‘Ramadan tours to Al-Quds: Make your pilgrimage to the holy mosques.” “We offer you a pilgrimage to the sites that were undertaken by Jesus, a trip to the Holy Land, which is open to all citizens of the Kingdom.”

Recently, the tourism market in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has become swamped with deals for Jerusalem tours. There were ads in newspapers, magazines and the Internet offering affordable three and four-day packages to Jerusalem during Ramadan.

After all, the holy city with its sacred mosques and churches is only a short ride away from Jordan’s capital.

It takes about an hour and a half to drive from Amman to Jerusalem via the Allenby Bridge (including inspection by the Border Police), which spells easy and convenient tourism for Jordanian visitors.

To visit Israel from Jordan, you don’t need to take a plane – a short bus ride will do, which reduces the price of the tour considerably. The cost of a three- or four-day package starts from $530, although one agency advertised a three-day tour for $180.

Ibrahim Zumot, manager of the east Jerusalem based Overseas Travel Bureau, says that the city has indeed witnessed an increase in Arab tourists from Jordan and Egypt recently, due to the quiet maintained in the region. “The region has been quiet for some time and nothing has happened, therefore the tourists feel that it’s OK to travel to Jerusalem,” he explains.

However, the Jordanian tour operators who jumped at the opportunity to corner the market soon discovered there was much more to Jerusalem tourism than just booking buses and hotels. Influential Jordanian unions and hard-liners believe that these tours are nothing more than a ploy designed to circumvent a longstanding, unofficial boycott against Israel.

“Some travel agents exploit the religious feelings of our people, especially in these days before Ramadan, and offer package deals to Jerusalem. A phone call to one of these agencies confirmed that they cooperate with Israeli companies. In order to get to Jerusalem, you need to receive a visa from the Israeli Embassy,” the Jordanian Web site egbid.com wrote.

Although the Hashemite Kingdom is officially connected to Israel through a peace agreement signed in 1994, Jordanian unionists vehemently deny any normalization of relations with the Jewish state and therefore view the tours to Jerusalem as a form of recognition of Israel.

“Obtaining a visa from the Israeli Embassy is tantamount to a recognition of the Zionist entity that bestows legality on the occupation of the holy city,” the president of the Trade Unions Council, Ahmad Armouti, said during the last spate of protests. Last week, demonstrations were held in front of the Jordanian Tourism Ministry, which allegedly supports the tourist flow to Israel. The protesters, who belonged to the National Committee for Resisting Normalization of Ties with Israel, carried signs that called for a ban on all such trips, as they advocate normalization with Israel. Some of the signs quoted the recent ruling of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, chairman of the International Union for Muslim Scholars and spiritual father of the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, who issued a fatwa condemning the calls to visit Al- Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem under occupation.

“These trips will only legitimize the occupation in Al-Quds [Jerusalem], which is the place of the first qibla [prayer direction] in Islam,” Qaradawi wrote in his ruling.

Those who condemn the tours and visits to Jerusalem also rely on an explicit ban on visiting Jerusalem issued by Ibrahim Qaylani, the former minister of the Wakf in Jordan, and Baba Shanouda III, the head of the Egyptian Copts. Both men ruled that religious tourism to Jerusalem is a form of normalization and that it will not serve the interests of the Palestinian people.

“As long as there is occupation of Al-Quds, Muslims are not permitted to visit the holy city,” Ibrahim Qaylani wrote.

There are also calls to blacklist and boycott those who maintain relations with Israel. Consequently, a lawyer who represents an Israeli firm might lose his membership in the Lawyers’ Union, an owner of an apartment might receive threatening phone calls or emails, so the local newspapers were cautious enough not to name the travel agency in question, probably so that they would not be threatened afterwards.

OPPOSITION TO normalization of ties has been consistent in the Arab world since 1967, which resulted in almost total isolation of Jerusalem and the Arab population in Jerusalem from the larger Arab and Islamic contingent. Even during the Jerusalem – Capital of Arab Culture 2009 event, the city didn’t experience any increase in visits from Arab countries, let alone celebrity Arab singers and performers who were afraid of being accused of normalizing ties with the Jewish state.

This approach comes in sharp contrast to the view of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, in particular President Mahmoud Abbas, who said on more than one occasion that a visit to Jerusalem is an expression of solidarity “with the prisoner and not with the guard.”

Referring to Qaradawi’s ruling, Abbas said, “We serve the religion, we do not use it. They, however, use the religion as they wish.”

The Palestinian Authority did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq recently supported the PA’s approach, calling on a convergence on Jerusalem by Muslims to strengthen the city’s Islamic identity.

“I say to those who insist on not visiting [Jerusalem] before its liberation: My worst fear is that you will have nothing to visit after Israel realizes its plans in Jerusalem and elsewhere,” he told the London-based pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat.

In 2009 in Jordan, during another wave of interest in tours to Jerusalem, the Palestinian mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, who was probably trying to placate the hard-liners in the Arab world, said, “When on tour, the pilgrims only stay in east Jerusalem, and the State of Israel doesn’t benefit from them; therefore, these tours are not prohibited and only serve the interest of the Palestinian people.”

Judge Taysyr al-Tamimi added that “The visits to Jerusalem only support the heroic people of Jerusalem, who are threatened by the occupation and are subject to expulsion.”

However, all this rhetoric fell on deaf ears. Despite the high status of Jerusalem in Islam and despite the fact that there is hardly a Muslim or an Arab who hasn’t heard of Al-Aksa Mosque, the Arab and Muslim tourism to the city remains limited. According to the Tourism Ministry, the record number of Jordanian visitors to Israel was 16,807 persons in 2008. The following year, only 15,821 Jordanians crossed the border.

Meanwhile, there has been a certain increase in Jordanian visitors since the beginning of this year (7,847 persons from January to June). Naturally, these figures could be substantially higher if there had been a consensus regarding tourism to Jerusalem in Jordanian society.

ALTHOUGH WHAT is being done is allegedly meant to serve their interest, Jerusalem Arabs feel more abandoned and hurt by these developments than happy.

“Our economy really needs all the help and support we can get. Since Jerusalem was cut off from its surroundings by the Israeli wall, our markets are not as active as they used to be. I wish that all Arabs and Muslims would come to visit here,” says Muhammad Said, a vendor who sells nuts and candy near Damascus Gate.

“I have heard of the anti-normalization movement, but they have to understand that they are really boycotting us, their kinsmen, rather than Israel. Israel doesn’t care about these boycotts; the city is filled with foreign tourists. We want our brothers from Jordan and Egypt and other countries to come to visit us,” says Intisar, a student at Al-Quds University.

Travel agent Zumot says he has a hard time understanding what could be wrong with religious tourism.

“The Christians perform pilgrimages in the footsteps of Christ, the Muslims visit the holy mosques. What could be wrong with that?” he asks.

But for now, the majority of Arab tourists who face threats and intimidation at home and the uncertainty of visiting a country that is regarded by most as “the enemy state” choose to explore the holy city virtually, viewing Al-Aksa and the Holy Sepulchre on Google Earth. Despite the geographic proximity and the convenient means of transportation, the geopolitical gaps are still difficult to overcome.

The moon is a permanent feature in our skies, but is it as unchanging as it seems?

Scientists consider the Earth’s only natural satellite to be a pristine environment, an “open book” where the history of the solar system is written. But according to new observations by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), there’s more than just impact craters — born from the violent early days of our developing star system — written in the lunar landscape.

Reported in a new paper set for publication in the Aug. 20 issue of the journal Science, previously undetected landforms have been spotted by the LRO’s high resolution camera. These landforms are known as “lobate scarps” and were first identified in photographs taken by the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.

However, the lobate scarps seen in these early missions appeared to be clustered around the equatorial regions. Now, very high resolution observations made by the LRO have revealed 14 more previously unknown scarps, signifying that they can be found all over the moon’s surface.

Lobate scarps are raised features approximately 9 meters high by several kilometers long that form along thrust faults. On Earth, thrust faults are obvious as older rock is forced to lift and fold over younger rock — this is caused by compression. For a geologically active body like the Earth, this is common, but the moon is not geologically active. What is creating this pressure?

“Relatively young, globally distributed thrust faults show recent contraction of the whole moon, likely due to cooling of the lunar interior. The amount of contraction [from the center of the moon to lunar surface] is estimated to be about 100 meters in the recent past,” said Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the National Air and Space Museum and lead author of the paper.

David Morrison, senior scientist at NASA’s Lunar Science Institute and NASA’s “Ask an Astrobiologist” expert who wasn’t involved with this research, likened this process to the wrinkles that form on an old apple as it dehydrates and shrinks. “You’re trying to fit the crust [of the moon] around a smaller interior, and the only way that can happen is if these scarps form,” Morrison told Discovery News.

“In the Earth system, where you have plate tectonics, you have as many new voids created as mountains thrust up,” he added, pointing out that there is no evidence on the lunar surface for these “voids” — or regions where the lunar crust has been pulled apart to balance out the regions of compression causing the scarps. The moon just has compression regions, wrinkling the surface. The logical conclusion is therefore that the core of the moon has shrunk and the crust buckled under the resulting compression.

Another interesting fact about these newly discovered scarps is their apparent young age. Along the thrust faults, some small impact craters have been overridden by the scarps (pictured above), giving an idea that the scarps are must have formed after some ancient lunar impacts.

Although this is fascinating, the moon isn’t the only celestial body to show signs of shrinkage.

“Ever since the first Mariner 10 flyby of the planet Mercury, one of the things that characterized the surface is the same lobate thrust faults also attributed to shrinkage,” Morrison said.

“Until now, Mercury was the only place that we’ve seen this with crustal shrinkage of several kilometers. Now it looks like it’s happened in our own back yard as well.”

A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien “sentient machines”.

Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth.

But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short.

Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than “biological” life.

Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting extraterrestrials would not only not look like us, but that they would not at a biological level even work like us.

However, Seti searchers have mostly still worked under the assumption – as a starting point for a search of the entire cosmos – that ETs would be “alive” in the sense that we know.

That has led to a hunt for life that is bound to follow at least some rules of biochemistry, live for a finite period of time, procreate, and above all be subject to the processes of evolution.

But Dr Shostak makes the point that while evolution can take a large amount of time to develop beings capable of communicating beyond their own planet, technology would already be advancing fast enough to eclipse the species that wrought it.

“If you look at the timescales for the development of technology, at some point you invent radio and then you go on the air and then we have a chance of finding you,” he told BBC News.

“But within a few hundred years of inventing radio – at least if we’re any example – you invent thinking machines; we’re probably going to do that in this century.

“So you’ve invented your successors and only for a few hundred years are you… a ‘biological’ intelligence.”

From a probability point of view, if such thinking machines ever evolved, we would be more likely to spot signals from them than from the “biological” life that invented them.
‘Moving target’

John Elliott, a Seti research veteran based at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, says that Dr Shostak is putting on a firmer footing a feeling that is not uncommon in the Seti community.

“You have to start somewhere, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Dr Elliott told BBC News.

“But having now looked for signals for 50 years, Seti is going through a process of realising the way our technology is advancing is probably a good indicator of how other civilisations – if they’re out there – would’ve progressed.

“Certainly what we’re looking at out there is an evolutionary moving target.”

Both Dr Shostak and Dr Elliott concede that finding and decoding any eventual message from such alien thinking machines may prove more difficult than in the “biological” case, but the idea does provide new directions to look.

Dr Shostak says that artificially intelligent alien life would be likely to migrate to places where both matter and energy – the only things he says would be of interest to the machines – would be in plentiful supply. That means the Seti hunt may need to focus its attentions near hot, young stars or even near the centres of galaxies.

“I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time… looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out.”

* Ahmadinejad: Israel lacks courage to attack Iran Iranian leader tells Al Jazeera he doesn’t think threat of attack by US or Israel is ‘serious’; says Persian Gulf states ‘too smart’ to allow use of US bases in their territory for strike on Tehran.

* Iran builds ambassador of death Ahmadinejad inaugurates first locally made unmanned long-range bomber.

* Abbas warns Ashton of threat to peace talks Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has warned in a letter to EU high representative Catherine Ashton that an end to Israel’s partial settlement freeze would bring an immediate halt to direct peace talks.

* Iran: If attacked our response will be wide-ranging and unpredictable Iran Revolutionary Guards unveil new high-speed missile-carrying vessels, latest in series of recent additions to country’s military arsenal.

* Combat brigades in Iraq under different name 7 Advise and Assist Brigades, made up of troops from BCTs, still in Iraq

* Iran unveils missile-launching boats Assault vessel with “high destructive power” to be mass produced.

* Sudan plans nuclear program Reactor is for “peaceful purposes”; IAEA travels to Khartoum

* Alien hunters should look for artificial intelligence A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien sentient machines.

* Petraeus says US has momentum over Afghan Taliban General David Petraeus, the top commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said the Afghan Taliban’s momentum has been reversed in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, as well as near Kabul.

* Activists rally over Ground Zero mosque Hundreds gather in New York at two separate demonstrations.

BARACK OBAMA has emerged as a classic example of charismatic leadership – a figure upon whom others project their own hopes and desires. The resulting emotional intensity adds greatly to the more conventional strengths of the well-organized Obama campaign, and it has certainly sufficed to overcome the formidable initial advantages of Senator Hillary Clinton.

One danger of such charisma, however, is that it can evoke unrealistic hopes of what a candidate could actually accomplish in office regardless of his own personal abilities. Case in point is the oft-made claim that an Obama presidency would be welcomed by the Muslim world.
This idea often goes hand in hand with the altogether more plausible argument that Mr. Obama’s election would raise America’s esteem in Africa — indeed, he already arouses much enthusiasm in his father’s native Kenya and to a degree elsewhere on the continent.

But it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.)

It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities.

For example, in Iran in 1994 the intervention of Pope John Paul II and others won a Christian convert a last-minute reprieve, but the man was abducted and killed shortly after his release. Likewise, in 2006 in Afghanistan, a Christian convert had to be declared insane to prevent his execution, and he was still forced to flee to Italy.

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

That an Obama presidency would cause such complications in our dealings with the Islamic world is not likely to be a major factor with American voters, and the implication is not that it should be. But of all the well-meaning desires projected on Senator Obama, the hope that he would decisively improve relations with the world’s Muslims is the least realistic.