcery the use ("isti'ana", seeking help) of the hidden properties ("khawass") of foodstuffs, medicines and unguents"; but traditional medicines are both widely practiced in the Islamic world and "never subject to religious censorship".


title: Islam and magic

text: According to Remke Kruk, the traditional "scholarly definition" of magic distinguishes between natural, or sympathetic magic—which "makes use of the hidden properties (in Arabic: khawass) of natural substances"; and "demoniac magic"—which "involves the help of spirits, usually malevolent spirits (demons)". The first allow the second forbidden.


title: Islam and magic

text: Ibn al-Nadim (c.932-c.992) argues that good supernatural powers are received from God after purifying the soul, while sorcerers please devils and sacrifices to demons, committing acts of disobedience.


title: Islam and magic

text: Al-Razi (1149 or 1150–1209) and Ibn Sina (c. 980–1037), describe magic as merely a tool with the outcome of an act of magic determining whether it is legitimate or not.


title: Islam and magic

text: Whether or not sorcery/magic is accessed by acts of piety or disobedience is often seen as an indicator whether sorcery/magic is licit or illicit, according to Moiz Ansari. Magic where the mind is directed "toward an object other than God" is forbidden, but utilizing "demons and jinn" to perform magic is not necessarily sinful (according to Toufic Fahd). Fahd quotes Ḥājjī Khalīfah in "summarizing the views of the Muslim theologians": 'The obedience of demons and jinn to humans is not something unimaginable, either from the standpoint of reason or from the standpoint of accepted practice.'


title: Islam and magic

text: Tabasi (d.1089) offered a wide range of rituals to perform sorcery, but also agreed that only magic in accordance with sharia is permissible. According to Tobias Nünlist, rather than condemning magic and occultism as whole, Muslim writers on othe subject usually distinguished between licit and illicit occult practises. According to Henrik Bogdan, Gordan Djurdjevic, contrary to Western esotericism and occultism, there is no clear conflict between "orthodoxy" and occultism in Islam.


title: Islam and magic

text: Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), founder of Wahhabism, considered sorcery as one of the few sins where killing was a "divinely sanctioned punishment". 20th century scholar Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani stated that those who have "the conviction that sorcery has effect of its own accord, and not because of God's decision and will", will not enter paradise.


title: Islam and magic

text: Wahid 'Abd al-Salam (or Ibn al-Salam) Bali, a popular Wahhabi-trained author of several books on the dangers of jinn and magic, uses "sorcery" ("siḥr") to mean "demonic, not on sympathetic magic". "Khawass" often refers to "God's holy names and of various Qur'anic texts" and belief that these have a powerful supernatural effect is "very much a part of Islamic daily practice", nonetheless some (Qasim Mahmud al-Mahmud), have denounced "these religious texts also as demonic" and Islamically "unacceptable". (Qasim Mahmud al-Mahmud accused a Islamic healer of the forbidden practice getting help from a jinn after the healer maintained that all fragments of text of the Quran have a 'spirit servant', and if a Muslim reads the appropriate "text a fixed number of times according to the "abjad", they "will immediately obtain what they desire".)


title: Islam and magic

text: Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292–1350), a disciple of Ibn Taimiyya, who became the major source for Wahhabism, entirely disregards magic, including exorcisms, as superstition. During the end of the Ottoman Empire, Muslims started to disregard occult practises as superstition.


title: Islam and magic

text: The categories of practices and treatments mentioned below sometimes overlap, and sometimes are historical and may no longer be either commonly practiced or practiced at all.


title: Islam and magic

text: "Most" magic in the early Islamic world was "protective in nature", asking for God's beneficence in general and His intervention specifically against the supernatural powers of the evil eye, "shayatin" (devils) and "jinn", all mentioned in the Quran. Incantations, spells, evocation, theurgy all involve contacting some spirit/supernatural being/deity and employing them for some purpose.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to Toufic Fahd in encyclopedia.com, "incantations and spells" are "meant to compel the "jinn" and the demons to accomplish a desired end, by pronouncing the formula `"Azamtu ʿalaykum" ('I command you')". Nothing about the practice of commanding jinn is found in the Qurʾān or ḥadīth, but Fahd quotes scholar Ḥājjī Khalīfah (1609–1657) defending the practice:


title: Islam and magic

text: This thing is possible and lawful, according to reason and the law; whoever denies it is not highly regarded, because he winds up failing to acknowledge the omnipotence of God: to subjugate the spirits, to humble them before him, and to make them subordinate to men, is one of the miracles of [God's] creation.


title: Islam and magic

text: This practice is lawful in Islam according to Fahd, provided its practitioner does not act "in a manner that is wicked and harmful to others", and does not direct their "mind toward an object other than God".


title: Islam and magic

text: According to some (Ibn Khaldūn and the Pseudo-Majrīṭī) magical ability is not acquired, but must be something in the magician's "nature", specifically they must have a disposition called "al-tibaʿ al-tamm", "the perfect nature"; "the person who possesses it attains 'knowledge of the secrets of creation, of natural causes, and of the mode of being of things.


title: Islam and magic

text: "Evocation" involves ordering "the spirits of the dead, the demons, and the planets" to carry out the wishes of the magician, (whereas with "incantations and spells" it is jinn and demons who are compelled to obey the magician, according to Toufic Fahd in encyclopedia.com).


title: Islam and magic

text: "To evoke the spirit of a planet" (Fahd writes), a ritual must be performed where the magician is dressed in the right color ("red-gray for Saturn, white-gray for Jupiter, the yellow-green-red of red-gold for Mars, red-gold for Venus, a mixture of all colors for Mercury, and green-white for the Moon"), perfumed with the "scent" of the planet, has consumed the right "essence and flavor" of the planet, mounted an "image of whatever it is one plans to ask of the spirit invoked", and then waited for the right moment in the zodiac.


title: Islam and magic

text: The difference between magic and theurgy ("ʿilm al-khawāṣṣ wa-al-ṭalāsim") is (according to Ibn Khaldūn), that


title: Islam and magic

text: the sorcerer does not need any aid, while those who work with talismans seek the aid of the spiritualities of the stars, the secrets of numbers, the particular qualities of existing things, and the positions of the sphere that exercise an influence upon the world of the elements, as the astrologers maintain. The philosophers, therefore, say that sorcery is a union of spirit with spirit, while the talisman is a union of spirit with body.


title: Islam and magic

text: to combine the active celestial forces with the passive earthly forces at moments favorable to the desired action and influence, with the help of vapors [able] to strengthen and attract the spirit of the talisman, with the intent of producing unusual manifestations in the world of generation and decay. In comparison with magic, this science is more accessible, for both its principles and its causes are known. Its usefulness is obvious, but mastery comes only after a great deal of effort.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to Savage-Smith, the amulets and talismanic objects (there being no difference between them) used by early Muslims "chiefly took the form of pious invocations to God, through Quranic quotations and prayers", and were used "to ward off the evil eye and misfortune", and to gain good fortune, increase fertility, "potency or attractiveness". Early talismanic objects "reflect pre-Islamic magical symbolism" and contain symbols such as a "long horned stag", oryx, scorpion, lion or dog, stars, "a frame of pseudo-writing"; and magic squares.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to Ḥājjī Khalīfah, natural magic ("al-shaʾwadhah") "involves imaginary phenomena ... aerial illusions, atmospheric vapors, playing with fire, tricks with bottles, cups, and glasses, illusions with eggs, fruits produced out of season, wax figures, animal taming, discovery of hidden objects, preparation of magic ink, and so on", often concocted from mixtures of "natural essences, ointments, liquified materials, or even special words with suggestive powers". Savage-Smith describes "confidence tricks, sleight-of-hand trick" using "lamps, candles, vapours, bottles, cups and glasses, eggs," etc., as "magic as trickery and conjuring" practiced by disreputable individuals in medieval Islamic times.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to Remke Kruk, while traditional handbooks of magic, such as ones "circulated under the name 'al-Buni'


title: Islam and magic

text: and their later offshoots", including a work referred to as the 'Diyarbi book', are full of information on how "khawass, hidden properties, of various Qur'an chapters and verses and of God's holy names" can be put to work in invocations, but "all these books contain instructions" on harming other people. They contain information "not only about how to banish, but also about how to destroy and kill enemies and how to drive people", such as married or unmarried couples, "apart ("tafriq")" invoking angels and/or jinn. These practices are condemned by orthodox Muslims.


title: Islam and magic

text: Savage-Smith writes that "by the thirteenth century" in the Islamic world "there were manuals of sorcery giving spells for flying, for becoming invisible, for walking on water, for giving someone a dog's head", and other "amazing things".


title: Islam and magic

text: The evil eye, ( "al-ʿayn", also ,), where misfortune befalls someone after another person has looked at them, usually with feelings of jealousy is recognized by Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Khaldūn.


title: Islam and magic

text: Ibn Sīnā explains the evil eye as "an admiring tendency of the soul that exercises [the evil eye], by this property, a weakening influence on the object of its admiration" [the victim of the evil eye] According to Islam Question and Answer fatwa site, (according to Muhammad) the second greatest cause of death among Muslims is the evil eye: 'Most of those who die among my ummah (Muslim community) die because of the will and decree of Allaah, and then because of the evil eye.'


title: Islam and magic

text: natural and innate. It cannot be left alone. It does not depend on the free choice of its possessor. It is not acquired by him. [It is] an influence exercised by the soul of the person who has the evil eye. A thing or situation appears pleasing to the eye of a person, and he likes it very much. This [circumstance] creates in him envy and the desire to take it away from its owner. Therefore he prefers to destroy him.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to Dawn Perlmutter, writing in 2013, "an entire industry of professional exorcists" has arisen in "the Middle East and among Western Muslims", performing Qur'anic healing, posting on YouTube and advertising on Facebook and Twitter. In Islamic literature there are detailed treatises that include "entire exorcism rites and purification rituals for the destruction of amulets and other magical items" to neutralize black magic.


title: Islam and magic

text: In the early and classical Islamic world divination (gaining information about future events or things unseen by occult methods) encompassed a range of techniques, "grouped roughly" into those "largely intuitive" (for example, water diviners observed the behaviour of animals, such as the hoopoe, to discover "the presence of underground water") and those employing "numerical or mechanical methods". interpreting the will of God by examining "the conformation of animal parts"; the patterns appearing on the


title: Islam and magic

text: "surface of water, oil, or ink, (hydromancy); dream interpretation (oneiromancy); "Few details remain of the specific methods" used in these intuitive techniques. Predicting changes in weather patterns "based on the visibility of important star-groups", was the subject of a tract by al-Kindi c. 801–873 CE) and another tract "is still in circulation today, at least in Iraq".


title: Islam and magic

text: focuses more on spiritual protection and family counseling than prediction and prophecy. In addition to reading cards, dice, palms, and coffee grounds, activities include selling amulets to ward off evil spirits and providing advice for marital problems. In Afghanistan, fortunetellers operate out of small shops or outside of mosques and shrines across the country but are rarely consulted to portend the future; most often their clients are women or the elderly seeking guidance for problems affecting their families. In Iran and Pakistan this fortunetelling is also widespread.


title: Islam and magic

text: Divining using "specific parts of the human body" (physiognomy), such as twitching eyelids or other involuntary movements, "the shape and appearance of the hands, joints, and nails" ("`ilm al-kaff") and chiromancy or palmistry (employing lines on the hands - "ʿilm al-asārīr"), "were, and still are popular" in the Muslim world. Physiognomy does not try to align "physical characteristics with character traits" but to use them to read the future. Twitching eyelids, for example, would not indicate a nervous personality but might foretell "the success or failure of an enterprise".


title: Islam and magic

text: In Islamic history, Astrology ("ʿilm al-nujūm", "the science of the stars"), was "by far" the most popular of the "numerous practices attempting to foretell future events or discern hidden things", according to Savage-Smith. It has several sub categories:


title: Islam and magic

text: Sortilege, or practice of casting lots and interpreting the results produced by chance ("qurʿa"), was used both to predict the future, and "as a means of determining a course of action or deciding between courses of action". While casting lots was "considered legitimate" in Islam, according to Savage-Smith, two practices involving chance are prohibited by the Quran:


title: Islam and magic

text: Using the "numerical values of letters" to form a word ("ʿilm al-ḥurūf") has been used as divination. Treatises on divination maintained that "the victor and vanquished" of some battle or event could be determined by "calculating the numerical value of the names of the contenders, dividing each by nine, and finding the remainders on the chart". More complicated techniques involved combining the letters of one of the 99 names of God "with those of the name of the desired object" ("jafr"). An "even more" complicated form involved creating an "intricate circular chart ... concentric circles, letters of the alphabet, elements of astrology, and poetry" and calculating "the degree of the ecliptic on the eastern horizon".


title: Islam and magic

text: The difference between miracles and magic is this: a miracle is a divine power that arouses in the soul [the ability] to exercise influence. The [worker of miracles] is supported in his activity by the spirit of God. The sorcerer, on the other hand, does his work by himself and with the help of his own psychic power, and, under certain conditions, with the support of devils. The difference between the two concerns the idea, reality, and essence of the matter.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to contemporary Shia cleric Sayyid Abdul Husayn Dastghaib Shirazi, the ability "to perform extraordinary acts" (miracles) or "Karamat" happens because of the great "piety and abstinence" of the miracle worker and is not sinful (according to Dastghaib Shirazi), provided there can be no question that the performer of the miracle


title: Islam and magic

text: "Quranic treatment" is made up of practices based "exclusively" on "reciting Qur'anic texts, and defining exactly what this implies".


title: Islam and magic

text: Elements of the 'Qur'anic treatment include "talking about the patient's troubles", recitation of "ruqyah"—i.e specific Quranic verses (and dua) (see notes below) and prolonging the treatment "if no progress is observed". Though based on revealed scripture and religious belief, parts of the treatment also have "obvious psychotherapeutic value"—recitation of scripture the patient believes to be divine, emphasis on the patient talking about their problems, "repetition of simple rituals within a well-defined time schedule over a certain period of time"—and as of 2005, was "highly fashionable" even among the Muslim elite in places like Cairo.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2011–2012 of Muslims around the world, a majority of Muslims surveyed in the Middle East North Africa, Turkey, South Asia, and Southeast Asia believe in Jinn—However, less than 20% of those surveyed thought that making offerings to jinn was an "acceptable part of Islamic tradition". Belief in talismans, witchcraft and spiritual healers, was not as widespread, ranging from one half to a quarter of Muslims in these regions. More religious Muslims are more likely to believe in jinn, talismans and other supernatural entities.


title: Islam and magic

text: Scholar Remke Kruk found books on magic and sorcery "extremely well represented" in "street stalls and bookshops" in the Muslim world from Marrakesh to Cairo to Yemen circa 2005. Practical handbooks on the subject were common, but with the "orthodox" Islamic revival, "religious pamphlets condemning various practices" also became popular, starting around 1990. G. Hussein Rassool states that


title: Islam and magic

text: Throughout the Muslim world, there are sorcerers, fortune tellers and traditional healers; many are in violation of interpretations of the Shari’ah (Islamic law). This leads the magicians or healers that use magic or witchcraft into the realm of major "Shirk" which refers to the association of a partner with Allah, the summoning other than God and relying on others beside Allah.


title: Islam and magic

text: Kruk writes that "over the centuries" the Islamic scholars of "official Islam" have worked to forbid magical practices, but despite their efforts magic practices have "become intricately interwoven with religious elements and practices" in Islamic culture. Consequently, the line between forbidden and allowed "is so blurred that neither the practitioner nor the client" are often aware of when they are crossing that line.


title: Islam and magic

text: On the one hand, practices approved by strict Islamic conservatives (called "orthodox" by Kruk) and revivalists to counteract magic include things like the use of water "over which the Quran has been recited" or to which have been added "salt, rose essence, oil of black caraway, or the leaves of the lote tree". On the other, in traditionally practised "magic and sorcery" now under attack from those strict conservatives, recitation of the 99 names of God and verses of the Quran play "a major part".


title: Islam and magic

text: The practice of many Islamic healers who claim to talk to jinn for the purpose of curing and preventing the evil eye and exorcism of possession by jinn, is believed to be the extremely serious sin of "shirk" (mentioned above) by more strict/conservative/orthodox Muslims. Kruk points out how fine the differences between approved and disapproved practices can be—it is acceptable to get in touch with jinn "in exorcisms" to "threaten" them, but it is "shirk" to "ask their help" in a healing; dissolving Quranic texts written on paper in water is forbidden, but "writing in bowls with ink that is washed off by the water poured into the bowl", is recommended by the well known conservative, Wahabbi-oriented cleric Wahid 'Abd al-Salam Bali.


title: Islam and magic

text: Kruk worries that the rise of stricter forms of Islam has led to an attack on healing "practices that used to be well integrated into Islamic life".


title: Islam and magic

text: According to Ahmed Ferky Ibrahim, (professor of Islamic law at McGill University), while "capital punishment for magic is rooted in Islamic history", it was seldom applied historically. "When you read 16th- through 19th-century Ottoman court records, for instance, you realize there was no inquisition of magicians, no witch hunts, as was the case in Christian Europe ...The frequent persecution of magicians is indeed a recent phenomenon".


title: Islam and magic

text: As of 2013, "stricter laws, arrests, and executions have resulted in efforts to deter magical practices" in "Afghanistan, Gaza, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia". Sorcery is also a crime in Nigeria.


title: Islam and magic

text: In Saudi Arabia (prior to the reign of Muhammad bin Salman), Harry Potter books were "forbidden" and men and women have been beheaded on charges of sorcery.


title: Islam and magic

text: In 2009, a special "Anti-Witchcraft Unit" was "created and formalized", not only to investigate and pursue alleged witches, but to "neutralize their cursed paraphernalia, and disarm their spells". In that year, in just one region (Makkah) alone, "at least 118 people were charged with 'practicing magic' or 'using the book of Allah in a derogatory manner. By 2011, the Anti-Witchcraft Unit had established nine witchcraft-fighting bureaus in cities across the Saudi, and processed "at least 586 cases of magical crime".


title: Islam and magic

text: In 2007, an Egyptian pharmacist, Mustafa Ibrahim, was beheaded in Riyadh after being convicted on charges of "practicing magic and sorcery" as well as other charges.


title: Islam and magic

text: In 2008, police went to the trouble of luring a well-known Lebanese television psychic, Ali Hussain Sibat, into a sting operation while he was in Saudi on hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). He was sentenced to death but had his sentenced reduced to 15 years in prison "after outcry from international human rights organizations". In September 2011 a Sudanese man was beheaded, having been caught in another sting operation "set in motion by the religious police".


title: Islam and magic

text: Human rights workers allege that accused in Saudi Arabia are often foreign domestic workers from Africa and Southeast Asia who often are simply practicing folk medicine from their country or who are charged with witchcraft by their employers in retaliation for taking those employers to court for refusal to pay wages. (The power of the Committee for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue that oversees the anti-witchcraft unit has been sharply curtailed under the reign of crown prince Muhammad bin Salman.)


title: Islam and magic

text: In Iran in 2011, 25 advisers and aides of the then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei were arrested on charges of practising sorcery and black magic.


title: Islam and magic

text: According to "the top sorcerer among Iran's ruling elite" (top "according to associates clients and government officials"), Ahmadinejad met with him "at least twice" (Ahmadinejad denies the charges), and was just one among "dozens" of high Iranian government officials" who consult him on "matters of national security". The "top" sorcerer (claims to) regularly contact Jinn who "work for Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, and for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency", and has had 'a long battle to infiltrate the Israeli jinn and find out what they know. The sorcerer also claimed that not only did jinn work for the US and Israel, but that some were being used by him "to infiltrate" the intelligence agencies of Israeli and U.S.


title: Islam and magic

text: In Gaza, exorcism is not illegal but treated with considerable suspicion by the Islamist ruling Hamas party, which claimed to have "exposed thirty cases of fraud" in one year, 2010.


title: Islam and magic

text: The BBC relates the story of a charismatic Mali-born confidence artist (Foutanga Babani Sissoko) who convinced the bank manager at Dubai Islamic Bank (Mohammed Ayoub) that he, Sissoko, using black magic, "could take a sum of money and double it" ("... he saw lights and smoke. He heard the voices of spirits. Then there was silence"). Between 1995 and 1998 Ayoub made 183 transfers into bank accounts of Sissoko—eventually totaling 890 million dirhams or $242 million—"expected it to come back in double the amount." However, after a time the Bank's auditors "began to notice that something was wrong" and Sissoko (who had left Dubai for the U.S. and then Mali) stopped answering Ayoub's calls. Eventually the Dubai government covered the banks loses and Ayoub was convicted of fraud and sentenced to three years in prison. Rumour had it "he was also forced to undergo an exorcism, to cure him of his belief in black magic."


title: Islam and magic

text: In Pakistan it is common to slaughter an animal to ward off evil and bad luck, it is especially efficacious is sacrificing a black goat. In December 2016, after 48 people died in the crash of a propeller-driven Pakistan International Airlines plane, a group of airline staff were seen slaughtering a black goat on the tarmac of Islamabad’s airport.


title: Islam and magic

text: This practice is not restricted to the lower echelon of Pakistani society. When he was President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari had a black goat sacrificed at his house every day to ward off black magic and the evil eye. (61% of Pakistani Muslim surveyed believe in the evil eye according to a 2012 Pew report.) Zardari was also known to seek the advice of a spiritual healer on when and where it was auspicious to travel.


title: Islam and magic

text: In Syria in January 2015 ISIS beheaded a male street performer ("known for entertaining locals with ... magic tricks like making coins and cell phones disappear") in a public square. (Although Adam Silverstein suggests this may be less strict enforcement than ISIS's confusion over the definition of sihr).


title: Islam and magic

text: As a "good representative" of the kind of literature attacking the practice of magic, Kruk cites a popular, widely available book ("al-Sarim al-Battar fi tasaddi li-l-sahara al-ashrar"), on "how to deal with sorcery and its evil effects", written from an orthodox and strict Wahhabi viewpoint, by Saudi shaykh Wahid 'Abd al-Salam (or Ibn al-Salam ) Bali.


title: Islam and magic

text: Shia cleric Sayyid Abdul Husayn Dastghaib Shirazi, who states on his webpage on Al-Islam that "a Muslim who indulges in magic and does not repent is punished by death", goes on to affirm that "many" Islamic jurists are of the opinion that "countering one magic spell by another is permitted", and gives examples of how


title: Xi'an JH-7

text: The Xi'an JH-7 ( – fighter-bomber; NATO reporting name Flounder), also known as the FBC-1 (Fighter/Bomber China-1) Flying Leopard, is a tandem two-seat, twin-engine fighter-bomber in service with the People's Liberation Army Naval Air Force (PLANAF), and the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF). The main contractors are Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation (XAC) and the 603rd Aircraft Design Institute (later named the First Aircraft Institute of AVIC-I).


title: Xi'an JH-7

text: The first JH-7s were delivered to the PLANAF in the mid-1990s for evaluation, with the improved JH-7A entering service in 2004.


title: Xi'an JH-7

text: In the early 1970s, the PLAAF required a new fighter-bomber to replace the Harbin H-5 and Nanchang Q-5. A request was duly submitted to the Ministry of Aviation Industry (later renamed to the Aviation Industry Corporation of China), which organized a domestic development program when efforts to secure a joint venture with foreign partners failed. The program was authorized on 19 April 1983 by then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. The program was also aiming to make use of newly imported British Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines at the time.


title: Xi'an JH-7

text: The PLANAF required a similar aircraft and the program set out to develop a variant for each set of requirements. The PLAAF variant was conceived as an all-weather, long-range bomber/strike aircraft, with a two-seat, tandem cockpit, electronic countermeasures (ECM), and terrain following capabilities (similar to the General Dynamics F-111). The naval version differed in that it was conceived as a dedicated reconnaissance/strike aircraft. The PLAAF variant was dropped in the early 1980s, with the PLANAF variant becoming the JH-7.