The growth of radical Islam

[Rudey]

Originally posted by AnonAlumna
I don't really know that much about Islam, but I did recently read an article about 'Honor Killings' among Muslims. Is that part of their religion too?

...just curious...

This was written by Salman Rushdie in the New York Times this weekend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/op...ushdie.html?hp

July 10, 2005
India and Pakistan's Code of Dishonor

By SALMAN RUSHDIE
IN honor-and-shame cultures like those of India and Pakistan, male honor resides in the sexual probity of women, and the "shaming" of women dishonors all men. So it is that five men of Pakistan's powerful Mastoi tribe were disgracefully acquitted of raping a villager named Mukhtar Mai three years ago. Theirs was an "honor rape," intended to punish a relative of Ms. Mukhtar for having been seen with a Matsoi woman. The acquittals have now been suspended by the Pakistan Supreme Court, and there is finally a chance that this courageous woman may gain some measure of redress for her violation.

Pakistan, however, has little to be proud of. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that there were 320 reported rapes in the first nine months of last year, and 350 reported gang rapes in the same period. The number of unreported rapes is believed to be much larger. The victim pressed charges in only one-third of the reported cases, and a mere 39 arrests were made. The use of rape in tribal disputes has become, one might say, normal. And the belief that a raped woman's best recourse is to kill herself remains widespread and deeply ingrained.

For every Mukhtar Mai there are dozens of such suicides. Nor is courage any guarantee of getting justice, as the case of Shazia Khalid shows. Dr. Khalid was raped last year in the province of Baluchistan by security personnel at the hospital where she worked. A Pakistani tribunal failed to convict anyone of the crime.

Dr. Khalid says that she was subsequently "threatened so many times" that she was forced to flee Pakistan. "I was hounded out," she says, expressing dissatisfaction that the government neither brought her attackers to justice nor protected her from the threats that followed.

That is the same government, led by President Pervez Musharraf, that confiscated Mukhtar Mai's passport because it feared she would go abroad and say things that would bring Pakistan into disrepute; and it is the same government that has allied with the West in the war on terrorism, but seems quite prepared to allow a war of sexual terror to be waged against its female citizens.

Now comes even worse news. Whatever Pakistan can do, India, it seems, can trump. The so-called Imrana case, in which a Muslim woman from a village in northern India says she was raped by her father-in-law, has brought forth a ruling from the powerful Islamist seminary Darul-Uloom ordering her to leave her husband because as a result of the rape she has become "haram" (unclean) for him. "It does not matter," a Deobandi cleric has stated, "if it was consensual or forced."

Darul-Uloom, in the village of Deoband 90 miles north of Delhi, is the birthplace of the ultra-conservative Deobandi cult, in whose madrassas the Taliban were trained. It teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of Islam that exists anywhere in the world today. In one fatwa it suggested that Jews were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Not only the Taliban but also the assassins of The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl were followers of Deobandi teachings.

Darul-Uloom's rigid interpretations of Shariah law are notorious, and immensely influential - so much so that the victim, Imrana, a woman under unimaginable pressure, has said she will abide by the seminary's decision in spite of the widespread outcry in India against it. An innocent woman, she will leave her husband because of his father's crime.

Why does a mere seminary have the power to issue such judgments? The answer lies in the strange anomaly that is the Muslim personal law system - a parallel legal system for Indian Muslims, which leaves women like Imrana at the mercy of the mullahs. Such is the historical confusion on this vexed subject that anyone who suggests that a democratic country should have a single, unified legal system is accused of being anti-Muslim and in favor of the hardline Hindu nationalists.

In the 1980's, a divorced woman named Shah Bano was granted "maintenance money" by the Indian Supreme Court. But there is no alimony under Islamic law, so orthodox Indian Islamists like those at Darul-Uloom protested that this ruling infringed the Muslim Personal Law, and they founded the All-India Muslim Law Board to mount protests. The government caved in, passing a bill denying alimony to divorced Muslim women. Ever since Shah Bano, Indian politicians have not dared to challenge the power of Islamist clerical grandees.

In the Imrana case, the All-India Muslim Law Board has unsurprisingly backed the Darul-Uloom decision, though many other Muslim and non-Muslim organizations and individuals have denounced it. Shockingly, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has also backed the Darul-Uloom fatwa. "The decision of the Muslim religious leaders in the Imrana case must have been taken after a lot of thought," he told reporters in Lucknow. "The religious leaders are all very learned and they understand the Muslim community and its sentiments."

This is a craven statement. The "culture" of rape that exists in India and Pakistan arises from profound social anomalies, its origins lying in the unchanging harshness of a moral code based on the concepts of honor and shame. Thanks to that code's ruthlessness, raped women will go on hanging themselves in the woods and walking into rivers to drown themselves. It will take generations to change that. Meanwhile, the law must do what it can.

In Pakistan, the Supreme Court has taken one small but significant step in the matter of Mukhtar Mai; now it is for the police and politicians to start pursuing rapists instead of hounding their victims. As for India, at the risk of being called a communalist, I must agree that any country that claims to be a modern, secular democracy must secularize and unify its legal system, and take power over women's lives away, once and for all, from medievalist institutions like Darul-Uloom.

-Rudey

[Tom Earp]

If You Really feel that strongly, then why not move to Iserial and fight for them and what you feel?

Sorry Rudey, but Your posts seem to get more disjointed!

[Rudey]

Originally posted by Tom Earp
If You Really feel that strongly, then why not move to Iserial and fight for them and what you feel?

Sorry Rudey, but Your posts seem to get more disjointed!

I'm not from "Iserial". I'm American.

-Rudey

[Tom Earp]

Kewel Dude!

Good for you, but you live in a foreign city, Chicago!

Still never answer a question do you?

Oh, I am picking on Rudey, woe is me!

Not for YOU Dude for for the Jaw Bone of The Ass!

Oh, She will find it and Fumigate I Hope!

[Rudey]

Fundamentalist Muslims object to free speech:
A newspaper in Norway published a cartoon with pictures of Mohammed in them. Countries across Europe like France have also published these cartoons as a right to free speech. This may be similar to the voluminous number of books that are anti-semitic, anti-American, and anti-Christian that can be found in bookstores in place like Egypt. Some may say it's not anywhere nearly as bad as the hate literature found in the Muslim world.

Fundamentalists believe Islam should be the law:
Muslims are angry because their religion doesn't allow for any depictions of Mohammed. They are also angry because one of those cartoons has Mohammed with a bomb around his head - a reference to the (mis)use of Islam as a directive for violence and terrorism.

Fundamentalists attack Europeans and Christians:
As a result, Muslims are rioting and have attacked embassies in their countries as well as threatened Europeans and Christians (and their churches). Today they set fire to the embassies of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in Syria and the government there stood by and refused to protect them. Saudi Arabia has proposed a boycott of goods - a clear violation of the WTO accords which it has signed up for.

-Rudey
--Religion is the opiate of the masses.

[_Opi_]

Originally posted by Rudey
[B]Fundamentalist Muslims object to free speech:
A newspaper in Norway published a cartoon with pictures of Mohammed in them. Countries across Europe like France have also published these cartoons as a right to free speech. This may be similar to the voluminous number of books that are anti-semitic, anti-American, and anti-Christian that can be found in bookstores in place like Egypt. Some may say it's not anywhere nearly as bad as the hate literature found in the Muslim world.

dude, even nonfundamentalist muslims object to this kind of free speech. It was a blatant attack on the religion. Hate literature anywhere should not be tolerated by any country and should not be re-printed in other countries.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by _Opi_
dude, even nonfundamentalist muslims object to this kind of free speech. It was a blatant attack on the religion. Hate literature anywhere should not be tolerated by any country and should not be re-printed in other countries.

First of all, you may not like the subject, but if it's free speech, it's free speech.

Second of all, what was an attack on religion?

Printing a picture of Mohammed? Muslim rules are not global law no matter how much the fundamentalists want it.

Was it criticizing the huge use of violence in the name of Islam?

Was it the fact that it was done by non-Muslims? Actually it was printed in Jordan as well. Are Muslims attacking Islam? I'm confused.

Really the only attacks are the attacks on free speech, the attacks on Europeans embassies (even of countries that didn't print the images), the threats on Christians, the murder of European artists, the Fatwas issued by Jihadists to kill writers like Salman Rushdie and artists, and the threats against the lives of feminist Muslims in Europe.

Muslims have repeatedly put out television shows, books, newspaper articles that are filled with hate speech, racism, anti-semitism, and bigotry. In Egypt they had a television show dedicated to "The Protocols of Zion" one of the most anti-semitic books ever written, and Egypt was a supposedly moderate Muslim country that receives billions in US aid. Their Foreign Minister had the nerve to the the UN that the Dutch need to pressure their newspapers to not put out things like that. Dutch Muslims have now started to pass out cartoons showing Anne Frank in bed with Adolf Hitler and cartoons denying the existance of the Holocaust. The Arab European League now carries them on its website. That is HATE speech. That is BIGOTRY. Once again Muslims display their sheer anti-semitism. Is this rare? Is this an outlier?? Visit www.memri.org for translated media from the Muslim world and tell me how much hate speech you see on a daily basis.

Many Muslims protested peacefully against the pictures. It is their absolute right to do so. It would have been great if they protested peacefully against the murder of artists and if they protested peacefully against the animals that burn down embassies and bite the hand that feeds them as well. It would have been wonderful if they said "No more racism, anti-semitism, and bigotry and Arab and Muslim media" and it would have been even better if they said "You know what? Jews had nothing to do with this so let's not be anti-semites yet again".

-Rudey

[_Opi_]

Originally posted by Rudey


Second of all, what was an attack on religion?

it's not the fact that they drew our prophet per say...but more about the content of that drawing...i.e. bomb as a turban...get it?

it's offensive..

[AnchorAlum]

Wait a minute, _O_. I thought Islam forbade likenesses of the prophet, Period. What I've read on the subject is that it is done to avoid the appearance of idolatry, which is objectionable to Muslims.

Now, I admit that the bomb/turban thing is insult to injury if you are Islamic, but it's not the "main driver" of the offense, if what I read is correct.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by _Opi_
it's not the fact that they drew our prophet per say...but more about the content of that drawing...i.e. bomb as a turban...get it?

it's offensive..

Actually it is the fact that they drew Mohammed as well. And yes they also drew him with a bomb. How is that offensive? Would a sword have been better? Did Mohammed not kill? Did he not kill in a rather Machiavellian manner? Those are rhetorical questions. Mohammed killed and conquered and slaughtered.

I want you to spell out how the bomb is offensive. Is it not a matter of killing? Do many terrorists not use Islam as justification in their killings and jihads - whether in the bombs they blow up school buildings with or the swords that they use to cut off the heads of innocent civilians?

You have ignored the rest of my post as well. Clearly this is not hate. Even a Jordanian newspaper carried it. Hate is what so many Muslims have practiced across the world - from the hate in the media in Egypt to the hate in the Muslim communities across Europe. Hate is the current anti-semitism in the Hitler cartoons that mock Anne Frank and deny the holocaust. Hopefully the combination of Muslim hate, Iranian nuclear ambitions, and the Muslim desire to eliminate innate human freedoms will push Europe to stop the creation of Eurabia.

When Van gogh was killed a while back you seem to have interjected at the time that his work was offensive to Muslims - as if that offense could justify murder (if it didn't, it had nothing to do with the subject).

I have said in the past that I do not know of a solution to these jihadists - which there are a lot of. I think it would be interesting if a new religion was created called "Peaceful Islam" which rejected violence, hate and terrorism, and saw itself as formally separate from the others. At that point it would remove a lot of the gray area. The problem is much more than the "Wahabists".

-Rudey

[Rudey]

Originally posted by AnchorAlum
Wait a minute, _O_. I thought Islam forbade likenesses of the prophet, Period. What I've read on the subject is that it is done to avoid the appearance of idolatry, which is objectionable to Muslims.

Now, I admit that the bomb/turban thing is insult to injury if you are Islamic, but it's not the "main driver" of the offense, if what I read is correct.

I also have to ask (as a side note) why it's forbidden to draw a likeness of Mohammed if he is not a god. In that case wouldn't he be human? And if you can have drawings of the Ayatollah, why not of Mohammed? Someone can PM me that info if they know. Thanks

-Rudey

[AnchorAlum]

Tell me that non-Muslims in ANY Islamic country would be allowed to storm any embassy for any reason and live to tell about it.

Sorry, but France last fall, Scandinavian countries now. London last summer. It's a frightful last test of Europe's will.

Europe is reaping what they've sown. Acquiescence to a growing Islamic population, and refusing to demand that they assimilate culturally or go back to their primitive pile of sand has brought this about.
No one demands that they change their religion, but if your religion prevents you from assimilating into the culture, then you have to make a choice, and your new country should expect no less.

[Rudey]

Originally posted by AnchorAlum
Tell me that non-Muslims in ANY Islamic country would be allowed to storm any embassy for any reason and live to tell about it.

Sorry, but France last fall, Scandinavian countries now. London last summer. It's a frightful last test of Europe's will.

Europe is reaping what they've sown. Acquiescence to a growing Islamic population, and refusing to demand that they assimilate culturally or go back to their primitive pile of sand has brought this about.
No one demands that they change their religion, but if your religion prevents you from assimilating into the culture, then you have to make a choice, and your new country should expect no less.

Don't forget Spain.

They even attacked churches in Lebanon. They threatened Catholic churches in Gaza. Then they put out pictures denying the Holocaust.

The people under attack are non-Muslims and the victims are non-Muslims.

I think the only country that's on their side that they want to attack now is Canada (G-d forbid).

-Rudey

[AnchorAlum]

I truly believe that radical Islamism has a goal - the destruction of Christianity - immediately following the eradication of Judaism - and the societies and cultures where the two faiths are practiced today.

Europe seems to be a deer caught in the headlights. Do we let the Islamofascists take them over and then aim their sights at us? Does Europe have the will to take their culture and their continent back?

[PiKA2001]

Originally posted by AnchorAlum

Europe seems to be a deer caught in the headlights. Do we let the Islamofascists take them over and then aim their sights at us? Does Europe have the will to take their culture and their continent back?

In regards to terrorism I don't see Europe taking any drastic measures anytime soon. They are treating it like it's a little problem ( like unemployment ). They are in that sense no different than America was before 9/11.