Isaac Schrödinger

Who, Exactly, Does Their Fighting?

I had to re-read the last part here just to be sure.

Discovering Evil

This made my skin crawl:

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Madinah began this week a series of summer activities aimed at reaching out to the youth and teaching them Islamic principles.

This Commission -- more accurately, the Religious Police -- was responsible for the death of many Saudi girls in March of 2002:

Saudi Arabia's religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress, according to Saudi newspapers.

Now, they're poisoning the minds of young kids:

Talking about the aim of the programs, Al-Tuwaijri said, “The main aim is to increase awareness among the youth regarding Islamic principles and to highlight what is wrong. We aim at solving the social, religious and psychological problems faced by youngsters. The activities aim to show the youth the path of future success.”

Another reason for this youth indoctrination:

“We have selected the location of the activities close to areas where youths gather in order to attract them. It is much better for youth to attend these events than go around in malls, which may put them in trouble with the authorities,” said Al-Zahrani.

"Go around in malls" is code for inter-sex mingling (gasp!). It seems the religious clowns are having trouble enforcing the gender apartheid. So, they've started this program where they can easily monitor the youth and prepare the thugs of tomorrow.

Link via Saul Wall in the comments.

1.5 Billion People Served

Christopher Hitchens:

[...] Islamic belief, however simply or modestly it may be stated, is an extreme position to begin with. No human being can possibly claim to know that there is a God at all, or that there are, or were, any other gods to be repudiated. And when these ontological claims have collided, as they must, with their logical limits, it is even further beyond the cognitive capacity of any person to claim without embarrassment that the lord of creation spoke his ultimate words to an unlettered merchant in seventh-century Arabia. Those who utter such fantastic braggings, however many times a day they do so, can by definition have no idea what they are talking about.

Ouch! The truth hurts.

Opening the Mind

Imagine a future in which you're not dead. You're just waiting for repair.

Incredible.

Crazy Magnetism

This reminds me of a very true statement: Attraction is not a choice.

Though, there are consequences. See, for example, the 28th comment.

20-30 Years

The Weekly Standard: The 9/11 Generation.

No Sex For You!

Muslim Matters:

It should be pretty obvious to most of us, especially the Muslims who still maintain ties/visitations to the “motherlands” that the Muslim world does indeed have a problem with sex.

You see, Muslims search for sex ... on google!

Thankfully, both Saudi and Iran have installed web filtration that is preventing this feed of mental perversion to the region, likely in the time frame of 2005-2006.

Yes, this fellow approves of totalitarian regimes that censor the Internet. How could anyone possibly object?

While I am a proponent of starving the inflow of perversity through any channels to a Muslim populace, the question is why is this populace in so much need for this trash?

Because they aren't getting any. Just a guess.

While on the outside, the norms of Muslim society prevented the actual “practice” of what the corrupted hearts and minds now desired, people have been caught up between two different worlds: a world of sex on their TV sets and computer monitors, and a world of the literal and metaphorical hijab and “parda” on the outside. This of course breeds the underground world of sexual escapades and desperation, to the point of being turned-on by the sight of feet (as in the case where women wear complete jilbab/niqab), secret messages and encounters, and the like.

The solution to this problem?

The solution is not and cannot be to open up the society and have a free for all as in the Western world.

But, of course.

I'm Left Out

Infidels Are Cool: 10 Best Apostate Sites.

*Sob.*

Still, my words have been featured at two of those sites -- #1 and #10.

Republican vs. Democrat

No comment.

Poor Guy

Very clever. More here.

"I Love Life"

You Tube: Ayaan Hirsi Ali inteview with VOA.

Link via The Dougout via Thrutch.

One, Er, Sauce to Rule Them All

MSNBC:

It’s not the secret pizza sauce. It’s not the blend of Italian cheeses. And it’s not the spicy pepperoni.

So, what is it that makes this pizza so popular?

Porn.

There is a God!

This brilliant idea is just begging to be imported to the Islamic world.

And don't forget to scroll down and read about the sophisticated beer.

An Easy Answer

"Ummah.com: Is It OK to Kill Children and Rape Women?"

This lovely tradition started from the very beginning of Islam. The most (in)famous incident* is the slaughtering of all the men of a Jewish tribe while their women and children were taken as slaves. This all happened under the direct command of the peaceful prophet Muhammad.

Note that Islam allows a man to have four wives and an unlimited number of sex slaves -- a "tradition" that survives to this day.

* I've written about Banu Quraiza here.

Stark Contrast

Daniel Jackson talks about the Golan Heights:

It is clear from which direction the threat of violence comes.

Indeed.

A Loving Extermination

The National Post via Daimnation:

A fundamentalist Pakistani preacher, taken off the air by VisionTV this week in response to complaints, defended his beliefs about Jews yesterday but denied he was a hatemonger.

One paragraph later:

But the written statement, issued by his personal secretary in Lahore, went on to explain Mr. Ahmad's belief that the Holocaust was "Divine punishment" and that Jews would one day be "exterminated."

What could possibly be hateful about that?

More: A Doctor Who Prescribes Death.

No Burqa for Men

The infidels are bringing their filthy behavior to the pure, morally flawless Middle East. For how long will the umma suffer these indignities?

Americans in Iraq

Discarded Lies:

My tactical battalion group had just finished dog-slicing detail in the outpost perimeter, when one of the guys, who had a reputation as something of a crank-yanker, took off his ACU pants, revealing his tan underwear. We thought it was only mildly amusing, until he told us to look closer, to reveal that his underwear was not made of cloth, but hundreds of Iraqi heart valves, stitched together.

Wow, that must have been some intricate work.

The Cost of Terror

The Belmont Club:

Who knew that Tigerhawk wrote his undergraduate thesis in counterinsurgency? Back in 1983 he foresaw that the indiscriminate application of terror -- such al-Qaeda has been engaged in would swing the intelligence advantage to the side which was discriminating in its application of coercion.

TigerHawk:

The Iraqi insurgency in all its elements is complicated, but I have long thought that the portion of it known as "al Qaeda in Iraq" -- the Sunni jihadis who promoted and implemented beheadings and the killing of children and mass casualty car bomb attacks -- was particularly vulnerable to traditional counterinsurgency tactics. Al Qaeda's methods of punishing noncooperation struck me as capricious; car bombs kill even more indiscriminately than American air strikes, so a noncombatant is at risk of dying from them whether or not he cooperates with al Qaeda.

Iraqis are experiencing and comprehending the true nature of both sides. Collectively, they'll choose wisely.

Bad Omen

Poor guy:

Cab driver Michael Byrne asked the agency to retire the number that was assigned to him last year, saying it has brought him nothing but bad luck.

Damn You Greeks!

Victor Davis Hanson:

Maybe Bush and Blair were reading their Xenophon, since even poor Saddam Hussein gets into Hall’s indictment, along with the war against terror, the ongoing Iraqi conflict and the other usual suspects. So, thanks to Edward Said, we can forget all that suicide bombing, IEDs, fatwas, televised beheadings, virulent anti-Semitism, burqas, polygamy, female circumcision, Sharia law, honor killings, Middle East dictatorships and theocracies, political oppression and religious intolerance, and instead blame such “fictive ethnicities” on imperialism that began with the Greeks [...]

Well, it's more original than blaming the Jews.

Admired by Royalty

The following pictures are dangerously cute. You're warned!

• Demure.
• The Spring Twins.

Tugging the Heart Strings

A sample poem from Guantanamo:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
When I blow up that school bus full of kids
it will be the fault of the Jew

Wah re wah! It's fake but accurate.

Update
Also see a video at Junk Yard. Oh the anguish!

No Kurd Zone

A visitor to my blog at 9:44 a.m. must have been very disappointed.

A Putrid Faith

Gulf News:

Egypt's top cleric yesterday denied in a statement that he had said a Muslim can give up his faith without punishment.

He doesn't specify what that punishment might be.

"There is a campaign by secularists to distort the image of Dr Ali Goma'a," a senior official in Al Azhar told Gulf News.

"He cannot deny punishment in this life for the apostate," said Mustafa Al Chaka of the Islamic Research Centre.

Khaybar Oasis makes an excellent comment. An excerpt:

[...] in Islamic societies, publicly expressed apostasy from Islam is considered a threat to the well-being of Muslims.

He [the Egyptian cleric] also wrote: "If the case in question is one of merely rejecting faith, then there is no worldly punishment."

Right; not merely "rejecting faith." The distinction in mainstream Islam, and apparently endorsed by Gomaa, is that the apostasy from Islam must be public, i.e., must be detected through some overt words or acts, to constitute a crime worthy of earthly punishment. So if you keep secret your apostasy, and no other person finds out about it or reports it, you won't be punished, except by Allah. Nothing new there. That is classical Islamic jurisprudence.

I think this Egyptian cleric, Ali Goma, was trying to sugarcoat the vile nature of Islamic law. Now, that his untrue comment has got too much attention, he's backpedaling.

Read this and shudder at what really happens to ex-Muslims in Egypt:

One week ago, on July 16, these same family members openly threatened to kill Al-Sayed for leaving Islam to become a Christian, after spotting her walking through a fair in Alexandria.

Local police promptly took her into “protective custody,” allegedly to prevent her physical harm at the hands of her irate Muslim relatives.

But instead of protecting her, local police and State Security Investigation (SSI) officials have subjected the threatened woman to days of severe physical and emotional torture. Her maltreatment included electrical shocks, beatings and being photographed naked.

The state of Egyptian law:

After becoming a Christian in January 2003, Al-Sayed had obtained Christian identity papers under the name of Maryan Eleya Saleeb and married a Christian man. Egyptian law does not permit anyone born a Muslim to change his or her religion, nor can a Muslim woman marry a Christian.

Turkey's Future

John O'Sullivan:

Sunday's election results strengthen the AKP's hand in taking a middle course between banning head scarves and imposing sharia.

I am not very familiar with the Turkish political arena but I do hope Sullivan is right. We'll find out in a few years just how mild these Islamists really are.

Not Enough Evil

Naughty at most, I say.

The Love of Death

Elder of Ziyon comments on a Pew research survey:

This is remarkable. The rest of the Muslim world is recognizing that supporting terror is a dead end, but PalArabs overwhelmingly support it - across demographic lines! Young and old, religious and secular, men and women - they have managed to create a culture that is not only at odds with all of civilized society, but also at odds with the rest of the Arab world.

A further breakdown of the hideous results.

Naughty Charles

Ahem.

Terrorists Feeling the Heat

Strategy Page:

Since the surge offensive began four months ago, Iraqi (military and civilian) deaths have declined by more than 50 percent, and American casualties are down by over a third. U.S. troops are still taking the lead in moving into hostile areas, and being exposed to ambush and IEDs. But U.S. tactics and training have made enemy efforts much less lethal. This has helped demoralize an increasing number of terrorists. Many are tired of killing Iraqi civilians, and the increasing difficulty at getting at American troops.

One thing we rarely see in the media is the numbers of terrorists killed.

While the terrorists make a big deal out of every American killed, they know that most of their attacks were not only failures, but got a lot of their buddies killed. On average, 10-20 terrorists die for every American killed. This has been going on for years, and an increasing number of Iraqi fighters are demoralized and quitting. Many either become informers, or surrender and speak freely. This is resulting in fresher intelligence, and raids that are catching terrorist  cells preparing for operations, and in possession of weapons, bombs and incriminating documents.

Link via Instapundit.

Judicious Deity

Eva:

I was thinking about how people seem to read their holy books a whole lot more as they get older. Then, it dawned on me, they were cramming for their finals. As for me, I'm just hoping God grades on the curve.

Hunh.

Asif from Punjab

Cricinfo interviews one of the most talented bowlers in the world:

"When I close my eyes at the top of my mark, I can just see exactly where the ball pitches, how it swings in, and hits the top of the off stump," he told Cricinfo in a chat recently. You believe him. Batsmen who didn't, have suffered.

Throw Away the Key!

Guilty for incorrect spelling.

There is No Fun in Islam

"Uncultural Muslims":

From my own reading of Muslims and their wants is that culture itself should never be an influence on their life, it should never amalgamate with their religious practises and above all, it should never be seen positively. All culture is bad, and any good that is seen in it is Islam influenced. So literature, art, music to name but a few are all “corrupt” and bad and shouldnt be indulged in, lest you entertain Satanic thoughts.

There's always a danger that the culture just might replace the religion.

The Noses Run and the Feet Smell

English can be amusing.

Oh, To Be Pure

This headline encapsulates titanic amounts of lunacy: "Villages in competition to stop education of girls".

The maulana has adopted a successful method of putting various villages into competition. He announces a fatwa on his radio station and gives the task to a single village to follow it. Then he announces the number of people from that village who follow the edict and promises them heavenly rewards for taking a step towards the implementation of sharia in the country.

Then he gives the challenge to another village to surpass the first one and the response is always more positive.

Education is only one part of the ugliness.

When Fazlullah announced recently that polio vaccination was un-Islamic, he followed the same method and the response was amazing.

On the very first day, parents of about 5,000 children refused to get their sons and daughters vaccinated. The maulana congratulated all those parents on his radio station and appealed to more families to win heavenly rewards.

The next day, the anti-polio teams were denied permission to administer the vaccine to 8,600 children. The third day saw attacks on vaccination teams in many villages.

Link via Dhimmi Watch.

Offering Blood for Honor

Clayton Cramer makes a good point:

Honor killings are done to earn the respect of other members of the Muslim community--to expiate shame for what their daughter (apparently, never the son) has done. By this fact alone, it tells us that honor killings are considered acceptable or even necessary by some non-trivial fraction of the Muslim community in Britain.

This matter is very tough to comprehend. We wouldn't even think of penalizing, let alone killing, a woman who after divorcing an abusive husband starts dating a man from a different village. But for many in that closed culture, the boundaries for a woman are set whether they be physical or sensual. The punishment for breaking the shackles has to be dire and swift, so as to clearly remind all the rest to stay in their place.

Cramer is also correct in noting that this horrific standard doesn't apply to the men. A sick demonstration of this:

Today I was visiting the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and my roommate, we’ll call her Sally, went with me because she had to meet with the same professor as I.

She started crying in the taxi on the way back home telling me about her experience the other night with her Jordanian boyfriend, we’ll call him Malik.

Sally and Malik haven’t been dating for very long and I won’t go into the details of their relationship, but she really did like this guy, and I liked him as well. He seemed very Western, spoke English well, acted respectably, dressed nice, came from an affluent and well-off family. He even lived in Europe for two years and had relationships with girls there.

They went out to eat last night and she brought up the subject of honor killings. Malik nonchalantly said that he would be willing to kill his sister or support his uncle or dad if they killed her if she had sex.

Weird People

Asmaa on Egypt:

My 7 year old cousin, who wears hijab now was telling me that her parents didn't want her to wear it yet. She's like, "I had to cry and scream so that they'd let me wear it." So I asked her why she wanted to wear it at all, and she replied "because it's summer, so it's going to be hot and I'll get more rewards because of the heat."

Of course, the famous sawab--the reward points for Islamic paradise. Funny how one has to go through hell to get to heaven.

An Interesting Issue

Chicago Boyz: Multiple Cultures.

Don't Chew That!

No comment.

We Must Not Tell Lies

Yahoo News:

President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that foreigners who publicly criticize him or his government while visiting Venezuela will be expelled from the country.

The flawless logic behind this:

"How long are we going to allow a person from any country in the world to come to our own house to say there's a dictatorship here, that the president is a tyrant, and nobody does anything about it?" Chavez asked during his weekly television and radio program.

Damian Penny comments:

Reminds me of what a Sandinista official allegedly said about a Nicaraguan opposition newspaper in 1984: "They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it."

A Doctor Who Prescribes Death

The National Post via LFG:

A day after saying it regretted broadcasting a lecture by a Pakistani preacher who says Muslim scripture advocates violent holy war and the "extermination" of Jews, VisionTV put him back on the air again this weekend.

A leading Jewish organization said yesterday it would launch a formal complaint with Canadian broadcast regulators after Vision aired another hour-long talk by fundamentalist Israr Ahmad on Saturday.

Last summer, I was channel surfing and came across a familiar language. A speaker was talking about the Quran and explaining the words and context in Urdu to the audience. His speech was filled with hatred towards the Jews. That part didn't surprise. What was shocking: a Canadian channel was providing an outlet to this hideous man.

A few months passed when I came across a few You Tube videos of this Israr Ahmad. His loathing for liberty and human rights was unmistakable. Unfortunately, some time later these videos were removed.

Fortunately, one can still view a small one-minute clip here. The name is "A confession of defeat. (Urdu With English sub-titles)". I can vouch for the fact that the subtitles do convey his intended meaning. You see, Israr Ahmad is upset about the fact that the Pakistanis only discriminate against the people who belong to the Ahmadi sect. To him, that is not enough. He wants the Ahmadis to be declared as apostates--so that they could be killed since the punishment for apostasy is death.

Note, at the link, you can also find more videos of Israr Ahmad. If you don't mind being depressed, then view them all.

Secular Islamists?

MSNBC:

Turkey’s Islamic-rooted ruling party won parliamentary elections by a wide margin Sunday, and the prime minister pledged to safeguard the country’s secular traditions and do whatever the government deems necessary to fight separatist Kurdish rebels.

Super!

Kara Zor-El.

The Persian Enigma

Asharq Alawsat:

The key oil industry, which accounts for more than 75 per cent of the government’s income, is being starved of cash. Efforts to attract some $15 billion in foreign investments in the oil and gas industries have borne no fruit. Foreign investors are wary of violating United Nations sanctions or running afoul of the US Treasury’s plans to put the financial squeeze on the Islamic Republic.

All this may seem surprising if only because Iran has earned almost $150 billion from oil exports since Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005. So, were did the money go?

Glenn Reynolds offers a guess.

Lumos

Wikipedia: Spells in Harry Potter.

I bet that 'Accio' would be Homer Simpson's favorite spell. Accio Remote! would be handy. And I can see him yelling Accio Beer! and then a can hitting him in the head.

Doh!

Unhealthy Imports

MSNBC:

Mexican cantaloupe irrigated with water from sewage-tainted rivers. Candy laced with lead. Chinese toothpaste is not the only concern for U.S. consumers wary of the health risks posed by imported goods.

Yikes.

China, already under suspicion as the source of tainted toothpaste, contaminated fish and toxic medicine, had the largest number of violations in the past 12 months, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejecting 1,901 shipments of food or cosmetics. But India and Mexico weren’t far behind, with inspectors rejecting 1,787 and 1,560 shipments, respectively.

What's even more scary?

FDA inspectors only have the money and resources to check about 1 percent of the 8.9 million imported food shipments a year. Many of those inspections target problem products from problem nations, like Indian relishes or Mexican cantaloupe.

Little Time For Posts

Too much work and other stuff to take care of.

Iranian Police - Squirrel Division

Conservative Propaganda:

Iranian police have arrested fourteen squirrels for spying, reports the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

Wow.

Now, I kinda hope this is true and the CIA is behind this because it would mean my tax dollars are going to a good cause, making the crazy-ass Iranian madmen spend their time chasing spy squirrels. Maybe the CIA is fomenting a secret squirrel revolution in Iran, one nut at a time.

Hunh.

Denying Humanity

Tariq Nelson:

One day, I received a phone call from an old friend. This brother – if you saw him – personifies sternness upon the Sunnah. His non-Muslim mother had just passed away and he felt sad. He had not seen her in over three years and she’d never even met his wife and children. This had caused him to reflect on where his life had gone for the years that he had been Muslim. He was in an unhappy “stranger marriage”, with no money, had cut off his non-Muslim family and was feeling lonely and depressed despite the outer appearance of firmly being upon the Sunnah and having a wife and children.

What follows is a detailed explanation of a fanaticism in Muslim circles.

Converts are not only expected to completely disavow their former beliefs, but also all of their happy experiences of the past. “Astaghfirullah!” is usually the exhortation, as if simply by mentioning that the church had a nice youth center, a convert is questioning Islam.

Within these movements, converts are instructed to tell themselves that they really hated every moment of the times at Sunday dinner at Big Momma’s. We must tell ourselves: The past was all bad and all evil and then I became Muslim.

Such converts inflict this misery upon themselves because the umma is obsessed with purity and impressions.

Within this, the “everyday Muslim” – who did not necessarily cut off the family and old friends - becomes torn between what is natural and these instructions on how to be this lifeless Muslim. Muhammad Al-Shareef mentioned that he thought that many Muslims are depressed because they live two lives. One life when they are around Muslims and the other life they lead when they walk out of the door.

What an identity.

Please, Go Easy On Us Dhimmis

Gates of Vienna:

Last year Jens Orback, the Democracy Minister in the former Social Democratic government of Sweden, caused a stir by saying on a state radio program, “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and the Muslims so that when we become the minority they will be the same towards us.”

Oh yes, we're all familiar with the famous Islamic tolerance for minorities. I'm sure the Swedes will get the exact same treatment.

Now a Dutch government minister has added her own voice to the chorus of accommodation, capitulation, and dhimmification in Europe.

Stuff that crocodile with sugar! He'll definitely be sweet to you in the future.