14 November, 2006
PAKISTAN
Christians to come under Sharia law in North-West Frontier Province
The NWFP’s provincial assembly for a second time adopts the Hasba bill which would place everyone under the watchful eye of the Sharia. The central government has objections and Christians are against it. It will lead to anarchy and religious minorities and women will be its first victims.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) – The government of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), a Pakistani province that borders on Afghanistan, is trying once more to impose a Taliban-like law on its citizens, but is facing opposition from the central government and the country’s religious minorities.
Federal Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said today he would examine the proposed Hasba (Hisba) bill and if it failed to meet constitutional standards it would be sent to the Supreme Court.
Pakistan’s Christians are warning for their part that such a law runs the risk of “talebanising” the province, something that is a threat to the local population.
The NWFP Assembly, led by a Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (a coalition of six Islamist parties), tried in July 2005 to adopt a first draft of the bill. Under the new legislation the office of
Muhtasib would be established; he would be the guardian of private morals and people’s adherence to Islamic principles and respect for Sharia law. But in September Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that the bill was “unconstitutional and discriminatory”.
Yesterday, the NWFP Assembly tabled an amended version of the bill whose changes, according to the local government, take into accounts the court’s objections.
Many however continue to fear that the risk for discrimination and abuses is still very high.
Minister Durrani noted that the ‘Hasba Act’ had nothing to do with religion but was “aimed at providing benefits to workers of the alliance before the [2008] general elections by spending Rs 8 billion on the structure needed to enforce it.”
For Shahbaz Bhatti, chairman of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, the Hasba bill is like “a sword hanging over religious minorities and women since they will be prime target of extremists.”
In a press release, Mr Bhatti added that the “"Hasba Bill is unconstitutional, a religious marshal law, and a parallel legal system that will spread anarchy and chaos in society and will deprive the general public of their rights and liberty. The provincial government will be able to use this bill to victimise its political opponents”.
In his view, “the Hasba bill is a conspiracy against the integrity of the country and the solidarity [of its people]. It hampers the efforts to promote interfaith harmony, a democratic culture and an enlightened and moderate image of the country.”
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
A Big Reason There Is No Peace.
Note: Muslims are not the only people who steal. However, the level of theft by muslims and their friends, in Palestine is so overwhelming that iy actually undermines any serious moves to peace. The current situation is so profitable to so amny people, why change it?
Read and think of the people who lose out in this crime...
Gaza Stripped
Whatever happened to Arafat's billions?
By Joseph Braude
HUSTLE & PLO Arafat makes a withdrawal from the West Bank November 11 marks two years since the death of PLO chief Yasir Arafat—but don't count on most Palestinians to mourn his memory.
On a good day in Gaza City, only 40 percent of the last night's sewage gets dumped into public beaches along the Mediterranean coast, where gaunt Palestinian kids build sand castles out of thick brown sludge. One and a half million Gazans, mostly children, live overwhelmingly in poverty amid a gutted infrastructure and a dysfunctional democracy. Meanwhile, the First Lady of Palestine, Yasir Arafat's widow Suha, has been living large in Paris, among other places, at the palatial Hotel Le Bristol. She and her baby daughter left Gaza for France in 2000, during the second intifada and Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian lands—and reportedly occupied an entire floor of the five-star hotel, at approximately $16,000 per night.
"Our economy has been deteriorating ever since Arafat came on the scene in '94," says Ramallah-based Bir Zeit University professor Mudar Kassis. "People had been waiting for something to happen that would improve the daily life of the Palestinians. Instead, the suffering has mounted, and the highest GNP per capita in our history still dates back to 1991."
Israeli and American intelligence officials say Suha Arafat's Paris hotel bill would be little more than chump change for the glitzy heiress, whose late husband might just have been the most flagrant embezzler of public funds since Louis XVI. During Arafat's rule, the United States, World Bank, European Union, and Arab governments poured $7 billion into the Palestinian Authority to try and help forge a viable Arab-Israeli peace. As much as half that sum is reported to have gone AWOL, with only a small fraction recovered to date. And Suha has proved to be only one of several big-time beneficiaries.
SUITE LIFE Hotel Le Bristol, where Suha stays when visiting Paris"There was never a complete public reckoning of corruption during the Arafat years," says Kassis, who teaches philosophy at Bir Zeit and heads the university's institute of law. "Now the Palestinians have lost so many assets ... that compared to the loss of life and land, it seems negligible." Kassis nonetheless calls for heeding the lessons of Palestine's first autonomous decade, lest history repeat itself. Which it already has: The flagrant corruption that marked the U.S.-led nation-building project in Iraq was underscored last year when a U.S.-appointed Iraqi defense minister and his procurement chief allegedly stole hundreds of millions in public funds.
Two years after Arafat's funeral, an international scavenger hunt continues for the revolutionary leader's far-flung riches. A motley assortment of investigators ranging from Israel's security establishment to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which now rules in Ramallah, maintain an ongoing interest in every lost stash. "The only man who knows the whole story is dead," says a senior Israeli military intelligence official who agreed to answer questions on condition of anonymity. "But the deeper you go into it, the more it stinks."
Arafat's money trail leads far beyond the smelly sands of Gaza Beach, to a rainbow coalition of shady figures—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—and as far west as New York's Greenwich Village, where the militant chieftain once secretly bought a stake in Bowlmor Lanes, a trendy bowling alley. You might say the closest the world ever came, in fact, to harmony and peace between all three monotheistic faiths was in the sleazy international campaign to siphon off Palestinian grant aid. It may be too early still to tell the full Where's Waldo–like tale of where the cash went. But several all-stars of Arafat's money laundering network have come to light—and the legacy of their greed still has grave repercussions across the Middle East.
Arafat's lifetime of grubbing for cash on behalf of the Palestinians dates back to his young adulthood in Cairo, where he was born shortly before the American stock market crash of 1929. Few had heard of the Palestinian cause back then, and there were no blue-and-white pushke boxes accepting pocket change for it. But longtime PLO stalwart Nabil Shaath remembers watching, as a 13-year-old, the young revolutionary hit up his father for a cash donation. Shaath told Atlantic Monthly correspondent David Samuels he immediately recognized the future president of Palestine. Arafat's sister Inam, moreover, recalls the cash-flush teen's leadership style during the same period: "He formed [the neighborhood kids] into groups and made them march and drill," she told Arafat's biographer. "He carried a stick to beat those who did not obey his commands. He also liked making camps in the garden of our house."
These two remembrances pretty much say it all about Arafat's lifelong financial strategy and management approach: He leveraged his relationship with authority figures to bankroll his movement, then took that leverage and beat Palestinians over the head with it.
YOUNG GUN Arafat in Lebanon, circa 1983He would not, however, go the way of other third-world dictators and settle into luxury living. "He controlled the money," recalls Eran Lerman, a retired Israeli military intelligence colonel who now heads the American Jewish Committee's Jerusalem office, "but he hardly ever used it for his own purposes. Most of it was a political tool—to ensure that no single faction of the Palestinians dominated." Follow the guerrilla leader's 50-year career through civil war in Jordan, civil war in Lebanon, R&R in Tunis, and total war in Palestine, and most eyewitness accounts of the PLO chief at bedtime indicate he went to sleep on a creaky cot.
The same may not be said of his close aides and confidantes, many of whom enjoyed opulent lifestyles as a reward for their loyalty to Arafat. "He was a connoisseur of power," writes David Samuels, "who used the money that he stole to buy influence, to provoke or defuse conspiracies, to pay gunmen, and to collect hangers-on the way other men collect stamps or butterflies."
Over a year after Arafat's death—when the Islamist terror group Hamas swept the Palestinian Authority elections on an anti-corruption platform—some of these "butterflies" tried to fly the coop, with wads of cash tucked under their clothes. According to the pro-Palestinian London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Hamas intercepted a former PA finance ministry chief, Ali al-Ramlawi, attempting to smuggle millions of dollars in greenbacks into Jordan. More than 30 other PLO seniors were subsequently caught fleeing town and jailed, according to Hamas sources. Their confiscated moneybags, says the senior Israeli intelligence official, proved an early boon to the nascent Hamas-controlled treasury.
But these local cronies were just small potatoes. Incessant infighting among Palestinian elites, so common in patriarchal societies, meant that Arafat would often prefer to pick outsiders—even sworn enemies of the Palestinian people—to handle his most sensitive, high-stakes finance jobs. Consider Arafat's long-time Lebanese Christian aide and confidante, Pierre Rizk. Given the 1982 massacre of several thousand Palestinian refugees by Maronite Christians in south Lebanon, it might seem odd to picture Arafat relying for help on a Maronite militia leader. But in fact Rizk, the former intelligence chief for the Christian "Phalangist" paramilitary during the infamous Sabra and Chatila massacres, served Arafat for a decade and a half as a confidante and bag man—allegedly pocketing millions.
CHAIRMAN OF THE HOARD Yasir with his wife, Suha, less than two weeks before his deathAs Arafat lay dying at Percy Hospital in Paris, Rizk reportedly negotiated with the PLO on behalf of Arafat's widow Suha for a $20 million cash payment and an ongoing monthly allowance. He helped Suha shrewdly leverage her power of attorney and next-of-kin access to the ailing leader's hospital bedside. The rumor has also been widely reported that Rizk and Suha became lovers.
"It wouldn't surprise me," says fellow Maronite Ziad Abdel Nour, who heads the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. "Pierre Rizk has zero principles whatsoever. He will cheat, lie, kill—whatever needs to be done."
"Where does this guy live?" I ask.
"Are you kidding? A guy like that doesn't live anywhere."
Suha, for her part, has relocated to Tunis, where she enjoys the protection of head of state Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. "She stays out of politics," says Muhammad Abdullah Amireh, a family friend and confidante based in Nablus, reached by phone. "Her whole life is focused on her daughter Zahwa," Amireh said, "who now attends a top preparatory school in Tunis with the elites of the country." She had sparked controversy in 2002 for asserting that if she had a son, there would be "no greater honor" than his martyrdom for the Palestinian cause. But the outspoken first lady has not returned to the Palestinian territories since her departure in 2000.
Amireh added that the Arafat widow periodically returns to Paris to see family and friends and go shopping. European press reports assert that she manifests a preference for haute couture designer Louis Féraud and upscale shoemaker Christian Louboutin. Via Amireh, Mrs. Arafat declined an interview, citing her hectic schedule.
The Arafats' monied inner circle, which welcomed Lebanese Maronite Christian Pierre Rizk, also found room for some Israelis and Jews. Together with Arafat senior advisor Muhammad Rashid—by birth an Iraqi Kurd—the Palestinian leader tapped two ex-Israeli security officials to open doors for PLO money in elite Swiss banks, beginning around 1997. What has become known in the Hebrew press as the "Ginnosar Affair"—named after one of Arafat's Israeli business partners, ex-spook Yossi Ginnosar—sent shock waves through the Jewish state and Zionist diaspora. It wasn't just the enormity of the sums these erstwhile enemies were embezzling together while the peace process tanked—though $340 million is a lot of hummus—the alleged involvement of some senior members of the American Jewish peace camp in Arafat's corruption also cast a shadow on their efforts to help broker peace.
Take Stephen P. Cohen, a prominent Jewish freelance diplomat who spent much of the '90s jet setting between Israel and Arab capitals, often backed by Slimfast diet tycoon S. Daniel Abraham. A seasoned Israeli investigative journalist accused him in 2002 of having profited from business dealings with Ginnosar and Arafat. No evidence was offered to suggest that Cohen had behaved unlawfully—nor does he appear to have been as deeply involved with Arafat as Israel's Ginnosar, let alone PLO bagman Mohammed Rashid. Cohen's nuanced response to the accusation, however, seemed to raise more questions than it answered. "Cooperative business was not my primary focus," he explained, "but it was perfectly consistent with my attempts to bridge the societies." According to retired military intelligence colonel Lerman, the scandal only further detracted from Cohen's standing in Israeli political circles amid the demise of the peace process: "As the Oslo process collapsed," he observes, "many of the people who were Jewish go-betweens—Cohen, Abraham, and others—have lost their luster here."
BOWLING FOR PALESTINE The Arafat–Bowlmor connection. Meanwhile in New York City, the shiny black bowling balls of Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village bare rumbling witness to the long, strong arm of Arafat. Flush with cash during the bloody Palestinian intifada of 2000–2004, Arafat's Kurdish finance chief, Mohammed Rashid, deputized Palestinian American Zeid Masri to pour $1.3 million of Palestinian Authority largesse into the bowling alley's parent company, Strike Holdings LLC. A McLean, Virginia–based private equity fund controlled by Masri, SilverHaze Partners LLC, fronted the transaction.
After a US–mandated Standard & Poor's audit of the PA's investment arm exposed the wacky dealings in 2004, Strike CEO Thomas Shannon took immediate steps to return the funds. "The information was never disclosed to us previously," he told a reporter. "[H]ad we known the source of these funds, which represent approximately two percent of our company's equity, we would never have accepted them." How many strikes at Bowlmor Lanes inadvertently fed into Arafat's coffers, the world may never know. Tragically, it's a safe bet that none of the proceeds reached Palestinian 13-year-olds on the sludgy shores of Gaza Beach.
Comment: What comment could possibly do justice to this terrible and true story?
Read and think of the people who lose out in this crime...
Gaza Stripped
Whatever happened to Arafat's billions?
By Joseph Braude
HUSTLE & PLO Arafat makes a withdrawal from the West Bank November 11 marks two years since the death of PLO chief Yasir Arafat—but don't count on most Palestinians to mourn his memory.
On a good day in Gaza City, only 40 percent of the last night's sewage gets dumped into public beaches along the Mediterranean coast, where gaunt Palestinian kids build sand castles out of thick brown sludge. One and a half million Gazans, mostly children, live overwhelmingly in poverty amid a gutted infrastructure and a dysfunctional democracy. Meanwhile, the First Lady of Palestine, Yasir Arafat's widow Suha, has been living large in Paris, among other places, at the palatial Hotel Le Bristol. She and her baby daughter left Gaza for France in 2000, during the second intifada and Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian lands—and reportedly occupied an entire floor of the five-star hotel, at approximately $16,000 per night.
"Our economy has been deteriorating ever since Arafat came on the scene in '94," says Ramallah-based Bir Zeit University professor Mudar Kassis. "People had been waiting for something to happen that would improve the daily life of the Palestinians. Instead, the suffering has mounted, and the highest GNP per capita in our history still dates back to 1991."
Israeli and American intelligence officials say Suha Arafat's Paris hotel bill would be little more than chump change for the glitzy heiress, whose late husband might just have been the most flagrant embezzler of public funds since Louis XVI. During Arafat's rule, the United States, World Bank, European Union, and Arab governments poured $7 billion into the Palestinian Authority to try and help forge a viable Arab-Israeli peace. As much as half that sum is reported to have gone AWOL, with only a small fraction recovered to date. And Suha has proved to be only one of several big-time beneficiaries.
SUITE LIFE Hotel Le Bristol, where Suha stays when visiting Paris"There was never a complete public reckoning of corruption during the Arafat years," says Kassis, who teaches philosophy at Bir Zeit and heads the university's institute of law. "Now the Palestinians have lost so many assets ... that compared to the loss of life and land, it seems negligible." Kassis nonetheless calls for heeding the lessons of Palestine's first autonomous decade, lest history repeat itself. Which it already has: The flagrant corruption that marked the U.S.-led nation-building project in Iraq was underscored last year when a U.S.-appointed Iraqi defense minister and his procurement chief allegedly stole hundreds of millions in public funds.
Two years after Arafat's funeral, an international scavenger hunt continues for the revolutionary leader's far-flung riches. A motley assortment of investigators ranging from Israel's security establishment to the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which now rules in Ramallah, maintain an ongoing interest in every lost stash. "The only man who knows the whole story is dead," says a senior Israeli military intelligence official who agreed to answer questions on condition of anonymity. "But the deeper you go into it, the more it stinks."
Arafat's money trail leads far beyond the smelly sands of Gaza Beach, to a rainbow coalition of shady figures—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—and as far west as New York's Greenwich Village, where the militant chieftain once secretly bought a stake in Bowlmor Lanes, a trendy bowling alley. You might say the closest the world ever came, in fact, to harmony and peace between all three monotheistic faiths was in the sleazy international campaign to siphon off Palestinian grant aid. It may be too early still to tell the full Where's Waldo–like tale of where the cash went. But several all-stars of Arafat's money laundering network have come to light—and the legacy of their greed still has grave repercussions across the Middle East.
Arafat's lifetime of grubbing for cash on behalf of the Palestinians dates back to his young adulthood in Cairo, where he was born shortly before the American stock market crash of 1929. Few had heard of the Palestinian cause back then, and there were no blue-and-white pushke boxes accepting pocket change for it. But longtime PLO stalwart Nabil Shaath remembers watching, as a 13-year-old, the young revolutionary hit up his father for a cash donation. Shaath told Atlantic Monthly correspondent David Samuels he immediately recognized the future president of Palestine. Arafat's sister Inam, moreover, recalls the cash-flush teen's leadership style during the same period: "He formed [the neighborhood kids] into groups and made them march and drill," she told Arafat's biographer. "He carried a stick to beat those who did not obey his commands. He also liked making camps in the garden of our house."
These two remembrances pretty much say it all about Arafat's lifelong financial strategy and management approach: He leveraged his relationship with authority figures to bankroll his movement, then took that leverage and beat Palestinians over the head with it.
YOUNG GUN Arafat in Lebanon, circa 1983He would not, however, go the way of other third-world dictators and settle into luxury living. "He controlled the money," recalls Eran Lerman, a retired Israeli military intelligence colonel who now heads the American Jewish Committee's Jerusalem office, "but he hardly ever used it for his own purposes. Most of it was a political tool—to ensure that no single faction of the Palestinians dominated." Follow the guerrilla leader's 50-year career through civil war in Jordan, civil war in Lebanon, R&R in Tunis, and total war in Palestine, and most eyewitness accounts of the PLO chief at bedtime indicate he went to sleep on a creaky cot.
The same may not be said of his close aides and confidantes, many of whom enjoyed opulent lifestyles as a reward for their loyalty to Arafat. "He was a connoisseur of power," writes David Samuels, "who used the money that he stole to buy influence, to provoke or defuse conspiracies, to pay gunmen, and to collect hangers-on the way other men collect stamps or butterflies."
Over a year after Arafat's death—when the Islamist terror group Hamas swept the Palestinian Authority elections on an anti-corruption platform—some of these "butterflies" tried to fly the coop, with wads of cash tucked under their clothes. According to the pro-Palestinian London daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Hamas intercepted a former PA finance ministry chief, Ali al-Ramlawi, attempting to smuggle millions of dollars in greenbacks into Jordan. More than 30 other PLO seniors were subsequently caught fleeing town and jailed, according to Hamas sources. Their confiscated moneybags, says the senior Israeli intelligence official, proved an early boon to the nascent Hamas-controlled treasury.
But these local cronies were just small potatoes. Incessant infighting among Palestinian elites, so common in patriarchal societies, meant that Arafat would often prefer to pick outsiders—even sworn enemies of the Palestinian people—to handle his most sensitive, high-stakes finance jobs. Consider Arafat's long-time Lebanese Christian aide and confidante, Pierre Rizk. Given the 1982 massacre of several thousand Palestinian refugees by Maronite Christians in south Lebanon, it might seem odd to picture Arafat relying for help on a Maronite militia leader. But in fact Rizk, the former intelligence chief for the Christian "Phalangist" paramilitary during the infamous Sabra and Chatila massacres, served Arafat for a decade and a half as a confidante and bag man—allegedly pocketing millions.
CHAIRMAN OF THE HOARD Yasir with his wife, Suha, less than two weeks before his deathAs Arafat lay dying at Percy Hospital in Paris, Rizk reportedly negotiated with the PLO on behalf of Arafat's widow Suha for a $20 million cash payment and an ongoing monthly allowance. He helped Suha shrewdly leverage her power of attorney and next-of-kin access to the ailing leader's hospital bedside. The rumor has also been widely reported that Rizk and Suha became lovers.
"It wouldn't surprise me," says fellow Maronite Ziad Abdel Nour, who heads the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon. "Pierre Rizk has zero principles whatsoever. He will cheat, lie, kill—whatever needs to be done."
"Where does this guy live?" I ask.
"Are you kidding? A guy like that doesn't live anywhere."
Suha, for her part, has relocated to Tunis, where she enjoys the protection of head of state Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. "She stays out of politics," says Muhammad Abdullah Amireh, a family friend and confidante based in Nablus, reached by phone. "Her whole life is focused on her daughter Zahwa," Amireh said, "who now attends a top preparatory school in Tunis with the elites of the country." She had sparked controversy in 2002 for asserting that if she had a son, there would be "no greater honor" than his martyrdom for the Palestinian cause. But the outspoken first lady has not returned to the Palestinian territories since her departure in 2000.
Amireh added that the Arafat widow periodically returns to Paris to see family and friends and go shopping. European press reports assert that she manifests a preference for haute couture designer Louis Féraud and upscale shoemaker Christian Louboutin. Via Amireh, Mrs. Arafat declined an interview, citing her hectic schedule.
The Arafats' monied inner circle, which welcomed Lebanese Maronite Christian Pierre Rizk, also found room for some Israelis and Jews. Together with Arafat senior advisor Muhammad Rashid—by birth an Iraqi Kurd—the Palestinian leader tapped two ex-Israeli security officials to open doors for PLO money in elite Swiss banks, beginning around 1997. What has become known in the Hebrew press as the "Ginnosar Affair"—named after one of Arafat's Israeli business partners, ex-spook Yossi Ginnosar—sent shock waves through the Jewish state and Zionist diaspora. It wasn't just the enormity of the sums these erstwhile enemies were embezzling together while the peace process tanked—though $340 million is a lot of hummus—the alleged involvement of some senior members of the American Jewish peace camp in Arafat's corruption also cast a shadow on their efforts to help broker peace.
Take Stephen P. Cohen, a prominent Jewish freelance diplomat who spent much of the '90s jet setting between Israel and Arab capitals, often backed by Slimfast diet tycoon S. Daniel Abraham. A seasoned Israeli investigative journalist accused him in 2002 of having profited from business dealings with Ginnosar and Arafat. No evidence was offered to suggest that Cohen had behaved unlawfully—nor does he appear to have been as deeply involved with Arafat as Israel's Ginnosar, let alone PLO bagman Mohammed Rashid. Cohen's nuanced response to the accusation, however, seemed to raise more questions than it answered. "Cooperative business was not my primary focus," he explained, "but it was perfectly consistent with my attempts to bridge the societies." According to retired military intelligence colonel Lerman, the scandal only further detracted from Cohen's standing in Israeli political circles amid the demise of the peace process: "As the Oslo process collapsed," he observes, "many of the people who were Jewish go-betweens—Cohen, Abraham, and others—have lost their luster here."
BOWLING FOR PALESTINE The Arafat–Bowlmor connection. Meanwhile in New York City, the shiny black bowling balls of Bowlmor Lanes in Greenwich Village bare rumbling witness to the long, strong arm of Arafat. Flush with cash during the bloody Palestinian intifada of 2000–2004, Arafat's Kurdish finance chief, Mohammed Rashid, deputized Palestinian American Zeid Masri to pour $1.3 million of Palestinian Authority largesse into the bowling alley's parent company, Strike Holdings LLC. A McLean, Virginia–based private equity fund controlled by Masri, SilverHaze Partners LLC, fronted the transaction.
After a US–mandated Standard & Poor's audit of the PA's investment arm exposed the wacky dealings in 2004, Strike CEO Thomas Shannon took immediate steps to return the funds. "The information was never disclosed to us previously," he told a reporter. "[H]ad we known the source of these funds, which represent approximately two percent of our company's equity, we would never have accepted them." How many strikes at Bowlmor Lanes inadvertently fed into Arafat's coffers, the world may never know. Tragically, it's a safe bet that none of the proceeds reached Palestinian 13-year-olds on the sludgy shores of Gaza Beach.
Comment: What comment could possibly do justice to this terrible and true story?
Friday, November 10, 2006
Reactions To Jack Straw.
Note: The senior British politician Jack Straw called on Muslims to modernise their behaviour and presentation. there was great uproar from the pre modern muslim element in Britain. But the press supported him. They had some interesting comments.
Read and think O'Muslims...
The last Straw
America Alone, although written with Mark Steyn’s inimitable verbal energy and wit, makes for grim reading. We do not know which is more minatory, the explosion of radical Islam or the West’s supine response to its depredations. It is cheering to report, then, that Europe may finally be rousing itself from its multicultural torpor. Consider the situation in England. England has been as accommodating to Muslim sensitivities as any country, but there are signs that this may be changing. A few weeks ago, the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, Member of Parliament for Blackburn, said that he would prefer that women not come to his surgery wearing a veil. The veil was a “visible statement of separation and difference,” and he felt “uncomfortable” talking to someone whose face he could not see.
Well, there was the usual eruption of mutli-culti indignation in the “Muslim community.” But what was a refreshing change was the response in the media. “Mr. Straw is to be commended for brushing aside the politically correct nostrums that have inhibited such discussion among senior politicians,” wrote one editorialist, while Patience Wheatcroft, writing in The Daily Telegraph, weighed in with a rousing essay under the headline “Multiculturalism hasn’t worked: let’s rediscover Britishness”:
The tyranny of political correctness has for years suppressed the qualms that many Britons have had about what was happening to their country. Radical imams were allowed to preach hatred while being funded with state benefits, but few dared to question such madness, let alone act against it. The doctrine of multiculturalism dictated that all beliefs should be allowed to flourish, and to challenge that view was as politically incorrect as … suggesting that two married parents usually provide the best start in life for a child.
Gradually, however, people are gaining the courage to defy the diktats of political correctness and to question the assumptions of what should be acceptable in Britain today.
Jack Straw’s comments were a galvanizing event, but the concern seems to go far beyond that episode. The Financial Times, for example, reports that there are plans afoot to “rebalance” the official funding of Muslim groups, favoring “those that publicly oppose extremism and endorse ‘shared values.’” The burden of the FT’s piece was to say that any such effort “could trigger legal challenges,” but the heartening thing is that such initiatives are underway in the first place.
Even the Church of England, a notably invertebrate entity of late, has shown some signs of abandoning its accustomed recumbancy. “The Church of England has launched an astonishing attack on the Government’s drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society,” we read in The Sunday Telegraph last month. “In a wide-ranging condemnation of policy, it says that the attempt to make minority ‘faith’ communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society ‘more separated than ever before.’”
The criticisms are made in a confidential Church document … that challenges the “widespread description” of Britain as a multi-faith society and even calls for the term “multi-faith” to be reconsidered… . It claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government’s “schizophrenic” approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given “privileged attention” to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities… . One bishop said it was the first time the Church had launched such a defence of the country’s Christian heritage.
It is too early to say whether such evidences of life are too late—whether, that is to say, the processes Mark Steyn anatomizes in America Alone have rendered any such objections moot. Still, it’s been a long time since a mainstream British institution stood up for Britishness, let alone the Church of England defending England’s “Christian heritage.”
Comment: Clearly reformed Islam will need the local muslims to cast off all the nonsense about clothes and hair and masks and 'respect' and 'modesty' and all the rubbish from the desert that they have brought with them. Modern society has plenty of respect and modesty. Islamic sex hysteria pretending to be 'respect' and 'modesty' is of no use in Australia.
Government programs in Australia must channel money to the reformers and actively work against the efforts of the muslim anti modernists. This struggle is not a University debate; it is a fight for the inclusion into Australia of those muslims who want to be Australians and a fight to exclude the enemies of Australia from this country.
All muslims need to remember that no country has to allow sedition in its land; nor does freedom in Australia mean freedom to attack Australia. The sooner the Jack Straw view of muslim development is picked up by the muslims,both in Britain and in Australia, the better off the muslims will be.
Read and think O'Muslims...
The last Straw
America Alone, although written with Mark Steyn’s inimitable verbal energy and wit, makes for grim reading. We do not know which is more minatory, the explosion of radical Islam or the West’s supine response to its depredations. It is cheering to report, then, that Europe may finally be rousing itself from its multicultural torpor. Consider the situation in England. England has been as accommodating to Muslim sensitivities as any country, but there are signs that this may be changing. A few weeks ago, the former foreign secretary Jack Straw, Member of Parliament for Blackburn, said that he would prefer that women not come to his surgery wearing a veil. The veil was a “visible statement of separation and difference,” and he felt “uncomfortable” talking to someone whose face he could not see.
Well, there was the usual eruption of mutli-culti indignation in the “Muslim community.” But what was a refreshing change was the response in the media. “Mr. Straw is to be commended for brushing aside the politically correct nostrums that have inhibited such discussion among senior politicians,” wrote one editorialist, while Patience Wheatcroft, writing in The Daily Telegraph, weighed in with a rousing essay under the headline “Multiculturalism hasn’t worked: let’s rediscover Britishness”:
The tyranny of political correctness has for years suppressed the qualms that many Britons have had about what was happening to their country. Radical imams were allowed to preach hatred while being funded with state benefits, but few dared to question such madness, let alone act against it. The doctrine of multiculturalism dictated that all beliefs should be allowed to flourish, and to challenge that view was as politically incorrect as … suggesting that two married parents usually provide the best start in life for a child.
Gradually, however, people are gaining the courage to defy the diktats of political correctness and to question the assumptions of what should be acceptable in Britain today.
Jack Straw’s comments were a galvanizing event, but the concern seems to go far beyond that episode. The Financial Times, for example, reports that there are plans afoot to “rebalance” the official funding of Muslim groups, favoring “those that publicly oppose extremism and endorse ‘shared values.’” The burden of the FT’s piece was to say that any such effort “could trigger legal challenges,” but the heartening thing is that such initiatives are underway in the first place.
Even the Church of England, a notably invertebrate entity of late, has shown some signs of abandoning its accustomed recumbancy. “The Church of England has launched an astonishing attack on the Government’s drive to turn Britain into a multi-faith society,” we read in The Sunday Telegraph last month. “In a wide-ranging condemnation of policy, it says that the attempt to make minority ‘faith’ communities more integrated has backfired, leaving society ‘more separated than ever before.’”
The criticisms are made in a confidential Church document … that challenges the “widespread description” of Britain as a multi-faith society and even calls for the term “multi-faith” to be reconsidered… . It claims that divisions between communities have been deepened by the Government’s “schizophrenic” approach to tackling multiculturalism. While trying to encourage interfaith relations, it has actually given “privileged attention” to the Islamic faith and Muslim communities… . One bishop said it was the first time the Church had launched such a defence of the country’s Christian heritage.
It is too early to say whether such evidences of life are too late—whether, that is to say, the processes Mark Steyn anatomizes in America Alone have rendered any such objections moot. Still, it’s been a long time since a mainstream British institution stood up for Britishness, let alone the Church of England defending England’s “Christian heritage.”
Comment: Clearly reformed Islam will need the local muslims to cast off all the nonsense about clothes and hair and masks and 'respect' and 'modesty' and all the rubbish from the desert that they have brought with them. Modern society has plenty of respect and modesty. Islamic sex hysteria pretending to be 'respect' and 'modesty' is of no use in Australia.
Government programs in Australia must channel money to the reformers and actively work against the efforts of the muslim anti modernists. This struggle is not a University debate; it is a fight for the inclusion into Australia of those muslims who want to be Australians and a fight to exclude the enemies of Australia from this country.
All muslims need to remember that no country has to allow sedition in its land; nor does freedom in Australia mean freedom to attack Australia. The sooner the Jack Straw view of muslim development is picked up by the muslims,both in Britain and in Australia, the better off the muslims will be.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Real Religion At Work.
Note: Muslim readers should pay close attention to this article: it shows what real religion actually is. Readers will note the absence of any calls for revenge; the absence of 'honor' killings of girls; the absence of guns and the strong presence of modern educational facilities open to all. This is real religion at work...muslims will not see this sort of thing in muslim circles.
Read and ask yourself why muslims never have these kinds of organisations...
7 November, 2006
PHILIPPINES
Mindanao: Notre Dame Oblates mark 50 years “serving Christians and Muslims”
by Santosh Digal
The congregation was set up by two missionaries of Mary Immaculate with the aim of supporting education in the archipelago, torn apart by years of separatist struggle. With time, peace and interfaith dialogue became the foremost mission of these sisters.
Cotabato (AsiaNews) – Despite myriad troubles experienced over the years, the Oblates of Notre Dame “are happy to serve both Muslims and Christians in Mindanao”, where they are “joyfully celebrating” their Golden Jubilee. Mindanao is an archipelago in the southern Philippines that has been torn apart by clashes between the army and Islamic separatists for more than 50 years.
During festivities marking the anniversary, under way in Cotabato, Sr Rose Susan Montejo, Mother General of the congregation, said: “These 50 long years have been trying at times but very fruitful. We can say that during the tormented times of Mindanao, we managed to perform our work, serving the poor and promoting peace.”
One of the most significant works undertaken by the sisters involves the formation of basic ecclesial communities, which “seek to attend to the needs of farmers, fisher folk, ‘lumados’ (indigenous peoples) and other marginalized groups”.
The sisters are also in the forefront of peace-building projects reaching out to local Muslims and Christians, as well as youth education and local health services. “Although we are not many, our efforts go ahead,” said Fr Montejo.
The congregation was founded in the early fifties by two Oblates of Mary Immaculate. These priests were sent to the southern Philippines, where they started literacy projects for local youth, setting up a chain of schools called Notre Dame.
One of the priests, Fr George Dion, contacted two retired teachers working as spiritual counsellors in the area and suggested the establishment of an institute of lay consecrated people to help educate Mindanao’s youth: the two accepted to help him and the new institution was set up with the blessing of the then-bishop of Cotabato, Mgr Gerard Mongeau.
Dion, who would later become bishop of Jolo, is considered to be the founder, while Mgr Mongeau, later archbishop, is the canonical founder. On 10 November 1956, the first woman arrived: Sr Estrella Adre. This event marked the official birth of the institute.
At the time, the institute had mostly lay people who took temporary vows but shortly afterward, many consecrated themselves to religious life, taking perennial vows.
The early work of the Oblate sisters was focused on parish catechism, but they soon threw themselves into social services too, like education and local administration programmes, the formation of diocesan catechists and ministry among the indigenous peoples and women of Mindanao.
Sr Montejo said: “With the advent of liberation theology in the 1970s, we launched a foundation aimed at supporting initiatives of inter-religious dialogue and peace between Christians and Muslims. With time, this became our main mission.”
From the archipelago, the sisters branched out elsewhere in the Philippines and later to Papua New Guinea and the United States. Even throughout the long and bitter war, the sisters remained on the frontline, alongside the missionaries of Mary Immaculate, seeking to help the needy, both Christians and Muslims.
Today, the Congregation counts 168 sisters: gathered in Cotabato, the sisters are “recalling the past and planning for the future. We are happy that we have helped many young worthy women to become sisters to help those in need.”
Comment: The good work done by these religious sisters should be financially supported by the Australian government. Our foreign aid should try and get assistance to the most basic level possible. These sisters are working at that level.
Read and ask yourself why muslims never have these kinds of organisations...
7 November, 2006
PHILIPPINES
Mindanao: Notre Dame Oblates mark 50 years “serving Christians and Muslims”
by Santosh Digal
The congregation was set up by two missionaries of Mary Immaculate with the aim of supporting education in the archipelago, torn apart by years of separatist struggle. With time, peace and interfaith dialogue became the foremost mission of these sisters.
Cotabato (AsiaNews) – Despite myriad troubles experienced over the years, the Oblates of Notre Dame “are happy to serve both Muslims and Christians in Mindanao”, where they are “joyfully celebrating” their Golden Jubilee. Mindanao is an archipelago in the southern Philippines that has been torn apart by clashes between the army and Islamic separatists for more than 50 years.
During festivities marking the anniversary, under way in Cotabato, Sr Rose Susan Montejo, Mother General of the congregation, said: “These 50 long years have been trying at times but very fruitful. We can say that during the tormented times of Mindanao, we managed to perform our work, serving the poor and promoting peace.”
One of the most significant works undertaken by the sisters involves the formation of basic ecclesial communities, which “seek to attend to the needs of farmers, fisher folk, ‘lumados’ (indigenous peoples) and other marginalized groups”.
The sisters are also in the forefront of peace-building projects reaching out to local Muslims and Christians, as well as youth education and local health services. “Although we are not many, our efforts go ahead,” said Fr Montejo.
The congregation was founded in the early fifties by two Oblates of Mary Immaculate. These priests were sent to the southern Philippines, where they started literacy projects for local youth, setting up a chain of schools called Notre Dame.
One of the priests, Fr George Dion, contacted two retired teachers working as spiritual counsellors in the area and suggested the establishment of an institute of lay consecrated people to help educate Mindanao’s youth: the two accepted to help him and the new institution was set up with the blessing of the then-bishop of Cotabato, Mgr Gerard Mongeau.
Dion, who would later become bishop of Jolo, is considered to be the founder, while Mgr Mongeau, later archbishop, is the canonical founder. On 10 November 1956, the first woman arrived: Sr Estrella Adre. This event marked the official birth of the institute.
At the time, the institute had mostly lay people who took temporary vows but shortly afterward, many consecrated themselves to religious life, taking perennial vows.
The early work of the Oblate sisters was focused on parish catechism, but they soon threw themselves into social services too, like education and local administration programmes, the formation of diocesan catechists and ministry among the indigenous peoples and women of Mindanao.
Sr Montejo said: “With the advent of liberation theology in the 1970s, we launched a foundation aimed at supporting initiatives of inter-religious dialogue and peace between Christians and Muslims. With time, this became our main mission.”
From the archipelago, the sisters branched out elsewhere in the Philippines and later to Papua New Guinea and the United States. Even throughout the long and bitter war, the sisters remained on the frontline, alongside the missionaries of Mary Immaculate, seeking to help the needy, both Christians and Muslims.
Today, the Congregation counts 168 sisters: gathered in Cotabato, the sisters are “recalling the past and planning for the future. We are happy that we have helped many young worthy women to become sisters to help those in need.”
Comment: The good work done by these religious sisters should be financially supported by the Australian government. Our foreign aid should try and get assistance to the most basic level possible. These sisters are working at that level.
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
No Coercion In Religion?
Muslim propagandists make a big show about the Koran saying that there shal be no coercion in religion. Observably, the real muslims in the mosques do not believe this. Imams and mullahs do not preach this. Muslims who leave Islam do so at the threat of their lives. The innate violence of Islam is very real and easily uncovered.
Read a current example here...
MALAYSIA
Church besieged after false rumours about Muslim baptisms
by Joseph Masilamany
A protest by hundreds of Muslims ended without any harm done. The Muslims were convinced that a group of Muslims was being baptized. The police and Religious Affairs Department have announced they will investigate the matter.
Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews) – A Muslim protest outside the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Ipoh, 220km north of Kuala Lumpur, luckily ended without any harm done. The protest was prompted by false rumours about a baptism ceremony of a group of Muslims.
Yesterday, as a first Holy Communion service for 110 Catholic children was under way, 300 Muslims mounted a protest outside the church, instigated by SMS messages claiming that a group of Muslims was to be baptized there.
Despite the tense situation outside the church compound, the congregation of about 1,000 parishioners continued with the service, having been advised not to leave the church until the protesters had left.
Perak State police chief, Datuk Abdul Aziz Bulat, who was at the scene, advised protesters not to believe rumours, especially those transmitted through SMS. “Contrary to what the SMS claimed, no such thing took place at the church and I have directed my men to investigate and trace the source of this malicious text message and its sender,” he told a media conference.
The protesters dispersed after about two hours, during which Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) troops arrived in four trucks and a water cannon truck and formed a barricade between the protesters and the church. Aziz said the crowd comprised members of a political party and some curious onlookers. The police chief also said officers from the Perak State Religious Affairs Department were at the scene to assist and explain to the crowd that the SMS was sent by provocateurs.
Policemen were anyhow stationed in the vicinity to ensure there would be no more such protests.
The National News Agency, Bernama, quoted the Perak Religious Affairs Department director, Datuk Jamry Sury, as saying that he would have the case investigated and take action against the culprits who spread the rumour.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop Emeritus of Kuala Lumpur, Anthony Soter Fernandez, told AsiaNews: “It is not the nature of the Catholic Church to indiscriminately baptize any person. Any adult seeking baptism has to first undergo a long period of examination and faith education.”
Mgr Fernandez, who now lectures at the General Seminary in Penang, said the onus was on any adult who wished to know more about the Catholic faith to sort out all impediments before seeking such instruction. He reiterated that the Catholic Church in Malaysia had never conducted clandestine baptisms of Muslims.
Comment: The innate violence of Islam is common knowledge to all Australians who look at Islam with open eyes. This doesn't mean that all muslims are violent; obviously they are not. You can have peaceful muslims, but not peaceful Islam.
The current hysteria that lurks just under the surface with muslims is apostacy. Muslims wanting to leave Islam take their lives in their hands by doing so. Thus any story which plays to this worry will bring immediate reactions from overwrought muslims who will resort to violence without any difficulty.
The mad crowd in Malaysia is just another example of a religious group whose world is starting to collapse. Islam is innately violent in a world where ordinary people are becoming ever more opposed to violence. Islam is dying and its fanatical adherents will get violent to slow the process. Their violence, of course, just hastens their decline. Islam, like Soviet Communism, will collapse because of its internal contradictions, not because of some external conquest.
Read a current example here...
MALAYSIA
Church besieged after false rumours about Muslim baptisms
by Joseph Masilamany
A protest by hundreds of Muslims ended without any harm done. The Muslims were convinced that a group of Muslims was being baptized. The police and Religious Affairs Department have announced they will investigate the matter.
Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews) – A Muslim protest outside the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Ipoh, 220km north of Kuala Lumpur, luckily ended without any harm done. The protest was prompted by false rumours about a baptism ceremony of a group of Muslims.
Yesterday, as a first Holy Communion service for 110 Catholic children was under way, 300 Muslims mounted a protest outside the church, instigated by SMS messages claiming that a group of Muslims was to be baptized there.
Despite the tense situation outside the church compound, the congregation of about 1,000 parishioners continued with the service, having been advised not to leave the church until the protesters had left.
Perak State police chief, Datuk Abdul Aziz Bulat, who was at the scene, advised protesters not to believe rumours, especially those transmitted through SMS. “Contrary to what the SMS claimed, no such thing took place at the church and I have directed my men to investigate and trace the source of this malicious text message and its sender,” he told a media conference.
The protesters dispersed after about two hours, during which Federal Reserve Unit (FRU) troops arrived in four trucks and a water cannon truck and formed a barricade between the protesters and the church. Aziz said the crowd comprised members of a political party and some curious onlookers. The police chief also said officers from the Perak State Religious Affairs Department were at the scene to assist and explain to the crowd that the SMS was sent by provocateurs.
Policemen were anyhow stationed in the vicinity to ensure there would be no more such protests.
The National News Agency, Bernama, quoted the Perak Religious Affairs Department director, Datuk Jamry Sury, as saying that he would have the case investigated and take action against the culprits who spread the rumour.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop Emeritus of Kuala Lumpur, Anthony Soter Fernandez, told AsiaNews: “It is not the nature of the Catholic Church to indiscriminately baptize any person. Any adult seeking baptism has to first undergo a long period of examination and faith education.”
Mgr Fernandez, who now lectures at the General Seminary in Penang, said the onus was on any adult who wished to know more about the Catholic faith to sort out all impediments before seeking such instruction. He reiterated that the Catholic Church in Malaysia had never conducted clandestine baptisms of Muslims.
Comment: The innate violence of Islam is common knowledge to all Australians who look at Islam with open eyes. This doesn't mean that all muslims are violent; obviously they are not. You can have peaceful muslims, but not peaceful Islam.
The current hysteria that lurks just under the surface with muslims is apostacy. Muslims wanting to leave Islam take their lives in their hands by doing so. Thus any story which plays to this worry will bring immediate reactions from overwrought muslims who will resort to violence without any difficulty.
The mad crowd in Malaysia is just another example of a religious group whose world is starting to collapse. Islam is innately violent in a world where ordinary people are becoming ever more opposed to violence. Islam is dying and its fanatical adherents will get violent to slow the process. Their violence, of course, just hastens their decline. Islam, like Soviet Communism, will collapse because of its internal contradictions, not because of some external conquest.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Mullahs As Parasites.
Note: This posting is very critical of the mullahs who run Iran. Reading this article one can understand why Iran is so poor despite the vast oil and gas reserves of that nation.
Read and learn...
The present Shiite Iran is home to over 300,000 Mullahs. The most descriptive term for Mullah is parasite. A Mullah begins his career as a parasite, lives as a parasite and dies as a parasite, simply because he contributes absolutely nothing to the necessities of life, yet gobbles disproportionately more of whatever resources he can grab.
As a true parasite, a Mullah’s very survival depends on others. It is critical for a Mullah to procure and maintain docile obedient host. A flock of gullible ignorant fanatics make excellent host and the Mullahs’ main task is to keep the sheep in their pen by hook or crook. They scare the flock by horror stories of hell and entice them by the promise of unimaginable glorious paradise if and only if they behave and keep on supplying them with milk, wool and meat.
So, the infighting is all about survival. One bunch is having it all while another is sidelined. We must understand that there has never been one united house of the Mullahs. Mullahs are like packs of wolves. Each pack hunts and eats its prey. Packs of wolves fight one another for valued prey, particularly in the face of scarcity.
The coffer of the Islamic Republic of Iran is flush with the extortion-high oil revenues. A reasonable question is: why don’t the Mullahs simply share the wealth and attend to the business of fighting the external enemy? When it comes to money, enough is never enough. “There is enough to meet everyone’s need, but not enough to meet everyone’s greed,” observed Gandhi. And greed is in the very bones of the Mullahs, since it is the only way that parasite know how to live.
The present Mullahcracy is in the form of a pyramid. The Mullahs in the game at the top have skimmed and continue to skim inordinate amounts of the national income. Mullah Akbar Rafsanjani, a past president of the Islamic Republic, and his family, for instance, have reportedly stolen enough to give the Wal-Mart’s Waltons a run for their money. And there are hundreds of lesser Mullahs, like Rafsanjani, who are pocketing huge sums.
The ruling Mullahs—the in-boys—are master practitioners of the trickle down economics. Except that by the time they are through with pocketing some of the national income and paying off their supporters, there is little left for the out-boys—the sidelined Mullahs.
The in-boys Mullahs must pay for the loyalty of the military, the police, and the thugs to keep them in power. Furthermore, in contrast to their mastery of machination, treachery, and cruelty, they are inept at managing the affairs of the state
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a unique creature—it is best described as Theocratic Aristocracy. The “divinely-ordained” rulers maintain themselves in power by an elaborate system of patronage. Lucrative positions, contracts and valued privileges are distributed by patronage. The result is that the ruling Mullahs enjoy a significant number of supporters in all strata of society—the civil service, the military, the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and the hooligans and thugs who are ready to unleash their vicious attacks on anyone or group that dares to challenge the in-charge men of Allah.
Another seeming anomaly is that proportionately there are more Mullahs in prison in Iran than any other class of the society, including university students who have always been political “troublemakers.” The reason is that these are the out-boys Mullahs—the parasites that are deprived of the dole—their very means of livelihood. Their mosques are often shut down, their flocks are harassed by the system’s agents and their sources of income are dried. And as we said, it is the nature of the beast, for parasite can only live from the products of others.
The out-boys Mullahs hate the in-boys Mullahs not only for looting Iran’s oil money, but also for badly impoverishing the masses who had traditionally fed and pampered them. The per capita income in present Iran is about two-thirds of what it was before the catastrophic Islamic take over of 1979. The flock of ignorant fanatic fools, the Mullahs traditional source of sustenance, can barely feed itself and has very little to spare for the leeching Mullahs.
Another point that needs clarification is the myth widely circulated by the mainstream media and the ivory tower pundits: the claim that there is a major division among Shiites regarding the relationship of the mosque and the state. Let this myth be dispelled once and for all.
There is absolutely no such a division among the Shiites. The perceived difference is in fact a strategic one. One camp, led by the late ayatollah Khomeini, believes that it is admissible for the Mullahs to rule the state directly, as is the case in the present Iran. The other camp believes that the Mullahs should only supervise the civilian government. In other words, one group wants to be the king, while the other wants to be the king-maker. The difference is academic. As a matter of fact the latter camp led by the grand ayatollah Al-Sistani of Iraq can have its cake and eat it too, so to speak. It can have all the say and power it desires by proxy and, at the same time, absolve itself of any responsibility for governmental wrongdoing or failure.
In conclusion, there is nothing new in Islamdom. Feuding, infighting and killing are longstanding practices of the religion of peace. If and when the non-Islamic world solves its myriad problems ranging from dealing with a pompous lunatic playboy with nuclear weapons to that of endemic hunger, disease and environmental degradation, it can embrace Islam to avoid the boredom of peace. “Peace is boring, war is exciting,” is an old saying. And Islam has never been boring.
Comment: There are Shia muslims and mullahs in Australia. They appear to cause no trouble in our society even if many of the mullahs are terrible in Iran. Certainly all the troublemaking imams in Australia are of the Sunni Muslim faction.
Perhaps the Australian government should stop Sunni muslims coming to Australia but allow Shia to come. Would this help keep the peace in this country?
Read and learn...
The present Shiite Iran is home to over 300,000 Mullahs. The most descriptive term for Mullah is parasite. A Mullah begins his career as a parasite, lives as a parasite and dies as a parasite, simply because he contributes absolutely nothing to the necessities of life, yet gobbles disproportionately more of whatever resources he can grab.
As a true parasite, a Mullah’s very survival depends on others. It is critical for a Mullah to procure and maintain docile obedient host. A flock of gullible ignorant fanatics make excellent host and the Mullahs’ main task is to keep the sheep in their pen by hook or crook. They scare the flock by horror stories of hell and entice them by the promise of unimaginable glorious paradise if and only if they behave and keep on supplying them with milk, wool and meat.
So, the infighting is all about survival. One bunch is having it all while another is sidelined. We must understand that there has never been one united house of the Mullahs. Mullahs are like packs of wolves. Each pack hunts and eats its prey. Packs of wolves fight one another for valued prey, particularly in the face of scarcity.
The coffer of the Islamic Republic of Iran is flush with the extortion-high oil revenues. A reasonable question is: why don’t the Mullahs simply share the wealth and attend to the business of fighting the external enemy? When it comes to money, enough is never enough. “There is enough to meet everyone’s need, but not enough to meet everyone’s greed,” observed Gandhi. And greed is in the very bones of the Mullahs, since it is the only way that parasite know how to live.
The present Mullahcracy is in the form of a pyramid. The Mullahs in the game at the top have skimmed and continue to skim inordinate amounts of the national income. Mullah Akbar Rafsanjani, a past president of the Islamic Republic, and his family, for instance, have reportedly stolen enough to give the Wal-Mart’s Waltons a run for their money. And there are hundreds of lesser Mullahs, like Rafsanjani, who are pocketing huge sums.
The ruling Mullahs—the in-boys—are master practitioners of the trickle down economics. Except that by the time they are through with pocketing some of the national income and paying off their supporters, there is little left for the out-boys—the sidelined Mullahs.
The in-boys Mullahs must pay for the loyalty of the military, the police, and the thugs to keep them in power. Furthermore, in contrast to their mastery of machination, treachery, and cruelty, they are inept at managing the affairs of the state
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a unique creature—it is best described as Theocratic Aristocracy. The “divinely-ordained” rulers maintain themselves in power by an elaborate system of patronage. Lucrative positions, contracts and valued privileges are distributed by patronage. The result is that the ruling Mullahs enjoy a significant number of supporters in all strata of society—the civil service, the military, the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and the hooligans and thugs who are ready to unleash their vicious attacks on anyone or group that dares to challenge the in-charge men of Allah.
Another seeming anomaly is that proportionately there are more Mullahs in prison in Iran than any other class of the society, including university students who have always been political “troublemakers.” The reason is that these are the out-boys Mullahs—the parasites that are deprived of the dole—their very means of livelihood. Their mosques are often shut down, their flocks are harassed by the system’s agents and their sources of income are dried. And as we said, it is the nature of the beast, for parasite can only live from the products of others.
The out-boys Mullahs hate the in-boys Mullahs not only for looting Iran’s oil money, but also for badly impoverishing the masses who had traditionally fed and pampered them. The per capita income in present Iran is about two-thirds of what it was before the catastrophic Islamic take over of 1979. The flock of ignorant fanatic fools, the Mullahs traditional source of sustenance, can barely feed itself and has very little to spare for the leeching Mullahs.
Another point that needs clarification is the myth widely circulated by the mainstream media and the ivory tower pundits: the claim that there is a major division among Shiites regarding the relationship of the mosque and the state. Let this myth be dispelled once and for all.
There is absolutely no such a division among the Shiites. The perceived difference is in fact a strategic one. One camp, led by the late ayatollah Khomeini, believes that it is admissible for the Mullahs to rule the state directly, as is the case in the present Iran. The other camp believes that the Mullahs should only supervise the civilian government. In other words, one group wants to be the king, while the other wants to be the king-maker. The difference is academic. As a matter of fact the latter camp led by the grand ayatollah Al-Sistani of Iraq can have its cake and eat it too, so to speak. It can have all the say and power it desires by proxy and, at the same time, absolve itself of any responsibility for governmental wrongdoing or failure.
In conclusion, there is nothing new in Islamdom. Feuding, infighting and killing are longstanding practices of the religion of peace. If and when the non-Islamic world solves its myriad problems ranging from dealing with a pompous lunatic playboy with nuclear weapons to that of endemic hunger, disease and environmental degradation, it can embrace Islam to avoid the boredom of peace. “Peace is boring, war is exciting,” is an old saying. And Islam has never been boring.
Comment: There are Shia muslims and mullahs in Australia. They appear to cause no trouble in our society even if many of the mullahs are terrible in Iran. Certainly all the troublemaking imams in Australia are of the Sunni Muslim faction.
Perhaps the Australian government should stop Sunni muslims coming to Australia but allow Shia to come. Would this help keep the peace in this country?
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Muslim Boys, Sex and Jihad.
Note: Sex is a matter of great concern to boys.This is a universal truth and includes muslim boys.This posting gives the sensible reader an indication, from the inside, of the dynamics of this sex question and the motivation of some muslim boys involved with the violence of Jihad...the Jihad of murder, not the 'spiritual'Jihad of islamist propaganda.
read and learn...
Hot for martyrdom
Michael Coren
National Post
Friday, November 03, 2006
Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn't tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It's safer that way. It's only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims.
He's a disarmingly gentle and courteous man. But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism.
"Yes, 'imperialism,' " he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe."
Hamid drank in the message of Jihadism while at medical school in Cairo, and devoted himself to the cause. His group began meeting in a small room. Then a larger one. Then a Mosque reserved for followers of al-Zawahiri. By the time Hamid left the movement, its members were intimidating other students who were unsympathetic.
He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine.
"I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine."
His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists believe, he insists, that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia.
"We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."
He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: "North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.
"Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism."
A pause. "I know. I was one who accepted it."
This partial explanation is shocking more for its banality than its horror. Mass murder provoked partly by simple lust. But it cannot be denied that letters written by suicide bombers frequently dwell on waiting virgins and sexual gratification.
"The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?"
He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."
Then he leaves -- for where, he cannot say. A voice that is silenced in its homeland and too often ignored by those who prefer convenient revision to disturbing truth. The tragedy is that Tawfik Hamid is almost used to it.
- Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster. www.michaelcoren.com
© National Post 2006
Comment: Western nations have basically solved the sex question: it is your own business. Muslim countries have not yet solved this question and thus vast efforts are put into suppressing the problems associated with unresolved sexual tension.
The muslim Paradise is all about boys and men cavorting with virgins..72 apparently..thus they have the option of dying as muslim 'martyrs' and having an eternal erection to be satisfied eternally by virgins. This is not a spiritual paradise...it is a teenage boy's masturbation fantasy.
This fantasy is believed by every muslim boy. Promoting jihad is not that difficult when you have this to offer to sexually frustrated boys immersed in muslim 'theology'.
Australian public policy is better served by the public discounting of this silly and dangerous notion of Paradise, especially if it is best attained by muslim boys via the process of murdering others. Australian officials must stop thinking that the problem is just one of policing. It is also a battle of ideas...we have not even begun to counter these dangerous ideas.
Isn't it time we started?
read and learn...
Hot for martyrdom
Michael Coren
National Post
Friday, November 03, 2006
Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn't tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It's safer that way. It's only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims.
He's a disarmingly gentle and courteous man. But he's determined to tell a complacent North America what he knows about fundamentalist Muslim imperialism.
"Yes, 'imperialism,' " he tells me. "The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe."
Hamid drank in the message of Jihadism while at medical school in Cairo, and devoted himself to the cause. His group began meeting in a small room. Then a larger one. Then a Mosque reserved for followers of al-Zawahiri. By the time Hamid left the movement, its members were intimidating other students who were unsympathetic.
He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. "The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education," he says. "I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine.
"I've heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims -- and never poor Christians -- who become suicide bombers in Palestine."
His analysis is fascinating. Muslim fundamentalists believe, he insists, that Saudi Arabia's petroleum-based wealth is a divine gift, and that Saudi influence is sanctioned by Allah. Thus the extreme brand of Sunni Islam that spread from the Kingdom to the rest of the Islamic world is regarded not merely as one interpretation of the religion but the only genuine interpretation. The expansion of violent and regressive Islam, he continues, began in the late 1970s, and can be traced precisely to the growing financial clout of Saudi Arabia.
"We're not talking about a fringe cult here," he tells me. "Salafist [fundamentalist] Islam is the dominant version of the religion and is taught in almost every Islamic university in the world. It is puritanical, extreme and does, yes, mean that women can be beaten, apostates killed and Jews called pigs and monkeys."
He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: "North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.
"Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism."
A pause. "I know. I was one who accepted it."
This partial explanation is shocking more for its banality than its horror. Mass murder provoked partly by simple lust. But it cannot be denied that letters written by suicide bombers frequently dwell on waiting virgins and sexual gratification.
"The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?"
He's exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. "Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want."
Then he leaves -- for where, he cannot say. A voice that is silenced in its homeland and too often ignored by those who prefer convenient revision to disturbing truth. The tragedy is that Tawfik Hamid is almost used to it.
- Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster. www.michaelcoren.com
© National Post 2006
Comment: Western nations have basically solved the sex question: it is your own business. Muslim countries have not yet solved this question and thus vast efforts are put into suppressing the problems associated with unresolved sexual tension.
The muslim Paradise is all about boys and men cavorting with virgins..72 apparently..thus they have the option of dying as muslim 'martyrs' and having an eternal erection to be satisfied eternally by virgins. This is not a spiritual paradise...it is a teenage boy's masturbation fantasy.
This fantasy is believed by every muslim boy. Promoting jihad is not that difficult when you have this to offer to sexually frustrated boys immersed in muslim 'theology'.
Australian public policy is better served by the public discounting of this silly and dangerous notion of Paradise, especially if it is best attained by muslim boys via the process of murdering others. Australian officials must stop thinking that the problem is just one of policing. It is also a battle of ideas...we have not even begun to counter these dangerous ideas.
Isn't it time we started?
Saturday, November 04, 2006
The Problem Of Sayyid Qutb's Jihad.
Note: Sayyid Qutb is an important figure in current Islamic violence circles. He was executed by President Nasser of Egypt in 1966. Qutb provides the intellectual justification (based on the Koran)for the present day assault by Islamist terrorists on the West, Christianity, the Jews and liberal muslims. Readers will not have read his ideas in relation to the thought of Pope Benedict. It makes interesting reading.
Benedict XVI and the redemption of jihad
Posted on Oct 30, 2006.
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Chicago
Can jihad be redeemed? That is, can the religious sense of purpose that fuels Islamic extremism be leavened with a commitment to reason and peace, without thereby losing its sense of self? That’s the $64,000 question facing Islam, and it is for the most part one that only Muslims themselves can answer.
One could make the case, however, that if anyone in the West can help, it’s Pope Benedict XVI, despite Regensburg and all the heartache that followed – because Benedict is the lone figure of global standing in the West who speaks from within the same thought world that Muslims sympathetic to the strong religious identity of the jihadists themselves inhabit.
A detour into the recent history of Islamic thought helps make the point.
Egyptian poet and essayist Sayyid Qutb, hanged by Nasser in 1966, is known as the father of modern Islamic radicalism. Ironically, Qutb’s vision of jihad as an unrelenting conflict with the enemies of Islam was forged in part in the improbable locales of Washington, D.C., Greeley, Colorado, and Palo Alto, California, where he studied from 1948 to 1950 as part of an exchange program sponsored by the Egyptian Ministry of Education.
Qutb attended Wilson Teachers’ College, the Colorado State College of Education (today the University of Northern Colorado), and Stanford. Based on that experience, Qutb penned his famous tract The America I Have Seen, which has gone through innumerable printings and today can be found in cheap paperback editions in virtually every corner of the Islamic world. It still exercises a profound impact in shaping Muslim perceptions of American culture.
The work amounted to a ferocious attack upon what Qutb called “the American man,” depicted as obsessed with technology but virtually a barbarian in the realm of spirituality and human values. American society, for Qutb, was “rotten and ill” to its very core.
He wrote:
This great America: What is it worth in the scale of human values? And what does it add to the moral account of humanity? And, by the journey’s end, what will its contribution be? I fear that a balance may not exist between America’s material greatness and the quality of its people. And I fear that the wheel of life will have turned and the book of life will have closed and America will have added nothing, or next to nothing, to the account of morals that distinguishes man from object, and indeed, mankind from animals.
Qutb was not blind to the superficial attractions of America, which draw immigrants from every corner of the globe:
Imagination and dreams glimmer in this world of illusion and wonder. The hearts of men fall upon it from every valley, men from every race and color, every walk of life, and every sect and creed … America is the land of inexhaustible material resources, strength, and manpower. It is the land of huge factories, unequalled in all of civilization. … American genius in management and organization evokes wonder and admiration. America’s bounty and prosperity evoke the dreams of the Promised Land.
Yet Qutb saw that promise as false, because America’s technical virtuosity is not matched by a similar greatness of spirit:
It is the case of a people who have reached the peak of growth and elevation in the world of science and productivity, while remaining abysmally primitive in the world of the senses, feeling and behavior. A people that has not exceeded the most primordial levels of existence, and indeed, remains far below them in certain areas of feeling and behavior.
The American man’s obsession with technical power, Qutb wrote, has “narrowed his horizons, shrank his soul, limited his feelings, and decreased his place at the global feast, which is so full of patterns and colors.”
A particular zone of disgust for Qutb was what he saw as the sexual licentiousness of American culture (and this, bear in mind, was the early 1950s). He wrote that a society in which “immoral teachings and poisonous intentions are rampant” and sex is considered “outside the sphere of morality” is one in which “the humanity of man can hardly find a place to develop.” Qutb said that “providing full opportunities for the development and perfection of human characteristics requires strong safeguards for the peace and stability of the family.”
As Lebanese journalist Fawaz Gerges has noted, Qutb is no De Tocqueville. He barely scratches the surface of American culture, completely missing its underlying religiosity and failing to understand how core spiritual values such as liberty and equality form part of the bedrock of American psychology.
Yet for anyone familiar with the cultural criticism penned over the years by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, there is nevertheless something strikingly familiar in Qutb’s critique – albeit not so much of America, as the West in general. What both men share is a conviction that the West’s scientific and technological achievements are not always matched by its spiritual and moral wisdom.
As early as his 1965 work The Sacramental Foundation of Christian Existence, Ratzinger warned against:
“… the reduction of man to homo faber, who does not interact with things in themselves, but only regards them as functions of his labor. With this … man’s ability to have a view for the eternal is destroyed. He is incarcerated in his world of labor, and his only hope is that future generations will be able to have more convenient conditions of labor than him, if he has sufficiently struggled to have such conditions created. A truly paltry consolation for an existence that has become miserably tight!”
In his 1990 book In the Beginning, on the doctrine of creation, Ratzinger wrote of contemporary Western society:
“The good and the moral no longer count, it seems, but only what one can do. The measure of a human being is what he can do, and not what he is, not what is good or bad. What he can do, he may do. … He does not free himself, but places himself in opposition to the truth. And that means that he is destroying himself and the world. … [The question] “What can we do?” will be false and pernicious while we refrain from asking, ‘Who are we?’ The question of being and the question of our hopes are inseparable.”
Ratzinger has even linked this critique to the question of birth control, arguing that it amounts to a mechanical solution to an ethical and cultural problem. In the 1996 book Salt of the Earth, he said: “One of our great perils [is] that we want to master the human condition with technology, that we have forgotten that there are primordial human problems that are not susceptible of technological solutions, but that demand a certain life-style and certain life decisions.”
I adduce these quotes, of course, not to suggest that Benedict is a Christian version of Qutb. Benedict is infinitely more balanced and subtle; among other things, Benedict is far more favorable in his analysis of American culture. As Cardinal Avery Dulles recently pointed out, at times Benedict sounds almost like De Tocqueville in his positive assessment of church/state relations in this country.
Yet Benedict XVI would nevertheless find in Qutb a version –in extreme and distorted form – of the same critique of the West that the pope in many ways shares.
In the end, this is the most compelling reason why Benedict’s repeated insistence that he wants a “frank and sincere” dialogue with Islam is more than lip service. Fundamentally, the clash of cultures that Benedict sees in the world today is not between Islam and the West, but between belief and unbelief – between a culture that grounds itself in God and religious belief, and a culture that lives etsi Deus non daretur, “as if God does not exist.”
In that struggle, Benedict has long said, Muslims are natural allies.
Yet Benedict is also well aware that at present, Islamic radicalism is having almost the opposite effect – discrediting religious commitment in any form by associating it with violence and fanaticism. Hence when Benedict presses Muslims to reject terrorism and to embrace religious liberty, he does so not as a xenophobe or a crusader, not as a “theo-con,” but as someone who perceives himself as a friend of Islam, pressing it to realize the best version of itself.
That, no doubt, is part of the argument he will try to make during his upcoming trip to Turkey.
If they could set aside their prejudices, at least some of the spiritual sons and daughters of Sayyid Qutb might well recognize a potential ally in Joseph Ratzinger – and therein lays perhaps the last, best hope for Muslim/Catholic dialogue under Benedict XVI.
Comment: Readers will be aware that this site has constantly advocated that there should be a government financed intellectual struggle in Australia between the violent islamists and the path of non violence. This is not yet happening. The path of Jihad is actually the ideology of muslim imperialism and violent war. This is often proclaimed to be a purely 'spiritual' struggle. These claims are false and lies...part of a policy of taqqiyya.
The government in Australia is doing good work through ASIO in dealing with these jihadist muslims. However, the 'mind war' has not yet started. Money and personnel resources have to be brought to bear in Australia to form an alliance in our society to defeat the IDEAS of the Jihadists. It is not enough to simply arrest the malefactors. It is their IDEAS which cause the problems.
Action along these lines is long overdue.
Benedict XVI and the redemption of jihad
Posted on Oct 30, 2006.
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Chicago
Can jihad be redeemed? That is, can the religious sense of purpose that fuels Islamic extremism be leavened with a commitment to reason and peace, without thereby losing its sense of self? That’s the $64,000 question facing Islam, and it is for the most part one that only Muslims themselves can answer.
One could make the case, however, that if anyone in the West can help, it’s Pope Benedict XVI, despite Regensburg and all the heartache that followed – because Benedict is the lone figure of global standing in the West who speaks from within the same thought world that Muslims sympathetic to the strong religious identity of the jihadists themselves inhabit.
A detour into the recent history of Islamic thought helps make the point.
Egyptian poet and essayist Sayyid Qutb, hanged by Nasser in 1966, is known as the father of modern Islamic radicalism. Ironically, Qutb’s vision of jihad as an unrelenting conflict with the enemies of Islam was forged in part in the improbable locales of Washington, D.C., Greeley, Colorado, and Palo Alto, California, where he studied from 1948 to 1950 as part of an exchange program sponsored by the Egyptian Ministry of Education.
Qutb attended Wilson Teachers’ College, the Colorado State College of Education (today the University of Northern Colorado), and Stanford. Based on that experience, Qutb penned his famous tract The America I Have Seen, which has gone through innumerable printings and today can be found in cheap paperback editions in virtually every corner of the Islamic world. It still exercises a profound impact in shaping Muslim perceptions of American culture.
The work amounted to a ferocious attack upon what Qutb called “the American man,” depicted as obsessed with technology but virtually a barbarian in the realm of spirituality and human values. American society, for Qutb, was “rotten and ill” to its very core.
He wrote:
This great America: What is it worth in the scale of human values? And what does it add to the moral account of humanity? And, by the journey’s end, what will its contribution be? I fear that a balance may not exist between America’s material greatness and the quality of its people. And I fear that the wheel of life will have turned and the book of life will have closed and America will have added nothing, or next to nothing, to the account of morals that distinguishes man from object, and indeed, mankind from animals.
Qutb was not blind to the superficial attractions of America, which draw immigrants from every corner of the globe:
Imagination and dreams glimmer in this world of illusion and wonder. The hearts of men fall upon it from every valley, men from every race and color, every walk of life, and every sect and creed … America is the land of inexhaustible material resources, strength, and manpower. It is the land of huge factories, unequalled in all of civilization. … American genius in management and organization evokes wonder and admiration. America’s bounty and prosperity evoke the dreams of the Promised Land.
Yet Qutb saw that promise as false, because America’s technical virtuosity is not matched by a similar greatness of spirit:
It is the case of a people who have reached the peak of growth and elevation in the world of science and productivity, while remaining abysmally primitive in the world of the senses, feeling and behavior. A people that has not exceeded the most primordial levels of existence, and indeed, remains far below them in certain areas of feeling and behavior.
The American man’s obsession with technical power, Qutb wrote, has “narrowed his horizons, shrank his soul, limited his feelings, and decreased his place at the global feast, which is so full of patterns and colors.”
A particular zone of disgust for Qutb was what he saw as the sexual licentiousness of American culture (and this, bear in mind, was the early 1950s). He wrote that a society in which “immoral teachings and poisonous intentions are rampant” and sex is considered “outside the sphere of morality” is one in which “the humanity of man can hardly find a place to develop.” Qutb said that “providing full opportunities for the development and perfection of human characteristics requires strong safeguards for the peace and stability of the family.”
As Lebanese journalist Fawaz Gerges has noted, Qutb is no De Tocqueville. He barely scratches the surface of American culture, completely missing its underlying religiosity and failing to understand how core spiritual values such as liberty and equality form part of the bedrock of American psychology.
Yet for anyone familiar with the cultural criticism penned over the years by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, there is nevertheless something strikingly familiar in Qutb’s critique – albeit not so much of America, as the West in general. What both men share is a conviction that the West’s scientific and technological achievements are not always matched by its spiritual and moral wisdom.
As early as his 1965 work The Sacramental Foundation of Christian Existence, Ratzinger warned against:
“… the reduction of man to homo faber, who does not interact with things in themselves, but only regards them as functions of his labor. With this … man’s ability to have a view for the eternal is destroyed. He is incarcerated in his world of labor, and his only hope is that future generations will be able to have more convenient conditions of labor than him, if he has sufficiently struggled to have such conditions created. A truly paltry consolation for an existence that has become miserably tight!”
In his 1990 book In the Beginning, on the doctrine of creation, Ratzinger wrote of contemporary Western society:
“The good and the moral no longer count, it seems, but only what one can do. The measure of a human being is what he can do, and not what he is, not what is good or bad. What he can do, he may do. … He does not free himself, but places himself in opposition to the truth. And that means that he is destroying himself and the world. … [The question] “What can we do?” will be false and pernicious while we refrain from asking, ‘Who are we?’ The question of being and the question of our hopes are inseparable.”
Ratzinger has even linked this critique to the question of birth control, arguing that it amounts to a mechanical solution to an ethical and cultural problem. In the 1996 book Salt of the Earth, he said: “One of our great perils [is] that we want to master the human condition with technology, that we have forgotten that there are primordial human problems that are not susceptible of technological solutions, but that demand a certain life-style and certain life decisions.”
I adduce these quotes, of course, not to suggest that Benedict is a Christian version of Qutb. Benedict is infinitely more balanced and subtle; among other things, Benedict is far more favorable in his analysis of American culture. As Cardinal Avery Dulles recently pointed out, at times Benedict sounds almost like De Tocqueville in his positive assessment of church/state relations in this country.
Yet Benedict XVI would nevertheless find in Qutb a version –in extreme and distorted form – of the same critique of the West that the pope in many ways shares.
In the end, this is the most compelling reason why Benedict’s repeated insistence that he wants a “frank and sincere” dialogue with Islam is more than lip service. Fundamentally, the clash of cultures that Benedict sees in the world today is not between Islam and the West, but between belief and unbelief – between a culture that grounds itself in God and religious belief, and a culture that lives etsi Deus non daretur, “as if God does not exist.”
In that struggle, Benedict has long said, Muslims are natural allies.
Yet Benedict is also well aware that at present, Islamic radicalism is having almost the opposite effect – discrediting religious commitment in any form by associating it with violence and fanaticism. Hence when Benedict presses Muslims to reject terrorism and to embrace religious liberty, he does so not as a xenophobe or a crusader, not as a “theo-con,” but as someone who perceives himself as a friend of Islam, pressing it to realize the best version of itself.
That, no doubt, is part of the argument he will try to make during his upcoming trip to Turkey.
If they could set aside their prejudices, at least some of the spiritual sons and daughters of Sayyid Qutb might well recognize a potential ally in Joseph Ratzinger – and therein lays perhaps the last, best hope for Muslim/Catholic dialogue under Benedict XVI.
Comment: Readers will be aware that this site has constantly advocated that there should be a government financed intellectual struggle in Australia between the violent islamists and the path of non violence. This is not yet happening. The path of Jihad is actually the ideology of muslim imperialism and violent war. This is often proclaimed to be a purely 'spiritual' struggle. These claims are false and lies...part of a policy of taqqiyya.
The government in Australia is doing good work through ASIO in dealing with these jihadist muslims. However, the 'mind war' has not yet started. Money and personnel resources have to be brought to bear in Australia to form an alliance in our society to defeat the IDEAS of the Jihadists. It is not enough to simply arrest the malefactors. It is their IDEAS which cause the problems.
Action along these lines is long overdue.
Friday, November 03, 2006
The Poison Of Sharia.
Note: This posting concerns the creping paralysis of Sharia law in Indonesia. This will ensure the continued poverty of the local muslims.
Knowledgeable people are now aware that Islam = Poverty. The islamic agency which ensures this poverty is Sharia.
Read and learn...
2 November, 2006
INDONESIA
Jakarta worried about local Sharia-inspired laws
After months of silence, the Indonesian Justice and Human Rights Ministry announced a review of ordinances that are accused by many of going against principles enshrined in the Constitution. In June, the Home Affairs Minister had said it was up to local governors to deal with the matter.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) – After a long silence, the Indonesian Justice and Human Rights Ministry yesterday promised to review local government bylaws accused of discriminating against minority groups and going against principles enshrined in the Constitution.
Minister Hamid Awaluddin said he would coordinate with the Home Affairs Ministry, which had repeatedly promised to scrutinize the constitutionality of regional laws, but then in June put the onus to do so on individual local governors.
Since 2004, when regional autonomy came into force, 22 regencies and municipalities adopted Sharia-inspired laws: some criminalize conduct that is banned by Islamic law like adultery, prostitution, gambling, alcoholism and further, they restrict women’s freedom.
Minority groups, Muslim academics and the MPs of several political parties have long been calling on Jakarta to cancel such ordinances, warning against the “creeping” Islamization of Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world.
An anti-prostitution bylaw enacted by Tangerang regency in 2005 sparked strong protests after a woman was accused of being a prostitute just because she was walking on the street alone at night. Regions such as South Sulawesi and Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam have adopted bylaws requiring state officials to be able to read Arabic.
Months ago, Widodo Adisucipto, Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, said that more than 85% of local ordinances were full of contradictions and many were blocking overseas investments.
Hamid said the Justice Ministry would set a human rights standard that must be respected by regional ordinances. The review would be carried out by officials at provincial legal and human rights offices. But the last word on the repeal of “incriminated” bylaws would lie with the Home Affairs Ministry, which has not yet made any statements about the matter.
Comment: Sharia law, more than other aspects of the Koran, is the cause of the endless poverty that one finds in muslim countries. Despite great natural resources and often very many technologically well educated people, muslim countries run with Sharia law requirements are universally poor. It is sharia which negates the advantages of natural resources and the education of its middle class.
There is no escaping this burden of Sharia, both personally and nationally, unless the person or nation abandons Islam. Increasingly, in the future, this option will be taken up. There will be no other way to break the poverty cycle that grips the world's 900 million muslims.
Knowledgeable people are now aware that Islam = Poverty. The islamic agency which ensures this poverty is Sharia.
Read and learn...
2 November, 2006
INDONESIA
Jakarta worried about local Sharia-inspired laws
After months of silence, the Indonesian Justice and Human Rights Ministry announced a review of ordinances that are accused by many of going against principles enshrined in the Constitution. In June, the Home Affairs Minister had said it was up to local governors to deal with the matter.
Jakarta (AsiaNews) – After a long silence, the Indonesian Justice and Human Rights Ministry yesterday promised to review local government bylaws accused of discriminating against minority groups and going against principles enshrined in the Constitution.
Minister Hamid Awaluddin said he would coordinate with the Home Affairs Ministry, which had repeatedly promised to scrutinize the constitutionality of regional laws, but then in June put the onus to do so on individual local governors.
Since 2004, when regional autonomy came into force, 22 regencies and municipalities adopted Sharia-inspired laws: some criminalize conduct that is banned by Islamic law like adultery, prostitution, gambling, alcoholism and further, they restrict women’s freedom.
Minority groups, Muslim academics and the MPs of several political parties have long been calling on Jakarta to cancel such ordinances, warning against the “creeping” Islamization of Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world.
An anti-prostitution bylaw enacted by Tangerang regency in 2005 sparked strong protests after a woman was accused of being a prostitute just because she was walking on the street alone at night. Regions such as South Sulawesi and Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam have adopted bylaws requiring state officials to be able to read Arabic.
Months ago, Widodo Adisucipto, Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, said that more than 85% of local ordinances were full of contradictions and many were blocking overseas investments.
Hamid said the Justice Ministry would set a human rights standard that must be respected by regional ordinances. The review would be carried out by officials at provincial legal and human rights offices. But the last word on the repeal of “incriminated” bylaws would lie with the Home Affairs Ministry, which has not yet made any statements about the matter.
Comment: Sharia law, more than other aspects of the Koran, is the cause of the endless poverty that one finds in muslim countries. Despite great natural resources and often very many technologically well educated people, muslim countries run with Sharia law requirements are universally poor. It is sharia which negates the advantages of natural resources and the education of its middle class.
There is no escaping this burden of Sharia, both personally and nationally, unless the person or nation abandons Islam. Increasingly, in the future, this option will be taken up. There will be no other way to break the poverty cycle that grips the world's 900 million muslims.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Reform Islam Making Progress.
Note: Reform Islam is making serious progress. This posting from Germany is a sign of how 'the end is nigh' for the silly old fashioned and reactionary 'Islam of the Desert' in Western society. The lady member of Parliament is from the German Greens. If the Greens have abandoned the reactionary muslim position, it is sunk.
Read on and be encouraged...
Police Protection for German Parliamentarian
A German parliamentarian of Turkish origin has called for Muslim women to throw off their headscarves and embrace Western values. After receiving death threats for the remarks, she is under police protection. Politicians are defending her right to free speech.
A Turkish-German parliamentarian has received death threats for her critique of the head scarf.
With the increased focus on immigrants in Germany, it sometimes seems like integration success stories don't exist. They do. And Ekin Deligöz is one of the country's finest. A Turkish-born German citizen, she now serves in the seat of German democracy, the Bundestag. But, cultural emissaries like Deligöz don't only build bridges, they also sometimes expose the vast differences that make their existence so crucial.
That, in fact, is why Deligöz is now kept company by a police detail. The Green party member has received death threats for calling on Muslim women to take off their headscarves and to embrace German society and values two weeks ago. "You live here, so take your headscarf off," Deligöz was quoted by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper as saying.
In addition to the threats, she has also been the victim of a negative media campaign in Turkey with tabloid stories comparing her to the Nazis. In a letter of complaint written to the Turkish Ambassador by the head of the Green Party Renate Künast, she indicated that Deligöz had been "insulted in writing, by telephone, and also in person ... overwhelmingly by Turkish men."
Deligöz sees the headscarf as a symbol of female oppression and patriarchy. If it were just a fashion accessory, she says, "then I wouldn't now be under police protection."
A number of Muslim organizations in Germany have accepted an invitation from Künast and the Greens to discuss the threats and to talk about "behaving with respect toward each other."
Meanwhile, a number of German politicians are vociferously denouncing the threats and defending Deligöz's right to freedom of speech. "It is absolutely legitimate that a woman who is Muslim herself ... makes this appeal, said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. In an interview with the German radio station RBB, he continued, "What we lawmakers must decisively support is that someone can voice these opinions and that one doesn't need police protection to do so."
Norbert Lammert, president of the Bundestag and a close ally of Chancellor Merkel, called the threats "a severe attack on the core values of our constitution."
Deligöz is pleased at the support the German government has provided. "Most threats were supposed to intimidate me," she said, "but in a democratic society it should be possible to also express a critical opinion."
Comment: These views of the Green member of the German Parliament should be echoed here in Australia. The recent Hilali crisis will ensure that they are.
Read on and be encouraged...
Police Protection for German Parliamentarian
A German parliamentarian of Turkish origin has called for Muslim women to throw off their headscarves and embrace Western values. After receiving death threats for the remarks, she is under police protection. Politicians are defending her right to free speech.
A Turkish-German parliamentarian has received death threats for her critique of the head scarf.
With the increased focus on immigrants in Germany, it sometimes seems like integration success stories don't exist. They do. And Ekin Deligöz is one of the country's finest. A Turkish-born German citizen, she now serves in the seat of German democracy, the Bundestag. But, cultural emissaries like Deligöz don't only build bridges, they also sometimes expose the vast differences that make their existence so crucial.
That, in fact, is why Deligöz is now kept company by a police detail. The Green party member has received death threats for calling on Muslim women to take off their headscarves and to embrace German society and values two weeks ago. "You live here, so take your headscarf off," Deligöz was quoted by the Bild am Sonntag newspaper as saying.
In addition to the threats, she has also been the victim of a negative media campaign in Turkey with tabloid stories comparing her to the Nazis. In a letter of complaint written to the Turkish Ambassador by the head of the Green Party Renate Künast, she indicated that Deligöz had been "insulted in writing, by telephone, and also in person ... overwhelmingly by Turkish men."
Deligöz sees the headscarf as a symbol of female oppression and patriarchy. If it were just a fashion accessory, she says, "then I wouldn't now be under police protection."
A number of Muslim organizations in Germany have accepted an invitation from Künast and the Greens to discuss the threats and to talk about "behaving with respect toward each other."
Meanwhile, a number of German politicians are vociferously denouncing the threats and defending Deligöz's right to freedom of speech. "It is absolutely legitimate that a woman who is Muslim herself ... makes this appeal, said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. In an interview with the German radio station RBB, he continued, "What we lawmakers must decisively support is that someone can voice these opinions and that one doesn't need police protection to do so."
Norbert Lammert, president of the Bundestag and a close ally of Chancellor Merkel, called the threats "a severe attack on the core values of our constitution."
Deligöz is pleased at the support the German government has provided. "Most threats were supposed to intimidate me," she said, "but in a democratic society it should be possible to also express a critical opinion."
Comment: These views of the Green member of the German Parliament should be echoed here in Australia. The recent Hilali crisis will ensure that they are.
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