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From that well-known organ of Islamophobia, The Guardian:
A Muslim woman juror who was arrested for apparently listening to an MP3 player under her hijab during a murder trial is facing jail for contempt of court. She is said to have used the traditional headscarf to hide headphones while ignoring vital evidence from a retired businessman who bludgeoned his disabled wife to death.
Fred Thompson makes some excellent points about Iran’s reported unhappiness with the movie ‘300′.
It does pretty much beggar belief that a regime which sponsors a conference entitled “A World Without Israel” can complain that a work of fiction, representing events that happened thousands of years ago, is an act of warfare against it.
Anyway, I think this guy would make a pretty good president.
According to The Economist, a report by the Arab Association for Human Rights and the Centre Against Racism has accused airport staff at Ben-Gurion Airport of discriminating against Arabs.
I’m very happy to see that Arab organisations are taking an interest in human rights and racism. Maybe I should contact them, to tell them about an experience I had recently. I met with an employment agent to discuss job opportunities, and he started to excitedly tell me about a very lucrative position in Bahrain. Then he suddenly stopped, probably having noticed my yarmulke, and said, “Sorry, I’ve just realised that wouldn’t really work, now, would it?” Because of course anyone with an Israeli passport, or even just a stamp of entry into Israel, would be denied entry into most Arab countries. How’s that for discrimination? A bit stronger than so-called harassment by airport security, I would have thought. (And as anyone who has been to Israel can attest, airport security is pretty stringent for everybody, Arab, Jew, Gentile, it doesn’t matter.)
So maybe this Centre Against Racism could help! Maybe they could get newspapers like The Economist to highlight this pretty blatant racism. Or how about the law in Jordan which specifically denies citizenship to Jews? I’m sure they’d be up in arms against that.
Wouldn’t they?
It’s sad that while supposed intellectuals and people who ought to know better sign up to the ridiculous “Independent Jewish Voices”, a Muslim can see the realities in Israel with far greater clarity than bandwagon-hopping Jews. I mean, how hard is it to find this stuff out? How long does it take to mentally compare apartheid South Africa with Israel?
Oh wait; I know what you’re going to say. She’s an Uncle Tom, a traitor to her own people. Unlike the noble IJV, who are brave dissenters, standing up for a view of Israel that is held by only, what, 90% of the British media? For which they face no threats of death; unlike Ms Manji and anyone else who dares to point out the uncomfortable truth about Islam.
Norm on the Independent Jewish Voices launched with such fanfare yesterday. Not much to add really: except continuing amazement that these people have the chutzpah to characterise criticism of their viewpoint as “oppression”, when non-Muslims (and even non-Sunnis) in the Arab world cannot even practice their religion except in secret. Ha. Aha.
Abbagav makes an excellent point:
How often have you heard the excuse that the suicide bombers and terrorist attackers go after Israeli civilians with ‘Allahu Akbar’ fury because they have no other choice, since they don’t have advanced weapons and missiles like Israel does? But now on Israel’s northern border, and coming from Gaza too, we see that the moment Jihadists do get their missiles, they don’t use them to go after Israeli artillery pieces as the apologists would have you expect. Now that Jihad has a choice, it still prefers sending its explosives at hospitals and city centers, as if the missile is just a suicide bomber upgrade. Yesterdays missile strike on Israeli reserve soldiers gathered for a meeting is the exception that proves the rule: it was essentially a lucky shot, the first notable hit against a military target after the prior 3000 Katyusha’s had landed on apartment buildings, schools and businesses from Haifa to Naharia to Tzfat, leaving Israel’s uniformed combatants and equipment massed near the border all but ignored.
And Israelinsider talks about one of the Jewish martyrs, an incredibly selfless young man who gave his life to save his comrades (not to kill innocents):
It was that same high moral sense that led Major Roi Klein (H.y.d.) to volunteer to lead his unit in Lebanon. Roi, 31 years old and the father of two boys, was an accomplished musician, a superb commander and a Torah scholar. When his unit was attacked in Bint J’beil, he and his men were surrounded in an ambush. One of the terrorists lobbed a grenade towards the group. Roi yelled out “Sh’ma Yisrael” and jumped on the grenade. He took the brunt of the explosion and saved many of his men. This, too, was a different sort of morality.
While the world’s media remains obsessed with Lebanese victims and Lebanese refugees, manipulated by blatantly twisted reporting by Arab stringers, as usual the Jewish victims and the Jewish refugees (one-third of the country has been pretty much evacuated!) struggle on, ignored, discounted, “only Jews, after all”. Thank G-d for America, and for the millions of Jews around the world who are supporting their brothers and sisters in Israel in their fight for their lives, with solidarity, prayers, money, and material aid. We stand with you, we support you, we honour you, and we will continue to tell the truth in the face of the lies. Israel, we are so proud of you! A light unto the nations indeed.
I have always thought that no one can really understand the economic performance of Moslem nations without studying Islam as religion and culture. The best indicator of the potential of growth and development of a nation is the status and role of women. Their exclusion means depriving the country of an important volume of workforce and talent. Moreover, their exclusion also undermines the desire of men to achieve success; spoiled from their childhood and treated as princes, men don’t feel the need to prove themselves.
However secular the tastes of the young Muslim men, they strongly wish to maintain the male dominance they have inherited from their parents. A sister who has the temerity to choose a boyfriend for herself, or who even expresses a desire for an independent social life, is likely to suffer a beating, followed by surveillance of Stasi-like thoroughness. The young men instinctively understand that their inherited system of male domination—which provides them, by means of forced marriage, with sexual gratification at home while simultaneously freeing them from domestic chores and allowing them to live completely Westernized lives outside the home, including further sexual adventures into which their wives cannot inquire—is strong but brittle, rather as communism was: it is an all or nothing phenomenon, and every breach must meet swift punishment.
Public opinion in Britain is mostly favourable towards Muslims, but the feeling is not requited by British Muslims, who are among the most embittered in the western world, according to a global poll published yesterday.
You know that moderate, peace-loving group that was overwhelmingly elected by the moderate, peace-loving Palestinians? Hamas, yes, that’s them. Well, it seems they think they’ve found a way to get over the “wall”, the security fence which Israel was forced to build to prevent them from coming to Israel and murdering innocent people. Only took them five years to think of it:
Hamas looking to fly planes into buildings
(I suppose it’s the American media that transliterates Hamas in that way, but since the English seem to cope with “loch” why don’t you call them “Chamas”?)
The poor old Catholic Church. It just can’t get no respect. Publish a few cartoons portraying Muhammed, and the world goes into an uproar. Newspapers are banned, editors are fired, the media fall over themselves to “protect Muslim sensitivities” (and their own backs. Or chests. Remember Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh?).
But make a film that denies the basic premise of Christianity, and accuses the Catholic Church of engaging in a millenia-long coverup of the true nature of the central divinity, and editorials excoriating Sony Pictures for its “insensitivity” towards Catholics and their beliefs are pretty thin on the ground. Couldn’t be because the threats of violence were also missing, could it?
Lacking any disturbingly violent followers, the Catholic Church is having to exercise its censorship envy in the courts, where, one imagines, the brave judges will have no problem upholding freedom of speech against the law-abiding. You see, having rules about freedom of speech that you’re only prepared to uphold if no-one behaves threateningly are kind of like laws against guns: the people who are the problem don’t care about the rules and the laws, so you end up with a warm fuzzy feeling of having the right intentions, without anything resembling a good result. Which is what seems to be important these days.
Following the introduction of the new “timewarp” protocol (the hypertext timewarp protocol, or httwp) I have discovered some pretty interesting websites from the near and far future. Since your browser may not be able to handle httwp yet, I’ve arranged a little mirror of the Republic World News site: it gives “Breaking News for the Islamic States of America”.