"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."
"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.
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
On
women...
Australian cleric refuses to quit over "meat" sermon
"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."
'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
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.
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."
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]
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."
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.
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
By Richard
Dawkins...
Christopher Hitchens:
GOD IS NOT GREAT
The case against religion
307pp. Atlantic. £17.99.
978 0 446 57980 3
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”.
“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.
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
”.
". . . . 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.
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.
”
"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.
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...
Tuesday, 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: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,423304,00.html
“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
Flirting
with Palin earns Pakistani president a fatwa
B y
I s s a m A h m e d
October 1, 2008
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.
He may have survived the
battle with the brooms in “Fantasia,” but now Mickey Mouse has to contend
with Islam.
