That new government we helped to power is sure turning out fine, isn’t it? I mean, under Islamic Law, they could have been sentenced to death. Instead, for merely exercising the right of conscience inherent in all persons, a mother and her sons get “only” fifteen years in prison:
The criminal court of Beni Suef (115 km south of Cairo) has sentenced an entire family to prison for converting to Christianity. Nadia Mohamed Ali and her children Mohab, Maged, Sherif, Amira, Amir, and Nancy Ahmed Mohamed abdel-Wahab will spend 15 years in prison. Seven other people involved in the case were sentenced to five years in prison.
(…)
An individuals religious faith is listed in Egyptian identity cards. Christians, converted to Islam for various reasons that attempt to return to the religion to which they belong have enormous difficulty in correcting their names on the documents. This leads many people to forge them, risking prison. The reverse process, ie the transition from Christianity to Islam is not hindered, and in many cases is favored by the very Registry officials.
The woman had converted to Islam from Christianity on marrying her husband, but, after he died, she wanted to convert back. And she tried to convince her sons to join her. Under Islam, this is a huge sin.
I’m sure the Obama administration will be right on this, reminding the Egyptians that we did not facilitate their revolution so religious minorities could be persecuted. And they’ll listen and shape up, because the Hundred Acre Wood foreign policy is working out so well, isn’t it?
Islamic leaders continue to portray the popular protests against President Morsi and his recently passed Sharia-heavy constitution as products of Egypt’s Christians. Recently, Muslim Brotherhood leader Safwat Hegazy said in an open rally, as captured on video:
“A message to the church of Egypt, from an Egyptian Muslim: I tell the church — by Allah, and again, by Allah — if you conspire and unite with the remnants [opposition] to bring Morsi down, that will be another matter…. our red line is the legitimacy of Dr. Muhammad Morsi. Whoever splashes water on it, we will splash blood on him.”
More recently, Dr. Wagdi Ghoneim — who earlier praised Allah for the death of the late Coptic Pope Shenouda, cursing him to hell and damnation on video — made another video, entitled, “A Notice and Warning to the Crusaders in Egypt,” a reference to the nation’s Copts, which he began by saying, “You are playing with fire in Egypt, I swear, the first people to be burned by the fire are you [Copts].” The video was made in the context of the Tahrir protests against Morsi: Islamic leaders, such as Hegazy and Ghoneim, seek to portray the Copts as dominant elements in those protests; according to them, no real Muslim would participate. Ghoneim even went on to say that most of the people at the protests were Copts, “and we know you hid your [wrist] crosses by lowering your sleeves.”
The heart of Ghoneim’s message was genocidal: “The day Egyptians — and I don’t even mean the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafis, regular Egyptians — feel that you are against them, you will be wiped off the face of the earth. I’m warning you now: do not play with fire!”
And to make that genocide even easier to carry out, he dehumanized them by comparing them to animals:
“Respect yourselves and live with us and we will protect you… Why?… because Allah has forbidden me to be cruel to animals. I’m not trying to compare you to animals … but if I am not cruel to animals or plants, shall I be cruel to a soul created by Allah? You are an infidel in Allah’s sight — and it is for him to judge you. However, when you live in my country, it is forbidden for me to be unjust to you — but that doesn’t mean we are equal. No, oh no.”
Ghoneim can weasel all he wants, but the idea is clearly planted. Copts are inferior, maybe even animals, and if they don’t act like good little dhimmis… If you noticed a resemblance to Germany in the 1930s, your mind wasn’t playing tricks on you.
The Coptic Christmas falls on January 7th this year. You can imagine what a merry season it is for them.
And speaking of Christmas, Islam’s birthplace (maybe…) demonstrated its dedication to tolerance for all by arresting 44 people who were engaged in a hideous plot.
In the latest kingdom-wide crackdown on those who would violate the national religious policy of Islam only, Saudi Vice and Virtue Police arrested 44 on charges of plotting to celebrate Christmas, as reported on Dec. 27, 2012 by the Beirut-based Al-Akhbar news portal.
The raid took place in the northwest province of al-Jawf, at the private residence of an individual identified only as “an Asian diplomat.”
The fiends… It’s a good thing the watchful officers of the Vice and Virtue police were on the job. Who knows what might have happened? They might have sung carols, exchanged good wishes and presents, said a prayer or two — someone might have had a good time!!
Is it any wonder, in the kind of society that develops under Sharia law, that people can speak of another of the world’s major religions, Christianity, as being the most persecuted on the planet and even in danger of extinction in the lands of its birth?
A merry Christmas season and a happy New Year, indeed.
As of last week, Saudi women’s male guardians began receiving text messages on their phones informing them when women under their custody leave the country, even if they are travelling together.
Saudi women’s rights activist Manal al-Sherif, who last year urged women to defy a driving ban, said a man had contacted her to say he had received a text from the immigration authorities while at the airport with his wife.
“The authorities are using technology to monitor women,” said Saudi author and journalist Badriya al-Bishr, who criticised the “state of slavery under which women are held” in the kingdom.
“This is technology used to serve backwardness in order to keep women imprisoned,” she added.
Under laws influenced by the strict Wahabi interpretation of Islam, women are not allowed to leave Saudi Arabia without permission from their male guardian (a husband, father or brother), who must give consent by signing what is known as the “yellow sheet” at the airport or border.
The article mentions the mockery this new rule has received from women and some men, but it’s supported by the Wahabi religious establishment, which is a lynchpin of the monarchy, so that makes it the law.
What’s next? A fatwa mandating electric shock collars for disobedient wives?
In a move that has prompted a demand for a UN investigation by Iran’s most celebrated human rights campaigner, the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, 36 universities have announced that 77 BA and BSc courses in the coming academic year will be “single gender” and effectively exclusive to men.
It follows years in which Iranian women students have outperformed men, a trend at odds with the traditional male-dominated outlook of the country’s religious leaders. Women outnumbered men by three to two in passing this year’s university entrance exam.
Senior clerics in Iran’s theocratic regime have become concerned about the social side-effects of rising educational standards among women, including declining birth and marriage rates.
Under the new policy, women undergraduates will be excluded from a broad range of studies in some of the country’s leading institutions, including English literature, English translation, hotel management, archaeology, nuclear physics, computer science, electrical engineering, industrial engineering and business management.
Now there’s a smart way to develop your country — if your goal is to march boldly into the 12th century, that is.
The Iranian Minister for Science and Higher Education claimed the move was necessary to restore “gender balance” in the universities. How progressive of him. But an observation at the end of the article hints at the real reason for the imbalance, and therefore the ban:
Iran has highest ratio of female to male undergraduates in the world, according to UNESCO. Female students have become prominent in traditionally male-dominated courses like applied physics and some engineering disciplines.
Sociologists have credited women’s growing academic success to the increased willingness of religiously-conservative families to send their daughters to university after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The relative decline in the male student population has been attributed to the desire of young Iranian men to “get rich quick” without going to university.
In other words, too many Iranian boys are cocksure, lazy dummies, while the women are willing to work hard to get ahead. So the answer, of course, is to close the doors on the most energetic and ambitious of your people.
It was Muhammad’s favorite wife, his child-bride Aisha, who once said:
“I have not seen any woman suffering as much as the believing women” (Bukhari 72:715)
According to today’s issue of El Fegr, “Elements of terrorist, jihadi organizations distributed leaflets today inciting for the killing of Copts in Suez, Ismailia, and Upper Egypt, promising them [Copts] a tragic end if they do not return to the truth.”
An image of a copy of the letter appears on El Fegr’s website. Titled “An Urgent and Important Notice,” it begins by calling on “all brothers and sisters” to “kill or physically attack the enemies of the religion of Allah—the Christians in all of Egypt’s provinces, the slaves of the Cross, Allah’s curse upon them…” It proceeds to promise a monetary reward for whoever helps “achieve Allah’s rights against his enemies.”
(…)
This genocide has been called until Egypt’s Christians “return to the truth,” a reference apparently meaning that Egypt’s Christians must either embrace “the truth”—that is, Islam, which they must convert to—or else return to the truths of the religion, which holds that Christians must embrace their subhuman dhimmi status (Koran 9:29).
The ongoing persecution of religious minorities in the Muslim world is something rarely reported in our mainstream media, which instead hangs on every word about “Islamophobia” uttered by CAIR and its allies. But, unlike those claims, the persecution of Christians, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, Jews, and Buddhists in areas where Islam dominates or seeks domination is all too real — and often fatal.
One of the founding, core ideals of the United States is freedom of religion, the right to practice one’s faith -or no faith at all- without fear of punishment. We consider it a universal, unalienable right, pre-existing any government, endowed in all by Nature and Nature’s God.
It would be nice if the current administration could be bothered to speak out for that right, on behalf of those suffering genuine oppression.
Following the presidential victory of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi, the very first fatwa to appear by Egypt’s highest fatwa council addresses—not social, political, or economic issues in Egypt—but rather frogs. Specifically, it bans Muslims from hunting and killing frogs to sell to those nations that dine on the amphibians. As the fatwa explains, according to Islam’s prophet Muhammad as recorded in a hadith, a frog’s “croaking is praise [to Allah].” Accordingly, “a number of jurists [fuqaha] have relied on this [hadith] to forbid the eating of frogs, under the notion that ‘that which is banned from being killed, is forbidden from being eaten.’”
This could lead to a diplomatic crisis with France.
Of course, not all animals sing Allah’s praises. Sharks and squirrels, for example, are known agents of the Jews.
Remember: frogs good, squirrels bad.
At least one frog may have a serious problem on his hands, however: while croaking is blessed, singing is forbidden according to some authorities. This fellow had better be careful:
Last year it was CBS’ Lara Logan, who was sexually assaulted by a gang of hundreds of Egyptian men while covering the anti-Mubarak demonstrations in Tahrir Square. This year, it’s independent journalist Natasha Smith, attacked while she was walking with friends across a bridge during celebrations of the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral victory:
But in a split second, everything changed. Men had been groping me for a while, but suddenly, something shifted. I found myself being dragged from my male friend, groped all over, with increasing force and aggression. I screamed. I could see what was happening and I saw that I was powerless to stop it. I couldn’t believe I had got into this situation.
My friend did everything he could to hold onto me. But hundreds of men were dragging me away, kicking and screaming. I was pushed onto a small platform as the crowd surged, where I was hunched over, determined to protect my camera. But it was no use. My camera was snatched from my grasp. My rucksack was torn from my back – it was so crowded that I didn’t even feel it. The mob stumbled off the platform – I twisted my ankle.
Men began to rip off my clothes. I was stripped naked. Their insatiable appetite to hurt me heightened. These men, hundreds of them, had turned from humans to animals.
No, animals act far better. This is a direct result of the less-than-human status women are accorded under Islam, particularly infidel women.
There are no words to describe the disgust I feel right now.
The Saudi muttawa are the kingdom’s religious police, there to promote virtue and prevent vice — as defined by totalitarian, repressive, misogynistic Sharia law. It’s such a wonderful organization that, in order to preserve the virtue of young girls not properly dressed, they prevented their escape from a burning building, letting them die.
Lovely people, no?
Anyway, and on a much lighter note, some “mutts” tried to tell a Saudi woman to leave a mall when she (if I understand the situation correctly) wanted to try on nail polish where men might see it –THE HORROR!!
The lady, on the other hand, would have none of it:
A follow up to the story about Egypt’s proposed “Farewell Intercourse” law. While that itself looks more and more apocryphal (the Mail Online has since added denials by the Egyptian embassy to its story), the question of whether Islam permits sex with one’s dead spouse lives on. As esteemed Moroccan cleric Abd Al-Bari Al-Zamzami explains, it may not be approved, it may well be sick, but it ain’t illegal:
Abd Al-Bari Al-Zamzami : A few days ago, I was asked by the Al-Sabbah newspaper about men who have sex with their dead wives. The truth is that this question took me by surprise, and I asked the journalist whether there really are people who do this deplorable and disgraceful act, which is not to be expected from a normal, balanced person. Only a mentally or psychologically unbalanced man would do such a thing.
In any case, I do not have the right to prohibit things. Fatwas are not shaped according to one’s will or whim. Rather, they reflect the law of Allah.
[...]
Therefore, I do not have the right to prohibit that act merely because I consider it deplorable.
[...]
The evidence I relied upon in this case was that a wife’s death does not sever her relations with her husband. A wife’s death does not sever her marital relations with her husband. She remains his wife post mortem, in the Hereafter, just as she was his wife in her lifetime.
[...]
It is perfectly clear that marital relations are not severed by a wife’s death. She remains her husband’s wife. This being the case, the husband has the right to do whatever he wants with her. For instance, he may kiss her. It is common for a husband to kiss his wife after her death, out of love and sorrow. This is something that is done, and there is nothing wrong with it.
[...]
The fact that such an act is permissible does not make it commendable or even acceptable. Having sex with your wife’s corpse is permitted but not commendable.
The first half dealt with the question of whether a woman may use a carrot to relieve “sexual pressures” while preserving her chastity. Don’t laugh! These are crucial questions of law and theology that have vexed Islamic scholars for centuries!
According to this hadith, Muhammad took off his shirt and placed it on a dead woman and “lay with her” in her grave. The gravediggers proceeded to hurl dirt atop the corpse and the prophet, exclaiming, “O Prophet, we see you doing a thing you never did with anyone else,” to which Muhammad responded: “I have dressed her in my shirt so that she may be dressed in heavenly robes, and I have laid with her in her grave so that the pressures of the grave [also known as Islam's "torments of the grave"] may be alleviated from her.”
What was Muhammad saying and doing? Perhaps his magical shirt would transport the dead woman to heaven, and his blessed body would protect her from the “pressures of the grave”? A more cynical—a more human—reading is that he stripped his shirt as a natural step before copulating; that he precisely, if not sardonically, meant the act of sex would “alleviate” the pressures of death from the corpse; and that the observers covered them with dirt for privacy and/or for shame.
This interpretation is given much more weight when one considers that the secondary meaning for the word I translated above as “lay with” is “intercourse,” further demonstrating that the proposed Egyptian law is, in fact, based on this hadith: after all, the Arabic root-word used for “intercourse” in the phrase “farewell intercourse” is derived from the same root-word that Muhammad used to explain what he did with the dead woman (d-j-’). As if this was not enough, necrophilia finds more validation in Islam’s legal texts. For example, according to al-Sharwani’s Hawashi, “there is no punishment for having intercourse with a dead woman” and “it is not necessary to rewash the dead after penetration.”
Be sure to read the whole thing. I also recommend his reports on the lectures of Coptic Father Zakaria Botros on Muhammad’s perverse sexual practices. Bear in mind that all the authorities cited are approved Islamic texts.
Now, does this mean I think all or many Muslims approve of necrophilia or other perverse practices? No, of course not. Zamzami himself, in the clip above, is clearly disgusted.
But the religion does, because Allah himself in the Qur’an (33:21) endorses Muhammad’s life as a “beautiful pattern of conduct,” an example for all mankind for all time. And to the literalist believer who wishes to recreate the “true Islam” of the 7th century, that may well include (among other things) child marriage, pedophilia, and, yes, marital necrophilia.
I think you can see why Islam’s apologists would rather we not know of these things.
A double car-bombing at a church kills fifty. On Easter Sunday:
Shehu Sani, the President of Civil Rights Congress based in Kaduna, said two explosions took place at the Assemblies of God’s Church near the centre of the city with a large Christian population and known as a major cultural and economic centre in Nigeria’s north.
“There were two explosions and the casualty figure may go up because some injuries were really critical,” he said on phone.
Another resident of the city, Miss Blessing Audu said that the explosion has caused panic among Christians celebrating Easter.
She said some parts of the church were damaged even as the vibration caused by the explosives were heard in several parts of the city.
An emergency worker on condition of anonymity explained that the bombs were planted in two cars near the church.
At least 50 people were killed amid fears that the casualties may rise from the blasts.
But who could have done this?
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombings, but the BBC reported that Boko Haram recently said it would carry out attacks in the area over the Easter holiday.
The radical group has carried out a series of attacks on churches and other locations on Christmas Day, including outside the church in capital Abuja, where 44 people died.
It is waging a bloody war against the government to seek the enforcement of strict Shariah law and the release of all its detained members.
This isn’t a police matter. This is “jihad fi sabil Allah,” war for the sake of Allah. And it’s going to happen again and again in the borderlands between Islamic and non-Islamic civilizations, whether we leave Iraq and Afghanistan or stay.
Bryan Preston, reacting to the Secretary of State’s comparison of Americans opposed to the new HHS contraceptive and abortifacient mandate to Islamic Salafists who force women to live under the tyranny of Sharia law:
Wormtongue has nothing on Hillary Clinton.You can see in the video that Clinton knows exactly what she is saying, and she relishes saying it. She relishes calling anyone who opposes her regime’s mandates “extremists” and linking us with the worst and most brutal figures in the world.
This is vile, especially coming from a US secretary of state. It insults Americans for the sake of petty politics. It degrades the office that she holds.
Hillary Clinton has lately convinced many even on the right that she would have been a better president than Barack Obama. Personally I’ve never bought into that idea. She is no less of an ideologue than Obama. She is no less of an Alinskyite, she just isn’t as good at the game as Obama is. Her only claim to fame is that she married well, in the sense that she married a man who achieved the highest office in the world. Apart from that, she wasn’t a good Senate candidate and she turned out to be a weak candidate for the presidency. She has been a lousy ambassador for the nation, by turns incompetent and lacking in any sense of America’s history. Like her president, when she could choose to unite Americans, she chooses to divide us.
I’ve never understood the strange nostalgia for Lady Macbeth Hillary Clinton that arose after Obama’s election. Sure, she earned some respect for her hard fight for the nomination, but what would you expect from someone who was seeing the power she had dreamed of all her life being ripped from her claws? And, yeah, I agree: she was shafted by the Democratic National Committee.
But Hillary always was and is of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party: a statist, an admirer of Alinsky, and the author of ObamaCare’s infamous prequel.
Why on Earth would anyone think she’d be less of a incompetent leftist demagogue than Barack Obama?
Meanwhile, major geek points for working in the Lord of the Rings reference, Bryan. Well done.
A state judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed an assault and harrassment case against a Muslim defendant who admitted attacking the victim. Magistrate Judge Mark Martin, a veteran of the war in Iraq and a convert to Islam, ruled that Talag Elbayomy’s sharia defense — what he claimed was his obligation to strike out against any insult against the prophet Mohammed — trumped the First Amendment free speech rights of the victim.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Read the rest of McCarthy’s post,which includes a link to video of the judge’s stupid remarks. PJM’s Bryan Preston has quotes from the judge’s dressing down of the victim, which includes this beaut:
“Having had the benefit of having spent over 2 and a half years in predominantly Muslim countries I think I know a little bit about the faith of Islam. In fact I have a copy of the Koran here and I challenge you sir to show me where it says in the Koran that Mohammad arose and walked among the dead. I think you misinterpreted things. Before you start mocking someone else’s religion you may want to find out a little bit more about it it makes you look like a dufus and Mr. (Defendant) is correct. In many Arabic speaking countries something like this is definitely against the law there. In their society in fact it can be punishable by death and it frequently is in their society.
Wait, let me get this straight: Is Judge Martin saying that, since it was okay for the Muslim to assault the victim, which is clearly against our law, it would have been okay in the judge’s view for the Muslim to kill him? After all, the guy insulted Muhammad and hurt the Muslim defendant’s feelings. Sharia says kill the guy, so why not go all the way? (1)
Newsflash for Judge Martin: they’re called “unalienable rights” because they are inherent from birth in all men, “endowed by their Creator.” They are universal, even if Islamic countries are too benighted to realize it.
And then there’s this little thing called the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
…which has been incorporated into state law for centuries.
I don’t care if this guy dressed up as “Muhammad the transvestite” and shouted at the top of his lungs that Islam’s “prophet” committed lewd acts with the dead. (2) It is immaterial that the Muslim defendant’s feelings were hurt; the victim had the right to act like a jerk, and the defendant had no right to assault him.
The only way “free speech” matters is if we protect speech even when we or others find it offensive. Whether it offends religion, country, or your favorite TV program, it doesn’t matter. As long as it does not directly and deliberately incite violence, it is protected speech.
And it is appalling that an American judge, one who both as a judge and as a soldier swore oaths to protect and defend the Constitution and those very same unalienable rights, should trample on the right to free speech in a fit of cultural relativism.
I’m not sure what the law is in Pennsylvania is for removing a judge, but somebody needs to start working on this jackass’ case right now.
Footnotes:
(1) In fact, in the biographies of Muhammad and canonical hadiths (his sayings and deeds), we know for a fact he had people assassinated for criticizing him.
(2) Which he may well have.
Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in ‘no more virgins’, the country’s religious council has warned.
A ‘scientific’ report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis – both men and women – turn to homosexuality and pornography.
The startling conclusions were drawn by Muslim scholars at the Majlis al-Ifta’ al-A’ala, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, working in conjunction with Kamal Subhi, a former professor at the King Fahd University.
According to esteemed researcher Dr. Subhi, the terrible social cost of letting women drive can already be seen in other Arab countries:
And it pointed out ‘moral decline’ could already be seen in other Muslim countries where women are allowed to drive.
In the report Professor Subhi described sitting in a coffee shop in an unnamed Arab state.
‘All the women were looking at me,’ he wrote. ‘One made a gesture that made it clear she was available… this is what happens when women are allowed to drive.’
Poor guy. Loose women in their cars are constantly prowling the streets, looking for pure Islamic men to corrupt with their feminine wiles, bucket seats, and satellite radio. O tempora! O mores!!
Where has morality gone?
Good thing we have sharia law to guard us from temptation and keep women in their places.
A troubled young Muslim woman has questions for her god, presented in the form of a poem:
Good for her for using her mind and not accepting blindly what the clerics tell her must be so. Islam desperately needs more like her, if it’s ever to have any hope of reconciling with the modern world.
Then again, Islam does not have a happy tradition of tolerance toward critics, particularly women. I hope she stays safe.
RELATED: Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s short film “Submission,” which deals with the condition of women under Islam. Her partner in its production, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim fanatic for “insulting Islam,” and she herself is under constant threat of death.
Let’s hope so; I can think of few people more deserving of a trip to Hell. What’s certain, though, is that his “hometown” and last major focus of resistance, Sirte, has fallen:
There are unconfirmed reports deposed Libyan leader Moamar Gaddafi has died of wounds sustained when fighters captured his home town of Sirte.
If true, his death, which came swiftly after his capture is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.
“He (Gaddafi) was hit in his head,” National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta said.
“There was a lot of firing against his group and he died.”
Mr Mlegta said earlier Gaddafi was captured and wounded in both legs at dawn on Thursday as he tried to flee in a convoy which NATO warplanes attacked.
There was no independent confirmation of his remarks and NATO said it was still checking on the reports, which could take some time to confirm.
“We are checking and assessing the situation,” a NATO official said.
“Clearly these are very significant developments, which will take time to confirm. If it is true, then this is truly a historic day for the people of Libya.”
I’ll say it would be, if true. That sharp-dressing psychopath made the lives of most Libyans a nightmare for over 40 years and was responsible for the murder of Americans and other nationals in acts of terror. In the 70s he was a backer of the Irish Republican Army, as well as the Italian Red Brigades, the Basque ETA, and Peru’s Sendero Luminoso. While it became easy to laugh at his public buffoonery (and here’s the sad truth about his female bodyguards), let’s keep in mind that Muammar Qaddafi was a seriously evil, vile human being. If he has indeed met the fate of Saddam Hussein, Nicolae Ceaucescu, and Benito Mussolini, let no tears be shed for him.
But what of Libya’s future? This morning I caught a few minutes of Fox and Friends and watched Gretchen Carlson interview a reporter from the New York Times (sorry, can’t find a video link) and almost laughed at the man’s naivete: the Libyans were fighting for “democracy” and the “rule of law,” and that they “want the same things we do.” It was the starry-eyed “they’re just like us” argument that’s almost inevitably lead to cries of “what went wrong” a few years later.
“Just like us?” Did this reporter know of the Libyan Jew who went home to rebuild a synagogue in his old neighborhood, only to be told to flee for his life? Or how the rebels would scrawl the Star of David over pictures of Qaddafi, implying he was a Jew and thus an enemy to the Muslims?
“Just like us,” only without the religious tolerance part.
Did the reporter recall that eastern Libya, the Benghazi area, where the rebels originated, was also a hotbed for Al Qaeda recruiting? Or that at least some influential rebel commanders and their soldiers have fought for Al Qaeda? I think the “rule of law” they’re fighting for may mean something a bit different to them then it does in a Western liberal democracy. (hint: Sharia)
“Just like us,” only without that equality under the law part.
I’m not saying all the Libyan rebels are Islamists nor that there are no liberals among them; they’re not and there are. Libya may yet become a recognizable constitutional democracy instead of another Islamic hellhole. Let’s hope so, for the world would be a better place. But no one can predict a revolution’s future, and I’m not nearly so sanguine and indeed positively chirpy about Libya’s as a “sophisticated” reporter from the nation’s fish-wrap of record.
Greece and the Greeks have come in for some well-deserved criticism in recent years, first for their insane profligate borrowing and then for throwing a national tantrum and rioting when their creditors demanded they take steps to fix their fiscal mess.
But, give the cradle of democracy, liberty, and Western civilization some credit, too. When given a chance to strike a blow for human freedom, they did it, banning Sharia law:
This Muslim law establishes among others the right of polygamy and gives only to men the right to divorce their wives which constitutes a problem for the women in Thraki, Northern Greece. Even in Turkey, this law was abolished in 1926.
In addition, this law does not comply with the Greek constitution which establishes the equality of Greeks regarding the application of the laws and the equality of men and women. The National Committee on the Human Rights considers that the Shariah does not protect minorities but abuses the rights and values of all the Greek Muslims.
It is also announced that the family and hereditary relations of all Greek citizens will be regulated by Greek Laws. Thus, the Mufti will only be religious leader of Greek Muslims and will no longer have judicial authorities.
Good. Sharia is a barbaric, misogynistic legal code that enshrines inequality under the law and by its nature as (supposedly) divine law stands foursquare against every principle this country was founded on.
As they might say in Athens, Συγχαρητήρια η Ελλάδα! Congratulations, Greece!
Perhaps ironically, this puts Greece ahead of our more immediate democratic forebears in Britain, where Sharia courts have started to operate apparently with official sanction, though not without controversy, and where even the Anglican Archbishop has said that some accommodation to Sharia will have to be made.
Several states in the US have made moves to ban Sharia by forbidding the courts to consider any law not based on the US and state constitutions (1) This movement has gained steam since a (thankfully overturned) ruling by a district court in New Jersey that refused to grant a woman a restraining order against her husband because Islamic law does not recognize marital rape (2).
In this case, let’s hope the United States emulates Greece, not Great Britain.
Footnotes:
(1) You would think this would be a given, but even the Supreme Court has a problem with this.
(2) Naturally, the Justice Department has threatened to oppose such laws. No, not because Obama is a “secret Muslim,” but because the Leftist lawyers there have a contempt for state legislatures and can’t resist pandering to identity politics.
The Sinai peninsula has been in almost a state of anarchy since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak (1). Jihadist groups, including al Qaeda (2), have begun to operate openly as Egyptian sovereignty crumbles in an area crucial to Israel’s security. Late last week, Muslims waging jihad fi sabil Allah struck from Sinai in a series of terrorist attacks against Israel. Israel struck back hard, killing not only the instigators of the attack, but also, unfortunately, some Egyptian soldiers (3).
So, what is the logical response of the average Egyptian Islamic scholar to these events? Demand that the transitional government reassert national sovereignty and the rule of law over Egyptian territory and suppress these groups that are endangering the treaty of peace with Israel? Denounce these hijackers of Islam who clearly misunderstand Muhammad’s message of peace? Does he…
Islamic scholar Dr. Salah Sultan issued a religious decree according to which it is permissible to kill “any Israeli on Egyptian land, in response to the killing of Egyptian soldiers near the border with Israel,” Egyptian Al-Shuruq newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Thus Israeli businessmen in Alexandria to make a deal are fair game, even though they had nothing to do with the fighting, because, well… they’re Jews and therefore the enemies of all mankind! And, you see, the brave jihadis wouldn’t have done what they did (in Allah’s name) if those nasty Jews hadn’t been occupying Muslim lands (that is, the whole state of Israel) and those Egyptian soldiers wouldn’t have died in the criminal Zionist attack, so all Israelis (and therefore Jews) are to blame!
Yes, that really is what passes for logic there. And yet some people wonder why Arab Islamic society is screwed up.
I don’t.
Footnotes:
(1) Helped along by our Smart Power Administration. Heckuva job, Barry!
(2) See also the announcement from the Kavkaz Center, the propaganda arm of the Chechen jihadi terrorists.
(3) If you don’t want this to happen, Cairo, maybe you should try suppressing these medieval loons before the Israelis have to do it for you. Just a thought.
After all, Muhammad married Aisha (his favorite wife) when she was six. But, lest you think him a lech, he did at least wait until she was nine before consummating the marriage.
From Saudi Arabia’s Iqra TV, listen as cleric Muhammad al-Arifi assures us that there is no minimum age for marriage in Islam:
Muhammad Al-’Arifi: There is no agreed-upon minimum age for the marriage of a boy or a girl. It depends upon their maturity. Let’s assume that someone wants to marry your 20-year-old daughter. But your daughter’s mentality and capabilities… She wouldn’t know how to handle it. You feel that her marriage is bound to fail, because she has no understanding of how she is supposed to behave. You think that this girl is not ready to get married. It would be best to wait two or three years.
We don’t want to marry her off, and then have her husband divorce her after 2-3 weeks, saying: “What is this?! This girl doesn’t know what to do, she has no appreciation of marital life. She knows nothing.” In such a case, it is better to delay marrying her off.
In the days of Prophet Muhammad and his companions, people would get married at a younger age. For example, how old was ‘Aisha when the Prophet Muhammad married her? I will give you a hint.
Member of panel of Saudi youth: She was seven years old.
Muhammad Al-’Arifi: And how old was she when he had sex with her?
Member of panel: Fourteen.
Muhammad Al-’Arifi: Fourteen?! No way, she was nine. You are getting married tonight and you still can’t count…
She was nine years old. People might think it is strange that he married such a young girl. But this was the age at which they used to get married. The proof is that when the Prophet told Abu Bakr that he wanted to marry ‘Aisha – what did Abu Bakr say? He said: “You are more than welcome, oh Messenger of Allah, but my daughter is already engaged.” At seven years old she was already engaged.
[…]
If a girl’s physical and mental build allows her to get married, it is okay for her to get married. There is no minimum age for a girl’s marriage set by Islam.
Al-Arifi tries to minimize the skincrawl-factor (1) by saying “this is how they used to do it, back then,” but arranged marriages of children to adults are still common in countries ruled by Islamic tradition, including Saudi Arabia. In fact, in 2009, a top Saudi cleric went so far to say that prohibiting the marriage of a 12-year old girl to an adult was unfair — to the girl.
And did you notice something telling about this panel? There was not a single woman on it. No one to give a woman’s point of view, because a woman’s point of view isn’t worth considering; she isn’t as intelligent as a man, you see, and so couldn’t really understand the subtle issues involved. This is one facet of the degraded state of women subject to Sharia law, which makes them little better than property under the control of men. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written movingly about this.
There’s a category here at Public Secrets called “cultural jihad,” referring to the efforts of Islamic supremacists to condition Westerners to accept sharia law through grievance mongering and the exploitation of our generally tolerant customs and multicultural guilt. Robert Spencer has called this the “Stealth Jihad,” while former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy examines it at length in his book “The Grand Jihad.”
In Europe, the process is farther along, now involving intimidation, violence, and even enclaves run by Islamic supremacists in which the police refuse to enforce the law. Hence the reason why, in the video below, British comic Pat Condell calls what’s happening in Europe “cultural terrorism.”
Pat really shouldn’t be so shy about his feelings.
NOTE: Keep in mind that when Condell refers to Islamic extremists as “the far Right,” he’s doing so in a European context, where “far Right” means “fascist.” In the US, on the other hand, I believe we’re coming to a more correct understanding — that “Right” means “limited government,” while Fascism is part of the statist, totalitarian Left. See Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” for an excellent discussion.
Posted by Phineas Fahrquar 
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