Jihad Watch: "i am not an extremist, but i did threaten to kill a man who insulted islam".
Another lovely bit from a different Muslim:
It is a religion of peace for everyone until some duckhead sprews out his damn saliva on a senstive topic as this. Spencer will be delivered.
The evidence just keeps accumulating that man's contribution to global warming is minor, at worst.
It's odd to see that one important historical fact is rarely taken into account in the global warming debate: the Earth has had numerous periods of global warming and cooling. Think about it: how could we have had "Ice Ages" without relatively warmer periods?
There is no point in handicapping ourselves and wasting trillions of dollars when we won't have a significant effect on stopping this natural cycle. And another thing: let's look at the benefits of warming as well. Focusing solely on the "apocalypse" only provides a distorted picture.
The Big Pharaoh talks about depressing (Internet) poll results in Egypt.
The difference between halaal and haram pooping.
Hmm, I just noticed that my bathroom is very haram. Mashallah!
IBA: The Ayatollah Khomeini's Fling With A Four Year Old.
No, that's not a typo.
Matt asks in the comments:
I do have a question for you Isaac, as one who used to follow Islam. In the US you have (broadly) a division in Christianity between those who believe what the Bible says literally (Conservatives like the Southern Baptists) and those that interpret it in modern times (like Episcopalians with gay and female priests). I know there are more divisions, but those are two general/large ones.
Would you say there is a division within Islam between the "Fundamentalist Radicals" who whole to everything within the Koran and Hadith and more moderate Muslims that ignore certain strictures and live reasonably peaceably in the West? I'm not arguing that the latter group have a powerful voice. But is that a way to explain why all of the Muslims in the US & UK aren't engaged in Jihad? Or is there another explanation?
There is certainly a division in effect but not much in the religious sense.
I'll elaborate. All of the following listed items are considered forbidden (haram) in Islam.
You can look around in the West and see numerous Muslims who don't follow, let alone know, most of these rulings. In addition, it's tough to decipher the moral angle of these matters -- but that's Islam for ya.
So, in effect, we have many Muslims who don't follow Islam to the fullest (and thank God! for that). However, this does not mean that most of these mussulman are pushing for their view in the Muslim community. (As you've realized they do not have a powerful voice.) And on the rare occasions when they do speak up, the other Muslims simply beat them by saying, "Aha, the Quran and/or Muhammad say that so-and-so is haram! End of debate."
These points should be plain to see but instead the spectacularly wrong view has become the consensus: Islam is a harmless and peaceful religion that is being hijacked by a bunch of demented thugs. That's not true. The reality is that Islam is an evil faith that has, fortunately, not managed to obliterate the shreds of humanity in all of its adherents.
“It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably f****d before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.” “It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore… girl, I mean,” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get f****d to pieces.”
What Islam teaches: open discrimination, theft, rape and murder -- whether that's right or wrong depends on the religion of the victim.
Steve Ballmer claimed that the Vista launch is the biggest in software history (as was Windows 95 in 1995), stating that the software will be available in 70 countries, "thousands" of OEMs and 39,000 retail outlets around the globe. The software will be sold in 19 languages right away and will expand to 99 languages by the end of the year, Ballmer said.
I'll upgrade next year at the earliest.
The West's Crusade against Islam is not limited to removing governments that promote Islam, killing Muslims, stealing their wealth, and controlling their lands. The other aspect which is more dangerous (especially to future generations) is to stop the Dawah (teaching of true Islam) and promote in its a place a version of Islam that runs parallel to their own society. In otherwords; a watered down version that leaves out or completely ignores many aspects of the deen, especially those aspects that make Islam and Muslims different or should I say a threat to their inferior man-made systems.
So, that's why so many Westerners are leaving the Kafir-o-sphere for the superior lands of Islam!
Later, he offers another howler.
The tools they use are harassment, fear of harassment and fear itself. How many times have heard the debates about hijab? If you want to live in our society you should dress the way we do. If you don't eat pork, drink alcohol, or listen to music you should leave our country.
[Emphasis mine.]
Never heard that one before.
At the end, he offers links to videos and clarifies something:
I want to add that the word kafir means disbeliever, and if someone doesn't want to be called a disbeliever then they should become a believer.
Yeah, as though the problem is simply being called a kafir rather than how these people want to treat a kafir.
Interesting discussion about air superiority over at Samizdata.
Take a look.
Ruth R. Wisse talks about American universities:
Tens of thousands of families sent children and loved ones into battle. Democracies are notoriously--and commendably--reluctant to resort to military action, which means that almost every sector of society joined the debate over how best to respond to the aggression against us.
The elite universities alone kept silent. They did not undertake an inquiry into the reliability and adequacy of programs in Islamic and Middle East Studies, much less encourage those who "do well" academically to volunteer in the national defense. The only anxieties I heard expressed at faculty meetings since 9/11 were over the anthrax scare as it might affect the campus, and the potential encroachments on privacy of the Patriot Act. Not a word about new responsibilities the university might assume for a democratic way of life under attack.
Sandy Berger knew there were documents in the National Archives that showed the Clinton administration failed to do what it should have about al Qaeda and terrorism and he stole them and destroyed them. I don't see how any other conclusion is possible.
That's part of the problem. We'll likely never know just exactly what and how many politically damaging materials he destroyed. Though, given the nature of our times, that's the best guess.
Normally when linking Mike, I quote his superb writing.
Sometimes that's not necessary.
Michael Yon: "We’ll do or die in our country’s cause. And battle for the right. (A line from the regimental song of the 7th Cav.)"
Umar Lee: If Only a “Wahabbi” Believes This, Then What Does a Muslim Believe?
Gulf News: Clinics restoring virginity controversial.
Uff, the things a Muslim girl has to worry about!
Male virginity? No test, nobody cares.
Link via Achelois.
Update
Secret Dubai Diary:
Quite apart from the fact that it is possible to be a virgin and have a broken hymen, or to have spent a decade taking it up the back way and still count yourself a "virgin", the downgrading of the hymen may help destigmatise rape as a source of shame for a woman.
Another related post: Nip and Tuck - Dubai Style.
D'Souza gets whipped:
D'Souza asks us to put our hopes in an intra-civilization alliance; traditional Westerners and traditional Muslims on one side, and Islamist radicals and Western cultural leftists on the other. He puts his hopes on a peace-loving, tolerant, and humane Islam, which is strong enough to rescue us from our sorrows.
It would be wonderful--if only it were true. The peaceful and tolerant Islam of D'Souza's book is a fantasy. It doesn't exist, it has never existed, and if it ever does I'll be pleasantly surprised. Islam is not peaceful and tolerant, but a violent, depraved ideology. Islam's founder was one of the worse human monsters our world has ever suffered.
SDA: America Through John Kerry's Iranian Lens.
Don't miss the second-half of the post.
The government is not your friend.
Unintended consequences and de-facto monopolies create costs too high to calculate and must be borne without question.
I have heard a lot about how America is so technologically backwards compared to the hi-speed Internet heaven that is South Korea.
Looks like there is trouble in nirvana.
Sacred Cows: Is it 'cause I is black?
The author talks about the Shilpa Shetty controversy. I think that many have gone off the rails with their judgments. For example:
There’s also been talk of what is perceived as an intrinsic racial prejudice that runs through British society. The UK might project itself as a multi-cultural, but the intelligentsia here aren’t buying it. ‘It is no surprise that white people are racist,’ documentary maker Tanuja Chandra told the Hindustan Times. Director Anurag Basu echoed her words: ‘Everyone knows that there is racism in the UK.’
"It is no surprise that [blank] people are racist." Can you put any race in there without being racist?
"Everyone knows there is racism in the UK." Question: name a country in which racism does not exist?
Do read the last few lines for a little perspective.
If you understand Urdu / Hindi, then you'll enjoy this.
Also check out his "location" under the About Me section on the top-right.
5 seconds into a Mithun-da song: The guitarists wield their instruments like phallic objects.
Don't they always.
From my birth-city. Yes, he's holding a toilet. Over his head.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah says the Iranian government is putting the whole region in danger!
The Arabic-speaking Sunni Saudis vs. the Farsi-speaking Shiite Persians. Can you feel the love and harmony between these Muslim "brothers"?
This paragraph cracked me up:
Girl-power feminists who got where they are by marrying men with money or power – Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Arianna Huffington and John Kerry – love to complain about how hard it is for a woman to be taken seriously.
Umar Lee talks about gay adoption in Britain and later says:
There will come a time when it will be illegal in much of the West to advocate on behalf of many Muslim issues and to take traditional Islamic stances on a number issues and homosexuality, a cause celeb amongst many in the secular and decadent West, is one of the main issues [...]
The traditional Islamic stance on homosexuality:
The two Iranian teenagers, pictured above, were executed on July 19, 2005 for the crime of homosexuality.
I got an email from a guy in Ottawa who provided a link to this impressive and detailed essay. It's not to be missed.
One tends to forget the outright despotism of minorities who are resistant to assimilation if it isn't accompanied by a status of extraterritoriality and special dispensations. The result is that nations are created within nations, which, for example, feel Muslim before they feel English, Canadian or Dutch. Here identity wins out over nationality. Worse yet: under the guise of respecting specificity, individuals are imprisoned in an ethnic or racial definition, and plunged back into the restrictive mould from which they were supposedly in the process of being freed. Black people, Arabs, Pakistanis and Muslims are imprisoned in their history and assigned, as in the colonial era, to residence in their epidermis, their beliefs.
That's sad really. These people or their immediate ancestors left their homeland for the West and yet they're still culturally and psychologically stuck in a cage. Many think that this is to be "celebrated".
Here's more the same as was posted in Contradictions Abound.
I got an email with this link -- a VDH column:
Nabih Berri, the Lebanese Amal militia chief who is now allied with both the anti-American Hezbollah and Syria, has much of his family residing in Dearborn, Mich.
Amr Salem, until recently a cabinet minister in Bashar Assad's anti-American government in Syria, was a senior program manager at Microsoft. His family still lives in the U.S.
Bilal Musharraf, son of Pakistan strongman Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has been a Boston-based consultant and a Stanford business and education student. Meanwhile, his father's government is either unwilling or unable to arrest on his soil the remnants of al-Qaeda, among them, most likely, Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Prof. Hanson asks:
What are we to make of these incongruities and others like them?
Read it all to find out.
Tim Blair posts a few photos of Aussie "gang colors". I like!
Right Wing News: Right-Of-Center Bloggers Select The Most & Least Desired 2008 Republican Nominee.
I barely know the policies of only three of them. Gingrich, Giuliani and McCain.
Charles has audio of a small interview with Frank Miller -- he's famous for writing comics. Last year, he announced that he's working on a Batman story in which Al Qaeda makes a heavy appearance.
For some odd reason, it's rare for the media to slow such evil as villains. Frank Miller is one of the few exceptions.
On March 9, 2007, one of his comics will be released as a film: 300. It's based on the epic Battle of Thermopylae in which a few hundred Spartans faced a massive Persian army. I'm planning on watching it on IMAX.
Few people are aware that Islamic law forbids music, and when I have pointed it out, I've been accused of distortion and "Islamophobia."
The ban is not limited to music -- art depicting animated life, photography, dogs as pets, interest on money...the asininity never ends.
Bahraini author Dhiyaa Al-Musawi knows better, and lists it along with several other points as evidence of his going against religious orthodoxy.
MEMRI has some remarkable excerpts from an interview of Dhiyaa.
Iraq the Model from Baghdad:
Apache attack helicopters are constantly hovering over Baghdad now. Tracking them from my home in this city I can often estimate where the action is taking place.
In many cases these are combat missions, not routine surveillance patrols, and the sounds of the helicopters heavy machineguns can often be heard in the distance; sometimes far away, sometimes coming closer.
There's a lot more.
Opinion Journal via Sepia Mutiny:
In July last year, the late Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics in 1976, granted an interview to The Wall Street Journal. Today we publish material from a question-and-answer exchange he had by email--shortly after their meeting--with his interviewer, Tunku Varadarajan, the Journal's editorial features editor.
Go read it all. I am in agreement with what Milton Friedman said regarding India vs. China. The long run is, indeed, more favorable for India.
Achelois: Sexual promiscuity amongst Muslims.
Near the end:
What do you want men to believe when you insist that they can have sex with female slaves before they are married? How do they feel when you tell them their Prophet (pbuh) did it too so it’s OK? What message does that give to young Muslim men? I will not dwell on the huge problem in the Gulf where people treat their housemaids as slaves and therefore rape of maids is a very common occurrence but you can read it here and here if you like since I have talked about it in the past.
The author doesn't write down the logical corollary: Muhammad is not a moral model for decent humans in the 21st century. Blaming Western media for the atrocious and mentally fragmented condition of the umma is not helpful; the answer is closer to home.
Link via Mezba.
The fun intensified in Grade 10, during our O Levels Biology course. There was a rumor that the chapter on Human Reproduction had vivid diagrams. As soon as everyone got the books, all the students dove straight for page 180.
And they were bitterly disappointed.
There was a biological diagram of the process, including the "moment" (when two becomes one). Unfortunately for the students, Mr Gazali of the Bookstore had taken considerable pains to use a black marker to completely shade out the offensive material on the 40 or so textbooks.
Pron Nazis!
The use of magic markers in other contexts: Slouching Towards Burqa.
Often in Saudi Arabia, I would come across certain pages of magazines that would look odd. Upon closer inspection, it would become clear that someone had taken a black marker to "cover up" the flesh of the various women in the advertisements. Devilish parts such as ankles, knees, shoulders, elbows and arms would no longer be visible to the Muslims of Arabia, thus saving them from doom and certain blindness.
I used to read a weekly Urdu magazine from Pakistan called Akbar-e-Jehan. It would have a one or two-page sports section with a few choice photos. Sometimes, the mag would print a photo of a female tennis player and there would be, I assume, Saudi guys whose job was to mark out the naked legs of the player with a permanent marker. Similarly, in the ads, I would see women with smiling faces and "a magic burqa" covering their legs. Sometimes, entire pages would be ripped out from the magazine, so I didn't get to know what offended the regime or the Muttawa.
No magic markers are involved but I can't help but excerpt the next paragraph from the same post:
In the early 90s with the legal sales of satellite dishes, every devout Saudi could get Baywatch in his home. Many religious nuts tried hard to have the dishes banned but failed. Think about that. So fragile is their religion, they think it'll shatter if exposed to Pamela's hypnotic tits.
Varifrank via Glenn Reynolds:
I've never understood how on one hand people overseas will tell the pollsters how much they hate America - and Americans, and yet our streets seem to be increasingly filled with people from all around the world who have risked life and limb and broken the law of their country and ours to get here.
I mean, if I dont like a restaurant, I dont stand in line for 4 hours to get in, I just go somewhere else. I sure dont stand in line for four hours and then say how much I hate the place.
One would think that the polls are faulty but then one would be assuming that those who're polled are rational (in the sense that they see US bounty and thus adopt and like the American mode of successful behavior / system).
That is sadly not the case. Here's a depressing conversation I had in the summer of 2002 in Saudi Arabia that will shed more light on the matter.
I think that pollsters can ask two questions that can really showcase the schizophrenia of the people being polled.
Citizens of Islamic nations might think that America is The Great Satan but they certainly have no qualms about working for McLucifer.
Come to think of it: there are millions of American-born citizens who loath the US! Do you see them leaving for the comfort of Canada or the warmth of Mother Russia or [insert ideal nation here]? The vast majority don't.
America-bashing is similar to Jew-hatred; historically and logically invalid but it sure makes for a very convenient scapegoat.
Check it out at Samizdata.
Thank you to Karen in Australia for making this comment:
Here's a little more of what our Johnie had to say...
"JOURNALIST:
On the name change to the Department of Immigration, what do you say to those people who are fearing that this is some kind of condemnation of other cultures or downgrading the role of multiculturalism in Australia?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well they’re wrong. This is not condemning cultures, it’s just positively asserting the obvious and that is immigration should lead to citizenship and the path is you come to this country, you embrace its customs, its values, it’s language, you become a citizen. You don’t lose a place in your heart for the country you came from and you’re not expected to. I’ve always said that, and people are understandably going to retain a place in their heart for their home culture and we don’t discourage that in any way. But the premium must be upon, the emphasis must be upon, the dominant consideration must be, the integration of people into the Australian family. That’s always been my belief, it was my belief before I became Prime Minister and it continues to be my belief. But that can sit comfortably with total respect for different cultures and total respect for the fact that somebody born in China or Croatia will retain a place in his or her heart for the customs and the manner and the tempo and so forth of his or her birthplace"
Extracted from http://www.pm.gov.au/news/interviews/Interview2339.html
Good on'ya, John!
The Aussies are very lucky.
Another holy book found in the toilet! (Maybe.)
Black Lion tells the FBI about all the modern terrorist threats in America.
The first comment to that post is so classic.
I like pets as well but this is going too far.
The Brussels Journal via SDA:
Late last month Uppsala University was found guilty of discrimination against Swedes by the Swedish Supreme Court (Högsta domstolen). Three years ago, the university refused to enroll Cecilia Lönn and Josefine Milander in its Law Faculty even though they had better grades than thirty other students with a foreign background.
But that's compassionate racism!
Opinion Journal via Gus Van Horn:
The interview had been scheduled for months. The day before the interview Mr. Gore's agent thought Gore-meets-Lomborg would be great. Yet an hour later, he came back to tell us that Bjorn Lomborg should be excluded from the interview because he's been very critical of Mr. Gore's message about global warming and has questioned Mr. Gore's evenhandedness. According to the agent, Mr. Gore only wanted to have questions about his book and documentary, and only asked by a reporter. These conditions were immediately accepted by Jyllands-Posten. Yet an hour later we received an email from the agent saying that the interview was now cancelled. What happened?
An Inconvenient Interview was avoided by Al Gore. That's what happened.
MSNBC: Is Arnold's 'Doctor Tax' Unfair?
It levies "fees" on doctors and proposes to provide universal health care coverage in California. Yes, that includes illegal residents.
A few points:
Link via Sepia Mutiny.
