Roaming, travelling, visiting and tasting cultures, traditions & living patterns all over the world are all pleasant rewards that Almighty God has given to humans. The knowledge of human will never be completed if one never experienced other cultures and never saw the better practices in foreign countries. Travelling can enrich one’s wisdom, but unfortunately things are being tougher day by day to move around from one place to another. Well, if a list can be made on the most popular and cherished travel destination people always want to go, Rome can never ever be overlooked.

Rome is a place where history and present life run together side by side. If you are planning to step into Rome, then I must say, make the mental preparation to experience a live, biggest and moving museum. Yeah, you have read it right. Rome itself is nothing less than a museum! The beauty of the city will amaze you, surprise you, and turn you on! So why you are waiting? Make the plan of your next summer getaway to Rome and experience the most pictorial cities of the world. Never miss The Vatican, St Peter’s Square, Trevi Fountain and most importantly Colosseum, whenever you go there. It might be a business tour or a honeymoon, never miss this golden opportunity of sightseeing in Rome.

Transportation: Transportation is very important to get into the city and to move around so you should have an idea, what option you have at hand, and which one to choose. First, there are two international airports which are ready to welcome you. One is Leonardo DA Vinci/Fiumicino Int’l Airport and the other is Ciampino International Airport. From the former one, you will get one of the available trains to enter the central city. Among them, you can choose Terravision train which is the cheapest and easiest way to enter from this airport to the city.

If your holiday duration is 3 days to more, be clever to buy the Roma pass. For 30 euro, you will get free entries to many museums and all public transportation and handsome discounts on theaters and programs. Make sure about its expire date and enjoy.

Other than these, you can use taxis, buses, bicycles but never miss walking around the eternal city.

Eat & Rest: Ah, to find out a good food court, it would be intelligent to search on the residential areas, skipping the tourist locations. It is easy because, Rome is loaded with good restaurants. You can go for Pizzas, Ice creams, there is also foods for vegetarians in multiple buffet restaurants. Overall the prices are like 2 euros per pizza slice and around 20 euros for one main course at lunch or dinner. About 1 euro for water can be saved if you choose designed water fountains for drinking water. Don’t get afraid, they are so fresh and safe to drink.

It is good to search for hotels in the territory of Rome, like modern Rome, old, north, south etc. One thing everyone should know is that if you choose a hotel up to 3 star, you need to pay a tax of 2 euros per night and for 5-7 star hotels you will be charged a tax of 3 euros.

See and Shop: It is totally impossible to describe the millions of places to visit. I am briefly enlisting below some which are worth to see:

Museums: To know the development of any place from the past to the present, museums are the most important. Give a visit to Galleria Borghese, Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Capitolline Museums, the Galleria d’Arte Antica are just a few of thousands.

• Seven Hills of Rome
• Ostia Antica
• The Colosseum
• San Clemente
• Ancient and Catholic Rome
• The Piazzas
• Hadrian’s villa
• Testaccio: If interested in the night life of Rome then don’t miss this place to visit for party.

Shopping is an unavoidable part of travelling. In Rome, most affordable clothes and accessories are available mainly in Via Del Corso, Via Condotti, Pantheon, and Campo de’ Fiori. For a big shopping mall, Euroma2 is the best one with about 230 shops. It is obvious that you are going to love shopping here.

Rome, the largest and capital city of Italy, is an ancient city of the Roman empire, symbol of power, witness of many cultures and religion throughout its 2500 years of perseverance. A vacation to this city will be the treasure of your life.

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The religious man of Pakistan by the name of Thair ul Qadri has started his Million Man March on Islamabad this Sunday. He has returned to Pakistan after around eight years of exile in Canada. There are many people that are quite skeptical about his Qadri’s intentions because he says that he wants change. He has spent millions on his advertising getting support for his part. He says that terrorism and violence cannot be permitted in Islam.

Tahir ul Qadri has been busy promoting his agenda from Canada and even speaking out to the public through his videos and books. Now he is back in the spotlight in Pakistan and is ready to take action. He is telling the caretaker administration to replace the government and carry out fare elections this time around. The government has responded to the actions of Tahir ul Qadri by saying that nothing is going to stand in the way and there are going to be timely and fair elections.

Tahir ul Qadri says that he is doing his upmost best to ensure that there is a corruption free electoral process that takes places. Qadri has said that if the election reform demands are not met by Thursday then he will stage a Million Man March to the capital with thousands of supporters following him. Malik says that he will not allow the rallies to enter downtown Islamabad because they pose a security risk and will disrupt business in the city. Mr. Rehman Malik has said that he will hold Qadri responsible if any violence or murders occur in the country.

Malik has announced that Pakistani Taliban is planning attacks on the Million Man March and still Mr. Qadri is spending a lot on television urging others to join him. Despite a lot of criticism from the government Qadri is quite intent on marching to the capital despite all the risks. It has been expected that there are going to be around one to two million individuals that are going to join in on the march. They are planning on removing the barricades that are going to be put up by the government and will be in the city until all their demands are met. There are numerous supporters that say that Qadri is doing this for the benefit of the country and is trying to make a positive change.

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Terrorism is no more a new vocabulary in the modern world.  Terrorists have become part of the modern society. There will be no single day that you will wake up and not get the alert of breaking news on the activities of the terrorists. A collapse of a building under some destroying forces of weapons or mass destruction, suicide bombing, grenade explosion, bullets tearing into heads of people, mass killing, are the sort of news people wake up to fill their ears with. It has become the norm, that is the society and things do not seem to change any sooner.

All over the world, reports are indicating that terrorist camps are being established to house and facilitate the activities of the terrorists. Look in Africa, Europe, Asia, America, Australia and all the continents of the earth and it will come to your knowledge that terrorist camps are everywhere. In America, there is a jihadist group that is already in operation and is said to be responsible for over 35 terrorist camps in America. Jamaal, has leased a very big portion of land in an America where one of the terrorist leaders in America, Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, is using this as an operational basis for terrorist activities.

Terrorists are being trained in the best way possible to launch their attacks to other nations. One of the leaders was heard boasting of their activities under the claim that they are fighting the evils in America on behalf of Allah. The group is suspected of having committed a series of murder and bombing attacks in different places in the US. There are videos that have been released showing Americans converting to Islamists, and how they get trained to launch attacks using bombs, riffles, and AK-47.

Karachi in Pakistan has housed terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda. It was just recently reported that there are new 43 terrorist camps that have been discovered in Pakistan. Taliban has its basis of operation in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. A Hezbollah group in Syria has been a camp that was established for long to run the terrorism activities. Secretariats among other terrorist groups have been established all over the Middle East and Europe as well.

Africa has not been left behind in this. Starting with east Africa, Al-Shabaab reigns here. It is the sub-branch of a bigger terrorist group that was led by Osama bin laden camps in Somalia. It has completely paralyzed the political stability of the country, destroyed the economic growth and disrupted the social life. In Tunisia, there allegedly exists an area commonly known as a closed zone in the south.

The country has 2 terrorist camps where terrorists get trained and then transferred to countries like Libya, Mali and Syria just to mention a few. There have been a number of times when the Al-Qaeda has brushed shoulders with the militant bodies. Military support, ammunition as well as external funding is what some of these terrorist camps and groups receive from those who are funding terrorist activities.

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A New York-based magazine has sparked outrage after publishing a story about its fashion editor wearing a niqab for a day.

Vice magazine published a story on its website yesterday that details difficulties experienced by Annette Lamothe-Ramos, its fashion editor, while wearing a five-piece niqab, a cloth normally worn by some Muslim women when they are out in public.

The editor, who incorrectly labelled the cloth a burqa in the story, told of how she "scared tourists", felt like Batman and began to sweat in places she had never sweated before, all of which offended readers of the consistently irreverent magazine.

Ms Lamothe-Ramos, who also works as a DJ in New York, wrote about how she would never "do anything like this again because it suckkkkked".

Daily Mail, 8 August 2012

See "I walked around in a burqa all day (And I'm not Muslim)", Vice, 8 August 2012

And "A response to the detractors of our burqa-for-a-day article", Vice, 9 August 2012

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In the previous post I’ve shown that language itself is a sign that is based on military aspects. In fact, language itself is so dependent on the gathering of distinct elements to give birth to words, sentences, and meaning, as an army is of the gathering of distinct individuals – and if soldiers congregate around a fixed standard, where do the elements of language congregate themselves?

I would like to start by telling you about the Greek word phalaggos, that means line of battle as well as the joints between the fingers and toes, nowadays known as phalanges. From this word, another derived: phalanx, that was used In ancient Greece in relation to a division composed by the total members of the infantry. This word was inherited by English language, meaning a tactical formation consisting of a block of heavily armed infantry standing shoulder to shoulder in fixed lines several ranks deep – a meaning that got its inspiration from the close position of the elements of the Greek phalanx infantry, whose first rows were formed by soldiers having their spears projecting out over the first rank of shields, making it impossible for the enemy to reach one of its members without being pierced first.

In the Qur’an, we find this row in 61:4, “Indeed, Allah loves those who fight in His cause in a row as though they are a structure joined firmly.”  - the word row being conveyed by صف (Sf), to set, placed, or stationed, a company of men, military force, in a rank, row, or line.
The word structure is a translation of بنى (bnia), a root that also denotes the act of constructing and bringing up, educate. In Latin, structura means a fitting together, adjustment; having had its origin in struo, to make by joining together; to build, fabricate, make, form, construct, and, with the idea of order predominating, to set in order, arrange. In other words, the stationing of troops in a row is equivalent to constructing.

I’m certain that you’re familiar with the need of arranging bricks in a row so as to build a wall. In Arabic, we find such a wall in root سور, that also means a sign or token as well as being used to denote the chapters of the Qur’an. The idea is that every single sign is arranged in such a manner as to render possible the construction of whole. To the building as a whole, as a group composed by orderly arranged elements in rows, be it bricks or soldiers, we’ll give the name book, كتب, (ktb), a root that also means the disposing the troops in order.

So, basically, the Qur’an is a building. Being a building, it’s composed of elements closely joined in rows. But, remember that in order to assure that these rows are made even, masons use a wooden instrument similar to a rule? This instrument is found amongst the meanings of ام, the root we’ve found in the second part of this article, also signifying origin and mother.

Before concluding this article, there’s just one last detail to which I have to call your attention: the fact that the Qur’an is conveyed by Arabic root قرا, which means to collect together – and which, in turn, means that even the title itself is a sign… because in Arabic, the title of a book is one of the meanings of عنو (‘nu), a root that also refers to everything that serves as an indication of other thing.

God willing, in my next article I’ll tell you the story of what happened when I noticed that ayat is a word composed by the first and last letters of Arabic alphabet, and decided to look at the word in my native language that’s as well formed through the addition of the first and last letters of Portuguese alphabet.

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In the previous post, we’ve seen how  the identification of signs is dependent on the sense of vision.

I would now like to analyze an Arabic root whose presence in this article I hope will allow me to prove that in order to know signs a special kind of knowledge is needed, a type of  knowledge that seems to be associated with vision.

The root is سمو (smu), whose main meanings in the Qur’an are those of sky and names.
A name is a sign in the form of a language unit by which a person or thing is known.

The root سمو also means a form or figure seen from a distance, and the aspect of anything – so basically, just like the others we’ve seen so far, a name is also a sign with its own shape. But besides this similarity, a name has one characteristic that makes it distinct from the others: names are signs that can be used to allude to someone or something that is not present, which means that the recognizance of names is not dependent on vision.

To put it in other words, if names are like forms that we see then either we identify those forms or we don’t, that is, either we know them or we don’t. It is not a question of not seeing them, but of recognizing them. In Latin, this verb is recognosco, and literally means to know again. Being used to denote the act of recalling to mind, this meaning to know again as a recollection in the mind is dependent on the thing being previously known – and this is probably why سمو is synonym with علم (‘lm), a root whose main occurrence in the Qur’an is to denote knowledge, as I’ve pointed out in the first part of this article.

We should now recall that ayat denotes both the signs and the verses in the Qur’an. In my opinion, this pair should to be looked at from the very peculiar aspect it assumes in the Qur’an, where those signs lead a sort of double-live, as they are both apparent and not immediately perceptible… To say it in other words, the concept of ayat in the Qur’an tells us of  the existence of an apparent thing that is inseparable from a thing not equally apparent, and it is only because we are capable of seeing or recognizing the former that we are able to infer, or deduce, the presence of the other. This is also coherent with علم and سمو connection with signs, allowing me to conclude that getting to know the signs and the verses of the Qur’an is, in fact, dependent not only on the ability of seeing them but also of conceiving them.

In order for a better understanding of what conceiving means, I would like to call your attention to the Latin verb from which it derives: concipio, to take or lay hold of. From this general meaning, a figurative one emerged: to take or seize something by the sense of sight, which in turn was used as meaning to comprehend intellectually. I think that this verb is the one that more explicitly shows us that there’s an equivalence between seeing and understanding, an equivalence that originates in the general metaphor of the eye of the intellect, that is, a sort of sixth sense that is responsible for the perception of unapparent things.

The fact that they’re intrinsically connected is made explicit in Arabic root بصر, that denotes both the sense of vision with the eye and the vision of the intellect, as demonstrated, for instance, in 24:44, “God alternates the night and the day. Indeed in that is an indication for those of vision”.

The alternation of night and day is an apparent sign susceptible of being caught by the eyes, and, at the same time, an unapparent one that can only be grasped by the intellect – which means that this sign is a concept, that is, it is a name given to the conjunction of all the characteristic features or particulars of the alternation that can only be seen by the other type of vision. But if we wish to understand even better this type of knowledge, I suggest taking a look at 3:190 “Indeed, in […] the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding.“, where understanding is denoted by لب, a root that clearly associates it with the edible heart of nuts, almonds, etc. In other words, this is the type of knowledge or understanding that has its origin on the capability of being able to look at the inside, at the center of something that is hidden – a notion that is rendered clear in English language through the noun insight, literally, a sight or view into the interior.

Inspired by the sense of names in سمو, in the next post I will try to explain how these units of language congregate around its own standard…

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In the previous post, I’ve shown you that signs are associated with physical forms. Furthermore, and in order to shed more light on the concept, I’ve added one other Arabic root, علم, that shows us several examples of what signs are, and to one of them I now wish to pay special attention: the standard or banner to which soldiers congregate.

In ancient Rome, the military standard was named signum (the source of our sign), a word whose general meaning was that of a a mark, token, sign, indication. In its particular use in military language, the signum was the distinctive sign of a division of an army, a meaning that gave birth to several expressions, such as the following of the standard to denote the marching in military order; the relinquishing the standard as a synonym of deserting, and the fixing the banner as likened to encamping. This last meaning was conveyed in Latin through the expression signa figere. Meaning to fix, fasten, attach, affix, the verb figo (the source of  adverb fixe, that is, fixedly) was used as an allusion to the fixing in the ground, hence to erect or set up.

The Arabic root نصب (nSb), means to put, set upright. It can be applied to stones set up as a sign or mark to show the way. Furthermore, when used with the standard of علم it means setting it up. One other interesting thing is that this root signifies origin, source, a place whence a thing grows.

The noun origin derives from origo, to rise, while the verb denoting that action, orior, was used applied to the heavenly bodies as meaning to become visible, appear.
Besides origin, نصب also means dust rising high. In order to understand its presence side by side with origin, I’ll first ask you to pay attention to 30:20 “And of His signs is that He created you from dust”, and 35:11 “And God created you from dust, then from a sperm-drop“.
Dust is the name given to fine dry particles of earth. The noun particle derives from Latin particula, a small part or little bit – a diminutive of pars, a part, piece, portion. This same word gave origin to: partibilis, divisible; particulatio (particularize), a dividing into small parts or pieces; and to partitio (partition), used by philosophers as meaning a logical division into parts or members.

The root نصب signifies a portion as well.

The Latin word for dust is pulvis, a source of derivation of to pulverize, that is, to reduce a substance to fine particles. Latin pulvis was also used in relation to soil, hence alluding properly to potter’s earth, a substance whose elasticity allows it to create artifacts of several shapes.

From all this, I think it is possible to conclude that origin is associated with that which comes to existence by means of the firm congregation of parts, of which the soldiers congregation to the banner, and the particles of earth gathered to form dust and potter’s earth seems to be a symbol.

In 83:6-7 we read “[Man] was created from a fluid, ejected, emerging from between the backbone and the ribs.” The noun ribs is conveyed by the same root denoting dust in 30:20 and 35:11 – that is, نصب.

In what backbone is concerned, it is conveyed by صلب (Slb), that not only refers to any portion of the spine (particularly the lumbar portion, or loins),  but also to a banner or standard.

The backbone is also known as spinal column. The spinal column is a vertical structure made up of bone and cartilaginous matter that supports the trunk and the head. It is composed of roughly 33 bones called vertebrae -  Latin word for joint. Each pair of vertebrae is connected by a joint that stabilizes it and allows it to move. The spine is home to the spinal cord, or spinal marrow, a column of nerve tracts that, along with the brain, form the central nervous system, to which is sent all the information apprehended by the senses  – which means that we should add the spine to the the list where we already have the standard and dust-potter’s earth as symbols of origin. But not only the spine… we should also add the mother, a meaning that we get from Arabic ام (‘m), also meaning that to which other things are collected together as well as source, origin, foundation or basis of a thing, its stay, support or cause of subsistence. This root does not mention the spine, however it sure denotes the ensign, or standard, which an army follows.

In the next post, I will be analyzing signs dependence on the sense of vision.

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