STARVING AFGHANS USE CRYPTO TO SIDESTEP U.S. SANCTIONS, FAILING BANKS, AND THE TALIBAN

Posted on January 23, 2022 by iqu

STARVING AFGHANS USE CRYPTO TO SIDESTEP U.S. SANCTIONS, FAILING BANKS, AND THE TALIBAN

NGOs looking to provide emergency aid to Afghanistan are turning to cryptocurrency.

Lee Fang

January 19 2022, 5:30 p.m.

WHEN THE TALIBAN took over Afghanistan in August of last year, Fereshteh Forough feared that the group would close her school in Herat, the country’s third-largest city. Code to Inspire, an NGO Forough founded, was teaching computer programming to young Afghan women, and the Taliban oppose secondary education for women.

Months later, the picture is much different — and worse — from what Forough imagined. The school survived, becoming mostly virtual, but has transformed from a coding boot camp into a relief organization. The biggest risk for Forough’s students wasn’t lack of education, it was hunger. Forough looked for a way to provide emergency checks to the women but was stymied by banks that don’t want to risk violating severe U.S. sanctions.

JPMorgan Chase repeatedly blocked her attempts to transfer money, she said, and she grew increasingly alarmed by students who said they couldn’t access cash at local Afghan banks — many of which have closed or imposed strict withdrawal limits. In response, she turned to cryptocurrency to provide monthly emergency payments to help students afford enough food to survive.

“Since September, we’ve been sending cash assistance, about $200 per month, for each family, because the majority of our students have said their family lost their jobs. They are the sole breadwinner of the family,” explained Forough, whose family fled Afghanistan in the early 1980s, during the Soviet occupation, and now lives in New Hampshire. Code to Inspire pays its recipients in BUSD, a so-called stablecoin whose value is tied to the U.S. dollar, and then the women convert it to afghanis, the local currency, at money exchanges. “We created a safe way for our girls to cash out their crypto and pay for expenses, so they can pay for medical expenses and food and everything that’s needed.”

There are several advantages to using crypto: Afghans fleeing the Taliban can take their assets with them without risk. Humanitarian agencies seeking to bypass banks and discreetly avoid the Taliban can provide cash directly to those in need. Smugglers and intermediaries who may steal or try to resell aid packages can be circumvented if aid is given directly through a digital transaction.

“I am still in disbelief that I could receive money without any fear of [it] being confiscated in such a transparent way,” said T.N., a 21-year-old graphic design student in Herat enrolled in Code to Inspire, in a statement to The Intercept. “Creating a BUSD wallet was very easy and it was a delightful experience knowing how fast and in such a private way you can receive money even in Afghanistan.”

WHILE CODE TO INSPIRE is in a uniquely tech-savvy position compared with most Afghan organizations, Forough isn’t alone in thinking that blockchain-based solutions may help Afghans in need in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis.

Several other NGOs and humanitarian organizations — facing a choice between failed banks still hampered by sanctions and hawala networks of informal money traders that many fear are tied to the drug trade or controlled by the Taliban — are considering the use of cryptocurrency as an alternative.

One American attorney advising international groups in Afghanistan said that his clients are moving closer to experimenting with crypto payments, though he was not at liberty to identify the NGOs and asked for anonymity to protect their identities. Others are stepping up in a more visible way to harness the power of cryptocurrency to deliver assistance.

“You can trade back and forth, send it overseas or receive it overseas, without ever touching banks, without touching the Afghan government or Taliban.”

Sanzar Kakar, an Afghan American raised in Seattle who has worked on commercial projects in Afghanistan, including a local ride-hailing company akin to Uber, created an app. “We’re trying to solve this problem, that 22.8 million Afghans are marching toward starvation, including 1 million children this winter who might die of starvation,” said Kakar. HesabPay, launched in 2019, helps Afghans transfer money using crypto.

“We can’t get money through banks, but 88 percent of Afghan families have at least one smartphone,” said Kakar, who hopes to facilitate money transfers of afghanis, along with USDC, another stablecoin. He is in the process of setting up money-exchanging shops at which Afghans can obtain QR codes or trade crypto for hard currency.

“You can trade back and forth, send it overseas or receive it overseas, without ever touching banks, without touching the Afghan government or Taliban,” said Kakar. “It’s all on the blockchain network.”

A liquidity crisis is at the heart of the growing catastrophe in Afghanistan. Following the pullout of U.S. forces last August, the country was isolated overnight. The U.S. seized assets from the Afghan central bank and ended transfers of U.S. currency. Companies in Poland and France contracted to print the afghani ended shipments. Almost immediately, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as the SWIFT system, which underpins international financial transactions, suspended services in Afghanistan. Commercial banks couldn’t lend money, and retail customers couldn’t take their own money out of banks.

The departure of the international community, fearing that any transaction within Afghanistan would violate sanctions on the Taliban, ground the economy to a halt. Nearly four-fifths of the Afghan budget was foreign-funded before the U.S. left.

The Biden administration has issued exemptions to the sanctions for humanitarian aid. These Treasury Department licenses, however, have done little to mitigate the spiraling crisis, as The Intercept has reported. Taliban leaders listed by the sanctions are in charge of senior Afghan government positions, leading many banks to continue to block routine transactions because they conclude that any tax or duty paid to the government could risk violating sanctions. Overcompliance and compliance costs associated with the sanctions have damaged the ability to conduct ordinary commerce in the country, leading to mass unemployment and skyrocketing food and fuel costs.

So though humanitarian aid is technically allowed, restrictions by banks have made it functionally impossible. Several U.S. banks contacted by The Intercept declined to comment on the record about the shut-off of transactions with Afghanistan. “We comply with all economic sanctions laws and regulations and process NGO-related payments accordingly. We have no further information to share,” said a spokesperson for Wells Fargo.

New reports continue to show ghastly consequences of the economic collapse in the country. Parents have sold children into arranged marriages in order to purchase enough food to survive. In Kandahar, a high school teacher recently died of starvation after at least four days of not eating, according to a local human rights watchdog. UNICEF estimates that 3.2 million children face malnutrition and over 1 million face the immediate risk of death by starvation. The United Nations reports that only 2 percent of Afghanistan’s population of 40 million is getting enough to eat.

The Biden administration, while choking off the Afghan economy, has approved $782 million in aid since October. The funds include shelter, emergency food and hygiene services, and 1 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.

THE CHALLENGES TO introducing cryptocurrency payments and transactions, however, are steep. “We explored this option, but it is not for us,” said Kevin Schumacher, deputy executive director of Women for Afghan Women. “How do you pay 1,100 staff in 16 provinces, many of whom can’t read or write, with crypto?”

“Even the smallest fluctuations in crypto rate can erase thousands of dollars off your books,” added Schumacher. He also feared that the Treasury Department and IRS would look down upon audits that included cryptocurrency payments. “Lastly, very, very, very few vendors in Afghanistan understand and use crypto.”

The fluctuations in value can be mitigated, said Kakar and Forough, by using stablecoins that are pegged to the dollar and are not subject to the wild fluctuations in valuation that occur with popular cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or Bitcoin. Many Afghans use Binance, the international trading platform, which allows users to buy and sell stablecoins along with more speculative coins.

Kakar explained that many steps are in place on his app to ensure that users are authenticated. HesabPay, Kakar’s company, is running commercials on Afghan television and radio stations to explain the product, which uses biometric technology (such as facial recognition) to identify users.

“Even though these are decentralized technologies, you don’t want to have any involvement with the Taliban. You want to directly help the people.”

“It’s all in the blockchain, all on a permanent ledger outside of the whole banking system, but under the purview of the Treasury, so they know that money is not being used for terrorism finance,” said Kakar.

Cashless digital transactions that sidestep traditional banks still pose risks, especially for U.S. citizens or financial institutions facilitating or investing in platforms for Afghans.

Rahilla Zafar, a former U.S. aid worker in Afghanistan, now works with cryptocurrency donors to raise charitable funds for the region. “Even though these are decentralized technologies, you don’t want to have any involvement with the Taliban. You want to directly help the people,” said Zafar, who noted that U.S. donors are concerned about accidentally violating sanctions.

Zafar works with Crypto for Afghanistan, a charity that helps donors raise money for humanitarian projects. One such project is ASEEL, an app that originally served as an Etsy-style marketplace, helping Afghan artisans sell handmade goods. Now the company has transformed into a relief organization, distributing packages of food and medicine.

ASEEL accepts Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies, which are used to purchase supplies. But as Nasrat Khalid, the founder of ASEEL, explained, it can’t provide direct cash payments in Afghanistan because of the sanctions.

“We’ve helped 55,000 people, a lot of traction in the last six months. But we can only do aid packages because of the OFAC status,” said Khalid, referencing the Treasury Department’s sanctions enforcement office.

Despite the steep learning curve and several barriers to entry, within Afghanistan using crypto is seen as an unqualified improvement on the status quo. Zafar recalled working in Afghanistan years ago, when militants would raid vans transporting cash around the country. Forough said that her sister’s bank account was seized by the Taliban after the U.S. withdrawal because of her work with Western groups. There are more and more new reports of banks closing.

With crypto, Forough’s tiny pocket of Afghanistan is surviving. “A group of our students just finished our academy scholarship, 77 of them,” said Forough. “Including, I believe, the very first female blockchain coders in Afghanistan. It’s very exciting even though the situation on the ground is not very pleasant.”

Darul Uloom Deoband’s Stand About Maulana Saad Kandhlawi of Nizamuddin

Posted on December 31, 2021 by iqu

Darul Uloom Deoband’s Stand About Maulana Saad Kandhlawi of Tabligh

12/18/2016

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Important Clarification

6 Rabee’ul Awwal 1438/6 Dec 2016.

Due to the letters and questions regarding some of the incorrect ideologies and thoughts and the questionable Bayaans of Janaab Moulana Saad Saheb Kandhelwi received from within the country as well as from beyond, with the signatures of senior Asaatizah Kiraam and the panel of Muftis, an official stance has been taken.

However, before releasing this document, it was brought to our notice that a delegation wishes to come to Darul-Uloom and discuss matters on behalf of Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb. Hence, the delegation came and delivered the message on behalf of Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb that he is ready to make Rujoo’ (retract). Therefore, the unanimous stance was sent with the delegation to Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb. A reply was then received from him, however, Darul-Uloom Deoband was not satisfied with his reply completely, upon which some explanation was sent to Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb in the form of a letter.

In order to protect the blessed effort of Tableegh started by the Akaabir Ulema of Darul-uloom Deoband from becoming mixed up with incorrect ideologies, to keep it on the pattern of the Akaabir and also in order for its benefit and to keep the reliance of the Ulema-e-Haq upon this effort, it is regarded as a Deeni responsibility to present our unanimous standpoint to the Ahl-e-Madaaris, Ahl-e-Ilm and the unbiased people. May Allah Ta’ala protect this blessed effort in every way and grant all of us the ability to remain ideologically and practically on the path of truth.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
الحمد لله رب العالمين، والصلاة والسلام على سيد الأنبياء والمرسلين، محمد وآله وأصحابه أجمعين. أما بعد:

Recently a request has been received from many Ulema and Mashaaikh that Dar-uloom Deoband present its stance regarding the ideologies of Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb khandhelwi. Very recently, letters have been received from the reliable Ulema of Bangladesh and some Ulema from our neighbouring country (Pakistan), together with which various Istiftaas [requests for Fatwas] have come to the Darul-Ifta at Dar-uloom Deoband from within the country.

Without getting involved in the disagreements within the Jamaat and the administrative matters, we wish to say that since the last few years, the ideologies of Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb khandhelwi were received in the form of letters and Istiftaas. Now, after investigation, it has been proven that, in his Bayaans, incorrect or unfavourable explanation of the Qur’aan and Hadeeth, incorrect analogies and Tafsir bir Raay[interpretations based on self-opinion in conflict with Qur’an and Hadith] are found. Some statements amount to disrespect of the Ambiyaa’ (alayhis salaam) whilst many statements are such, wherein he moves beyond the bounds of the majority and Ijmaa’ of the Salaf.

In some Fiqhi matters also, without any basis, he contradicts the unanimous Fatwa of reliable Darul-Iftas and emphasises his new view upon the general people. He also stresses upon the importance of the effort of Tableegh in such a manner that other branches of Deen are criticised and belittled.

The method of doing Tableegh by the Salaf is also opposed, due to which the respect of the Akaabir and Aslaaf is lessened, rather, they are belittled. His conduct is in stark contrast to the previous Zimm-e-Daars of Tableegh, viz; Hazrat Moulana Ilyas Saheb (rahmatullahi alayh), Hazrat Moulana Yusuf Saheb (rahmatullahi alayh) and Hazrat Moulana In’aamul Hasan Saheb (rahmatullahi alayh).

Hereunder are some of the quotations we have received from the Bayaans of Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb which have been proven to have been said by him:

* “ Hazrat Moosa (alayhis salaam) left his nation and went in seclusion to engage in Munaajaat with Allah Ta’aala, due to which 188 000 individuals went astray. The Asl was Moosa (alayhis salaam), he was the Zimme-Daar. The Asl was supposed to remain. Haroon (alayhis salaam) was a helper and partner.”

* “Naql-o-Harkat is for the completion and perfection of Taubah. People know of the three conditions of Taubah, they don’t know the fourth. They have forgotten it. What is it? Khurooj! [i.e. coming out specifically for Tabligh]. People have forgotten this condition. A person killed 99 people. He first met a monk. The monk made him despair. He then met an Aalim. The Aalim told him to go to a certain locality. This killer did Khurooj, therefore Allah Ta’aala accepted his Taubah. From this it is understood that Khurooj is a condition of Taubah. Without it, Taubah is not accepted. People have forgotten this condition. Three conditions of Taubah are mentioned. The fourth condition, i.e. Khurooj is forgotten.”

* “There is no place for getting Hidaayat except the Masjid. Those branches of Deen where Deen is taught, if their connection is not with the Masjid, then, by the oath of Allah Ta’aala there will be no Deen in it. Yes the Ta’leem of Deen will take place, not Deen.”

(In this quotation, by connection with the Masjid, his intention is not going to perform Salaah in the Masjid. This is because he said this while talking about the importance of the Masjid and talking about Deen only after bringing a person to the Masjid. He said it while speaking about his specific ideology, the details of which is in the audio. His ideology is thus: to speak about Deen outside of the Masjid is contrary to the Sunnah, and contrary to the manner of the Ambiyaa’ (alayhis salaam) and the Sahaabah (radhiyallahu anhum))

* “To teach Deen for a wage is to sell Deen. People who commit Zina will enter Jannah before those who teach Qur’aan for a wage.”

* “According to me Salaah with a camera phone in ones’ pocket is invalid. Get as many Fatwas as you want from the Ulema. Listening to and reciting Qur’aan on a camera phone is a disgrace to the Qur’aan, there will be no reward for it. A person will be sinful by doing so. No reward will be attained. Because of doing so Allah Ta’aala will deprive one from the ability of practising on the Qur’aan. Those Ulema who give the Fatwa of permissibility in this regard, according to me they are Ulema-e-Soo, Ulema-e-Soo’. Their hearts and minds have become affected by the Christians and Jews. They are completely ignorant Ulema. According to me, whichever Aalim gives the Fatwa of permissibility, by Allah Ta’aala his heart is devoid of the greatness of the Kalaam of Allah Ta’aala. I am saying this because one big Aalim said to me: “What is wrong with it?” I said that the heart of this Aalim is devoid of the greatness of Allah Ta’aala even if he knows Bukhari. Even non-Muslims may know Bukhari.”

* “It is Waajib upon every Muslim to read the Qur’aan with understanding it. It is Waajib. It is Waajib. Whoever leaves out this Waajib act will get the sin of leaving out a Waajib act.”

* “I am astonished that it is asked: “With whom do you have Islaahi Ta’alluq?” Why is it not said, that my Islaahi Ta’alluq is with this effort? My Islaahi Ta’alluq is with Da’wat. Have Yaqeen that the A’maal of Da’wat is not just enough for reformation, rather, it guarantees reformation. I have contemplated deeply, this is the reason why those involved in the effort do not stay steadfast. I am saddened over those people who sit here and say that six points is not complete Deen. The person who himself says his milk is sour cannot do business. I was completely shocked when one of our own Saathis asked for leave for a month saying that he wanted to spend I’tikaaf in the company of so and so Sheikh. I said that until now you people have not joined Da’wat and Ibaadat. You have spent at least 40 years in Tableegh. After spending 40 years in Tableegh a person says that he wants leave because he wants to go for one month I’tikaaf. I said that the person who requests leave from Da’wat in order to do Ibaadat, how can he improve his Ibaadat without Da’wat? I am saying it very clearly that the difference between the A’maal of Nubuwwat and the A’maal of Wilaayat, the difference is only that of not engaging in Naql-o-Harkat. I am saying it extremely clearly that we do not make Tashkeel to merely go out to learn Deen, because there are other avenues of learning Deen. Why is it necessary to go out in Tableegh only? The object is to learn Deen. Learn in a Madrasah. Learn in a Khaanqah.”

Some quotations from his Bayaans have also been received from which it becomes apparent that Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb khandhelwi regards the vast meaning of Da’wat to be confined to the current form present in the Tableegh Jamaat. Only this form is expressed as the manner of the Ambiyaa’ (alayhis salaam) and the Sahaabah (radhiyallaahu anhum). Only this specific form is regarded to be Sunnah and the effort of the Ambiyaa’ (alayhis salaam), whereas it is the unanimous viewpoint of the majority of the Ummah that Da’wah and Tableegh is a universal command, regarding which the Shariah has not stipulated any specific form, which, if left out, will equate to leaving out the Sunnah.

In different eras Da’wat and Tableegh took on different forms. In no era was the divine command of Da’wat completely ignored. After the Sahaabah (radhiyallahu anhum), the Taabi’een, Tab-e-Taabi’een, A’immah Mujtahideen, Fuqahaa’, Muhadditheen, Mashaaikh, Awliyaa’ of Allah and in recent times our Akaabir made an effort in different ways to bring Deen alive on a global scale.

In order to maintain brevity we have only mentioned a few things. Besides these, many other points have been received that go beyond the scope of the Jumhoor Ulema and have taken the shape of a new ideology. These things being incorrect is very apparent, therefore, a detailed treatise is not required here.

Before this, on numerous occasions, attention was drawn to this in the form of letters sent from Darul-Uloom Deoband. It was also brought to the attention of the delegations from “Bangla Wali Masjid” on the occasion of the Tableeghi Ijtimaa’. To date no reply to the letters was received.

Jamaat-e-Tableegh is a purely Deeni Jamaat, which cannot be left to operate in a manner that is ideologically and practically apart from the majority of the Ummah and the Akaabir (rahmatullahi alayhim). The Ulema-e-Haq can never be unanimous nor can they adopt silence over disrespect to the Ambiyaa’ (alayhis salaam), deviant ideologies, Tafsir Bir Raay and whimsical explanation of the Ahaadeeth and Aathaar, because, these types of ideologies will later on cause the entire group to deviate from the path of truth as has happened to some Deeni and Islaahi Jamaats.

This is why we consider it our Deeni responsibility to inform the Ummah in general and the Tableeghi brothers specifically in light of these points that:-

Moulana Muhammed Saad Saheb khandhelwi Saheb, due to a lack of knowledge has strayed from the path of the majority of the Ulema of the Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaa’ah in his ideologies and his explanation of Qur’aan and Hadeeth, which is undoubtedly the path of deviation. Therefore, silence cannot be adopted regarding these matters, because, even though these ideologies are those of a single person, they are spreading with great speed among the general masses.

The influential and accomplished Zimme-Daars of Jamaat who are moderate and composed also wish to turn our attention that an effort needs to be made that this Jamaat which was established by the Akaabir be kept upon the pattern of the majority of the Ummah and that of the previous Zimme-Daars. An effort also needs to made so that the incorrect ideologies of Molvi Saad that have spread amongst the general masses may be rectified. If immediate action is not taken, there is fear that a great portion of the Ummah, which is affiliated to the Tableegh Jamaat will succumb to deviance and take on the form of a Firqah Baatilah.

We all make Du’aa that Allah Ta’aala protect this Jamaat and keep the Jamaat-e-Tableegh alive and flourishing with Ikhlaas upon the manner of the Akaabir. Aameen. Thumma Aameen.

Note: These types of inappropriate statements were made previously by some individuals connected to the Tableegh Jamaat, upon which the Ulema of that time, for example, Hazrat Sheikhul Islam (rahmatullahi alayh) etc. cautioned them after which those individuals desisted from such statements. Now, however, the Zimme-Daars [i.e. the leaders of Tabligh Jama’at] themselves are saying such things, rather, even worse things are being said, as is apparent from the above quotations. They were cautioned, however, they did not heed the caution, due to which this decision and Fatwa is being approved, in order to save the people from deviance.

END OF STATEMENT FROM DARUL ULOOM DEOBAND

The original Urdu version is available at this link:
http://www.darulifta-deoband.com/home/ur/Dawah–Tableeg/147286

Tablighi Jamat, The Powerful Muslim Revivalist Movement of 20th Century, at Crossroads

Posted on December 31, 2021 by iqu

Tablighi Jamat, The Powerful Muslim Revivalist Movement of 20th Century, at Crossroads

Monday June 27, 2016 10:54 AM, M. Burhanuddin Qasmi, ummid.com

Tablighi Jamat

In the 20th century era, Tablighi Jamat has been the most successful Muslim revivalist movement. It was architected and painstakingly nourished by Hazrat Maulana Ilyas (ra) in 1927, British India. Later it was polished and documented by a bunch of scholars like Hazrat Maulana Mohammad Yusuf (ra), Hazrat Maulana Mohammad Zakariya (ra) and Hazrat Maulana Inamul Hasan (ra) during their tenures as Amir (leader) or mentor. Stalwart scholars like Hazrat Maulana Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (ra) and Hazrat Maulana Manzoor Ahmad Nomani (ra) have penned down books and jeweled this movement with the Qur’an and Sunnah.

This movement has been playing a central role in spreading Islam and reviving its core values among the Islamic faith holders, particularly in the grass root level, for last one century. It has a door to door approach from a humble peasant to a high profile intellectual. The Jamat said to be subscribed, undocumented, by more than 200 millions adherents in 213 countries of the world, spreading across all the continents. Maulana Tariq Jamil and likes are some of the present Tablighi scholars who attract thousands across the world from all spectrums of life by their preaching.

Jamat at-Tabligh or Tablighi Jamat is an offshoot of Deoband School of Thoughts. The members of Jamat have always been very simple, pious and sincere. They are also called as Allahwale (Godly people) by commoners for their down to earth attitude, out of controversy working style, and for their deeds but for Allah only. Their aim is to please Allah alone and make their, and their fellow believers’ lives in hereafter better. The movement has always been exceptionally peaceful – spreading peace and inviting people towards the Masjid are the principal themes of Tablighi Jamat. The method of reformation introduced and practiced by the movement is unparalleled and very close to the ways of Prophet Mohammad (saws).

The Jamat does not maintain a register, nor a membership receipt or a bank account.

However, its members travel village to village, city to city, country to country and even from continent to continent, and they stay 3 days, 40 days, 4 months and even one year out of home. They spend millions as necessary expenses on travel and food but from their own pockets. ‘Apni Jaan, Apna Maal aur Apna Waqt’ (personal presence, own wealth and own time) is a tagline prerequisite for the members to sacrifice for their self-purification and better understanding of practical Islam.

The Jamat functions on the basis of Mashwara (mutual consultation) thus; it does not have formal office bearers as in other organizations. It does not have a president, nor a secretary or a treasurer; it is not a registered body either anywhere in the world.

In the early days, Hazrat Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhlawi (1886 – 1944) being the founder was leading the movement and thus was the Amir-e Jamat. Prior to his death, he and his close mates unanimously suggested for Maulana Mohammad Yusuf (ra) as leader of the movement. The 2nd Amir-e Jamat – Hazrat Maulana Muhammad Yusuf Kandhalvi (1917 – 1965) led the movement successfully and in his tenure he compiled the famous book Hayatus Sahab. In his period, the mission of Tablighi Jamat reached beyond the shores of Indian Ocean and touched Atlantic, Pacific and Southern shores successfully.

After the demise of Hazrat Maulana Yusuf (ra), Shaikhul Hadith Hazrat Maulana Mohammad Zakariya (ra) (1898 – 1982), the author of many Hadith books including famous Fazail-e A’mal, following a Mashwara (meeting) and advices from senior members of the Jamat, has appointed Hazrat Maulana Inamul Hasan (ra) as 3rd Amir-e Jamat. Hazrat Maulana In`amul Hasan Kandhlawi (1965 – 1995) led the movement supremely well and protected it from disputes. Since the work reached far and wide and in every nook and corner of the world, he made a Shura (an executive body) in every country for smooth functioning of the mission.

In some countries the Shura was formed with an Amir and in some other countries the Shura was without any Amir due to logistic reasons. Similarly all local and state workers and even workers from countries where members of the Jamat were not in big numbers were asked to appoint an arbitrator or Aimr-e Mashwara for their regular Mashwara or consultation on business of Jamat from Masjid level, to district, to state and even in some cases to country level work. The Amir-e Mashwara or the local Amir is selected by Mashwara itself, with opinions from all present in the meeting as the first assignment, for a limited time period only; and it goes on transferring to others by turn.

Hazratji Maulana Inamul Hasan (ra) has also formed a Shura or an executive body for Tabligh headquarter at Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz, New Delhi which consisted of 10 members to observe and promote the growing activities of Jamat throughout the world.

Thus he firmly established the Shurai Nizam or the consultative system of functioning in Tablighi Jamat in his life time. And all Shura bodies from Masjid level to country level smoothly kept on working under his patronage.

Following the sad demise of Hazrat Maulana Inamul Hasan (ra) in 1995, this Shura system went on fulfilling the noble responsibility of Dawah and Tabligh across the globe on the marked lines set by the three predecessors till 2015. However, during this long period between 1995 and 2015 most of the members of the Shura Body have passed away.

In the meantime, following the death of Hazrat Maulana Zubairul Hasan Kandhlawi (1950 – 2014), one of the most senior Shura members, controversies among his followers and the followers of Hazrat Maulana Muhammad Saad Kandhalawi, another senior most Shura member, started to surface in Public. Therefore, all the senior members of the Jamat from around the world held a meeting last year on 16th November, 2015 at Raiwind Markaz, Lahore, Pakistan to fill up the eight vacant places in the Worldwide Shura Body.

The meeting at Raiwind passed some important resolutions, copy is available with us, for the smooth functioning of this great revival mission worldwide. Most importantly, the Tablighi Mashwara or the meeting at Raiwind emphatically resolved to continue its business on the Shura (consultative) system only and negated a particular Amir or leader for future.

As per the Mashwara and following opinions and suggestions from all seniors of the Jamat present, the meeting resolved that the present Shura Body would consist of 13 members. (1) Haji Abdul Wahab from Pakistan, the most senior member alive, who has been working with Tabligh ever since its inception, (2) Maulana Mohammad Saad, India, (3) Maulana Ibrahim Dewla, India, (4) Maulana Ahmad Lat, India, (5) Maulana Mohammad Yaqoob, India, (6) Maulana Mohammad Zuhairul Hasan, India, (7) Maulana Nazrur Rahman, Pakistan, (8) Maulana Abdur Rahman, Pakistan, (9) Maulana Ubaidullah Khurshid, Pakistan, (10) Maulana Ziaul Haq, Pakistan (11) Qari Mohammad Zubair, Bangladesh, (12) Maulana Rabiul Haq, Bangladesh, (13) Janab Wasiful Islam, Bangladesh. International Tablighi Shura body thus comprises 5 each members from India and Pakistan and 3 from Bangladesh.

The meeting also resolved that these members would follow and protect the noble method of the functioning of Jamat and if they need to add any member in the Shura or make any changes, whatsoever, they would do it with mutual consultation (Mashwara) and no major decision in the policy matter should be taken in Nizamuddin Markaz, India, Raiwind Markaz, Pakistan or in Kokrail Markaz, Bangladesh in autonomy without the Mashwara with existing Shura body. The meeting also resolved that in future when any member of this Shura passes away, a new member would be selected by the Rai (opinion) of two third members of the present Shura – thus making 2/3 as quorum of the present Alami Tablighi Shura (International Executive Body of Tablighi Jamat). The meeting minutes also noted that the meeting was deliberating and passing these resolutions to protect the Shurai Nizam of the work and to keep this noble mission collective one for whole of the world.

Maulana Mohammad Saad of India allegedly did not accept the above resolutions thus not singed on the document. Sadly, he disagreed with that Shura and declared himself as Amir-e Jamat, an audio clip viraled on social media reportedly from him, at least confirms this. As a consequence, Jamat members at Hazrat Nizamuddin Markaz, India divided into two – some supporting Maulana Mohammad Saad and some others are supporting Maulana Mohammad Zuhairul Hasan, a supporter of Alami Shura and son of former senior member Hazrat Maulana Zubairul Hasan.

The followers of both the individuals are taking extreme views. The situation is worsening each passing day. They are even taking laws in their hands and resorting to violence. All peace talks, sacrifices for each other, love and respect for fellow human, let alone your own brother in the work of Dawah, seem to be the stories of past! All the bad news are continuously coming from inside Nizamuddin Markaz for last several months.

Common followers, friends and well-wishers of Tabilighi Jamat are very anxious over this adverse situation at their world headquarter. Intellectuals, media and local administration, initially ignored it, as trivial rifts are common in every organization but on 19th June 2016, (13th Ramadhanul Mubarak) this rift took an extremely serious and ugly turn when some supporters of one of the individuals attacked their opponents with lethal weapons following a short argument on a petty issue over Iftar mat. 15 people were reportedly injured; some of them were very serious, admitted in AIIMS, New Delhi. Some of the very senior members, who support Alami Shura, have received death threat; their rooms were reportedly smashed. They left Nizamuddin Markaz putting the blame over Maulana Saad’s supporters, the letter addressed to Maulana Mohammad Saad dated 19 June, 2016 by Dr. Sanaullah Khan with sorrow and anguish indicates this.

It is time, rather it is a clarion call for ulama of Deoband, Kandhla, Mazahir, Nadwa and senior members of Jamat from Aligarh and across the world to come forward and settle the dispute before it is too late. The most successful movement of 20 century Islam – Tablighi Jamat is at the crossroad. It is here, it may take a serious but ugly turn.

[M. Burhanuddin Qasmi is Editor of Eastern Crescent and Director of Markazul Ma’arif Education and Research Centre, Mumbai.]

Everything You Need to Know About Avocados

Posted on December 15, 2021 by iqu

+ 15 Science-Backed Reasons to Eat These Fabulous Fruits

Ocean Robbins · Published February 6, 2019 · 10 min read

SUMMARY

Avocados are popular and loved by many. In fact, consumption in the U.S. has risen more than fourfold in the last 20 years. But how much do you know about the creamy green fruit (yes, it’s a fruit!)? Are there avocado health benefits you should know about? Where do they come from? And are they sustainable? Keep reading to find out!

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You can find avocados almost everywhere — from grocery stores and farmers markets to chocolate pudding recipes.

Once considered a delicacy, this green tree fruit is now a common addition to tables and menus all over the world.

People’s love affair with avocados has gained traction in recent years. The growth in sales outpaces that of any other fruit. And in 2015, The Washington Post dubbed avocados “America’s new favorite fruit.”

What Is an Avocado?

The avocado is an evergreen, tropical tree with green, pear-shaped, nutrient-dense fruit. The term avocado refers to both the tree and the fruit.

Avocados come in hundreds of different varieties. And the tree is a member of the flowering plant family, Lauraceae.

The fruit itself is technically a berry containing one large seed. But keep in mind that the scientific definition of a berry (a fruit derived from the ovary of a single flower) varies from common usage. Botanists will tell you that eggplant is a berry and a strawberry is not. So I wouldn’t jump at a berry cobbler made by a botanist!

While they aren’t sweet, avocados are a satisfying and versatile food with a creamy, buttery texture. And they have a rich flavor from the high-fat content.

Avocado Health Benefits: The Skinny on This Healthy Fat Fruit

Avocados offer an abundance of fiber, potassium (more than a banana!), and vitamins B6 and C. They’re also rich in folate, which can boost your mood!

But any way you slice it, the nutrient avocados offer the most of is fat. In fact, one cup of avocado provides 21 grams of fat. The type of fat found in avocado, therefore, matters a great deal. And it’s mostly a mixture of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

Polyunsaturated fats are essential. This means they’re necessary for your body to function, but it can’t make them itself. Your body uses these fats to build cell membranes and the covering of nerves. And they’re also needed for blood clotting and muscle movement.

Monounsaturated fats are similar to the fats found in olive oil. Some studies have linked them to reduced inflammation, lower risk of heart disease, and anti-cancer effects.

While many people debate the health effects of specific types of fat, I think that’s a bit like debating whether a trumpet is a good instrument. Taken by itself, it’s arguable. But when it’s in a talented band, playing excellent music, the equation can change considerably.

To me, avocados are a bit like one of the finest orchestras ever assembled. They’re not only delicious — but they also contain a fabulous and nutritious symphony of components that combine to create a nourishing, satisfying (and, in my personal opinion, delicious!) result.

And unlike, for example, avocado oil, a cup of avocado provides 10 grams of fiber.

Plus Avocados Have Few Pesticides

According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), avocados are one of the Clean 15. (The list of produce least likely to contain pesticide residue.)

Fewer than one percent of conventional avocados tested positive for pesticides.

So if you can’t afford organically grown avocados, you can choose conventionally grown varieties without any major pesticide exposure.

15 Ways Avocados Can Support Your Health

A cut in half avocado in hands — iStock.com/olindana

Avocado health benefits are extensive and include:

Avocado eaters tend to be healthier. A 2013 study published in the Nutrition Journal found that avocado consumers tend to have higher nutrient intake and lower rates of metabolic syndrome. They also have lower weight, lower BMI, less belly fat, and higher levels of HDL (high-density lipoprotein, or “good”cholesterol).
Avocados can help you better absorb antioxidants. Some nutrients are fat-soluble. That means you should consume them with fats so your body can properly absorb them. A 2005 study published in The Journal of Nutrition found that eating carotenoids (antioxidants including lycopene and beta-carotene) with avocado or avocado oil increased their absorption.
Avocados may help prevent and treat cancer. A 2015 study published in Cancer Research found that avocatin B, a compound derived from avocado, can help kill leukemia cells. A 2015 research review published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that phytochemicals (plant compounds) in avocados make them potentially beneficial for preventing cancer.
Avocados can reduce your risk of heart disease. A 2015 study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that eating one avocado per day as part of a moderate‐fat, cholesterol‐lowering diet reduced LDL (low-density lipoprotein, or “bad”cholesterol).
Avocados may aid in weight loss. A 2013 study published in the Nutrition Journal found that people eating avocado with a meal felt 23% more satisfied. And they had a 28% lower desire to eat in the next five hours versus people who didn’t eat an avocado.
Avocados may boost brain health and memory. The fruit is rich in oleic acid (or OEA), an omega-9 fatty acid that’s linked to improved cognition. A 2009 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America found that these types of acids can enhance memory.
Avocados may help lower the risk of depression. Eating monounsaturated fats have been shown to reduce depression. (And balancing fat intake may help control depression.) And the high amount of folate has been shown to help maintain your brain’s feel-good chemicals, dopamine and serotonin.
Avocados can help prevent neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A 2016 study published in Advances in Neurobiology found that the “diverse array of bioactive nutrients” present in avocados play a key role in the prevention and cure of these types of diseases.
Avocados can keep your eyes healthy as you age. The fruit is rich in the carotenoids lutein and zeaxanthin, which can help protect and maintain healthy cells in your eyes. According to a 2017 study published in the journal Nutrients, avocado can help boost macular pigment with age.
Avocados can help prevent gum disease. A 2006 study published in the Journal of Periodontology found that key ingredients in avocados may enhance protective effects against periodontal disease.
Avocados can help ease osteoarthritis. A 2010 review published in the journal The Physician and Sportsmedicine found that key ingredients in avocados can help patients with arthritis of the hip or knee.
Avocados can combat metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is an assortment of linked issues including high blood sugar, high serum cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high body mass index, which lead to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. A 2017 study published in the journal Phytotherapy Research found that the “lipid‐lowering, antihypertensive, antidiabetic, anti‐obesity, antithrombotic, antiatherosclerotic, and cardioprotective effects of avocado” can help protect against this syndrome.
Avocados can help prevent food poisoning. A 2013 study published in the journal BioMed Research International found that the antibacterial activity of avocados can help protect against e. Coli and other foodborne pathogens.
Avocados can help reduce liver damage. A 2000 study presented by the American Chemical Society found that avocados contain chemicals that can protect against liver toxins. And avocados may be able to lessen the liver damage caused by the hepatitis C virus.
Avocados can be great for pregnant women. A 2016 study published in the journal Nutrients concluded that avocados are high in folate and potassium (typically under-consumed in maternal diets) as well as fiber, monounsaturated fats, and lipid-soluble antioxidants — all of which are tied to improvements in maternal health, birth outcomes, and quality of breast milk.

Any Down Sides to Avocados?

Avocados are high in fat and calories. So if excess weight is a concern, you may want to create some limits on how many you eat. A small amount can go a long way.

And if you’re prone to migraines or are allergic to latex, avocados might not be the fruit for you.

For those who suffer from migraines, certain foods, circumstances, or environmental factors can trigger episodes.

Avocados sometimes appear on lists of such foods due to the high levels of tyramine (a substance formed when proteins break down) they contain when overripe.

In addition, avocado contains some of the same allergens found in latex. So if you have a latex allergy, you may want to watch out to see if avocados trigger any of the same symptoms.

8 Types of Avocados Worth Knowing About

Hundreds of varieties of avocados exist, which vary widely in color and size. Some are green, others are black, and they range from as small as only a few ounces to as large as five pounds.

The most common types of avocados include:

Hass Avocados

Hass — the small, dark green, bumpy variety you’re probably used to — is eaten more than any other. In fact, Hass avocados made up 97% of avocado sales in the U.S. in 2018. And they accounted for about 80% of all avocados eaten worldwide.

Hass has become so popular because it’s great for exporting and importing. Believe it or not, it also ripens more slowly than other kinds (believe it or not). A Hass avocado also changes color when ripe and has a relatively thick skin.

They’re quite rich and can have up to 20% oil content. Their season is year-round, which works out well because that’s exactly the same as my season for guacamole!

Choquette Avocados

Native to South Florida, these large, bright-green avocados are lighter in flavor and less oily than Hass.

They have firmer flesh and hold up well in salads — though most people tend to prefer the buttery flavor of Hass.

Many Floridians have shady Choquette trees growing in their backyards. And they’re in season in Florida from June through March.

Bacon Avocados

Not to worry — no pigs are harmed in the making of these tasty avos!

Bacon avocados are oval shaped and have smooth green skin. They have pale yellow flesh and a creamy texture. They tend to be sweeter and more watery than Hass. Bacon avocados are in season from November to March.

Fuerte Avocados

Considered extremely flavorful, these pear-shaped, green avocados are grown in California and have a smooth, medium skin.

The Fuerte is easy to peel, and many consider it the best tasting, so grab some if you can! Fuerte avocados are in season from November to June.

Tonnage Avocados

This green, pear-shaped variety originated in Guatemala. It has a lower oil content than Hass or Choquette and a sweeter taste.

It’s in season from August through late September.

Daily 11 Avocados

Weighing up to five pounds, the Daily 11 avocado is related to the Hass. It may be the largest variety grown in California.

Pear-shaped or baggy with a thick skin, this avocado also has an oily texture. It’s in season from August through October.

Macarthur Avocados

Originally cultivated in California, the Macarthur is a large variety with a hard green shell and creamy inner fruit.

Buttery and nutty when ripe, it’s in season from August to November.

Shepard Avocados

Native to Australia, these “greenskin” (their skin stays green as they ripen) avocados are the second most common variety down under.

They’re longer than Hass, have a nutty flavor, and are available from February to April in Australia.

Where Do Your Avocados Come from?

With the increasing demand for avocados, it’s important to consider the source — as well as other issues surrounding the massive growth of avocado consumption.

The majority of avocados consumed by Americans come from Mexico.

In 2017, the country exported more than 1.7 billion pounds of Hass avocados to the U.S. Given the exponential rise of the industry, particularly in Mexico, many are concerned about its role in deforestation and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, according to The Smithsonian, the popularity of Hass avocados is creating a monoculture, where native varieties of avocado are being cut down and replaced with Hass trees.

So what can you do?

To vote with your dollars against a future of monocultures of Hass avocados, consider giving another avocado variety a try! Also, buying U.S. grown avocados helps minimize transportation distance and greenhouse gas emissions.

If you’re in Florida, California, Hawaii, or a tropical country, you’re likely to find some other options at your local farmer’s market or sustainable grocer.

When Is an Avocado Ripe?

A woman picking out an avocado at a supermarket — iStock.com/ljubaphoto

As many an avo-lover is aware, avocados can ripen quickly — often too quickly!

Most of us know the pain of forgetting about an avocado and then realizing it’s become too mushy to eat.

So how do you know when your avocado is ripe? It does depend on the variety. Hass avocados grow darker as they ripen, but so-called greenskins keep their color.

To determine ripeness, gently squeeze your avocado with all fingers. If a slight amount of pressure causes it to “give,” it’s ready!

Don’t press avocados with your thumb, though. It can bruise the fruit. (That technique is why many supermarket avocados end up ruined.) The human thumb is the natural enemy of the avocado!

You can also peel back the small stem or cap at the top of the avocado. If it comes away easily and if you find green underneath, you’ve got a good avocado that’s ripe and ready to eat.

And with a thicker-skinned or hard-shelled variety, you can pull out the little cap and stick a toothpick in. If it’s soft, the avo is ready to eat!

The Best Way to Peel an Avocado

Scooping an avocado out from its peel — iStock.com/NatashaPhoto

Peeling this fruit can be a challenge sometimes.

The highest concentrations of antioxidants are closest to the skin. So, you want to try to get as much of the flesh as you can.

The California Avocado Commission recommends the “nick and peel” method. Here’s how it works (you can check out a visual how-to on the CAC website):

Wash your avocado.
Cut it lengthwise, around the seed.
Rotate your fruit and cut it into one-quarter segments.
Separate the pieces and remove the seed.
Starting from the top of each piece, nick and peel the flesh off. Then discard the skin.

How to Store Avocados

For storage, keep avocados at room temperature until they’re ripe.

If your avocado is ripe, but you’re not quite ready to eat it, put it in the fridge. They’ll usually keep that way for three to five more days.

To speed up the ripening process, put your avocado in a brown paper bag and add an apple.

If you have half an avocado or it’s already cut up, squeezing a little lemon juice on it will help keep it from browning.

5 Different Ways to Eat an Avocado — Besides Guacamole!

If you’re looking to add more avocado to your diet, here are a few creative recipe ideas to try!

Basil Avocado Pesto

This flavorful recipe uses avocado in a dip along with basil and walnuts to create a nutrient-dense, perfect party food!

Baked Avocado Fries

You may have seen avocado fries on the menu at select eateries, but this oil-free recipe from Simple Vegan Blog is a baked, healthier version of the snack!

Vegan Avocado Toast

Avocado and toast are a match made in heaven. This recipe from Minimalist Baker is super simple and uses whole-grain bread, avocado, vegan parmesan, and red pepper flakes.

Avocado Quinoa Salad

Combine avocado and quinoa, and it’s the ultimate superfood salad! Try this easy, delicious recipe from Veggies Save the Day.

Avocado Chocolate Mousse

Who knew avocado made such a wonderful addition to desserts? This mousse recipe from Chocolate Covered Katie is rich and full of antioxidants.

Eye drops could replace reading glasses for millions

Posted on December 13, 2021 by iqu

A newly approved eye drop hitting the market on Thursday could change the lives of millions of Americans with age-related blurred near vision, a condition affecting mostly people 40 and older.

Vuity, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in October, would potentially replace reading glasses for some of the 128 million Americans who have trouble seeing close-up. The new medicine takes effect in about 15 minutes, with one drop on each eye providing sharper vision for six to 10 hours, according to the company.

Toni Wright, one of the 750 participants in a clinical trial to test the drug, said she liked what she saw.“It’s definitely a life changer,” Wright told CBS News national correspondent Jericka Duncan.

Before the trial, the only way Wright could see things clearly was by keeping reading glasses everywhere — in her office, bathroom, kitchen and car.

“I was in denial because to me that was a sign of growing older, you know, needing to wear glasses,” she said.

It was in 2019 that her doctor told her about a new eye drop with the potential to correct her vision problems, temporarily. The 54-year-old online retail consultant, who works from her farm in western Pennsylvania, instantly noticed a difference.

“I would not need my readers as much, especially on the computer, where I would always need to have them on,” she said.

Vuity is the first FDA-approved eye drop to treat age-related blurry near vision, also known as presbyopia. The prescription drug utilizes the eye’s natural ability to reduce its pupil size, said Dr. George Waring, the principal investigator for the trial.

“Reducing the pupil size expands the depth of field or the depth of focus, and that allows you to focus at different ranges naturally,” he said.

A 30-day supply of the drug will cost about $80 and works best in people 40 to 55 years old, a Vuity spokesperson said. Side effects detected in the three-month trial included headaches and red eyes, the company said.

“This is something that we anticipate will be well tolerated long term, but this will be evaluated and studied in a formal capacity,” Waring said.

Vuity is by no means a cure-all, and the maker does caution against using the drops when driving at night or performing activities in low-light conditions. The drops are for mild to intermediate cases and are less effective after age 65, as eyes age. Users may also have temporary difficulty in adjusting focus between objects near and far.

As of now, the drug is not covered by insurance. Doctors who spoke with CBS News said it’s unlikely that insurance will ever cover it because it’s not “medically necessary,” as glasses are still a less expensive alternative.

For Wright and millions just like her, the new drug is an easy backup solution — with a clear advantage.

“Just a convenience to have that option of putting the drops in and being able to go,” she said.

Love for Cats in Islam

Posted on December 12, 2021 by iqu

Paws for Thought: Love for Felines in Islam

by Helmy Sa’at

Most of us would have had a pet cat when we were younger. Or, at the very least, we continually come across strays in our neighbourhoods which we have been feeding for weeks, months or even years. It seems that we just cannot resist these mischievous four-legged snuggly fur balls which have aloof imprinted in their DNA, but catching us by surprise – melting our collective hearts with sudden head rubs when we least expect it.

We rely more on our pet cats than we care to acknowledge or even realise! Throughout this pandemic, more people have been exploring opportunities to adopt with a 250% increase in global searches by would-be pet owners. The following occurred during April and May 2020, compared to the same period in 2019.In addition, cats are more popular than dogs in 91 countries which means you are not alone in being part of a worldwide ailurophile club.

Many believe that having pets, especially, during these challenging times help with their mental well-being. Moreover, we have a lifelong friend to boot, as long as the kibbles keep coming!

Cracking the Cat Code With Faith

Narrated `Abdullah bin `Umar:

حَدَّثَنَا إِسْمَاعِيلُ، قَالَ حَدَّثَنِي مَالِكٌ، عَنْ نَافِعٍ، عَنْ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ عُمَرَ ـ رضى الله عنهما ـ أَنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ “‏ عُذِّبَتِ امْرَأَةٌ فِي هِرَّةٍ حَبَسَتْهَا، حَتَّى مَاتَتْ جُوعًا، فَدَخَلَتْ فِيهَا النَّارَ ـ قَالَ فَقَالَ وَاللَّهُ أَعْلَمُ ـ لاَ أَنْتِ أَطْعَمْتِهَا وَلاَ سَقَيْتِهَا حِينَ حَبَسْتِيهَا، وَلاَ أَنْتِ أَرْسَلْتِيهَا فَأَكَلَتْ مِنْ خَشَاشِ الأَرْضِ ‏”‏‏.‏

Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) said, “A woman was tortured and was put in Hell because of a cat which she had kept locked till it died of hunger.” Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) further said, (Allah knows better) Allah said (to the woman), ‘You neither fed it nor watered when you locked it up, nor did you set it free to eat the vermin of the earth.’ “

[Sahih al-Bukhari 2365]

As evident from the above hadith, it is deemed a serious sin to mistreat cats in Islam. Even Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was clear pertaining to the treatment of cats. They are not to be neglected, thus causing hunger. It is sunnah to feed them even if they are strays.

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu’minin:

حَدَّثَنَا عَبْدُ اللَّهِ بْنُ مَسْلَمَةَ، حَدَّثَنَا عَبْدُ الْعَزِيزِ، عَنْ دَاوُدَ بْنِ صَالِحِ بْنِ دِينَارٍ التَّمَّارِ، عَنْ أُمِّهِ، أَنَّ مَوْلاَتَهَا، أَرْسَلَتْهَا بِهَرِيسَةٍ إِلَى عَائِشَةَ رضى الله عنها فَوَجَدْتُهَا تُصَلِّي فَأَشَارَتْ إِلَىَّ أَنْ ضَعِيهَا فَجَاءَتْ هِرَّةٌ فَأَكَلَتْ مِنْهَا فَلَمَّا انْصَرَفَتْ أَكَلَتْ مِنْ حَيْثُ أَكَلَتِ الْهِرَّةُ فَقَالَتْ إِنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ “‏ إِنَّهَا لَيْسَتْ بِنَجَسٍ إِنَّمَا هِيَ مِنَ الطَّوَّافِينَ عَلَيْكُمْ ‏”‏ ‏.‏ وَقَدْ رَأَيْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم يَتَوَضَّأُ بِفَضْلِهَا ‏.‏

Dawud ibn Salih ibn Dinar at-Tammar quoted his mother as saying that her mistress sent her with some pudding (harisah) to Aisha who was offering prayer. She made a sign to me to place it down. A cat came and ate some of it, but when Aisha finished her prayer, she ate from the place where the cat had eaten. She stated: The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: It is not unclean: it is one of those who go round among you. She added: I saw the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) performing ablution from the water left over by the cat.

[Sunan Abi Dawud 76]

Clearly, cats are favoured for their cleanliness. This is partly why cats are permissible to enter homes and even mosques.

In human cultures across the globe, superstitions abound and could prove detrimental to weakening of faith when left unchecked. One being the misfortune associated with black cats that cross our paths unexpectedly, for instance. However, there is no Quranic verse or hadith to support such views. Instead, we as Muslims should put our faith in Allah and only fear Allah.

In a nutshell, all positive and negative things that happen remain in the purview of Allah; and Allah alone, decides our trajectories in life, certainly not black cats!

Purr-fect Tips for A Healthy Cat Companion

Whether you are a first time pet owner, or have been one for years it does not hurt to revisit a couple of fundamentals when it comes to ensuring that your cat is happy and healthy.

Supply of fresh, clean water is a must. Just like us, cats need to hydrate in order to maintain good health. Sufficient supply aids digestion, specifically, in the transport and absorption of nutrients and helps to maintain body temperature. One myth that we have come to accept as universal truth is that cats prefer to lap up milk in their saucers. Like many of us, cats could also be lactose intolerant. Therefore, milk is not necessarily the best choice for hydration when, in fact, it could cause issues, such as diarrhoea which only worsens dehydration.

No doubt, the pandemic has been a challenging period for many of us. Again, just like us, our pets are not averse to becoming depressed after being cooped up in a small indoor space for a long time. Windows are ideal for cats to observe the outdoors which provides an avenue to kill boredom and passing the time. If possible, add a bird feeder that would provide more opportunities for a varied occurrences to be observed.

Ultimately, no matter what animal we come across or choose to have as our pets, we need to treat it right.

Narrated Abu Huraira:

قَالُوا يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ وَإِنَّ لَنَا فِي الْبَهَائِمِ لأَجْرًا فَقَالَ‏: فِي كُلِّ ذَاتِ كَبِدٍ رَطْبَةٍ أَجْرٌ ‏

The people said, “O Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ)! Is there a reward for us in serving the animals?” He replied: “Yes, there is a reward for serving any animate (living being).”

[Sahih al-Bukhari 2466]

Spinal Cord Neurons Regenerated With New Drug

Posted on November 15, 2021 by iqu

New Class Of Drug Reverses Paralysis In Mice

US scientists have developed a new form of drug that promotes the regeneration of cells and reversed paralysis in mice with spinal injuries, allowing them to walk again within four weeks of treatment.

The research was published in the journal Science on Thursday, and the team of Northwestern University scientists behind it hope to approach the Food and Drug Administration as early as next year to propose human trials.

“The aim of our research was to develop a translatable therapy that could be brought to the clinic to prevent individuals from becoming paralyzed after major trauma or disease,” Northwestern’s Samuel Stupp, who led the study, told AFP.

Curing paralysis is a longstanding goal of medicine, and other cutting-edge research in the field includes experimental treatments using stem cells to make new neurons (nerve cells), gene therapy that tells the body to produce certain proteins to aid nerve repair, or injecting proteins.

Stupp’s team, on the other hand, used nanofibers to mimic the architecture of the “extracellular matrix” — a naturally occurring network of molecules surrounding tissue that is responsible for supporting cells.

Each fiber is about 10,000 times narrower than a human hair, and they are made up of hundreds of thousands of bioactive molecules called peptides that transmit signals to promote nerve regeneration.

The therapy was injected as a gel into tissue surrounding the spinal cords of lab mice 24 hours after an incision was made in their spines.

The team decided to wait a day because humans who receive devastating spinal injuries from car accidents, gunshots and so on also experience delays in getting treatment.

Four weeks later, mice who received the treatment regained their ability to walk almost as well as before the injury. Those left untreated did not.

The mice were then put down to examine the impacts of the therapy on the cellular level, and the team found dramatic improvements to the spinal cords.

The severed extensions of neurons called axons regenerated, and scar tissue that can act as a physical barrier to regeneration was significantly diminished.

This handout picture obtained from Northwestern University on November 10, 2021 shows a longitudinal spinal cord section treated with the most bioactive therapeutic scaffold; regenerated axons (red) regrew within the lesion Photo: Northwestern University via AFP / Handout

What’s more, an insulating layer of axons called myelin that is important in transmitting electric signals had reformed, blood vessels that deliver nutrients to injured cells had formed, and more motor neurons survived.

A key discovery by the team was that creating a certain mutation in the molecules intensified their collective motion and heightened their efficacy.

This is because receptors in neurons are naturally in constant motion, Stupp explained, and increasing the motion of the therapeutic molecules within the nanofibers helps connect them more effectively with their moving targets.

The researchers in fact tested two versions of the treatment — one with the mutation and one without — and found that mice that received the modified version regained more function.

The gel developed by the scientists is the first of its kind, but could usher in a new generation of medicines known as “supramolecular drugs,” because the therapy is an assembly of many molecules rather than a single molecule, said Stupp.

According to the team, it is safe because the materials biodegrade within a matter of weeks and become nutrients for cells.

Stupp said he hopes to rapidly move direct to human studies next without the need for further animal testing, such as on primates.

This is because the nervous system is highly similar across mammal species and “there is nothing out there to help spinal cord injury patients, and this is a huge human problem,” he said.

According to official statistics, nearly 300,000 people are living with a spinal cord injury in the United States alone. Their lifespan is shorter than people without spinal injury, and has not improved since the 1980s.

“The challenge will be how the FDA will look at these therapies because they’re completely new,” predicted Stupp.

Story of the Atom Bomb

Posted on November 12, 2021 by iqu

AN UNEARTHLY SPECTACLE

The untold story of the world’s biggest nuclear bomb

By Alex Wellerstein
October 29, 2021

A cape on the Barents Sea shore of the island Novaya Zemlya was the target for the October 30, 1961 Tsar Bomba nuclear test.

In the early hours of October 30, 1961, a bomber took off from an airstrip in northern Russia and began its flight through cloudy skies over the frigid Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya. Slung below the plane’s belly was a nuclear bomb the size of a small school bus—the largest and most powerful bomb ever created.

At 11:32 a.m., the bombardier released the weapon. As the bomb fell, an enormous parachute unfurled to slow its descent, giving the pilot time to retreat to a safe distance. A minute or so later, the bomb detonated. A cameraman watching from the island recalled:

A fire-red ball of enormous size rose and grew. It grew larger and larger, and when it reached enormous size, it went up. Behind it, like a funnel, the whole earth seemed to be drawn in. The sight was fantastic, unreal, and the fireball looked like some other planet. It was an unearthly spectacle! [1]

The flash alone lasted more than a minute. The fireball expanded to nearly six miles in diameter—large enough to include the entire urban core of Washington or San Francisco, or all of midtown and downtown Manhattan. Over several minutes it rose and mushroomed into a massive cloud. Within ten minutes, it had reached a height of 42 miles and a diameter of some 60 miles. One civilian witness remarked that it was “as if the Earth was killed.” Decades later, the weapon would be given the name it is most commonly known by today: Tsar Bomba, meaning “emperor bomb.”

A still frame from a once-secret Soviet documentary of the Tsar Bomba nuclear test, released by Rosatom in August 2020.

Designed to have a maximum explosive yield of 100 million tons (or 100 megatons) of TNT equivalent, the 60,000-pound monster bomb was detonated at only half its strength. Still, at 50 megatons, it was more than 3,300 times as powerful as the atomic bomb that killed at least 70,000 people in Hiroshima, and more than 40 times as powerful as the largest nuclear bomb in the US arsenal today. Its single test represents about one tenth of the total yield of all nuclear weapons ever tested by all nations.[2]

At the time of its detonation, the Tsar Bomba held the world’s attention, largely as an object of infamy, recklessness, and terror. Within two years, though, the Soviet Union and the United States would sign and ratify the Limited Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, and the 50-megaton bomb would fall into relative obscurity.

From the very beginning, the United States sought to minimize the importance of the 50-megaton test, and it became fashionable in both the United States and the former Soviet Union to dismiss it as a political stunt with little technical or strategic importance. But recently declassified files from the Kennedy administration now indicate that the Tsar Bomba was taken far more seriously as a weapon, and possibly as something to emulate, than ever was indicated publicly. And memoirs from former Soviet weapons workers, only recently available outside Russia, make clear that the gigantic bomb’s place in the history of Soviet thermonuclear weapons may be far more important than has been appreciated. Sixty years after the detonation, it’s now finally possible to piece together a deeper understanding of the creation of the Tsar Bomba and its broader impacts.

The Tsar Bomba is not just a subject for history; some of the same dynamics exist today. It is not just the story of a single weapon that was detonated six decades ago, but a parable about political posturing and technical enablement that applies just as acutely today. In a new era of nuclear weapons and delivery competition, the Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless.

HIROSHIMA: 15 KT

NAGASAKI: 20 KT

B83 (largest currently deployed US warhead): 1.2 MT

RDS-37: 1.6 MT

CASTLE BRAVO: 15 MT

TSAR BOMBA: 50 MT

The 1954 Castle Bravo test produced an estimated yield of 15 megatons.

From kilotons to megatons to gigatons

Even before the first atomic bomb was built, scientists in the United States had conceived of an even larger weapon, the “Super,” which would use the energy of a fission bomb to power nuclear fusion reactions in the heavy hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium—resulting in a much more powerful weapon than one fueled by fission alone. Such a weapon, they reasoned, could be scaled up to the megaton range, a thousand-fold increase over the kiloton weapons they were contemplating for World War II. Los Alamos researchers were doing calculations on theoretical fission-ignited fusion bombs with yields of 100 megatons by October 1944.[3]

But making the first hydrogen bombs took a bit more time than that. Post-war attempts to rein in the arms race failed, and the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949. By the end of that year, a tense debate over whether a crash H-bomb program was the proper response to the loss of the American nuclear monopoly had leaked into the public, giving rise to speculation about the vast damage that could be caused by still-hypothetical megaton weapons. It was easy to apply scaling laws to see what the damage would be from such weapons. The 20-kiloton “Fat Man” bomb used against Nagasaki, for example, could devastate the downtown area of a large American city like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York. A single 10-megaton bomb, though, could destroy entire metro areas, subjecting over a thousand square miles to a crushing blast wave and searing heat, easily producing casualties in the millions. The radioactivity produced would also be multiplied many hundreds of times, creating the possibility of vast contamination.

By the spring of 1951, Edward Teller and Stanislaw Ulam at Los Alamos had developed their design for a workable hydrogen bomb. The idea was superficially simple: Use the radiation of an exploding fission bomb (the “primary”) to compress a special capsule that contained both fusionable and fissionable materials (the “secondary”). A proof-of-concept device (“Sausage”) was tested in November 1952, achieving an explosive yield of 10 megatons. A more compact, weaponized version (“Shrimp”) was detonated in March 1954 in the Castle Bravo test, achieving a much higher yield than anticipated (15 megatons, or 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima) and surprising the scientists with more radioactive fallout than expected (which required the evacuation of occupied atolls downwind from the Marshall Islands test site).

Only a few months later, in July 1954, Teller made it clear he thought 15 megatons was child’s play. At a secret meeting of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission, Teller broached, as he put it, “the possibility of much bigger bangs.” At his Livermore laboratory, he reported, they were working on two new weapon designs, dubbed Gnomon and Sundial. Gnomon would be 1,000 megatons and would be used like a “primary” to set off Sundial, which would be 10,000 megatons. Most of Teller’s testimony remains classified to this day, but other scientists at the meeting recorded, after Teller had left, that they were “shocked” by his proposal. “It would contaminate the Earth,” one suggested. Physicist I. I. Rabi, by then an experienced Teller skeptic, suggested it was probably just an “advertising stunt.”[4] But he was wrong; Livermore would for several years continue working on Gnomon, at least, and had even planned to test a prototype for the device in Operation Redwing in 1956 (but the test never took place).[5]

All of which is to say that the idea of making hydrogen bombs in the hundreds-of-megatons yield range was hardly unusual in the late 1950s. If anything, it was tame compared to the gigaton ambitions of one of the H-bomb’s inventors. It is hard to convey the damage of a gigaton bomb, because at such yields many traditional scaling laws do not work (the bomb blows a hole in the atmosphere, essentially). However, a study from 1963 suggested that, if detonated 28 miles (45 kilometers) above the surface of the Earth, a 10,000-megaton weapon could set fires over an area 500 miles (800 kilometers) in diameter. Which is to say, an area about the size of France.[6]

One of many heavily redacted pages in Cold War-era reports about US plans for “superbombs.” Edward Teller’s enthusiasm for “bigger bangs” is hinted at in these minutes from July 1954 meetings of the General Advisory Committee to the US Atomic Energy Commission.

The bomb’s physical dimensions would be gigantic: It would weigh 24–26 tons, with a length of 26 feet and a diameter of over 6 feet.

The Soviet Union had been interested in the Super for about as long, having received espionage information about the early American thermonuclear effort. The Soviets appear to have made their own path to the hydrogen bomb, though, first pursuing a single-stage design (“Sloika,” a reference to a layered pastry), tested in 1953, that could “only” be detonated at about half a megaton (though sub-megaton, it would still be 25 times as explosive as the Nagasaki bomb, and capable of killing millions if used on a major metropolis). In the spring of 1954, Andrei Sakharov, Yakov Zeldovich, and Yuri Trutnev, along with other Soviet physicists, developed their own version of a staged thermonuclear weapon, called RDS-37. The details of this are still somewhat cloudy, but it appears to have been a genuinely indigenous development, and it resulted in the test of a megaton-range weapon in 1955.[7]

As in the United States, there were those in the Soviet Union who immediately began thinking of “bigger bangs.” In late 1955, Avraamiy P. Zavenyagin, a KGB general who was a minister of the nuclear program, proposed scaling up the program’s new H-bomb to a massive size. It would be nothing fundamentally innovative—the same RDS-37 design but with a lot more fuel, to produce a yield in the “many tens of megatons”; one document suggests 20-30 megatons. Work began on the weapon, dubbed RDS-202, in 1956, with design calculations made at Chelyabinsk-70 (the Soviet equivalent of the Livermore weapons laboratory) and procurement orders issued for the necessary materials.

The bomb’s physical dimensions would be gigantic: It would weigh 24–26 tons, with an eventual length of 26 feet (8 meters) and a diameter of over 6 feet (2 meters). Making the parts of such an oversized weapon proved almost beyond the capabilities of existing machine shops. The largest, front part of the casing alone required a “parquet” approach in which 1,520 smaller elements were welded together, and the casting of the internal spherical shapes required new manufacturing techniques.

But acting rapidly, the scientists and technicians had the bomb ready for testing in the fall of 1956 (Sakharov himself signed off on its warhead design). However, uncertainties about the possible effects of such a large weapon—and the scientists’ inability to reliably predict meteorological conditions that would affect both the distance of the blast effect and the fallout—led Soviet officials to postpone the test until additional studies could be done, which would end up taking years. Zavenyagin himself died on the last day of 1956, and, with him, so apparently did RDS-202. In March 1957, the Soviet government ordered that the project be put in long-term storage, and in 1958 decided to dismantle and recycle all the pieces of it. All that would remain in storage was the massive casing, which had been painstakingly engineered for its unusual ballistic properties.[8]

Meanwhile, Soviet thermonuclear weapons design began to improve dramatically. Two young physicists at Arzamas-16 (the Soviet Los Alamos), Yuri Trutnev and Yuri Babaev, developed what they called a “new principle” for staged thermonuclear weapons. Project 49, as it was called, focused on optimizing the transfer of energy from the bomb’s primary to its secondary. This, coupled with better primaries and secondaries, allowed for a much more efficient warhead, capable of getting much bigger “bangs” out of a given weight and volume of material. Their new bomb design was finally tested in February 1958, with great success. Igor Kurchatov, the famed “father of the Soviet atomic bomb,” reported that year to the Congress of the Communist Party that now the Soviet Union had “even more powerful, more advanced, more reliable, more compact and cheaper atomic and hydrogen weapons.”[9]

Another still frame from the recently released Soviet-era film about the Tsar Bomba test. The bomb casing was all that remained from RDS-202, an unsuccessful earlier Soviet superbomb project.

Planning for a 100-megaton bomb

By the end of 1958, both the United States and the Soviet Union would agree to a voluntary Test Ban Moratorium. Their stockpiles would still grow, but innovation in the arms race—at least when it came to the warheads—was deliberately stifled by the lack of nuclear testing. This would continue until 1961, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev decided, at last, that Soviet nuclear testing should resume.

Khrushchev would claim, in his memoirs, that he was pressured by the scientists and the military to resume testing.[10] But it is also clear from those around him that he felt the need to look tough to the world—and to the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy, whom Khrushchev judged weak. And the real instigator would be the crisis in Berlin, which was coming to a head in 1961, and would only be resolved with the construction of the city’s notorious wall toward the end of the year.

The Soviet Union was also, it should be noted, in a somewhat precarious strategic position. The Red Army was huge and vast, and its nuclear arsenal was rapidly growing, but its delivery vehicles did not allow it to threaten the United States homeland directly and credibly. The Soviets could threaten by proxy, to be sure. But the United States had a many-fold advantage in nuclear weapons, many of them ringed around the Soviet borders. The Soviet Union had tested its first ICBMs, but there were scarcely any deployed. These same tensions would, in a few years, lead Khrushchev to base missiles in Cuba, but prior to that they made Khrushchev desperate to appear tough.

“Let the 100-megaton bomb hang over the capitalists like a sword of Damocles!”

On July 10, 1961, Khrushchev summoned the nuclear scientists from Arzamas-16 to the Kremlin, where he told them about his plan to resume testing that fall. Andrei Sakharov argued that further testing was unnecessary; Khrushchev was furious at his impertinence and snapped: “Sakharov, don’t try to tell us what to do or how to behave. We understand politics. I’d be a jellyfish and not Chairman of the Council of Ministers if I listened to people like Sakharov!”[11]

Exactly how the idea of the 100-megaton device came up at this meeting is not entirely clear from the accounts, but it sounds like Khrushchev asked the scientists for proposals for future tests, and somebody (some authors say it was Trutnev) proposed that they build and detonate a 100-megaton bomb. Khrushchev seized upon the idea, reportedly announcing: “Let the 100-megaton bomb hang over the capitalists like a sword of Damocles!”[12]

Later Russian accounts by participants claim Arzamas-16 scientists had been inspired, in part, by speculations about gigantic, gigaton-range bombs in the foreign press in May 1960. The physicist and designer Victor Adamski said that Sakharov and others tried to immediately assess the plausibility of the news reports, and came up with the schema that was ultimately used for the Tsar Bomba. They had initially apparently planned to design a smaller experiment, but they had somehow come across the preserved casing from the aborted RDS-202 bomb from 1956. The vastness of it apparently inspired them to go for a full-size test. But unlike the 1956 plan, they would use the newest Project 49 insights in developing this new bomb, making it far more sophisticated than a simple scaling-up of an old design; it would be over twice as powerful as RDS-202, despite being the same dimensions and weight.[13] Sakharov, in his memoirs, said he had been thinking about “the initiative,” as he called it, well before any formal request was made. It was not just about the megatonnage for its own sake; it would need to be “an absolute record,” so that, perhaps, it would be the last series of atmospheric tests ever requested.[14]

The 100-megaton bomb would be known internally as Project 602. The speed of its development is beyond impressive in retrospect: In a mere four months, the team would have to develop an entirely new weapon design for a totally untested yield range; build the device and fabricate the fissionable and fusionable material into the correct shapes; and devise a plan to safely test it. Sakharov would manage the whole project, with Trutnev and Babaev doing much of the design work, along with the young physicists Victor Adamski and Yuri Smirnov. Little has been released about the details of the design, but a few years ago two longtime participants in the Soviet and Russian nuclear programs revealed that it was what they called a “bifilar” design: There was a “main” thermonuclear unit in the center, with two “primaries” imploding it from either side (with a time difference between the two detonations of no more than 0.1 microseconds).[15] This seems plausible given the documentary photographs of the bomb released by Russia after the Cold War, which definitely show one very compact “primary” bomb at the front end of the case, and hint at another at the back of the case. If this is true, it suggests that the 100-megaton bomb design was quite different from most thermonuclear weapons; there has never been a report of any American bombs, for example, that use multiple, simultaneous primaries.

Another Soviet weapons scientist, Leonid Feoktistov, from the rival Chelyabinsk-70 laboratory (which engineered the ballistics of the bomb), reported disappointment when he later looked at the warhead design: “It soon became clear that we are not talking about some kind of super-discovery, but just about an increase in weight and size.” Adamski, Smirnov, and Trutnev would disagree with this assessment entirely: “The bomb’s design was far from simple. Although it was based on already well-known principles, many things could have happened, including a failure to achieve the desired explosive yield. But our specialists made it so that the bomb went off flawlessly.”[16]

Frame from the Tsar Bomba documentary released by Rosatom.

At the last minute, there were uncertainties about the design. Evsei Rabinowich, a colleague of Sakharov’s, had decided that the design would not work as planned. Sakharov disagreed. “Unfortunately,” Sakharov later recalled in his memoirs, “we lacked the mathematical tools I needed to prove this (partly because we had departed from precedent in our drive for a more powerful device).” In the end, Sakharov made “some changes” in the design, to minimize the margin of error, which were implemented only days before the test.

Sakharov also made one major change to the test plan. Even though the test bomb was a 100-megaton design, it would not be a 100-megaton detonation. In most thermonuclear weapons designs, at least half the yield comes from a final stage in which non-fissile atoms of uranium 238 are induced to fission by the high-energy neutrons produced by deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. Replacing the uranium 238 with an inert substance, in this case lead, would make the weapon half as powerful (50 megatons), and it would release far less fallout in the form of fission products.

Portrait of Andrei Sakharov from the early 1950s. (Russian Federal Nuclear Center, VNIIEF Museum and Archive, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives)

Sakharov was already queasy about the long-term deaths from nuclear fallout, and he wanted to minimize the excess radioactivity produced by the test. In 1958, he had calculated that for every megaton of even “clean” nuclear weapons, there would be some 6,600 premature deaths over the next 8,000 years across the globe, owing to carbon atoms in the atmosphere that would become radioactive under the bomb’s neutron flux.[17]

A few thousand deaths—even the 660,000 that he thought would be the result of a 100-megaton test—would be a tiny amount compared with the billions who would live and die over those millennia, but they were still deaths Sakharov considered himself partially responsible for. Had he not reduced its yield by half, the 100-megaton bomb would have contributed about half as many fission products as were released by all nuclear tests prior to the test moratorium. As it was, even a bomb that was only 3 percent fission wasn’t exactly clean in an objective sense—as it still released almost two megatons of fission products. But in a relative sense (comparing fission yield to total yield), it was one of the cleanest nuclear weapons ever tested. Again, Sakharov would later state that he believed that if this worked, it could essentially end atmospheric nuclear testing: The Soviets would be able to “squeeze everything out of this [testing series] so that it would be the last one.”[18]

In August 1961, Khrushchev summoned scientists to a secret meeting at the Kremlin. A colonel stationed at Arzamas-16 was tasked with bringing a wooden dummy of the massive bomb—considerably scaled down, but still large enough that it required several officers to bring it into the conference room. He later reported that, as the scientists briefed Khrushchev, the Soviet leader “stroked the polished surface of the model for a long time, and looked at the superbomb with drunken eyes.” The colonel speculated that perhaps Khrushchev believed the bomb “gave him unprecedented power over the world.”[19]

Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev addresses a cheering rally in Moscow on June 21, 1961. Khrushchev threatened to sign a peace treaty with East Germany before the end of the year and said Russia would resume nuclear tests as soon as the United States started testing again. (AP Photo)

Announcing the test, denouncing the test

On August 30, 1961, the Soviet Union issued a statement that it was abandoning the test moratorium. It, of course, blamed the United States, claiming the Americans were on the threshold of starting up nuclear testing underground, and emphasizing the defensive nature of the Soviet arsenal. The statement also referred to big bombs: “The Soviet Union has worked out designs for creating a series of superpowerful nuclear bombs of 20, 30, 50, and 100 million tons of TNT.” But it did not yet directly threaten to test weapons of such high yields.[20]

The response from Kennedy and others was predictably negative (according to one advisor who was there, the president’s first reaction was “unprintable”).[21] The Kennedy administration then agreed that the United States, too, would resume nuclear testing. The tests the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had ready to go were low-yield underground tests, which the White House thought might “invite such adverse comment” when compared to the larger Soviet tests “as to be unacceptable.” But AEC Chairman Glenn Seaborg managed to convince Kennedy that it was a bad idea to try to immediately test larger devices, and the White House would later use this fallout-free series of tests as a contrast to the multi-megaton Soviet test series.[22]

The Soviet hints of 100-megaton bombs provoked furious speculation in American newspapers, which reported unattributed sources saying that the United States could, if it wanted to, build and test 100-megaton weapons of its own, but that it chose not to. Some American scientists chimed in that weapons of such size were “too big” to be practical—that such a weapon would be strategically pointless. The argument, which would come up again and again in discussion of these bombs, was based on the way in which blast damage scales with yield. A 100-megaton bomb releases 10 times more energy than a 10-megaton bomb, but it does not do 10 times more damage. This is because the blast effects of explosions scale as a cubic root, not linearly. So a 10-megaton bomb detonated at an optimal altitude might do medium damage to a distance of 9.4 miles (15 kilometers) from ground zero, but a 100-megaton bomb “only” does the same amount of damage to 20.3 miles (33 kilometers). In other words, a 100-megaton explosion is only a little more than twice as damaging as a 10-megaton bomb. The weight of nuclear weapons, though, does roughly scale with their yield in a more linear fashion (design sophistication can vary this a bit), so a 100-megaton bomb weighs roughly 10 times more than a 10-megaton bomb, which makes it much more difficult to deploy on a bomber or missile.

The details can get much more complicated, depending on which effects one looks at (thermal radiation scales much better than blast damage), but the point that would be repeatedly made is that it is easier to deploy multiple lower-yield weapons than to deploy more massive weapons (and it is worth noting the absurdity of considering even one-megaton weapons, capable of utterly destroying most cities and many of their suburbs, to be “lower-yield”).

A November 1961 issue of LIFE magazine compared the destructive impact of a single, high-yield nuclear blast like Tsar Bomba to multiple lower-yield explosions with the same total megatonnage. The caption notes that even below 50 megatons, distributing lower-yield detonations would cause more damage.

In late August 1961, John McCloy, director of the US Disarmament Commission, reported publicly that, in a meeting with Khrushchev, the Soviet premier had said that they would need to test a 100-megaton weapon to learn whether their design worked. Soon after, the White House issued a statement denouncing Soviet testing plans and arguing that Soviet “threats of massive weapons” would not be able to “intimidate the world.” The White House recalled its representative from nuclear-testing negotiations in Geneva, and further talking points given to newspapers denounced talk of the giant bomb and its possible testing as “atomic blackmail” and “terrorism.” As Soviet nuclear testing began at the start of September, the protests continued. The Soviet test series was vigorous, with multiple tests per week, and yields ranging from less than a kiloton upward to a 12.5-megaton bomb by mid-October.

Finally, in his introductory speech to the Convocation of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on October 17, Khrushchev made public his plan for the Tsar Bomba:

Since I have digressed from the prepared text, I might as well say that the testing of our new nuclear weapons is going on very successfully. We shall complete it very soon—probably by the end of October. We shall evidently round out the tests by exploding a hydrogen bomb equivalent to 50 million tons of TNT. (Applause.) We have said that we have a bomb as powerful as 100 million tons of TNT. And we have it, too. But we are not going to explode it, because, even if exploded in the remotest of places, we are likely to break our own windows. (Stormy applause.) We will therefore not do it yet. But by exploding the 50-million bomb, we shall test the triggering device of the 100-million one. However, God grant, as people said in the old days, that we never have to explode those bombs over any territory. That is our fondest dream! (Stormy applause.) [23]

The world response was immediate. The United States, of course, immediately denounced the plan as unnecessary: Even the development of 100-megaton bombs did not require a test of 50 megatons in strength, and the fact that the Soviets were doing it anyway “could only serve some unconfessed political purpose.” Newspapers picked up that the bomb would be tested around Halloween (a holiday not celebrated in the Soviet Union), and several editorial cartoons depicted Khrushchev in appropriate garb: on a broomstick, sprinkling fallout from a giant bomb; or as a trick-or-treater with a massive bomb in his bag of candy. By October 27, the United Nations had passed a resolution that “solemnly appealed” to the Soviet Union to refrain from testing a 50-megaton bomb.

All of this, of course, fell on deaf ears. The plan had been to test the “superbomb” since July, and the scientists at the Soviet weapons laboratories had finally prepared the warhead and its ungainly ballistic casing. These were assembled and shipped via a special railcar to northern Russia, where they were hung underneath a Tu-95V bomber that had been painted white to better reflect the thermal radiation of the blast. All the while, cameramen filmed the work, to create a documentary for Khrushchev to later show Communist Party officials and to impress foreign visitors (the 30-minute, top-secret film, “Testing of a clean hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 50 million tons,” was finally released by Rosatom a few years back).[24]

Titled “Autumn Haze”, this October 1961 cartoon by Herb Block depicts Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev as a witch on a broomstick, just in time for Halloween.

Demonstrators raise a poster during protest processions near the Soviet Embassy in New Delhi, India on November 1, 1961. The poster depicts Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev throwing a 50-megaton nuclear bomb on civilization. Lettering reads, “Just a test… let me try on you.” (AP Photo)

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Shots of the actual Tsar Bomba detonation and mushroom cloud collated from the previously secret Soviet documentary released by Rosatom in August 2020.

Sakharov and most of the weapons designers were not at the test, but they knew it worked because the detonation disrupted radio communications with the test site for 40 minutes. Despite being detonated low enough (about 13,000 feet) to be at risk of contacting the ground and creating significant local fallout, the blast wave “bounced” the fireball of the bomb upward. As a result, almost all the fallout shot into the stratosphere, where it would circle in the northern latitudes for years before coming down.

The global denunciation was, again, swift. Not yet knowing that the fission content of the bomb was deliberately reduced, the United States and others criticized the Soviet Union harshly for its contribution to global fallout. The White House said this was a political act, rather than a military one, and emphasized that such weapons did not change the balance of power: “There is no mystery about producing a 50-megaton bomb. … The United States Government considered this matter carefully several years ago and concluded that such weapons would not provide an essential military capability.”[25]

The Kennedy administration’s official statement immediately following the Tsar Bomba test on October 30, 1961.

An American Tsar Bomba?

The Kennedy administration wasn’t bluffing about its ability to produce a 50-megaton bomb. As already discussed, the United States had been looking at weapons in the 10- to 100-megaton yield range for a long time and had even contemplated weapons in the gigaton range.

The closest the United States had previously come to weapons in what they called the “very high-yield” category came in the late 1950s, when Strategic Air Command (SAC) pushed vigorously for a 60-megaton bomb. Such a weapon was being eyed not only for its city-destroying powers (which would be substantive), but also for use in cracking open deeply-buried facilities—such as those within mountains, like the bunker the United States was then building at Raven Rock to ensure “continuity of government” in the event of nuclear war. General Thomas Power had designated this weapon as SAC’s top priority in 1957.[26] But its incredible size increase over other weapons in the US arsenal attracted internal criticism and scrutiny. In 1957, AEC Commissioner Thomas Murray appealed to President Eisenhower directly as to whether such a massively powerful weapon was necessary, and whether it was consistent with “moral law with regard to the moderate and discriminate use of force in warfare.” This prompted Eisenhower to commission a study from the Pentagon and AEC on the need for such a weapon, and they ultimately concluded that it was probably “not appropriate” to develop such a weapon, largely because they expected adverse publicity both domestically and internationally. They concluded, however, that the “moral aspects of using large weapons do not differ from the use of any weapon having mass destruction potential.”[27]

Despite this, SAC continued to push for the weapon, and expected it to be tested as part of Operation Hardtack in 1958. Eisenhower had, however, put a cap on total megatonnage for the test series (15 megatons, or 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima), and this scuttled the test.[28] Scientists at the Livermore weapons laboratory assured SAC that they could provide them with two versions of such a weapon without testing, if desired; the first would be a 25,000-pound bomb with a 60-megaton yield, the second a 22,000-pound bomb of 45-megaton yield.[29]

A few months after Sputnik, in 1958, the US Air Force Chief of Staff asked the AEC for a feasibility study of even larger weapons—between 100 and 1,000 megatons in yield. As an internal, once-secret Air Force history from 1967 reported: “The Air Staff concluded that it might be feasible but not desirable to use a 1,000-megaton weapon. Since lethal radioactivity might not be contained within the confines of an enemy state and since it might be impractical to even test such a weapon, the Air Force Council decided in April 1959 to postpone establishing a position on the issue.”[30] Let that sink in: These were weapons too large for even the Eisenhower-era Air Force.

The largest weapon that the United States would ever field was also developed during this same, heady period: the Mark 41 thermonuclear bomb, with a yield of “approximately 25 megatons.” The United States has never formally declassified the exact yield of the Mark 41. A Congressman first divulged the weapon’s high yield a few days before the Soviet test, to reassure America’s people and allies that the country had powerful weapons of its own, and that each B-52 bomber could carry around 50 megatons of firepower in two such bombs. Unnamed AEC spokesmen then confirmed that this yield was essentially accurate. One rare document, potentially erroneously declassified, lists the exact yield as 23 megatons.[31]

Details on the development of the Mark 41 are still highly classified, but it was apparently a three-stage weapon—the only such weapon ever fielded by the United States. It was never tested at its full strength. For the 1950s, this appeared, ultimately, to be all that the US military required. Work on such high-yield weapons seems to have been put on hold once the Test Moratorium began.

But when the Soviets announced their 100-megaton bomb and renewed testing, the old discussions of “very high-yield” weapons got a second wind. Shortly after Khrushchev first brought up the possibility of a 100-megaton test, Lt. General Austin Betts, the Deputy Director of Military Applications at the AEC, asked Los Alamos and Livermore to come up with estimates of what it would take to make an American weapon with a yield of 100 megatons. Within a week, he was given back-of-the-envelope estimates about the requirements for scaling up existing technology (like the Mark 41) to those yields, and how long it would take to field such a weapon.[32]

Even after denouncing the Tsar Bomba as pointless terrorism, there were scientists and military planners working for the US government who were considering nuclear weapons with yields 20 times larger.

On October 18, 1961, AEC Chairman Glenn Seaborg wrote a memo to President Kennedy outlining the possibilities. A 100-megaton bomb, he explained, would weigh about 30,000 pounds and would be 6 feet in diameter and 12 feet in length. A 50-megaton bomb might be smaller but would still be extremely heavy (between 20,000 and 25,000 pounds). If this effort was given the “highest priority,” they could have such a weapon in the US stockpile within six months to a year, but such an effort would interfere with other programs. A test would be necessary to ensure reliability, but this could be done at reduced yield (no more than 10 megatons). The AEC had no reason to believe, he concluded, that the Soviet Union could not deliver their own such weapons to American targets.[33]

A few days later, Seaborg met with weapons scientists to discuss building high-yield weapons. Betts initiated a discussion with Sandia National Laboratory over the feasibility of dropping weapons with yields of 30 or 50 megatons from a B-52, which would require using drogue parachutes to ensure the survival of the pilots. At the same time, a team of Livermore scientists got together to review the possibilities of a US return to nuclear testing. Along with ideas relating to more optimized designs and “clean” bombs deriving most of their yield from fusion, they were intrigued once again by Teller’s possibility of bigger bangs: “USSR high-yield tests have reawakened interest in high-yield testing by the United States. High-yield weapons (50 megatons to 1,000 megatons) should be reconsidered and re-evaluated for their possible military use.”[34] Again, let that sink in: Even after denouncing the Tsar Bomba as pointless terrorism, there were scientists and military planners working for the US government who were considering nuclear weapons with yields 20 times larger.

In early 1962, one scientist at the Sandia lab reported to his colleagues about this sudden interest in superbombs, noting dryly that the Soviet detonation had “started some thinking in this country that there must be a good application for these things that has escaped our attention… the military would like to see the development of a few [very high-yield] bombs and would even feel good if a few were in the stockpile even though no known targets justify such weapons.”[35]

Over the course of late 1961 through 1962, the United States itself engaged in a series of vigorous nuclear weapons tests. The first set, Operation Nougat (September 1961–June 1962), was underground at the Nevada Test Site, and featured only low-yield detonations (these were the tests that Kennedy had worried would be perceived as too small). The second, Operation Dominic (April 1962–October 1962) was a rapid series of over 30 nuclear detonations at Johnston Atoll and Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean. Dominic was the first series of atmospheric testing done by the United States since the end of the moratorium, and it involved a variety of activities, including testing new weapons concepts, detonating weapons in outer space, probing the electromagnetic pulse effect, and detonating the first fully “mated” system of a nuclear warhead and a launched missile.

While most of the Dominic tests were in the kiloton range, a few were megaton tests. Only one crept up to around 10 megatons; the United States prided itself, in press releases, on testing its warheads at less-than-full yield, to reduce fallout in the atmosphere. (The entire Dominic test series was about 40 megatons, less than the single Tsar Bomba shot.) Even though it does not appear that any of the Dominic shots were aimed at developing a 100-megaton bomb, several of the new designs did play key roles in the AEC’s thinking about “very high-yield” weapons. Notably, three of the tests were for a new, “revolutionary” weapons concept known as RIPPLE, developed at Livermore by weapons designer John Nuckolls. The details of RIPPLE are still classified, but it promised to get very high fusion yields out of relatively light packages by dramatically optimizing how the weapon produced nuclear fusion reactions.[36]

The vigorous 1962 testing series, and the barely avoided catastrophe of the Cuban Missile Crisis, appear to have put a damper on these discussions temporarily. But by December, AEC Chairman Glenn Seaborg reported to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, that the AEC was prepared to develop an American Tsar Bomba if ordered to. Seaborg divided the possibilities into three categories. The first was to scale up existing weapons, like the Mark 41, to higher yields. This would be very quick, but the weapons would be extremely bulky. The second option was to use the new RIPPLE concept, which would get lighter weights but place unusual constraints on volume (probably because the secondary in a high-yield RIPPLE device would be spherical). Finally, there were weapons concepts “yet to be proven feasible” that would potentially achieve “the ultimate high yield, low weight, and acceptable volumes.”[37] The AEC noted it would be possible—by diverting significant laboratory resources—to have devices ready to test by the end of 1963.

Much of the memo quoted above is still classified (though many versions of it exist, and some are less redacted than others), but there is one copy that contains some relevant technical information. Los Alamos had reported to Seaborg that they would be able within three years to build a 100-megaton bomb (of which some 20 to 30 megatons would be from fission, but “clean” options could be made as well) that would weigh 30,000 pounds and would be 23 feet long, with a diameter of 5.5 feet. Livermore claimed it could scale up a Mark 41 to high yields and have it weigh only 20,000 pounds, and it would only take one year. But Seaborg again cautioned that to pull any of this off would require a substantial investment of time and resources, and he would not do it without explicit direction from the president: “to produce high-yield weapons will require a scope of effort much larger than any previous AEC weaponization effort.”[38]

A comparison of the “superbombs” developed or conceived by US and Soviet nuclear scientists. (Alex Wellerstein)

The Limited Test Ban Treaty

In 1963, the United States stood at a crossroads. Down one path was a new generation of “very high-yield” nuclear weapons with continued atmospheric nuclear testing. Down the other was the possibility of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which would ban future atmospheric testing, effectively precluding the development of high-yield weapons.

Defense Secretary McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff tentatively threw in their lot with the first path. In March 1963, McNamara established, and the Joint Chiefs concurred with, a formal development requirement for a “very high-yield” bomb that could be dropped from a B-52 bomber. “Specifically,” as Ross Gilpatric, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, outlined to Glenn Seaborg, “it is our desire to obtain the maximum yield possible compatible with the B-52 without requiring further nuclear tests.”[39]

Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Glenn Seaborg with President John F. Kennedy, February 16, 1961.

AEC Chairman Seaborg, though, seemed less eager—perhaps because of the aforementioned effort involved. Seaborg insisted that the president himself would have to be involved in this decision, because, he claimed, during the Eisenhower administration there developed an implicit policy that for weapons of such high yield, the labs and AEC would not work independently. Nonetheless, Seaborg duly reported that, according to the labs, the easiest high-yield bomb they could produce would be a scaled-up Mark 41, which would weigh (in the latest estimate) 35,000 pounds, with a 70-inch diameter, a length of 305 inches, and a yield of 50 megatons (but perhaps up to 65 megatons). This was roughly the maximum size that could fit into a B-52 bomb bay. The first production unit would not be ready until 1966, even if it was authorized immediately.[40]

Meanwhile, the AEC Director of Military Applications had started to look at one thorny, non-nuclear part of the project: the massive ballistic case for the weapon, the same issue that had caused the Soviets so much hassle. The case for some of the newer high-yield designs, as with Tsar Bomba, might be too large to fit inside the B-52.[41]

The same memo noted that Sandia had started to develop a new approach to testing known as “universal test vehicles,” or UTVs. These would have standardized ballistics and fuzing equipment that could deliver any warhead for testing purposes, so that test devices could be easily dropped from a plane even if they were still in early development. The original UTV would be the size of a B-53 bomb, quite large indeed, and capable of carrying any warhead that was at that time in the US arsenal. For weapons capable of carrying “very high yields,” however, an even larger test vehicle was being developed: the Big Test Vehicle, or BTV. It was the same size as the estimate Seaborg had given for a scaled-up, 50-megaton Mark 41: the largest size that could fit into a B-52. It required its own special transporter and looked like an immense cylinder.

Additionally, Sandia developed another vehicle that was even weirder, and perhaps more ominous: the Flashback Test Vehicle, intended for what was sometimes called Operation Flashback, and elsewhere called Project Breaker—an air-dropped gravity bomb casing so large it could not fit within a B-52 bomber. Like Tsar Bomba, it would be slung below the plane, half in the bomb bay and half out (with the bay doors removed). Project Breaker involved preparing to test a “very high-yield” warhead should atmospheric testing resume, initially on the argument that the US wanted it for its arsenal for use in the B-52 or the B-70 bomber.[42] By the mid-1960s, this argument was seen as not very convincing, and so the justification for Breaker shifted instead to measuring the effects of such a weapon for defensive purposes. The exact yield for Breaker, or why the warhead design anticipated for Flashback would be too large for even the expansive dimensions of the BTV, are unclear, but these two “Test Vehicles” give us a concrete look at what an American Tsar Bomba would have looked like, at least in its initial drafts.

At more than 300 inches long and weighing some 45,000 pounds, the Big Test Vehicle, or BTV, was near the maximum payload of the B-52 bomber.

The Project Breaker, or Flashback, nuclear test vehicle was so large it had to be partly suspended outside of the B-52 bomb bay.

But while the AEC was beginning to explore this pathway, complications came up. One was political. The White House had denounced the Tsar Bomba and high-yield atmospheric testing. When William Foster, the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which was attempting to broker disarmament talks with the Soviets, got wind of the US feasibility studies for “very high-yield” weapons, he urged Seaborg to proceed with caution. If it became known publicly that these studies were happening, Foster wrote, there would be an “effect on our negotiating position, political and psychological, and the consistency of such a development with the principles and purposes of our nuclear capabilities, as set forth in Presidential and other statements.”[43] And indeed, at some point during this time period a restriction was put on the AEC prohibiting the development of weapons so large that their ballistic cases wouldn’t fit into existing airplanes, probably because the sight of such a thing would necessarily invite speculation (so to develop the Flashback Test Vehicle required express permission from the White House).[44]

The Limited Test Ban Treaty was beginning to take shape at this time, with a very real possibility that the United States and Soviet Union would agree to ban all atmospheric nuclear testing. Underground testing, which the United States had demonstrated in 1961, would continue. But underground testing is limited to relatively low yields: To avoid “venting,” the fireball must be entirely contained underground—and an enormous fireball would require an enormous hole in the ground. (To put it into perspective: The fireball for a 50-megaton weapon has a radius of about 3 miles. The deepest active mine in the world is 2.5 miles deep, and the deepest hole in the world is only about 4 miles deep. Even the world’s highest mountain is only 5.5 miles tall.)

The take-away, as the AEC advised the White House and Congress, was that while there was still much the AEC could do to improve its nuclear arsenal with underground testing, the one area it wouldn’t be able to gain much knowledge was in very high yields. Furthermore, eventually the Soviet Union would be able to catch up with US capabilities in lower-yield weapons. So it really was an either-or situation: The United States could have superbombs, or it could have a Limited Test Ban Treaty. It could not have both.

The military was not keen on the treaty option, but it must have been clear that Kennedy was leaning in that direction. The head of Strategic Air Command, Curtis LeMay, bluntly told Kennedy that he wanted a 100-megaton bomb but would accept the assurances of the AEC that a 50-megaton bomb could be developed without testing, and that he understood it would be to the nation’s “political disadvantage” if they did not ratify the treaty.[45]

Secretary of Defense McNamara would be called before Congress to defend the military implications of the treaty before they ratified it. He was emphatically in favor of it—the only area where the United States was not ahead of the Soviets in testing was “very high-yield” weapons, but he now argued that the United States had “no great interest” in those. It was a return to the public rhetoric that had proliferated after the first announcement of a 100-megaton test by the Soviets: Such weapons were wasteful and ridiculous. Lower-yield weapons, which were still quite powerful (a megaton or two is nothing to sniff at!), could be even more destructive if deployed in quantity. The security gained from a treaty that would not only reduce global fallout but would also guarantee a trend toward lower yields, would be worth anything that could be gained from multi-megaton tests.

But this was not truly the end of an American Tsar Bomba. A key part of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, for the first decade or so after it was signed and ratified, was a provision for “readiness” of testing. Should the Soviets break the treaty, the United States would be ready to immediately begin atmospheric nuclear testing—it wouldn’t be caught off-guard like it was when the Soviets ended the Test Moratorium. The Americans hoped this threat would make the Soviets think twice about breaking the treaty, and they began planning for tests that would shed light on things that were hard to study with underground detonations, like the electromagnetic pulse effect.

Someone wrote on the memo, “My guess is we could go slower on this.” But the test preparations went ahead anyway.

So even while the United States professed to not care about “very high-yield” weapons, it continued to study them well into the Johnson administration. The Department of Defense was secretly convinced that weapons in this range were “significantly superior” when it came to destroying very hard targets, like deep-underground bunkers.[46] The AEC seemed to go along with this, saying it could do underground tests that would elaborate some of the concepts involved (including in the low-megaton range, which would be quite difficult), and that they were trying to establish a “readiness” capability to test 50- to 100-megaton weapons within 90 days of being ordered to by the White House. White House advisor McGeorge Bundy bluntly asked Johnson whether this was a prudent requirement:

Is the requirement for research and development in the very high-yield area sufficiently urgent to justify tests in the megaton range at this time? Do we really need to have a 50-100 [megaton] device ready for test within 90 days if the Limited Test Ban Treaty should be abrogated? When could effects tests using these very high-yield devices actually be conducted since [the Department of Defense] has made no provision to fund these very expensive tests? [47]

Someone wrote on the memo, “My guess is we could go slower on this.” But the test preparations went ahead anyway. The aforementioned Big Test Vehicle (BTV) and Flashback Test Vehicle would be maintained for a decade and used in training exercises, so that if the time came, gigantic-yield warheads could be placed inside them for atmospheric testing.

But the Soviets never broke the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and smaller warheads became the norm. Warheads that could be mounted in multiples and independently targeted on a single missile, or put into submarines, became the core of the arsenal. Large, high-yield weapons would, eventually, be mostly phased out. The dismissal of the uselessness of the Tsar Bomba would become orthodoxy, as even the CIA (eventually) concluded that the Soviets were not going to field such a thing in numbers or try to put superbombs on missiles.

By 1968 the previous interest in high-yield bombs was quickly seeming irrelevant. With the United States bogging down in Vietnam, someone from Sandia suggested filling BTVs with gasoline and dropping them on the Vietnamese, with a blast capability equivalent to 20 tons of TNT.[48] Plans continued to test this idea through 1971. But by 1976, Sandia would, in its own way, celebrate the end of the “very high-yield” weapons era by giving the specialized BTV transporter to NASA, where it would be used to load parachute test vehicles for the Space Shuttle program.

The detonation of the Tsar Bomba did not lead to the immediate abandonment of further atmospheric nuclear tests. Sakharov was despondent that high-yield testing continued in the Soviet Union for another year, and credited this with his final falling-out with the Soviet nuclear complex.[49] But did Tsar Bomba, as has sometimes been claimed by Soviet designers, lead to the Limited Test Ban Treaty? In some ways, yes—the resumption of testing after the Test Moratorium and the obsession with high yields once again brought nuclear contamination to the forefront of the conversation. In other ways, no—the obsession with high-yield nuclear weapons was almost a stumbling block on the way to the treaty. Tsar Bomba has an ambiguous legacy.

Footage from the Tsar Bomba documentary footage released in August 2020, showing photo frames of the detonation examined by Soviet military officers.

Ultimately, high-yield weapons were almost forgotten, re-entering the public consciousness only after the fall of the Soviet Union. It is unclear exactly who started calling the giant bomb the “Tsar Bomba,” a throwback to other impracticably large Russian creations (one source suggests it was Trutnev who proposed the name, when a museum exhibit about Soviet nuclear history was being put together in the early 1990s).[50] In its own day, the bomb didn’t have a consistent moniker. The US press mostly just called it the 50- or 100-megaton bomb, though sometimes they associated it with Khrushchev directly (e.g., the “K-bomb”). Today, Russian sources sometimes call it “Kuzkina mat”—Kuzka’s mother—after a Russian idiom (of obscure origins) that Khrushchev used in 1959 (“We’ll show you Kuzka’s mother!”). Sakharov himself referred to it in his memoirs as simply “the Big Bomb.”

Are the days of the 100-megaton bomb gone for good? One would hope so—though it has been speculated that the Russian Poseidon nuclear-powered drone-torpedo might carry some kind of “very high-yield” charge (reminiscent of a proposal Sakharov made after the successful Tsar Bomba test) as part of its attempt to maintain a credible (and terrifying) deterrence against US ballistic missile defenses. Such a weapon, detonated at sea level, would not only be incredibly devastating to a targeted port and the areas around it, but would, unlike the air-bursted Tsar Bomba, release a swath of deadly radioactive contamination that could cover hundreds of thousands of square miles.

But even if such weapons are now purely relegated to history, we should remember that the decision not to deploy them was not made because the Soviet Union and United States shied away from the shocking megatonnage. It was because massive bombs were harder to use, and something about them symbolized the ridiculousness of the arms race in a way that making thousands of “smaller” weapons (some as big as 20–30 megatons) did not.

The United States did not make 50- to 100-megaton bombs or gigaton bombs, but it made a gigaton arsenal: At its peak in 1960, the US stockpile was some 20,000 megatons, dispersed across tens of thousands of weapons. Even with trends toward miniaturization, it was not until the early 1990s that the US arsenal dropped beneath 5,000 megatons. Today it is probably around 2,000 megatons—more than enough to devastate the planet in a full-scale nuclear war.

The Tsar Bomba is dead; long live the Tsar Bomba. As the United States, Russia, and China seem to be engaged in new arms races in several domains, including unusual and new forms of nuclear delivery vehicles, the Tsar Bomba is a potent example of how nationalism, fear, and high-technology can combine in a fashion that is ultimately dangerous, wasteful, and pointless. “Very high-yield” nuclear weapons weren’t necessary for deterrence, and they were explored at the expense of not only other weapons systems, but also the multitude of other things that nations could spend their wealth and resources on. They didn’t bring safety or security.

Alex Wellerstein is an Associate Professor and Director of the Science and Technology Studies program at the Stevens Institute of Technology. His first book, Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States, was published by the University of Chicago Press in April 2021.

Footnotes

[1] Vladimir Afanasyev, quoted in Vladimir Suvorov, Strana Limoniya (Soviet Russia Press, 1989), 124-125.

[2] The US would announce that the yield was potentially as high as 57 or 58 megatons, and the Soviets would at times publicly embrace that higher estimate as well, with Khrushchev indicating at times that it was bigger than hoped for. Internally, the Soviets seem to have concluded it was actually “just” 50 megatons. Internally, the CIA guessed it might be as high as 63 megatons — likely just a reflection of threat hype. Central Intelligence Agency, “The Soviet Atomic Energy Program,” National Intelligence Estimate 11-2A-63 (2 July 1963), 1. The difference between 50 and even 63 megatons, as this article indicates, is not as meaningful as it sounds, because of how damage scales with explosive yield. For more discussion of the yield question (and many other interesting details about the test), see Carey Sublette, “Big Ivan, The Tsar Bomb (‘King of Bombs’),” Nuclear Weapon Archive (3 September 2007), who notes pithily: “After the fall of the USSR…. these motivations to continue with inaccurate estimates disappeared.”

[3] James B. Conant to Vannevar Bush (20 October 1944), quoted in Chuck Hansen, The Swords of Armageddon, 2nd edn., volume II, (Sunnyvale, Calif.: Chukelea Productions, 1995, 2007), 16.

[4] R.W. Dodson, “Minutes to the 41st Meeting of the General Advisory Committee to the US Atomic Energy Commission,” (July 12–15, 1954). Many differently-redacted versions of this meeting exist, including two in the Nuclear Testing Archive, Las Vegas, NV (documents NV0411974 and NV0073403). The code-names Gnomon and Sundial are visible only on a copy in the Chuck Hansen papers at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

[5] A Freedom of Information Act request by the author in 2015 obtained a few reports on Gnomon research at Livermore. By March 1955, there were at least 40 of them. Unfortunately, nearly every word in said reports, except for the date and number, were redacted by the National Nuclear Security Administration. On the testing during Redwing and its cancellation, see in particular B. Sussholtz to G.W. Johnson, “Tsunami Problem,” UCRL-ID-127830 (8 December 1955), which mentions a projected 60-megaton test on page 5.

[6] Thomas O. Passell, “Transmission by the Earth’s Atmosphere of Thermal Energy from Nuclear Detonations Above 50-km Altitude,” Stanford Research Institute Report, Project No. IMU-4021-302 (30 April 1963), see esp. figure 9.

[7] Gennady Gorelik with Antonina W. Bouis, The world of Andrei Sakharov: A Russian physicist’s path to freedom (Oxford University Press, 2005), 175-179. See also Alex Wellerstein and Edward Geist, “The secret of the Soviet hydrogen bomb,” Physics Today 70, no. 4 (March 2017), 40-47.

[8] On RDS-202, see V.D. Kiryushkin, Pravda o “Kuz’kinoj Materi’”, (Snezhinsk: RFYaTs-VNIITF, 2015), ch. 1-7. See also Victor B. Adamski and Yu. N. Smirnov, “50-megatonnyj vzryv nad Novoj Zemlej,” in V.B. Adamski, Iz pokoleniya pobediteley (Sarov, 2008), 117-142. On Zavenyagin, see also Gorelik, 173. On the development of the casing, see Yu. K. Chernyshev, Konstruktor yadernogo oruzhiya Grechishnikov Vladimir Fedorovich(Sarov: RFYaTs-VNIIEF, 2002), 28-32.

[9] Yuri Trutnev, “Termoydernoe oruzhine Rossii: nekotory etapy bol’shogo puti,” in Yaderny Vek: nauka I obshchestvo (IzdAT, 2004), 271-289; and R.I. Ilkaev, “60 let nauchnogo podviga,” Izvestiya Ran. Ceriya Fizicheskaya 71, no. 3 (2007), 302-312.

[10] Nikita Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, volume 2 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 483.

[11] Andrei Sakharov, Memoirs, trans. Richard Lourie (Knopf, 1990), 217.

[12] The suggestion that it was Trutnev comes from Anatoli Veselovski and German Ioilev, Nashe delo pravoe… Yadernyj shchit Rossii detyam XXI veka ot detej vojny i Pobedy (Sarov Information and Publishing Agency, 2017), 23. Other accounts of the July 1961 meeting are more vague: Trutnev, “Termoydernoe oruzhine Rossii: nekotory etapy bol’shogo puti,” 280; V.B. Adamski, Yu. N. Smirnov, and Yu. A. Trutnev, “Sverkhmoshchnye yadernye bzryvy v CShA i SSSR kak proyavlenie nauchno-tekhnicheskoj i gosudarstvennoj politiki v gody Kholodnoj Voinjy,” in Adamski, Iz pokoleniya pobediteley, 143-155, on 148. Khrushchev quote is from the latter.

[13] On inspiration, see Adamski, Smirnov, Trutnev, 148-149.

[14] Gorelik, 224.

[15] Veselovskij and Ioilev, 24. It is unclear why they use the term “bifilar,” which means double-threaded, and usually refers to coils or other similar sorts of arrangements where pairs of wires are used.

[16] Both quoted in Adamski, Smirnov, and Trutnev, 150. Some paraphrasing has been done to render their commentary more clear in English.

[17] Gorelik, 213.

[18] Gorelik, 225.

[19] Alexander Kondrashov, “Kak pokazivali ‘kuz’kinu mat’,” Argumeny i Fakty (24 October 2001).

[20] “Statement by the Soviet Union on Decision to Carry Out Experimental Explosions of Nuclear Weapons, August 30, 1961,” copy in Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, “Documents on Germany, 1944-1961,” 87th Congress, 1st Session (December 1961), 766-784.

[21] Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (Harper and Row, 1965), 619.

[22] Glenn T. Seaborg diary entry (5 September 1961), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0900443.

[23] Nikita Khrushchev, “Report of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the 22nd Congress of the C.P.S.U.,” reprinted in The Road to Communism: Documents of the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, October 17-31, 1961 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), on 62.

[24] The literal translation is “pure” hydrogen bomb, but in context they are referring to what would be considered a “clean” bomb in the Western context: a nuclear weapon with a very small fraction of its total yield derived from nuclear fission, as opposed to nuclear fusion.

[25] White House Release about the 50-megaton detonation (30 October 1961), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0176747.

[26] US Strategic Air Command, “History of the Strategic Air Command, 1 January 1958–30 June 1958,” Historical Study No. 73, Volume I (1958), 86.

[27] Ernest May, John D. Steinbruner, and Thomas W. Wolfe, “History of the Strategic Arms Competition, 1945-1972, Part 1,” (Office of the Secretary of Defense, History Office, March 1981), 204; Austin Betts to Glenn Seaborg (24 July 1963), Nuclear Test Archive, NV0178602; Report to the President by the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission (ca. August 1957), GaleNet Declassified Documents Online, DDRS-267715.

[28] It is unclear whether this is the same test as the aforementioned GNOMON device.

[29] US Strategic Air Command, “History of the Strategic Air Command,” 87.

[30] George F. Lemmer, “The Air Force and Strategic Deterrence,” USAF Historical Division Liaison Office (December 1967), GaleNet Declassified Documents Online, DDRS-309839.

[31] “B-52 has 50-megaton load, lawmaker says,” Los Angeles Times (27 October 1961), 21; “It’s official: B-52s pack 2 25-megaton bombs,” Boston Globe (30 October 1961), 7; U.S. Department of Energy Office of Declassification, “Restricted Data Declassification Decisions, 1946 to the Present (RDD-8),” (1 January 2002), entry V.F.3.e; DCI Briefing to Joint Chiefs of Staff (30 July 1963): “The US has stockpiled bombs of 9 MT and 23 MT.”

[32] Willam Ogle, “An Account of the Return to Nuclear Weapons Testing by the United States After the Test Moratorium, 1958-1961,” (October 1985), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0092202.

[33] Glenn Seaborg to John F. Kennedy (18 October 1961), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0915104.

[34] Ogle, “An Account of the Return to Nuclear Weapons Testing,”; Glenn Seaborg journal entry (21 October 1961), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0900560; Col. Clyde Gasser to Lt. Gen. R.C. Wilson, “Priority of Nuclear Weapons Tests of Primary Interest to the Air Force” (25 October 1961), Document 37 in William Burr and Hector L. Montford, eds., “The Making of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1958-1963,” Electronic Briefing Book no. 94 (8 August 2003).

[35] Virgil Elbert to D.H. Cotter, et al. (ca. March 1962), Digital National Security Archive, George Washington University, document NH-00081.

[36] On RIPPLE, see Jon Grams, “Ripple: An Investigation of the World’s Most Advanced High-Yield Thermonuclear Weapon Design,” Journal of Cold War Studies 23, no. 2 (2021), 131-161.

[37] Glenn Seaborg to Robert McNamara (13 December 1962). Several differently-redacted versions of this fascinating memo exist, including two in the Nuclear Testing Archive (NV0915114 and NV0058335), and one in the GaleNet Declassified Documents Online (DDRS-262940). I am grateful to Carey Sublette for the suggestion about the spherical nature of the RIPPLE secondary and its impact on the ballistic shape of a high-yield RIPPLE warhead. Sublette’s 2007 page on the Tsar Bomba, cited earlier, was also of good use in starting these investigations.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Roswell Gilpatric to Glenn Seaborg (6 March 1963), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0915160, with attachment (NV091561).

[40] Seaborg to Gilpatric (17 April 1963), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0176741.

[41] Austin Betts to Glenn Seaborg, et al. (29 May 1963), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0178604.

[42] Glenn Seaborg journal entry (ca. February 1964), Journal of Glenn T. Seaborg: November 23, 1963–February 28, 1964 (Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, 1989), 430-431. I would like to thank Scott Lowther for bringing Flashback to my attention in 2018 as a mystery to be solved.

[43] William Foster to Glenn Seaborg (20 May 1963), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0176739.

[44] Glenn Seaborg to Lawrence Hafstad (28 March 1964), Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0073694.

[45] Mike Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals: The Problem of Air Force Leadership, 1945-1982 (Air Force University Press, 1998), 136.

[46] Cyrus Vance to Lyndon Johnson (10 April 1964), Digital National Security Archive, George Washington University, NH-00078.

[47] McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon Johnson (13 June 1964), GaleNet Declassified Documents Online, DDRS-249086.

[48] United States Military Assistance Command, “Command History, Vietnam, 1968,” Volume II (1968), 758.

[49] Sakharov, Memoirs, 226-229.

[50] Adamski, Smirnov, and Trutnev, 153.

Gravitational Waves Detected by LIGO and VIRGO

Posted on November 12, 2021 by iqu

Record number of new gravitational waves offers game-changing window into universe

Scientists say 35 novel discoveries included a pair of massive black holes 145 times as heavy as the sun orbiting each other

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Illustration of two black holes orbiting each other. Astronomers say 32 of the 35 new gravitational waves detected likely resulted from pairs of black holes merging. Photograph: Science Photo Library/Alamy

Astronomers have detected a record number of gravitational waves, in a discovery they say will shed light on the evolution of the universe, and the life and death of stars.

An international team of scientists have made 35 new observations of gravitational waves, which brings the total number of detections since 2015 to 90.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, created by massive cosmic events – such as pairs of black holes smashing together – up to billions of light years away.

Astronauts Mark Vande Hei, Shane Kimbrough, Akihiko Hoshide and Megan McArthur pose with chile peppers grown aboard the International Space Station.

Waves from these cataclysmic collisions were detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) observatory in the US and the Virgo instrument in Italy between November 2019 and March 2020.

The first detection of gravitational waves, announced in 2016, confirmed a prediction Albert Einstein made a century earlier based on his general theory of relativity.

Monash University researcher Shanika Galaudage, a collaborator in the Australian branch of the project known as OzGrav, described gravitational waves as a game-changing “new window into the universe”.

“Gravitational waves are not [electromagnetic] light,” Galaudage said. “We can see things that are invisible, such as binary black hole mergers.”

Of the 35 new detections, 32 likely resulted from pairs of black holes merging.

Notable discoveries included two massive pairs of black holes orbiting each other – one pair that was 145 times as heavy as the mass of the sun, and the other 112 times. The scientists also discovered a “light” pair of black holes with a combined mass only 18 times that of the sun.Two of the 35 detections are believed to have originated from a neutron star merging with a black hole.

Neutron stars are small, incredibly dense objects: although they weigh around 1.4 times the mass of the sun, they are city-sized, with a radius of approximately 15km, said research collaborator Prof Susan Scott, of the Australian National University.

Scott said the detections were helping scientists understand both the evolution of the universe and also the nature of stellar objects.

The number of recent detections were up tenfold from when the Ligo and Virgo instruments first started observing for gravitational waves, Scott said. She attributed the increase to upgrades in the detecting instruments, such as an improvement in laser power.

“Eventually as we make the detectors even more sensitive, we’ll be able to see all the binary black hole pairs coming together throughout the whole universe,” Scott said.

“Neutron stars when they collide – they don’t create as strong gravitational waves as the black holes because they’re not as dense, and therefore we can’t see them out as far.”

Rainbow Swirl: artistic image inspired by a black hole neutron star merger event

In future, astronomers may also be able to detect gravitational waves from stars as they become supernovae. “This would help us to understand the process of stars when they finish their life cycle and run out of fuel and blow up and then collapse,” Scott said.

Analysing certain properties of the mergers allowed scientists to determine how they were formed, Galaudage said.

Some of the new detections are still mysterious. The researchers believe the 35th event could be either a pair of black holes, or a merger between a black hole and a neutron star.

The lighter object in this event had a mass greater than would be usual for a neutron star, but smaller than that of a black hole. “We’re seeing features … that we cannot explain yet,” Galaudage said.

Xinjiang schools used to separate Muslim children from families

Posted on October 18, 2021 by iqu

China Muslims: Xinjiang schools used to separate children from families

By John Sudworth
BBC News, Xinjiang

Published4 July 2019

Media caption,The BBC’s John Sudworth meets Uighur parents in Turkey who say their children are missing in China

China is deliberately separating Muslim children from their families, faith and language in its far western region of Xinjiang, according to new research.

At the same time as hundreds of thousands of adults are being detained in giant camps, a rapid, large-scale campaign to build boarding schools is under way.

Based on publicly available documents, and backed up by dozens of interviews with family members overseas, the BBC has gathered some of the most comprehensive evidence to date about what is happening to children in the region.

Records show that in one township alone more than 400 children have lost not just one but both parents to some form of internment, either in the camps or in prison.

Formal assessments are carried out to determine whether the children are in need of “centralised care”.

Alongside the efforts to transform the identity of Xinjiang’s adults, the evidence points to a parallel campaign to systematically remove children from their roots.

Image caption,The Hotan Kindness Kindergarten, like many others, is a high security facility

China’s tight surveillance and control in Xinjiang, where foreign journalists are followed 24 hours a day, make it impossible to gather testimony there. But it can be found in Turkey.

In a large hall in Istanbul, dozens of people queue to tell their stories, many of them clutching photographs of children, all now missing back home in Xinjiang.

“I don’t know who is looking after them,” one mother says, pointing to a picture of her three young daughters, “there is no contact at all.”

Another mother, holding a photo of three sons and a daughter, wipes away her tears. “I heard that they’ve been taken to an orphanage,” she says.

In 60 separate interviews, in wave after wave of anxious, grief-ridden testimony, parents and other relatives give details of the disappearance in Xinjiang of more than 100 children.

Missing in China; some of the family portraits handed to us in Turkey by Uighur parents looking for information about their children back home in Xinjiang

They are all Uighurs – members of Xinjiang’s largest, predominantly Muslim ethnic group that has long had ties of language and faith to Turkey. Thousands have come to study or to do business, to visit family, or to escape China’s birth control limits and the increasing religious repression.

But over the past three years, they have found themselves trapped after China began detaining hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities in giant camps.

The Chinese authorities say the Uighurs are being educated in “vocational training centres” in order to combat violent religious extremism. But evidence shows that many are being detained for simply expressing their faith – praying or wearing a veil – or for having overseas connections to places like Turkey.

For these Uighurs, going back means almost certain detention. Phone contact has been severed – even speaking to relatives overseas is now too dangerous for those in Xinjiang.

With his wife detained back home, one father tells me he fears some of his eight children may now be in the care of the Chinese state.

“I think they’ve been taken to child education camps,” he says.

New research commissioned by the BBC sheds light on what is really happening to these children and many thousands of others.

Dr Adrian Zenz is a German researcher widely credited with exposing the full extent of China’s mass detentions of adult Muslims in Xinjiang. Based on publicly available official documents, his report paints a picture of an unprecedented school expansion drive in Xinjiang.

Campuses have been enlarged, new dormitories built and capacity increased on a massive scale. Significantly, the state has been growing its ability to care full-time for large numbers of children at precisely the same time as it has been building the detention camps.

And it appears to be targeted at precisely the same ethnic groups.

In just one year, 2017, the total number of children enrolled in kindergartens in Xinjiang increased by more than half a million. And Uighur and other Muslim minority children, government figures show, made up more than 90% of that increase.

As a result, Xinjiang’s pre-school enrolment level has gone from below the national average to the highest in China by far.

In the south of Xinjiang alone, an area with the highest concentration of Uighur populations, the authorities have spent an eye watering $1.2bn on the building and upgrading of kindergartens.

Mr Zenz’s analysis suggests that this construction boom has included the addition of large amounts of dormitory space.

Image caption,Xinhe County Youyi Kindergarten has space for 700 children, 80% of whom are from Xinjiang’s minority groups

Xinjiang’s education expansion is driven, it appears, by the same ethos as underlies the mass incarceration of adults. And it is clearly affecting almost all Uighur and other minority children, whether their parents are in the camps or not.

In 2018 work began on a site for two new boarding schools in Xinjiang’s southern city of Yecheng (known as Kargilik in Uighur).

Yecheng County Middle Schools 10 and 11

Dragging the slider reveals the pace of construction – the two middle schools, separated by a shared sports field, are each three times larger than the national average and were built in little more than a year.

In April last year, the county authorities relocated 2,000 children from the surrounding villages into yet another giant boarding middle school, Yecheng County Number 4.

Government propaganda extols the virtues of boarding schools as helping to “maintain social stability and peace” with the “school taking the place of the parents.” And Mr Zenz suggests there is a deeper purpose.

“Boarding schools provide the ideal context for a sustained cultural re-engineering of minority societies,” he argues.

Just as with the camps, his research shows that there is now a concerted drive to all but eliminate the use of Uighur and other local languages from school premises. Individual school regulations outline strict, points-based punishments for both students and teachers if they speak anything other than Chinese while in school.

And this aligns with other official statements claiming that Xinjiang has already achieved full Chinese language teaching in all of its schools.

Media caption,The BBC visits the camps where China’s Muslims have their “thoughts transformed”

Speaking to the BBC, Xu Guixiang, a senior official with Xinjiang’s Propaganda Department, denies that the state is having to care for large numbers of children left parentless as a result.

“If all family members have been sent to vocational training then that family must have a severe problem,” he says, laughing. “I’ve never seen such a case.”

But perhaps the most significant part of Mr Zenz’s work is his evidence that shows that the children of detainees are indeed being channelled into the boarding school system in large numbers.

There are the detailed forms used by local authorities to log the situations of children with parents in vocational training or in prison, and to determine whether they need centralised care.

Mr Zenz found one government document that details various subsidies available to “needy groups”, including those families where “both a husband and a wife are in vocational training”. And a directive issued to education bureaus by the city of Kashgar that mandates them to look after the needs of students with parents in the camps as a matter of urgency.

Schools should “strengthen psychological counselling”, the directive says, and “strengthen students’ thought education” – a phrase that finds echoes in the camps holding their parents.

It is clear that the effect of the mass internments on children is now viewed as a significant societal issue, and that some effort is going into dealing with it, although it is not something the authorities are keen to publicise.

Media caption,The BBC has found new evidence of the increasing control and suppression of Islam in China

Some of the relevant government documents appear to have been deliberately hidden from search engines by using obscure symbols in place of the term “vocational training”. That said, in some instances the adult detention camps have kindergartens built close by, and, when visiting, Chinese state media reporters have extolled their virtues.

These boarding schools, they say, allow minority children to learn “better life habits” and better personal hygiene than they would at home. Some children have begun referring to their teachers as “mummy”.

We telephoned a number of local Education Bureaus in Xinjiang to try to find out about the official policy in such cases. Most refused to speak to us, but some gave brief insights into the system.

We asked one official what happens to the children of those parents who have been taken to the camps.

“They’re in boarding schools,” she replied. “We provide accommodation, food and clothes… and we’ve been told by the senior level that we must look after them well.”

Image caption,Hotan Sunshine Kindergarten, seen through a wire fence

In the hall in Istanbul, as the stories of broken families come tumbling out, there is raw despair and deep resentment too.

“Thousands of innocent children are being separated from their parents and we are giving our testimonies constantly,” one mother tells me. “Why does the world keep silent when knowing these facts?”

Back in Xinjiang, the research shows that all children now find themselves in schools that are secured with “hard isolation closed management measures.” Many of the schools bristle with full-coverage surveillance systems, perimeter alarms and 10,000 Volt electric fences, with some school security spending surpassing that of the camps.

The policy was issued in early 2017, at a time when the detentions began to be dramatically stepped up. Was the state, Mr Zenz wonders, seeking to pre-empt any possibility on the part of Uighur parents to forcibly recover their children?

“I think the evidence for systematically keeping parents and children apart is a clear indication that Xinjiang’s government is attempting to raise a new generation cut off from original roots, religious beliefs and their own language,” he tells me.

“I believe the evidence points to what we must call cultural genocide.”

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AN UNEARTHLY SPECTACLE

HIROSHIMA: 15 KT

NAGASAKI: 20 KT

B83 (largest currently deployed US warhead): 1.2 MT

RDS-37: 1.6 MT

CASTLE BRAVO: 15 MT

TSAR BOMBA: 50 MT

From kilotons to megatons to gigatons

Planning for a 100-megaton bomb

Announcing the test, denouncing the test

An American Tsar Bomba?

The Limited Test Ban Treaty

Footnotes

Record number of new gravitational waves offers game-changing window into universe