Entries Tagged 'Islam' ↓

The government is set to try–finally!–the worst of the terrorists in Guantanamo and will seek the death penalty for six individuals, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. See
this.

I’d like to hear whether Senators Clinton and Obama will seek the death penalty against these guys.

Do you really think they will be executed? Or will these trials by military tribunal end up putting America on trial before the world for Guantanamo, the war in Iraq, waterboarding, etc., etc.?

Back to the controversy over the Archbishop of Canterbury saying that England should accept at least a limited jurisdiction of Islamic law (sharia). . . . Some of you said that the Archbishop’s statement was misinterpreted and taken out of context, that it was more nuanced than the reports indicated and that it was not so bad.  We should read what he actually said.  Well,  Anne Applebaum did, and here is her conclusion:

Arguing that his remarks were misunderstood, misinterpreted and taken out of context, his office even took the trouble to publish them, in lecture form and the radio interview version, on his official Web site. I highly recommend a closer look. Reading them, it instantly becomes clear that every syllable of the harshest tabloid criticism is more than well deserved. The archbishop’s language is mild-mannered, legalistic, jargon-riddled; the sentiments behind them are profoundly dangerous.   

What one British writer called the ” jurisprudential kernel” of his thoughts is as follows: In the modern world, we must avoid the “inflexible or over-restrictive applications of traditional law” and must be wary of our “universalist Enlightenment system,” which risks “ghettoizing” a minority. Instead, we must embrace the notion of “plural jurisdiction.” This, in other words, was no pleasant fluff about tolerance for foreigners: This was a call for the evisceration of the British legal system as we know it.

I understand, of course, that sharia courts vary from country to country, that not every Muslim country stones adulterers and that some British Muslims volunteer to let unofficial sharia courts monitor their domestic disputes, which is not much different from choosing to work things out with the help of a marriage counselor. But the archbishop’s speech actually touched on something far more fundamental: the question of whether all aspects of the British legal system necessarily apply to all the inhabitants of Britain.

This is no merely theoretical issue, since conflicts between sharia law and British law arise ever more frequently. . . .Police in Wales are dealing with an epidemic of forced marriages, honor killings remain a perennial problem, and British law has already been altered to accommodate “sharia” mortgages. The archbishop is absolutely right in his belief that a universalist Enlightenment system — one in which the legitimacy of the law derives from democratic procedures, not divine edicts, and in which the same rules apply to everyone living in the same society — cannot easily accommodate all of these different practices.

I enjoy seeing liberal folk get hoisted on their own petard (virtual contest:  explain that figure of speech), so I especially appreciated Applebaum’s accusing the politically-correct archbishop of racial intolerance: 

His beliefs are merely an elaborate, intellectualized version of a commonly held, and deeply offensive, Western prejudice: Alone among all of the world’s many religious groups, Muslims living in Western countries cannot be expected to conform to Western law — or perhaps do not deserve to be treated as legal equals of their non-Muslim neighbors.  

Every time police shrug their shoulders when a Muslim woman complains that she has been forced to marry against her will, every time a Western doctor tries not to notice the female circumcisions being carried out in his hospital, they are acting in the spirit of the archbishop of Canterbury. So is the social worker who dismisses the plight of an illiterate, house-bound woman, removed from her village and sent across the world to marry a man she has never met, on the grounds that her religion prohibits interference. That’s why — if there is to be war between the British tabloids [calling for his resignation] and the archbishop — I’m on the side of the Sun.

The Archbishop embraces Dhimmitude for England:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has today said that the adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the UK is “unavoidable” and that it would help maintain social cohesion.Rowan Williams told BBC Radio 4’s World At One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.       

On the contrary, having divided sovereignty does NOT help maintain social cohesion, but rather the reverse. And those who “do not relate” to the legal system still must obey it.And yet, it appears that the Archbishop’s capitulation to Islam may be waking up the Brits:  His remarks have caused an uproar and calls for his resignation.       

 UPDATE:   Anthony Sacaramone answers some of the defenders of what the Archbishop said, including in the comments here.  And so does  Mollie Hemingway.

It was bad enough that the jihadists in Iraq are turning mentally-handicapped women into suicide bombers.  Al-Qaida is also using  children as young as 10.  

Insurgents in Iraq made use of mentally handicapped women as suicide bombers. Indeed, they loaded up two women with Down’s Syndrome, those sweet-tempered children, and blew them up, killing nearly 80 other people.

How much more monstrous than the jihadists get? Can moral relativists rationalize THIS?

An updated version of the Three Little Pigs was turned down for a government prize in England because “the use of pigs raises cultural issues.” The Brits felt the story might be offensive to Muslims, who consider pigs to be unclean. But no Muslims even complained!

Note the progression from stifling oneself because of external fears to stifling oneself voluntarily for no good reason. Notice too how an earnest multiculturalism is destroying actual culture.

The Politically-Correct contortionist award goes to the British government for its Orwellian scheme of relabling Islamic terrorism “anti-Islamic activity.” Let’s let Canadian hate-speech defendant Mark Steyn tell about it:

My favorite headline of the year so far comes from The Daily Mail in Britain: “Government Renames Islamic Terrorism As ‘Anti-Islamic Activity’ To Woo Muslims.”

Her Majesty’s government is not alone in feeling it’s not always helpful to link Islam and the, ah, various unpleasantnesses with suicide bombers and whatnot. Even in his cowboy Crusader heyday, President Bush liked to cool down the crowd with a lot of religion-of-peace stuff. But the British have now decided that kind of mealy-mouthed “respect” is no longer sufficient. So, henceforth, any terrorism perpetrated by persons of an Islamic persuasion will be designated “anti-Islamic activity” Britain’s home secretary, Jacqui Smith, unveiled the new brand name in a speech a few days ago. “There is nothing Islamic about the wish to terrorize, nothing Islamic about plotting murder, pain and grief,” she told her audience. “Indeed, if anything, these actions are anti-Islamic.”

Steyn observes that during the Blitz no one called the Luftwaffe airstrikes “anti-German activity.” So will England label the surge in Iraq “pro-Islamic activity” or “anti-American activity”?

A 23-year-old Afghan journalist wrote an article jocularly wondering why, if men are allowed four wives under Islam, women aren’t allowed four husbands. For writing these words, he was convicted of insulting Islam and sentenced to death.

Diana West points out that the journalist was convicted by a government and under a constitution that the United States put into place. Afghanistan’s constitution provides for Western-style freedoms, including the freedom of speech and of the press, but goes on to say that the Shari’a law of the Koran trumps all, as the ultimate law of the land. This is also what the U.S.-imposed constitution of Iraq says. So, in the course of our wars against jihadist terrorism and despite our constitution’s religious neutrality, are we responsible for imposing Islamic law?

Not too long ago we discussed children’s Bible picture books. Well, the Islamic government of Malaysia is confiscating Christian books that picture Abraham, Moses, Jesus, or other Biblical figures who are recognized by Islam as prophets. Islam forbids visual representations of holy figures, so even non-Muslims must do the same.

And remember how some liberal Christians were saying that we should just use “Allah” for God, since the word is simply the Arabic word for the deity? Well, the Islamic government of Malaysia has also outlawed Christians or any other non-Muslims from using the term “Allah.” This, in effect, prevents Christians from saying the word “God” in the Arabic language.

Read this.

An Iranian filmmaker has made a movie depicting the life of Jesus according to Islam. The film, “Jesus, the Spirit of God” depicts Him as a prophet, not as the incarnate God, and it denies that He was actually crucified. According to the movie and to the Koran, God snatched Jesus up to Heaven at the last minute and put Judas on the cross instead. According to Islam, God did not die for sinners; sinners have to die for God.

Nevertheless, the filmmaker said that he made the movie to show how much Christians and Muslims have in common. Another similarity is that Shi’ite Muslims believe that when the 12th Mahdi returns to earth to set up his kingdom, Jesus will come with him.

A piece on how a court ruling opens up the possibility of Islamic law being applied in a libel case gives more evidence of how Islam may indeed become THE postmodernist religion:

In the U.S., the Supreme Court’s seminal 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan decision defined libel or slander by a journalist as stating or writing falsehoods or misrepresentations that damage someone’s reputation—and in cases of public figures, doing so with malice.

Under sharia, by contrast, libel constitutes any oral or written remark offensive to a complainant, regardless of its accuracy or intent. Slander “means to mention anything concerning a person that he would dislike, whether about his body, religion, everyday life, self, disposition, property, son, father, wife, servant, turban, garment, gait, movements, smiling, dissoluteness, frowning, cheerfulness, or anything else connected with him,” according to Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368).

If truth is relative, how can there be slander or libel laws? The answer has to be that slander must consist of words that someone does not LIKE and so finds “offensive.” In our popular discourse, we have ALREADY adopted the Islamic definition.

Read this account of a young woman who converted from Islam to Christianity–how her father, the imam of a mosque, and the rest of her family are trying to kill her and how she has been in hiding for over a decade. This is happening not in some backward Middle Eastern emirate but in today’s ENGLAND. A sample:

Hannah was born in Lancashire to Pakistani parents who raised her and her siblings as strict Sunni Muslims.

She prayed and read the Koran, wore traditional Muslim clothes and was sent to a madrassa, a religious Muslim school.

She ran away from home at 16 after overhearing her father organising her arranged marriage.

Hannah was taken in by a religious education teacher and decided to convert to the Christian faith.

Although unhappy, her parents tolerated their daughter’s dismissal-of Islam as a “teenage phase”.

But when she opted to get baptised, while studying at Manchester University, her family were incensed and the death threats began.

Her father arrived at her home with 40 men and threatened to kill her for betraying Islam.

“I saw my uncle and around 40 men storming up the street clutching axes, hammers, knives and bits of wood,” she said.

“My dad was shouting through the letter box, “I’m going to kill you”, while the others smashed on the window and beat the door.

“They were shouting, ‘We’re going to kill you’ and ‘Traitor’.

“It was terrifying. I was convinced I was going to either die, but suddenly after about ten minutes the noise stopped and the men suddenly went away.”

Since then Hannah, who gives talks to churches on Islam, has been on the run from her family, often being forced to flee her home with only a few minutes’ notice.