Lauren and Dylan (those Everlong kids!)

Here is the backstory on Lauren and Dylan (if you don't know who I'm talking about, check out this recent post). Below is a story from today's Herald.ie, a Dublin based online media outlet "dedicated to bringing you the latest news from Dublin, Ireland and worldwide."

Meet the young stars who rocked Electric Picnic

By Geraldine Gittens

Thursday September 16 2010

THEY'RE NOT major stars just yet, but a young brother and sister duo have proved to be one of the hits of Electric Picnic. Dylan McBride and his sister Lauren performed in an open-mic session at the festival and have already received more than 4,200 hits on YouTube -- beating major rock bands as the most-viewed clip from the festival.

Dylan McBride and his sister Lauren performed in an open-mic session at the festival and have already received more than 4,200 hits on YouTube -- beating major rock bands as the most-viewed clip from the festival.

Dylan (12) and Lauren (11) from Greystones, Co Wicklow, performed an acoustic version of Everlong by the Foo Fighters in an open-mic session at the Oxjam tent at the boutique music festival which took place earlier this month.

The popular brother and sister duo say it's their favourite song to perform together but revealed this was only their second live performance.

They've beaten off stiff competition from the likes of Mumford and Sons, The Frames, and The National on YouTube, and it was a spontaneous decision by Lauren to take to the stage that propelled them to fame.

Their proud dad Alan, who recorded the video footage, said: "We were just walking around Electric Picnic and Lauren saw that there was an open-mic session.

"I thought they'd [the organisers] never put them on and I thought they were just going to humour them. But within two minutes of running into the tent, we heard the announcement that they were on next."

spontaneous

Lauren explained: "I just really wanted to do it and I went up to the guy and he said there was a half hour wait, but then he put us on anyway."

Alan added: "The whole thing was very spontaneous, and the guitar isn't working at the start and you can see then that the audience is visibly surprised that they can perform."

- Geraldine Gittens

A Judicious Catch-22: Ayodhya & the "Religion of Peace"

Two key portions of today's ruling in the Ayodhya case read as follows:

The disputed building was constructed by Babar, the year is not certain but it was built against the tenets of Islam. Thus, it cannot have the character of a mosque.

It is also established that the disputed structure cannot be treated as a mosque as it came into existence against the tenets of Islam.

These are both from Justice Dharam Veer Sharma, one of three judges in the case.

What is the meaning of the finding that the mosque built in the 16th century by the conqueror Babar "was built against the tenets of Islam"?

Muslims today want everyone to believe that theirs is a "Religion of Peace". Furthermore, they insist that this has always been the case, and that the spread of Islam has always been through peaceful means, and that, indeed, their own religious teachings require that this be the case.

Very well, then. If Islam forbids such things as destroying other people's sacred places and then gleefully building Victory Mosques using the leftover rubble as the foundations, fine. So be it. And since the Babri Masjid ("Babar's mosque") was undeniably built on the ruins of a vast Hindu Temple complex, and this complex, in turn, was at a site that has been sacred to Hindus since "time immemorial" (all of this was affirmed in today's court ruling), then said mosque "was built against the tenets of Islam."

The Religion of Peace has, therefore, been hoisted on its own petard. Either they build their mosques on the smoking ruins of other people's ancient sacred sites, or they don't. If they claim that they don't then any "mosque" built in that fashion was built "against the tenets of Islam" and, therefore, "cannot be treated as a mosque."

Here is some suggested further reading on the history of Muslim aggression and Hindu resistance in India:

Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD)
by Sita Ram Goel

HINDU TEMPLES: WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM
Volume I: A Preliminary Survey
Volume II: The Islamic Evidence

The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India
by K.S. Lal

Here is the preface to the last book listed above, The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India:

Had India been completely converted to Muhammadanism during the thousand years of Muslim conquest and rule, its people would have taken pride in the victories and achievements of Islam and even organised panIslamic movements and Islamic revolutions. Conversely, had India possessed the determination of countries like France and Spain to repulse the Muslims for good, its people would have forgotten about Islam and its rule. But while India could not be completely conquered or Islamized, the Hindus did not lose their ancient religious and cultural moorings. In short, while Muslims with all their armed might proved to be great conquerors, rulers and proselytizers, Indians or Hindus, with all their weaknesses, proved to be great survivors. India never became an Islamic country. Its ethos remained Hindu while Muslims also continued to live here retaining their distinctive religious and social system. It is against this background that an assessment of the legacy of Muslim rule in India has been attempted.

Source-materials on such a vast area of study are varied and scattered. What we possess is a series of glimpses furnished by Persian chroniclers, foreign visitors and indigenous writers who noted what appeared to them of interest. It is not an easy task, on the basis of these sources, to reconstruct an integrated picture of the medieval scenario spanning almost a millennium, beginning with the establishment of Muslim rule. The task becomes more difficult when the scenario converges on the modem age with its pre- and post-Partition politics and slogans of the two-nation theory, secularism, national integration and minority rights. Consequently, some generalisations, repetitions and reiterations have inevitably crept into what is otherwise a work of historical research. For this the author craves the indulgence of the reader.

Ayodhya ruling: Ram to stay put, land to be divided

A panel of three judges has unanimously ruled that the God Ram is not to be moved from his birthplace. That is to say, the "Ram Lalla idol" that was installed in 1949 (and then replaced with a new one, pictured here, in 2002) at the traditional site of Ram's birth, will remain in place and Hindus will continue to be free to come and worship Ram there.

The 2.7 acres of land at the disputed Ayodhya site will be divided into three parts, with the land on which the Ram Lalla idol sits remaining in Hindu hands.

Below is the latest from the Times of India:

Disputed Ayodhya site to be divided into 3 parts

30 Sep 2010, 1616 hrs IST

The Allahabad High Court on Thursday (September 30) ruled majority that the 2.7 acres disputed land in Ayodhya, on which the Babri Masjid stood before it was demolished on December 6, 1992, will be divided into three parts to be distributed among the Sunni Waqf Board, Nirmohi Akhara and the party for 'Ram Lalla', said the lawyers. The ownership of the disputed site is to be divided into three parts: the site of the Ram lala idol to Ram, Nirmohi Akhara gets Sita Rasoi and Ram Chabutara, Sunni Wakf Board gets the rest. Justice D V Sharma decrees the title suit in favour of Hindus, say lawyer K N Bhatt, who represented the party on behalf of 'Ram Lalla'. Status quo will be maintained at the disputed site in Ayodhya for three months, claimed lawyers Ravi Shanker Prasad and K N Bhatt. Justice S U Khan ruled that the disputed land belongs to both the communities, say lawyers. Official verdict of the judgement awaited. The verdict in the 60-year-old Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid title suit is a landmark one particularly for Justice D V Sharma, who is set to demit office on Friday. The other judges on the Lucknow bench of the High Court are S U Khan and Sudhir Agarwal. The Bench began the delivery of its verdict at 3:30 p.m. in Court Number 21 in the High Court premises which resembled a virtually impregnable fortress as the area surrounding it has been declared as a "no access zone". The BJP core group will meet at senior leader L K Advani's residence this evening following the Ayodhya title suit judgement, immediately after the arrival of party President Nitin Gadkari from Mumbai. The meeting will be attended by Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and her counterpart in Upper House Arun Jaitely among others and is expected to chalk out the future course of action on the issue after the court verdict. Advani had asked partymen to refrain from commenting on the issue till the verdict was out. Meanwhile, the Cabinet Committee on Security is slated to meet in the evening and it may consider the Allahabad High Court judgement in the Ramjanambhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Home Minister P Chidambaram had appealed to the people to accept the verdict and maintain peace and tranquility. They had also stressed that no attempt should be made by any section of the people to provoke another section after the verdict. The only hurdle in the pronouncement of the verdict was cleared by the Supreme Court on Tuesday when it dismissed the petition by a retired bureaucrat Ramesh Chandra Tripathi for deferment of the keenly-awaited judgement. The High Court verdict assumes significance as an amicable solution to the centuries old dispute over a piece of land has not been achieved through negotiations between the two religious groups. Repeated attempts were made by former Prime Ministers P V Narsimha Rao, V P Singh and Chandra Shekhar to persuade the two sides to reach a compromise but there was no success. The Ayodhya dispute has been an emotive issue for decades and mired in a slew of legal suits involving Hindu and Muslim religious groups. The first title suit in the case was filed in 1950 by one Gopal Singh Visharad, seeking an injunction for permitting 'pooja'(worship) of Lord Ram at the disputed site while the second suit was filed by Paramhans Tamchandra Das also in 1950 seeking the same injunction but this was later withdrawn. The third suit was filed in 1959 by the Nirmohi Akhara, seeking direction to hand over the charge of the disputed site from the receiver and the fourth one came in 1961 by UP Sunni Central Board of Waqfs for declaration and possession of the site. The fifth suit was moved on July one, 1989 in the name of Bhagwan Shree Ram Lalla Virajman also for declaration and possession. Through an application moved by then Advocate General of UP, all the four suits were transferred to the High Court in 1989. Out of the 94 witnesses in Court, 58 appeared from Hindu side and 36 from Muslim side and their statements run in more than 13,000 pages. The High Court while adjudicating the case also asked the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to carry out excavation in the area surrounding the disputed site to find out whether temple was there before mosque was built. The excavation, which was done in the presence of representatives from Hindus and Muslims, went on for more than five months between March and August in 2003. Hearing in the case taken up on a day-to-day basis from January this year was completed on July 26 and the special bench had reserved its verdict asking the parties concerned to approach the OSD in case there was any scope of resolution to the case through reconciliation. Since none of the parties made any attempt in this direction, the court had on September 8 fixed Septemebr 24 as the date for pronouncement of the verdict. It was fixed for September 30 after the apex court dismissed a plea for deferment of the High Court verdict. The three main issues before the High Court are whether there was a temple at the disputed site, prior to 1528, whether the suit filed by the Sunni Central Waqf board in 1961 is barred by limitation and whether Muslims perfected their title through adverse possession. The history of the dispute goes back to the year 1528 when a mosque was built on the site by Mughal emperor Babar which Hindus claim to be a birth place of Lord Ram and where a temple was there earlier. In order to settle the dispute the British officials in 1859 erected a fence to separate the places of worship, allowing the inner court to be used by Muslims and the outer court by Hindus and this system went on till 1949 when an idol of Lord Ram surfaced inside the mosque. The authorities then declared the premises a disputed area and locked the gates which were unlocked after 37 years in by a District Judge in 1986 to allow 'darshan'. With the passage of time the dispute took political colour. The Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992 in the presence of senior leaders of VHP, Shiv Sena and BJP. The demolition of the mosque triggered communal riots in several parts of the country in which more than 2,000 lives were lost. Earlier this month, R C Tripathi, one of the parties to the suit, moved a plea in the High Court seeking deferment of the verdict to make fresh attempts for out-of-court settlement through negotiations. On September 17, the High Court refused to defer pronouncement of the verdict following which the matter reached the Supreme Court. An apex Court bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and A K Patnaik refused to take up the case and referred it to another bench. Difference of opinion between two Justices R V Raveendran and H L Gokhale, before whom the matter came up for hearing on September 23, surfaced on entertaining the petition. However, the Court issued notices to the parties. The matter was finally head by a special three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India S H Kapadia on Tuesday and it dismissed the plea for deferment of the verdict by the High Court.