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Islamic punishment: Amputation

The Islamic extremists in Mali came to Issa Alzouma's cell and brought him out to the public square they had renamed Place de Shariah. They laid him out, tying down his arms and legs before amputating his right hand and forearm with a knife. More...

 

Iranian Finger-chopping Machine

Iran has released photos of an apparent finger-chopping machine used for punishing criminals. The image show a convicted robber and adulterer losing a finger before he is sentenced to 99 lashes and three years in prison, according to state media. But he shows no sign of pain during the terrifying ordeal—perhaps because he has been drugged, reports France24.

Following the amputation, Ali Alghasi, Shiraz’s public prosecutor, announced that sentences against criminals would become increasingly severe, without explaining why.

On January 20, two thieves were hanged in public in Tehran. They had been caught thanks to video filmed by a street surveillance camera that showed them robbing a man at knifepoint. They had stolen the equivalent of 20 euros.

Amputation, whipping, and even death by stoning are all legal forms of punishment under Iran’s Islamic penal code.

Islamist Group in Timbuktu Poised To Destroy Rare Centuries-Old Texts on Science and Mathematics

Armed with hammers, pickaxes, and loaded guns, Islamist extremists are tearing down Timbuktu’s ancient shrines, endangering rare texts on science and mathematics.

Documents housed in the shrines include writings about astronomy, the health effects of tobacco, and 3,000-year-old medicine, according to the New Scientist. They are part of Timbuktu’s “matchless collection” of about 300,000 historical Islamic texts, some dating back to the 13th century.

Since last weekend, members of Mali’s Ansar Dine, an Islamist militia with alleged lies to al-Qaida, have destroyed at least eight mausoleums as well as several tombs. They say their actions come at the behest of a “divine order” to eliminate idolatrous monuments, reports Time...
(more)   July 4, 2012.

Pakistani Rape Victim Gets Honor in U.S.

"A Pakistani activist, Mukhtar Mai, was gang-raped at the orders of a tribal council.
She was honored by Glamour Magazine as Woman of the Year 2005 for her fight against oppression in her homeland."

 LINKS
What is FAITH?
News of Other religions

Taliban issue decree urging death for Karzai

"It should be remembered that there is no difference between infidels and their agents and jihad against them has become incumbent," the fatwa said.  [news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051211/wl_nm/afghan_fatwa_dc]

8-Year old thief's arm is crushed.
It's an urban legend  See here


 

The existence of her child was all the evidence the judge needed...

"An Islamic appeal court has upheld a sentence of death by stoning for adultery against a Nigerian woman.  Amina Lawal, 30, was found guilty by a court in Katsina state in March after bearing a child outside marriage.  "We uphold your conviction of death by stoning as prescribed by the Sharia" (Iislamic law).   (BBC Aug. 19. 2002).


Islamic GESTATION PERIOD: On 25 September 2003 Lawal had her sentence overturned by the Sharia court of appeal, and is now free. In their successful defense of Amina Lawal, lawyers used the notion of "extended pregnancy," arguing that under Sharia law, a five year interval is possible between human conception and birth.

 

 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons
 brusselsjournal.com/node/382
 brusselsjournal.com/node/698

Sep 11 2001  See disTurban Humour --> 

Former Khmer Rouge military chief Ta Mok lies in a coma in military hospital in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh July 16, 2006. Ta Mok, one of Pol Pot's most ruthless henchmen and a key defendant in upcoming 'Killing Fields' trials, died on Friday in an army hospital in the Cambodian capital. (Stringer/Reuters)...  This isn't strictly Islamic, but it's in the same ballpark... torture as is advocated in the Holy Koran.  Torture is good, god willing.  The only other Khmer Rouge leader after Pol Pot and Ta Mok, now (Jul 2006), who is in custody, is former Tuol Sleng chief Duch -- real name Kang Kek Leu -- who is now a born-again Christian!



At the age of 5, Malika Oufkir, eldest daughter of General Oufkir, was adopted by King Muhammad V of Morocco and sent to live in the palace as part of the royal court. There she led a life of unimaginable privilege and luxury alongside the king's own daughter. King Hassan II ascended the throne following Muhammad V's death, and in 1972 General Oufkir was found guilty of treason after staging a coup against the new regime, and was summarily executed. Immediately afterward, Malika, her mother, and her five siblings were arrested and imprisoned, despite having no prior knowledge of the coup attempt.

They were first held in an abandoned fort, where they ate moderately well and were allowed to keep some of their fine clothing and books. Conditions steadily deteriorated, and the family was eventually transferred to a remote desert prison, where they suffered a decade of solitary confinement, torture, starvation, and the complete absence of sunlight. Oufkir's horrifying descriptions of the conditions are mesmerizing, particularly when contrasted with her earlier life in the royal court, and many graphic images will long haunt readers. Finally, teetering on the edge of madness and aware that they had been left to die, Oufkir and her siblings managed to tunnel out using their bare hands and teaspoons, only to be caught days later. Her account of their final flight to freedom makes for breathtaking reading. Stolen Lives is a remarkable book of unfathomable deprivation and the power of the human will to survive.


Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Real Time w / Bill Maher  
Her blog  
   WIKI

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on Real Time w/Bill Maher.

Re: Islam --
"The real moment for me was after the 11th of September I started to download Bin Laden's propaganda and compare it to what was written in the Qur'an, just to check if it was really there.  It was, and I was really disappointed and depply disturbed." 

Q: Do you want to stay in the US?
A: "Yes, I'm happy here. The only thing that bothers me is when you go to a restaurant they put ice in your water"        Newsweek Feb. 26, 2007

Raised by fundamentalist Muslims, she fled Somalia for a new life in the Netherlands.
[Richarddawkins.net/article,1915,My-life-under-a-fatwa,Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-The-Independent]


Her blog 

Australian Islamic cleric finds inanimate objects at "fault".

 

Muslim cleric and the mufti of Australia's biggest mosque Sheikh Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly (C) is surrounded by supporters as he leaves midday prayers at Sydney's Lakemba Mosque October 27, 2006. (David Gray/Reuters)

Islam is a religion of peace.


On women...
Australian cleric -

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem," Hilaly said, according to a newspaper translation. CANBERRA (Reuters) OCT 2006

Australia's top Muslim cleric, suspended from preaching after describing women who do not dress modestly as "uncovered meat," rejected calls to resign, saying he would not do so the White House was cleaned out. He apologized for his comments, which he said had been misinterpreted and taken out of context. In a sermon last month, he said sexual assaults might not happen if women wore a hijab and stayed at home.

Q:  Why would one place meat, covered or no, in a park or garden, or in the street
Why not simply put it in the REFRIGERATOR ?

"If necessary, we will behead
and slaughter to preserve the
spirit and morals of our people."

 

 

 


    Link:  Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

 

 


'Wear a veil or we will behead you,' radicals tell TV women
By Eric Silver in Jerusalem    04 June 2007

All 15 women presenters reported for work at the official Palestine Television station in Gaza yesterday, in defiance of death threats by a radical Islamic group that is believed to have links with al-Qa'ida. The Righteous Swords of Islam warned that it would strike the women with "an iron fist and swords" for refusing to wear a veil on camera.

"It is disgraceful that the women working for the official Palestinian media are competing with each other to display their charms," it said in a leaflet distributed in Gaza at the weekend. "We will destroy their homes. We will blow up their work places. We have a lot of information about their addresses and we are following their movements."

The fringe group threatened to "slaughter" the women for corrupting Palestinian morals.  "The management and workers at Palestine TV should know," it warned, "that we are much closer to them than they think. If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people."

About half the women TV journalists wear the traditional hijab head covering, but all show their faces and wear makeup. They mounted a vigil yesterday outside the Gaza City office of the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, demanding protection and respect.

Lana Shaheen, who heads the station's English-language programs, told The Independent: "Of course we are afraid. Previously this group threatened Internet cafes and video shops, then burned them. We will protect ourselves."

She insisted the women would continue working. "We will not change... our lives. We've worked through Israeli bombardments and attacks, just like the men. It's a national obligation."

Mohammed al-Dahoudi, the director-general of Palestine TV, said they were taking the threats seriously. "In the current security chaos, everything can happen in Gaza. There is incitement from some groups against television. We will continue to work as usual, but we will take precautions. We have to be careful."

He recalled previous attacks by Muslim radicals on local offices of the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV; another station, Voice of the Workers; and Palestine TV's own branch in Khan Yunis.  In recent weeks, militants campaigning against Western influence have also vandalized an American school and a Christian bookshop. Bassam Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, accused the radicals of behaving like the Taliban in Afghanistan. "Gaza has become Hamasistan. They are trying to drag Palestinian society back to the dark ages."

As the prospect of peace recedes and poverty spreads, Palestinians have become more traditional. Bars and cinemas have closed. Many educated, middle-class women now cover their heads, but hardly anyone, even in the villages, wears the niqab veil.

* Despite a sharp decline in the number of rocket attacks from Gaza, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, vowed yesterday to continue military operations in Gaza and the West Bank. Four Israeli soldiers were wounded yesterday when Palestinian fighters fired mortars at the Erez passenger crossing between Gaza and Israel. Earlier, troops shot dead a Fatah gunman in the West bank town of Jenin

Original article:  news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2611747.ece

Saudi Marriage Expert  Advises Men in Right  Way to Beat Their Wives
Friday, November 02, 2007


Move over, Dr. Phil, there's a new relationship expert in town.

He's Saudi author and cleric, "Dr." Muhammad Al-'Arifi, who in a remarkable segment broadcast on Saudi and Kuwaiti television in September, counseled young Muslim men on how to treat their wives.

"Admonish them – once, twice, three times, four times, ten times," he advised. "If this doesn't help, refuse to share their beds."

And if that doesn't work?

"Beat them," one of his three young advisees responded.

"That's right," Al-'Arifi said.

Click here to view the segment at MEMRITV.org

He goes on to calmly explain to the young men that hitting their future wives in the face is a no-no.

"Beating in the face is forbidden, even when it comes to animals," he explained. "Even if you want your camel or donkey to start walking, you are not allowed to beat it in the face. If this is true for animals, it is all the more true when it comes to humans. So beatings should be light and not in the face."

His final words of wisdom?

"Woman, it has gone too far. I can't bear it anymore," he tells the men to tell their wives. "If he beats her, the beatings must be light and must not make her face ugly.

"He must beat her where it will not leave marks. He should not beat her on the hand... He should beat her in some places where it will not cause any damage. He should not beat her like he would beat an animal or a child -- slapping them right and left.

"Unfortunately, many husbands beat their wives only when they get mad, and when they start beating, it as if they are punching a wall – they beat with their hands, right and left, and sometimes use their feet. Brother, it is a human being you are beating. This is forbidden. He must not do this."

Original article:   foxnews.com/story/0,2933,307680,00.html

 

20 out of 23 chose "Mohammad",
 popular boys' name in Sudan...


12-3-2007
A British teacher jailed in Sudan for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Mohammad arrived back in London on Tuesday after being pardoned and freed.

Gillian Gibbons, sentenced last week to 15 days in jail for insulting Islam, arrived at Heathrow airport on a flight from Khartoum along with two prominent British Muslim legislators who had appealed to Sudan's President for her early release.

A smiling Gibbons was met by her son John and daughter Jessica at the arrival lounge of the airport and was expected to hold a news conference. The plane touched down at around 0705
GMT.

Gibbons prompted a complaint after she let her pupils at Khartoum's private Unity High School pick their favorite name for a teddy bear as part of a project in September.

Twenty out of 23 of them chose Mohammad -- a popular boy's name in Sudan, as well as the name of Islam's Prophet.

Gibbons apologized on Monday for any distress she may have caused to the people of Sudan and said she had encountered "nothing but kindness and generosity from the Sudanese people."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose country has had strained relations with Sudan for several years, mainly due to the conflict in Darfur, said he was "delighted and relieved" to hear Gibbons had been pardoned and freed.


( Reporting by Kate Kelland.  Editing by Michael Winfrey )  Source Yahoo

Controversial Anti-Muslim Dutch Film Adds to Already Simmering Tensions
 

 


Threats of murder. Fears of riots and religious violence. Demands for censorship. Politicians in hiding, fearing for their lives. A government preparing for the worst.

It's happening right now in a most unlikely place ... the Netherlands, once regarded as Europe's quietest and most stable nation.

And it's all happening because of a 10-minute movie that hasn't even been made yet.

It's the work of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who calls his movie "a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamicization." Wilders plans to present it to his country on television sometime next month.

"People who watch the movie will see that the Koran is very much alive today, leading to the destruction of everything we in the Western world stand for, which is respect and tolerance," Wilders, the 41-year-old leader of the right-wing Party for Freedom, said in a telephone interview.

"The tsunami of Islamicization is coming to Europe. We should come to be far stronger."

Like other European countries, the Netherlands is struggling to cope with an influx of Muslim immigrants, and the newcomers are often relegated to working at low-paying jobs and living in high-crime ghettos. Though the Dutch boast of their culture of tolerance, tensions have been high, with some blaming rising unemployment and crime on newcomers from Muslim countries like Turkey, Morocco and Somalia.


In the late 1990s, political leaders like Pim Fortuyn, Somalian-born writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali and outspoken filmmaker Theo van Gogh seemed to tap into a growing well of resentment against Muslims and criticism of Islam.

In 2002, tensions broke into outright murder when Fortuyn was shot by an animal rights activist who told the judge in the case that he was acting on behalf of the country's Muslims. Two years later, van Gogh was shot, stabbed and nearly decapitated on an Amsterdam street by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Muslim and a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent.

Van Gogh, with Hirsi Ali, had recently made the film "Submission," a 10-minute movie that the two said depicted the abuse of women in Islamic cultures. After van Gogh's murder, the Dutch government placed public figures known for their anti-Muslim stances in safehouses... [ more]

Source:  foxnews.com/story/0,2933,313741,00.html

Pakistan orders Youtube blocked
 over cartoons


Sun Feb 24, 9:09 AM ET

Pakistan ordered local Internet service providers to block access to the popular Youtube Web site because of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad that have outraged many Muslims, an industry official said on Sunday.

The cartoons, published in Danish newspapers in 2005 and again earlier this month, angered Muslims because of their depiction of the Prophet Mohammad.

"They asked us to ban it immediately ... and the order says the ban will continue until further notice," said Wahaj-us-Siraj, convener of the Association of Pakistan Internet Service Providers.

Publication of the cartoons led to protests and rioting in many Muslim countries, including Pakistan, in which at least 50 people were killed and three Danish embassies attacked.

Several Danish newspapers reprinted one of the cartoons earlier this month after police in Copenhagen uncovered a plot by two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan origin to kill the cartoonist, sparking further protests around the world.

Attempts to access Youtube in Islamabad on Sunday were met with a generic error message saying the site was unavailable.

"Users are quite upset. They're screaming at ISPs which can't do anything," Siraj said.

"The government has valid reason for that, but they have to find a better way of doing it. If we continue blocking popular Web sites, people will stop using the Internet."

(Writing by David Fox)   Source Yahoo

Moslem Polygamist is Guilty of
Torturing 19 Children, 2 Wives

 

 

 

Links:
Mormon   polygamists
Mormonism vs. Islam

 


Wednesday, June 11, 2008

MURRIETA, Calif. — A self-described polygamist was convicted Wednesday of
charges that he starved, tortured and abused his two wives and many of his 19
children and stepchildren.

A Riverside County Superior Court jury found Mansa Musa Muhummed guilty on 25
counts, including torturing seven of the children, abusing 12 of them and
falsely imprisoning the wives. He faces seven life sentences.
Muhummed, 55, shook his head as the verdict was read, prosecutor Julie Baldwin
said.

His wives and children were not present in court but they plan to attend his
sentencing, which is scheduled for August 1, she said.
Muhummed, whose birth name was Richard Boddie, told authorities that his
Muslim faith gave him the right to ta ke multiple wives. He was arrested in
1999 after one of his wives, Laura Cowan, managed to slip a 13-page letter to
a postal service worker describing the abuse.

Source:  foxnews.com/story/0,2933,365744,00.html

A missile too far...



How Iran doctored  this picture


Only  3 out of 4  missiles worked
July 9, 2008

A handout picture released on the news website and public relations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Sepah News, shows an image apparently digitally altered to show four missiles rising into the air instead of three during a test-firing at an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert on July 9, 2008.

The 2nd Right missile has been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test.

In the Fig. 1 above, released on the online service of the Iranian daily Jamejam, three missiles rise into the air as a fourth remains on the ground during a test at an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert Jul 9 2008. An altered version of this image (slightly blurred) was released by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards news website Sepah News, on July 9, 2008, which shows a fourth missile in mid-launch in place of the missile on the ground.

"There's no doubt the photo was doctored," said Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation Program for the London-based International Institute For Strategic Studies.  The image, posted on a Web site owned by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, showed more that three missiles after launch.


Islamic Child abuse:

 

 

 

 A U.S. military bomb technician retrieves the hair of a suicide bomber after an attack in Baqouba, 60 km. northeast of Baghdad. Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2008. A female suicide bomber detonated an explosive-laden vest, killing 11 people and wounding 19, Iraqi officials said.
( A P p h o t o / M a y a A l l e r u z z o )
Source: News.Yahoo.com/nPhotos


Man convicted over Shia flogging

A devout Shia Muslim has been convicted of child cruelty after forcing two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony, in an unprecedented case.

The jury at Manchester Crown Court found 44-year-old Syed Mustafa Zaidi guilty of two counts of child cruelty.

The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer whip, with five curved blades.

Zaidi, of Station Road, Eccles, Salford, also flogged himself during the ceremony in January.

The court heard the boys admit that they had wanted to beat themselves, but not under duress and not with the whip.

The Ashura ceremony takes place during Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar and commemorates the death of Husayn, a central figure in the Shia faith.

Zaidi admitted he allowed them to use the bladed whip, but denied his actions were wrong, saying: "This is a part of our religion."

A local Muslim leader Safdar Zia has said the community was now working with police and the Crown Prosecution Service on a code of practice for the Ashura practice.

"We cannot eliminate this practice, but we can and will work to a code of practice so that the children don't get hurt, the law isn't broken, and the people who do want to take part don't get prosecuted," he said.

"We have to take into account people's beliefs and their rights, and we will respect them.

"But we are not above the law and we never will be and working with the authorities is the best chance we've got to prevent any harm being brought against any children."


During the trial the 14-year-old boy, who was 13 at the time, said that during the ceremony Zaidi told them both: "Start doing it, start doing it."

The child told the court: "We said 'we don't want to do it'."

He said he saw Zaidi flogging himself before washing blood from the whip and handing it to the 15-year-old boy.

Zaidi told the court: "It was an emotional time and the children were happy, they asked for it. No one forced anyone.

"If I'd known this would be the result of breaking the law I would never have done it."

The boys both received multiple lacerations to their backs, mainly superficial, with several deeper cuts.

Supt Nadeem Butt, of Greater Manchester Police, said: Zaidi had "abused the vulnerability" of the children, gone against the wishes of his own community and broken the law.

Carol Jackson, of the Greater Manchester Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said the prosecution "was not an attack upon the practices or ceremonies of Shia Muslims".

"Indeed, the prosecution relied as part of its evidence upon the president of the local Shia community centre," Ms Jackson said.

"We are satisfied that, given the age of the children involved, the coercion employed by Syed Mustafa Zaidi, who did not accept that he was wrong, and the possibility of such an incident occurring again, the decision to prosecute by the Crown Prosecution Service was the correct one.

"This is a very unusual case and the first of its kind to be prosecuted by the CPS in England and Wales."

Zaidi will be sentenced on 24 September.

"This is a very unusual case and the first of its kind to be prosecuted by the
CPS in England and Wales" ~~ Carol Jackson, CPS


Bible belter
Christopher Hitchens has successfully taken the case against God to the
heart of America, writes Richard Dawkins.

Christopher Hitchens: GOD IS NOT GREAT The case against religion 307pp. Atlantic. 978 0 446 57980 3

By Richard Dawkins...

There is much fluttering in the dovecots of the deluded, and Christopher Hitchens is one of those responsible. Another is the philosopher A. C. Grayling. I recently shared a platform with both. We were to debate against a trio of, as it turned out, rather half-hearted religious apologists (“Of course I don’t believe in a God with a long white beard, but . . .”). I hadn’t met Hitchens before, but I got an idea of what to expect when Grayling emailed me to discuss tactics. After proposing a couple of lines for himself and me, he concluded, “. . . and Hitch will spray AK47 ammo at the enemy in characteristic style”.

 

LINKS:
A page from the book: Masturbation Islamic style

 

Normal Masturbation

"As I write, a version of the Inquisition is about to lay its hands on a nuclear weapon".

Theocracy doesn’t obviously nurture the sort of cultural and educational advancement that goes with modern scientific inventiveness.

Grayling’s engaging caricature misses Hitchens’s ability to temper his pugnacity with old-fashioned courtesy. And “spray” suggests a scattershot fusillade, which underestimates the deadly accuracy of his marksmanship. If you are a religious apologist invited to debate with Christopher Hitchens, decline. His witty repartee, his ready-access store of historical quotations, his bookish eloquence, his effortless flow of well-formed words, beautifully spoken in that formidable Richard Burton voice (the whole performance not dulled by other equally formidable Richard Burton habits), would threaten your arguments even if you had good ones to deploy. A string of reverends and “theologians” ruefully discovered this during Hitchens’s barnstorming book tour around the United States.

With characteristic effrontery, he took his tour through the Bible Belt states – the reptilian brain of southern and middle America, rather than the easier pickings of the country’s cerebral cortex to the north and down the coasts. The plaudits he received were all the more gratifying. Something is stirring in that great country. America is far from the know-nothing theocracy that two terms of Bush, and various misleading polls, had led us to fear. Does the buckle of the Bible Belt conceal some real guts? Are the ranks of the thoughtful coming out of the closet and standing up to be counted? Yes, and Hitchens’s atheist colleagues on the American bestseller list have equally encouraging tales to tell.

God Is Not Great is a coolly angry book, but there are good laughs too; for example, Hitchens’s hilarious account of how Malcolm Muggeridge launched “the ‘Mother Teresa’ brand upon the world” with his story that, while the BBC struggled to film her under low-light conditions, she spontaneously glowed. The cameraman later told Hitchens the true explanation of the “miracle” – the ultra-sensitivity of a new type of film from Kodak – but Muggeridge fatuously wrote: “I myself am absolutely convinced that the technically unaccountable light is, in fact, the Kindly Light that Cardinal Newman refers to in his well-known exquisite hymn”.

Hitchens also offers an extremely funny brief history of Mormonism: how it was invented from scratch by Joseph Smith, a nineteenth-century charlatan who wrote his book in sixteenth-century English, claiming to have translated the text from plates of gold – which conveniently ascended into heaven before anyone else could see them. Even the amanuenses to whom the illiterate Smith dictated had to sit behind a curtain lest they should catch a glimpse and be struck dead. Do you know anyone so gullible? Yet today, Mormonism is powerful enough to field a presidential candidate, its clean-cut young missionaries patrol the world in pairs, and the Book of Mormon nestles in every Marriott hotel room.

Hitchens’s title alludes, of course, to those famous last words “Allahu Akhbar”. The subtitle has suffered from its Atlantic crossing. The American original, “How religion poisons everything”, is an excellent slogan, which recurs through the book and defines its central theme. The British edition substitutes the bland and pedestrian subtitle “The case against religion”.

“There was a rush to see who could capitulate the fastest, by reporting on the disputed [Danish cartoons] without actually showing them ”.

I referred earlier to Hitchens’s old-fashioned courtesy, and that was not (entirely) a joke. You can hear it in recordings of his lectures and debates, and you can see it in the first chapter of this book, “Putting It Mildly”.

"I leave it to the faithful to burn each other’s churches and mosques and synagogues, which they can always be relied upon to do. When I go to the mosque, I take off my shoes. When I go to the synagogue, I cover my head."

The next chapter, “Religion Kills”, benefits from Hitchens’s experience as a war correspondent. (Others have likened him to Evelyn Waugh or Graham Greene, but my own comparison is with Waugh’s intrepid rogue Basil Seal, who couldn’t keep out of trouble or away from the world’s trouble spots.) Publicly challenged by an American preacher to admit that, if approached by a gang of men in a dark alley, he would be reassured to learn that they had emerged from a prayer meeting, Hitchens’s return volley was unplayable:

"Just to stay within the letter “B”, I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem and Baghdad. In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance."

He does give his reasons too, and in no case are they vulnerable to the objection “But the dispute in B— is tribal / political / economic, not religious”. It is doubtless true that the people of B— are killing each other over something more than a mere liturgical disagreement. They are pursuing hereditary vendettas, paying back economic injustices. It’s all “them and us” stuff, yes, but how do they know who is them and who is us? Through religion, religious education, sectarian apartheid; through decades of faith-based separation, starting in kindergarten, working up through faith school and on to later life and the inculcated horror of “marrying out”; then, most importantly, the dutifully segregated indoctrination of the next generation.

I once had a televised encounter with a leading “moderate” Muslim, of the kind who gets a knighthood or a peerage for not being an “extremist”. I publicly challenged this “moderate” to deny that the Muslim penalty for apostasy was death. Unable to do so (the Koran is word-for-word inerrant), he wriggled and twisted, and finally claimed that it was an “unimportant detail”, because never enforced. Tell that to Salman Rushdie, of whom the knighted “moderate” had earlier said, “Death is perhaps too easy for him”.

 

Faith-based fanatics could not design anything as useful or beautiful as a skyscraper or a passenger aircraft. But, continuing their long history of plagiarism, they could borrow and steal these things and use them as a negation

 

 

 

 

 

 LINKS
Masturbation Café
Off-site links
Female Suicide Bombers
Mormonism vs. Islam

 ". . . . the literal mind does not understand the ironic mind, and sees it always as a source of danger. Moreover, Rushdie had been brought up as a Muslim and had an understanding of the Koran, which meant in effect that he was an apostate. And “apostasy”, according to the Koran, is punishable by death. There is no right to change religion . . . ."

Thus Christopher Hitchens on his friend Salman Rushdie, whom he welcomed into his Washington home and was subsequently warned by the State Department

". . . to change my address and my telephone number, which seemed an unlikely way of avoiding reprisal. However, it did put me on notice of what I already knew. It is not possible for me to say, Well, you pursue your Shiite dream of a hidden imam and I pursue my study of Thomas Paine and George Orwell, and the world is big enough for both of us. The true believer cannot rest until the whole world bows the knee. Is it not obvious to all, say the pious, that religious authority is paramount, and that those who decline to recognize it have forfeited their right to exist."

Hitchens invokes the Danish cartoons to discuss complicity and cowardice in the West:

"Islamic mobs were violating diplomatic immunity and issuing death threats against civilians, yet the response from His Holiness the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury was to condemn – the cartoons!
In my own profession, there was a rush to see who could capitulate the fastest, by reporting on the disputed images without actually showing them. And this at a time when the mass media has become almost exclusively picture-driven. Euphemistic noises were made about the need to show “respect’” but I know quite a number of the editors concerned and can say for a certainty that the chief motive for “restraint” was simple fear. In other words, a handful of religious bullies and bigmouths could, so to speak, outvote the tradition of free expression in its Western heartland."

While I admire Hitchens’s courage, I could not condemn those editors. There are times when “cowardice” amounts to no more than sensible prudence. But Hitchens is surely right to despise leaders of other religions who, while under no threat, go out of their way to volunteer a gratuitous “respect” and “sympathy” for those who incite murder in the name of God.

To return to Hitchens on Rushdie and the fatwa:

"One might have thought that such arrogant state-sponsored homicide . . . would have called forth a general condemnation. But such was not the case. In considered statements, the Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the chief sephardic rabbi of Israel all took a stand in sympathy with – the ayatollah. So did the cardinal archbishop of New York and other lesser religious figures. While they usually managed a few words in which to deplore the resort to violence, all these men stated that the main problem raised by the publication of The Satanic Verses was not murder by mercenaries but blasphemy. "

Moving to today’s Iran (and this may go some way towards explaining his otherwise mysterious flirtation with the neocon blackguards of Washington) Hitchens notes, “as I write, a version of the Inquisition is about to lay its hands on a nuclear weapon”. This is an unexpected threat. Theocracy doesn’t obviously nurture the sort of cultural and educational advancement that goes with modern scientific inventiveness.
Hitchens develops his point with respect to September 11, 2001, when "from Afghanistan the holy order was given to annex two famous achievements of modernism – the high-rise building and the jet aircraft – and use them for immolation and human sacrifice. The succeeding stage, very plainly announced in hysterical sermons, was to be the moment when apocalyptic nihilists coincided with Armageddon weaponry. Faith-based fanatics could not design anything as useful or beautiful as a skyscraper or a passenger aircraft. But, continuing their long history of plagiarism, they could borrow and steal these things and use them as a negation."

While my own primary concern as a scientist has been with religion’s claims about the cosmos and the sources of life, Hitchens restricts such matters to two short chapters. Where he really comes into his own is with the evils that are done in the name of religion: “religion poisons everything”. His list is pretty comprehensive. There is a good chapter on religion as child abuse; another on religion as a health hazard, which doesn’t fail to mention those Roman Catholic priests, including at least two cardinals and an archbishop, who solemnly told their flocks, in African countries ravaged by AIDS, that condoms transmit the virus.

Reviewers have variously described Hitchens as an equal opportunity atheist, an equal opportunity embarrasser (of all religions), an equal opportunity ranter, and an equal opportunity bigot. He is certainly not a bigot, nor does he rant (any critic of religion, no matter how mild, is automatically assumed to “rant”). But it is true, as another reviewer of God Is Not Great has put it, that it is “ecumenical in its contempt for religion”. Even Buddhism, which is often praised as a cut above the rest, gets both barrels.

It is no surprise that Hitchens’s chapter “The Nightmare of the Old Testament” effortlessly lives up to its name. The next one, despite its promising title (“The New Testament Exceeds the Evil of the Old”) is more about the unreliability of the texts than about any evil to match the admittedly high standards of the Pentateuch. Many Gospel stories were invented to fulfil Old Testament prophecies, and the shameless candour with which their authors admit it is almost endearing: “All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet . . .”. The real evil of the New Testament gets a chapter to itself: that is, the divine-scapegoat theory of Jesus’s crucifixion, as vicarious atonement for “original sin” (the past sin of Adam who had never existed, and the future sins of people like us who didn’t yet exist but were presumed to have every intention of sinning when our time came).

Hitchens is quick to note the similarity of Christianity to extinct cults. Jesus slots right into a cosmopolitan catalogue of virgin births along with Horus, Mercury, Krishna, Attis, Perseus, Romulus and, incongruously, Genghis Khan. Is it Jungian atavism, shrewd PR, or sheer accident that leads the inventors of cults, and the religions into which they mature, to conjure their gods out of virgin wombs, like so many rabbits out of hats? Jesus’s case was abetted by a simple mistranslation from the Hebrew for “young woman” into the Greek for “virgin”.

One of Hitchens’s central themes is that gods are made by man, rather than the other way around. A related theme is plagiarism: “monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay, of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents”. A pair of chapters explores “The Tawdriness of the Miraculous” and the widespread fallacy that we derive our morals from religious rules such as the Ten Commandments. As Hitchens witheringly puts it, does anybody seriously think that, before Moses delivered the tablet inscription “Thou shalt not kill”, his people had thought it a good idea to do so?

I said that Hitchens comes into his own on the evils that are done in the name of religion: “in the name of” is important. You can't just point to evil – or indeed good – individuals who happen to be religious. The case to be made is that people do evil (or good) – because they are religious. Crusaders and jihadis are – by their own lights – good. They do evil things (by our lights) because their faith drives them to it. The nineteen murderers of September 11 scrupulously washed, perfumed and shaved their whole bodies in preparation for the martyrs’ paradise, as they set off on what they sincerely, truly, prayerfully believed was a supremely righteous mission.

If ever a man embodied evil it was Adolf Hitler. He never renounced his Roman Catholicism, and affirmed his Christianity throughout his life, but unlike, say, Torquemada or a typical crusader or conquistador, he did not do his horrible deeds in the name of Christianity. Another deeply evil man, Joseph Stalin, was probably an atheist but, again, he didn’t do evil because he was an atheist, any more than he, or Hitler, or Saddam Hussein, did evil because they had moustaches. Hitchens is especially good on the idiotic challenge “Stalin and Hitler were atheists, what d’you say to that?” – doubtless after plenty of practice. Stalin, Hitler and the others may not have been religious themselves, but they understood the ingrained religiosity of their subjects, and exploited it gratefully. Hitchens makes the point only briefly in the book, but he has enlarged upon it in later speeches and interviews:

"For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the Czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you’re Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you can’t exploit the pool of servility and docility that’s ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity."

The point applies again to Kim Jong Il (the Dear Leader) and to his late father, Kim Il Sung (the Great Leader), who is still the Eternal President of North Korea, despite having died in 1994. Hitchens has personal experience of North Korea, and his observations on its modern cult of ancestor worship are the sort of thing he does best.

Having failed myself to find anything to complain about, I thought it my duty to examine other reviews in the hope of uncovering something negative to say. Most of them have been favourable, but Matt Buchanan, in the course of an otherwise rave review in the Sydney Morning Herald, hit home with this:

"He is also occasionally guilty of crassness. For example: “In the very recent past we have seen the Church of Rome befouled by its complicity in the unpardonable sin of child rape, or as it might be phrased in Latin form, no child's behind left.” Hitchens squanders a lot of trust with that vulgar lapse: readers suddenly catch sight of him chortling at his desk and it’s not pretty, or funny, and it impugns his seriousness elsewhere. "

An undeniable lapse but not a characteristic one. The slightly odd habit of downsizing self-important leaders by calling them “mammals” is a lesser error of tone that might be corrected in a future edition.

Peter Hitchens begins his negative review in the Daily Mail quite well (“Am I my brother’s reviewer?”), but the substance of his complaint seems to be that Christopher is as confident in his disbelief as any fundamentalist is confident in his belief. The answer to the familiar accusation of atheist fundamentalism is plain enough. The onus is not on the atheist to demonstrate the non-existence of the invisible unicorn in the room, and we cannot be accused of undue confidence in our disbelief. The devout churchgoer recites the Nicene Creed weekly, enumerating a detailed and precise list of things he positively believes, with no more evidence than supports the unicorn. Now that’s overconfidence. By contrast, the atheist says the humble thing: of all the millions of possible entities that one might imagine, I believe only in those for which there is evidence – trombones, pelicans and electrons, say, but not unicorns or leprechauns, not Thor with his hammer, not Ganesh the elephant god, not the Holy Ghost.

The second commonest complaint from reviewers is that Christopher Hitchens attacks bad religion. Real religion (the religion the reviewer subscribes to) is immune to such criticism. Here is the theologian Stephen Prothero in the Washington Post:

"To read this oddly innocent book as gospel is to believe that ordinary Catholics are proud of the Inquisition . . . and that ordinary Jews cheer when a renegade Orthodox rebbe sucks the blood off a freshly circumcised penis."

This complaint, too, is familiar, and the answer (even when the point is not exaggerated, as it is by Prothero) is obvious. If only all religions were as humane and as nuanced as yours, gentle theologian, all would be well, and Hitchens would not have needed to write this book. But come down to earth in the real world: in Islamabad, say, in Jerusalem, or in Hitchens’s home town, Washington DC, where the President of the most powerful nation on earth takes his marching orders directly from God. Channel-hop your television in any American hotel room, look aghast at the huge sums of money subscribed to build megachurches, at museums depicting dinosaurs walking with men, and see what I mean.

Finally, there are those critics who can’t resist the ad hominem blow: “Don’t you know Christopher Hitchens supported the invasion of Iraq?” But so what? I’m not reviewing his politics, I’m reviewing his book. And what a splendid, boisterously virile broadside of a book it is.


Richard Dawkins FRS is Oxford's Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science. His latest book, The God Delusion, has sold more than a million copies in its first year, and is being translated into more than 30 languages.

Source: From The Times Literary Supplement    September 6, 2007  entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/tls_selections/religion/article2400899.ece


Stoning victim 'begged for mercy'

A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC.

 

 

 

 

 

Faith-According to Amnesty International, nurses were sent to check during the stoning whether the victim was still alive. They removed her from the ground and declared that she was, before she was replaced so the stoning could continue.

 

 

 

 

 

 



The Holy Qur'an:
Text, Translation
& Commentary

Abdullah Yusuf Ali   (Editor)

 

 

"Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.

Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.

Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.

Numerous eye-witnesses say she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people last week.
Meanwhile, Islamists in the capital, Mogadishu have carried out a public flogging.

Mogadishu is nominally under the control of government forces and their Ethiopian allies, who face frequent attacks by Islamist and nationalist insurgents.
The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in the city says the flogging was a show of strength.

He says two men accused of helping to kill a man and torture his mother, who they accused of theft, were each given 39 lashes in the north-eastern suburb of Suqa-hola.

The man who actually killed the alleged thief was released, after agreeing to pay his family 100 camels in compensation.

Before the flogging, hundreds of Islamist fighters performed a military parade, our reporter says.
 

Death threats
Cameras were banned from the stoning in Kismayo, but print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend estimated that the woman, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was 23 years old.

However, Amnesty said it had learned she was 13, and that her father had said she was raped by three men.
When the family tried to report the rape, the girl was accused of adultery and detained, Amnesty said.

Convicting a girl of 13 for adultery would be illegal under Islamic law.
A human rights activist in the town told the BBC on condition of anonymity that he had received death threats from the Islamic militia, who accuse him of spreading false information about the incident.

He denies having anything to with Amnesty's report.
 

'Crying'
Court authorities have said the woman came to them admitting her guilt.

She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply, they said.
But a witness who spoke to the BBC's Today programme said she had been crying and had to be forced into a hole before the stoning, reported to have taken place in a football stadium.
 

"More than 1,000 people arrived there," he said.

"After two hours, the Islamic administration in Kismayo brought the lady to the place and when she came out she said: 'What do you want from me?'"

"They said: 'We will do what Allah has instructed us'. She said: 'I'm not going, I'm not going. Don't kill me, don't kill me.'

"A few minutes later more than 50 men tried to stone her."
 

'Checked by nurses'
The witness said people crowding round to see the execution said it was "awful".

"People were saying this was not good for Sharia law, this was not good for human rights, this was not good for anything."

But no-one tried to stop the Islamist officials, who were armed, the witness said. He said one boy was shot in the confusion.

According to Amnesty International, nurses were sent to check during the stoning whether the victim was still alive. They removed her from the ground and declared that she was, before she was replaced so the stoning could continue.

The port of Kismayo was seized in August by a coalition of forces loyal to rebel leader Hassan Turki, and al-Shabab, the country's main radical Islamist insurgent organization.

Mr Turki is on the US list of "financers of terrorism".

It was the first reported execution by stoning in the southern port city since Islamist insurgents captured it.
The BBC had a reporter in the area, but he was shot dead in Kismayo in June.


Source:   news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7708169.stm

 

Explains how the world’s great religions, true ones and false ones, to answer questions that persist through generations. Authors Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman are trusted religious...

90% of Americans own a Bible; while it’s the most widely read book, it’s also the least understood. Regardless of your religion, understanding the Bible brings much of Western art, literature, and public discourse into greater focus—from Leonardo da Vinci...

 

Saudi Cleric Says Mickey Mouse Must Die

September 16, 2008
He may have survived the battle with the brooms in “Fantasia,” but now Mickey Mouse has to contend with Islam.

Calling the loveable Disney rodent “one of Satan’s soldiers, Sheikh Muhammad Munajid said household mice and their animated counterparts must be rubbed out, the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

"Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases."

Munajid, a former diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington D.C., made the remarks on Arab television network al-Majd TV after he was asked to give Islam’s teaching on mice.  And Mickey wasn’t alone. Munajid also mentioned Jerry from “Tom and Jerry” fame is on his list of “impure” cartoon mice.

Quelle:   foxnews.com


If she has done these things she will be judged on Judgment Day.
Allah will forgive her anything except becoming a non-Muslim.”

The 27-year-old daughter of radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed has admitted to pole dancing in London bars in defiance of her family's strict Muslim beliefs, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

Yasmin Fostok left Bakri’s home four years ago because she did not share her father’s opinions.

"I don't get on with my dad. I don't agree with his views,” Fostok told the Daily Mail. “I just get on with my life and that is it.”

She currently lives with her 3-year-old son in South East London, whom she had with her ex-husband after their arranged marriage.

Fostok performs a fire-eating routine and performs semi-naked inside cages.

“If this is true I am deeply shocked,” Bakri told the Mail from Lebanon, where he has lived since being exiled from England three years ago. “She was brought up properly in the Muslim faith but she is free to make her own choices in life. But I am still shocked.”

“If she has done these things she will be judged on Judgment Day. Allah will forgive her anything except becoming a non-Muslim.”

Source: foxnews.com/story/0,2933,428484,00.html


lips_r1.gif (1858 bytes)Flirting with Palin earns
Pakistani president a fatwa
 

B y   I s s a m   A h m e d     October 1, 2008

 

 

 

 


 Mein Jihad                  Mein Kampf

After the flirtation came the fatwa.

With some overly friendly comments to Gov. Sarah Palin at the United Nations, Asif Ali Zardari has succeeded in uniting one of Pakistan's hard-line mosques and its feminists after a few weeks in office.

A radical Muslim prayer leader said the president shamed the nation for "indecent gestures, filthy remarks, and repeated praise of a non-Muslim lady wearing a short skirt."

Feminists charged that once again a male Pakistani leader has embarrassed the country with sexist remarks. And across the board, the Pakistani press has shown disapproval.

What did President Zardari do to draw such scorn? It might have been the "gorgeous" compliment he gave Ms. Palin when the two met at the UN last week during her meet-and-greet with foreign leaders ahead of Thursday's vice presidential debate with opponent Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

But the comments from Zardari didn't end there. He went on to tell Palin: "Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you."

"You are so nice," replied the Republican vice presidential hopeful, smiling. "Thank you."

But what may have really caused Pakistan's radical religious leaders to stew was his comment that he might "hug" Palin if his handler insisted.

Though the fatwa, issued days after the Sept. 24 exchange, carries little weight among most Pakistanis, it's indicative of the anger felt by Pakistan's increasingly assertive conservatives who consider physical contact and flattery between a man and woman who aren't married to each other distasteful. Though fatwas, or religious edicts, can range from advice on daily life to death sentences, this one does not call for any action or violence.

Last year, the mosque that issued the fatwa, Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, condemned the former tourism minister, Nilofar Bahktiar, after she was photographed being hugged by a male parachuting coach in France.

Clerics declared the act a "great sin" and, though less vocal about it, similar sentiments were shared by many among Pakistani's middle classes. The Red Mosque gained international infamy in July 2007 after becoming the focal point of a Pakistan Army operation.

For the feminists it's less about cozying up to a non-Muslim woman and more about the sexist remarks by Zardari.

"As a Pakistani and as a woman, it was shameful and unacceptable. He was looking upon her merely as a woman and not as a politician in her own right," says Tahira Abdullah, a member of the Women's Action Forum.

Dismissing the mosque's concerns as "ranting," she, however, adds: "He should show some decorum – if he loved his wife so much as to press for a United Nations investigation into her death, he should behave like a mourning widower," in reference to former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, a feminist icon for millions of Pakistani women.

The theme of decorum was picked up by English daily Dawn, whose editorial asked: "Why do our presidents always end up embarrassing us internationally by making sexist remarks?"

The incident bears some resemblance to yet another charm offensive by a senior Pakistani politician. Marcus Mabry's biography of Condoleezza Rice includes a passage in which he relates a meeting between former Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Ms. Rice, in which Mr. Aziz was said to have stared deeply into the secretary of State's eyes and to have told her he could "conquer any woman in two minutes."

There are some, however, who see things as having been blown out of proportion.

"It was a sweet and innocuous exchange played as an international incident on Pakistani and rascally Indian front-pages with one English daily [writing] it in a scarlet box, half-implying Mrs. Palin would ditch Alaska's First Dude and become Pakistan's First Babe. As if," wrote columnist Fasih Ahmed in the Daily Times.

For most, it will soon be forgotten in a country dealing with terrorism, rising food prices, and a struggling economy. "We don't care that much how they [politicians] behave – what really matters is keeping prices down," says Nazeera Bibi, a maid in Lahore.

Source:   news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20081002/wl_csm/opakfatwa&printer=1;_ylt=AvVKf3rukJsVG.FHClUqhxSve8UF


Saudi cleric favours one-eye veil

The binocular look remains too seductive for Sheikh Habadan

 

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is still a controversial topic in twenty-first century  Muslim societies.

A Muslim cleric in Saudi Arabia has called on women to wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies.

The niqab is more common in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but women in much of the Muslim Middle East wear a headscarf which covers only their hair.

Sheikh Habadan, an ultra-conservative cleric who is said to have wide influence among religious Saudis, was answering questions on the Muslim satellite channel al-Majd.


Source:  news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7651231.stm

Dear Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan

 

 


Happy Sputnik day 04 October, 1957

Dear Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan
04 October, 2008     [ Happy Sputnik day ! ]

BBC reports that you have recently called on women in Saudi Arabia to “wear a full veil, or niqab, that reveals only one eye.” You say that “showing both eyes encourage[s] women to use eye make-up to look seductive.”

I believe, sir, that showing only one eye will make matters worse. You see, whenever a woman and a man are together and the woman blinks, the man might think that she is winking. Is the hidden eye open or closed? If it is assumed to be normally open, then a momentary closing of the visible eye could be assumed to be a wink. If it is assumed to be normally closed, then the woman may be considered to be perpetually winking, which is equally problematic.

I have an alternative solution to your problem. I suggest that you introduce veils for men that cover both their eyes. That way it will make no difference if the women are winking, blinking or, heaven forbid, naked.

Good idea, no? You’re welcome.

Regards,
Amit Varma

Source:  indiauncut.com/iublog/article/open-letter-to-sheikh-muhammad-al-habadan-re-veils/


Joe Says:
October 4th, 2008 at 4:58 pm    [ Happy Sputnik day ! ]

I can relate to that but would suggest to cover the entire face, both eyes, and use high-tech glasses with mini screen connected to a tiny camera sitting on the side of the woman’s head. This way overweight Saudi clerics don’t get too excited. Of course, another option would be to simply give Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan a guide dog and a stick, donate his eyes to charity and let him enjoy a no-make up-world.

Source:   anorak.co.uk/strange-but-true/191662.html


Stoning victim 'begged for mercy'

A young woman recently stoned to death in Somalia first
pleaded for her life, a witness has told the BBC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Allah honored wives by instating the punishment
of beatings." 
~ See the VIDEO How to Beat Your Wife on YouTube

 

 

"Don't kill me, don't kill me," she said, according to the man who wanted to remain anonymous. A few minutes later, more than 50 men threw stones.
Human rights group Amnesty International says the victim was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped.
Initial reports had said she was a 23-year-old woman who had confessed to adultery before a Sharia court.
Numerous eye-witnesses say she was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones until she died in front of more than 1,000 people last week.
Meanwhile, Islamists in the capital, Mogadishu have carried out a public flogging.

The man who killed the thief was released,
after agreeing to pay his family 100 camels...

Mogadishu is nominally under the control of government forces and their Ethiopian allies, who face frequent attacks by Islamist and nationalist insurgents.
The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in the city says the flogging was a show of strength.
He says two men accused of helping to kill a man and torture his mother, who they accused of theft, were each given 39 lashes in the north-eastern suburb of Suqa-hola.
The man who actually killed the alleged thief was released, after agreeing to pay his family 100 camels in compensation.
Before the flogging, hundreds of Islamist fighters performed a military parade, our reporter says.
 

Death threats
Cameras were banned from the stoning in Kismayo, but print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend estimated that the woman, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was 23 years old.

However, Amnesty said it had learned she was 13, and that her father had said she was raped by three men.
When the family tried to report the rape, the girl was accused of adultery and detained, Amnesty said.
Convicting a girl of 13 for adultery would be illegal under Islamic law.
A human rights activist in the town told the BBC on condition of anonymity that he had received death threats from the Islamic militia, who accuse him of spreading false information about the incident.
He denies having anything to with Amnesty's report.
 

'Crying'
Court authorities have said the woman came to them admitting her guilt.

She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply, they said.
But a witness who spoke to the BBC's Today programme said she had been crying and had to be forced into a hole before the stoning, reported to have taken place in a football stadium.
"More than 1,000 people arrived there," he said.
"After two hours, the Islamic administration in Kismayo brought the lady to the place and when she came out she said: 'What do you want from me?'"
"They said: 'We will do what Allah has instructed us'. She said: 'I'm not going, I'm not going. Don't kill me, don't kill me.'
"A few minutes later more than 50 men tried to stone her."

 

'Checked by nurses'
The witness said people crowding round to see the execution said it was "awful".
"People were saying this was not good for Sharia law, this was not good for human rights, this was not good for anything."
But no-one tried to stop the Islamist officials, who were armed, the witness said. He said one boy was shot in the confusion.
According to Amnesty International, nurses were sent to check during the stoning whether the victim was still alive. They removed her from the ground and declared that she was, before she was replaced so the stoning could continue.
The port of Kismayo was seized in August by a coalition of forces loyal to rebel leader Hassan Turki, and al-Shabab, the country's main radical Islamist insurgent organisation.
Mr Turki is on the US list of "financers of terrorism".
It was the first reported execution by stoning in the southern port city since Islamist insurgents captured it.
The BBC had a reporter in the area, but he was shot dead in Kismayo in June.

Source:   news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7708169.stm

Shiva Nazar Ahari has been jailed
 for six years after being convicted
of 'waging war against God'.

 

 

Photo: Observer


An Iranian court has jailed a prominent human rights activist and journalist for six years after convicting her of "waging war against God" and other charges.

In another indication of the regime's determination to punish those who took part in protests after last year's disputed presidential election, Shiva Nazar Ahari was convicted of the crime known as "moharebeh" - usually punishable by death.

The 26-year-old, who founded the Committee of Human Rights Reporters in Tehran, was also convicted of plotting to commit crimes and agitating against the ruling system, Iran's semi-official ILNA news agency reported.

Ahari was fined about Ł250 as a substitute for receiving 76 lashes. The activist's family and supporters say the charges were politically motivated.

She was arrested in December 2009 on her way to the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the spiritual mentor of the Green movement, which opposed the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last June. Her supporters have voiced particular objection to the allegation behind the charge of moharebeh, which is that she was a member of the banned Mojahedin e-Khalq group, accused by the Iranian regime of terrorist activities. Her family say she deplores the organisation.

Ahari's lawyer, Mohammad Sharif, was quoted as saying he was "shocked" to learn that his client had been convicted of moharebeh, saying there was "no legal basis for this charge against her". He said he planned to file an appeal. Following her arrest, Ahar was held at the Evin prison, in Tehran, with little access to her lawyer or family members. She reportedly spent long periods in solitary confinement.

Since the disputed presidential election, journalists have become a prime target in the Iranian government's crackdown on the opposition. In a report published in March, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said at least 52 journalists were being held in Iranian jails.

Several other female activists have been targeted since the election. Earlier this month, Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer who has represented several arrested political activists and protesters, was arrested and charged with "propaganda against the regime" and "acting against national security".

Sotoudeh's husband, Reza Khandan, said she had been warned that she would be arrested if she continued to represent Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel peace prize laureate and human rights activist who left Iran a day before the election.

The opposition insist that June's election was rigged. Authorities in Iran deny the claims and have blamed foreign countries for fomenting sedition.

Source: Guardian.co.uk

Boko Haram --
Education Forbidden: Islam

 

 

 

 LINKS
What is a cargo cult ?
The statements of Osama Bin Laden & the sayings of Ayatollah Khomeini


Fighters opposed to Western education seek Islamic law across country.
Source: Aljazeera.net

 

... Boko Haram does not in any way mean 'Western Education is A sin' as the infidel media continue to portray us. Boko Haram actually means 'Western Civilization' is forbidden. The difference is that while the first gives the impression that we are opposed to formal education coming from the West, that is Europe, which is not true, the second affirms our believe in the supremacy of Islamic culture (not Education), for culture is broader, it includes education but not determined by Western Education.
Source: Allafrica.com

Palestinian jailed for logging
on to Facebook as 'God' to
criticize Islam
QALQILIYA, West Bank (AP) – A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars - caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority - and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin - the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar - was leading a double life.
Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father's barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for insulting the divine essence. Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

"He should be burned to death," said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public to be an example to others, he added.

Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favor of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a primitive Bedouin. He called Islam a blind faith that grows and takes over people's minds where there is irrationality and ignorance.

If that wasn't enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran. At its peak, Husayin's Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.

His Facebook groups elicited hundreds of angry comments, detailed death threats and the formation of more than a dozen Facebook groups against him, including one called Fight the blasphemer who said 'I am God.'

The outburst of anger reflects the feeling in the Muslim world that their faith is under mounting attack by the West. This sensitivity has periodically turned violent, such as the street protests that erupted in 2005 after cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed were published in Denmark or after Pope Benedict XVI suggested the Prophet Muhammad was evil the following year. The pope later retracted his comment.

"Husayin is the first to be arrested in the West Bank for his religious views," said Tayseer Tamimi, the former chief Islamic judge in the area.

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority is among the more religiously liberal Arab governments in the region. It is dominated by secular elites and has frequently cracked down on hardline Muslims and activists connected to its conservative Islamic rival, Hamas.
Husayin's high public profile and prickly style, however, left authorities no choice but to take action.

Husayin used a fake name on his English and Arabic-language blogs and Facebook pages. After his mother discovered articles on atheism on his computer, she canceled his Internet connection in hopes that he would change his mind.

Instead, he began going to an Internet cafe - a move that turned out to be a costly mistake. The owner, Ahmed Abu-Asal, said the blogger aroused suspicion by spending up to seven hours a day in a corner booth. After several months, a cafe worker supplied captured snapshots of his Facebook pages to Palestinian intelligence officials.

Officials monitored him for several weeks and then arrested him on Oct. 31 as he sat in the cafe, said Abu-Asal.

Husayin's family has been devastated by the arrest. On a recent day, his father stood sadly in the family barber shop, cluttered with colorful towels and posters of men in outdated haircuts. He requested that a reporter not write about his son to avoid being publicly shamed.

 

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin - the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar - was leading a double life.

Two cousins attributed the writings to depression, saying Husayin was desperate to find better work. Requesting anonymity because of the shame of the incident, they said Husayin's mother wants him to remain in prison for life - both to restore the family's honor and to protect him from vigilantes.

The case is the second high-profile arrest in the West Bank connected to Facebook activity. In late September, a reporter for a news station sympathetic to Hamas was arrested and detained for more than a month after he was tagged in a Facebook image that insulted the Palestinian president.

Gaza's Hamas rulers also stalk Facebook pages for suspected dissenters, said Palestinian rights activist Mustafa Ibrahim. He said Internet cafe owners are forced to monitor customers' online activity, and alert intelligence officials if they see anything critical of the militant group or that violates Hamas' stern interpretation of Islam.

Both governments also create fake Facebook profiles to befriend and monitor known dissidents, activists said. In September, a young Gaza man was detained after publishing an article critical of Hamas on his Facebook feed.

Such stalking on Facebook and other social media sites has become increasingly common in the Arab world. In Lebanon, four people were arrested over the summer and accused of slandering President Michel Suleiman on Facebook. All have been released on bail.

In neighboring Syria, Facebook is blocked altogether. And in Egypt, a blogger was charged with atheism in 2007 after intelligence officials monitored his posts.

Husayin has not been charged but remains in detention, said Palestinian security spokesman Adnan Damiri.

He could face a life sentence if he's found guilty, depending on how harshly the judge thinks he attacked Islam and how widely his views were broadcast, said Islamic scholar Tamimi.

Even so, a small minority has questioned whether the government went too far.
Zainab Rashid, a liberal Palestinian commentator, wrote in an online opinion piece that Husayin has made an important point: that "criticizing religious texts for their (intellectual) weakness can only be combated by oppression, prison and execution."


Islamic cleric bans women from touching bananas, cucumbers for sexual resemblance

 

...fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.

 

 


Lot et al

Manar Ammar

CAIRO: An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”

He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.

The sheikh was asked how to “control” women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them. The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.

Answering another question about what to do if women in the family like these foods, the sheikh advised the interviewer to take the food and cut it for them in a hidden place so they cannot see it.

The opinion has stirred a storm of irony and denouncement among Muslims online, with hundreds of comments mocking the cleric.

One reader said that these religious “leaders” give Islam “a bad name” and another commented said that he is a “retarded” person and he must quite his post immediately.

Others called him a seeker of fame, but no official responses from renowned Islamic scholars have been published on the statements.

   

Patriotism is the conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
-- George B. Shaw
And so I believe that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty creator.  In standing guard against the Jew.  I am defending the handiwork of the Lord.
-- Adolph Hitler  
  Amazon.com:  Mein Kampf
  The Sayings of Ayatollah Khomeini  by R. Khomeini

*  "The sperm of any animal whose blood spurts when its throat is cut is impure."
*  "If a man sodomizes the son, brother, or father of his wife after their marriage, the marriage remains valid. "
*  "Wine and all intoxicating beverages are impure, but opium and hashish are not. "
*  "During sexual intercourse, if the penis enters a woman's vagina or a man's anus, fully or only as far as the circumcision ring, both partners become impure, even if they have not reached puberty; they must consequently perform ablutions."
*  "If the man thinks that he has not entered the woman's vagina beyond the circumcision ring, ablution is not required."
*  "If a man -God protect him from it!- fornicates with an animal and ejaculates, ablution is necessary"
*  "If a man becomes aroused by a woman other than his wife but then has intercourse with his own wife, it is preferable for him not to pray if he has sweated; but if he first has intercourse with his spouse and then with another woman, he may say his prayers even though he be in sweat."

-- Ayatollah Khomeini

 
US Theologians:

Pat Robertson --
 "I have taken issue with our esteemed president in regard to this stand in [his] saying [that] Islam is a peaceful religion.  It's just not. 
And the Koran makes it clear, if you see an infidel, you kill him". [external - CNN:   cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/02/28/column.billpress]
&nbsp;Ministers preach war on Islam</a>
]

Rev. Franklin Graham --
    The Moslem faith is "a very evil and very wicked religion". [external - Dallas News: dallasnews.com/religion/stories/franklin_04rel.Zone1.Edition1.5861e.html ]

(source: American Atheist Newsletter, Apr. 2002  vol 41, No.4)

 

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