Studying honor killings is not the same as sensationalizing them — but Columbia University professor Lila Abu-Lughod disagrees. Moreover, she believes that indigenous Arab and Muslim behavior, including honor-related violence, is best understood as a consequence of Western colonialism — perhaps even of “Islamophobia.”
On October 25, 2010, at the American University of Beirut, Abu-Lughod admonished feminists who ostensibly sensationalize honor killings, a position which, in her opinion, represents “simplistic, civilizational thinking.” She “warned that an obsessive focus on the so-called honor crime may have negative repercussions” and that “people should be wary of classifying certain acts as a distinctive form of violence against women.” (Her remarks are summarized in a press release published by the university. According to the university, the article on which the speech is based will be published early next year in Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies.)
British Muslims chanted pure ugliness, “British soldiers burn in hell,” defaming yesterday’s Armistice Day ceremony in London. This is down-right disgusting. These Muslims come to the UK to live the good life — obviously better than where they were living — but spit on the nation that protects their freedoms.
Salim Mansur wrote recently that the many Western Muslims are busy producing the, “manufactured problem of ‘Islamophobia’,” and that, regarding Islamist atrocities, the, “…silence of Muslim minorities in the West is even more despicable than that of Arab-Muslim governments. It reveals how little they understand, or respect, the political culture of societies where they have made their homes.”
Six years ago, on November 11, 2004, Yasir Arafat died. On that occasion, former President Bill Clinton explained why he wouldn’t attend Arafat’s funeral: “I regret that in 2000 he missed the opportunity to bring [Palestine] into being….” Not Israel, but Arafat did so.
Today, the Arafat era’s lessons have been largely swept under the rug: his persistent mendacity, use of terrorism, cynical exploitation of an “underdog” posture to garner sympathy, and unfailing devotion to the dream of wiping Israel off the map. The placing of that last priority over creating a Palestinian state is why there is none today. Not Israeli policy, not settlements, but the preference for total victory over compromise.
If you were arrested for speaking on public streets, where would you turn for help? These days, the answer may depend on what you were saying.
Suppose you were arrested for marching through the streets of Dearborn, Michigan, protesting Israeli policies against Palestinians. Unquestionably, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) would support your rights, even filing suit on your behalf.
Suppose, instead, you were arrested for preaching Christianity on the streets of Dearborn. Would you ask the ACLU for help? Would it help you? Well, maybe.
Consider the four people arrested on June 18, 2010, for proselytizing passersby at Dearborn’s Arab International Festival. Certainly the ACLU agreed that the arrests had violated the missionaries’ constitutional rights. The state ACLU chapter’s legal director told the Michigan Messenger that “the man encouraging others to convert to Christianity was engaged in speech protected by the First Amendment.” But that is all. The organization did not issue any press releases to that effect, address the matter on its website, or reference it in listserv emails.
Courage. Honor. Duty. Sacrifice. Veterans have walked the walk, so how can I put into words my gratitude and admiration for their service in protecting this great nation? Thank you veterans.
Christians in Iraq have been, and not for the first time, deliberately targeted in a major terrorist attack. Indeed, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Iraq, from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to Sudan to Nigeria, Christians are being assaulted, intimidated, and murdered by militant Muslims.
Yet virtually never do Christians in any of these countries-perhaps with some occasional exceptions in India–attack Muslims. In the West, there have been no armed terrorist attacks on Muslims or the deliberate killing of Muslims. There does not exist a single group advocating such behavior.
The commentary is in French, but you’ll get the point. Enjoy the satire, Islam à la française — and if ya’ can’t take a joke, move to Iran and become one Ahmadinejad’s thought police:
Salim Mansur writes eloquently about the deafening silence of many Muslims when blood is spilled in the name Islam. He emphasizes that the “…silence of Muslim minorities in the West is even more despicable than that of Arab-Muslim governments. It reveals how little they understand, or respect, the political culture of societies where they have made their homes.” From the Toronto Sun:
The non-Muslim world is increasingly not surprised and unmoved by the depravity of Muslim jihadis committing outrage, one after another without end in sight, and what can only be explained, unsatisfactorily, as a pathological wish to cause pain to the living by random acts of terrorist violence.
The murderous attack on the church in central Baghdad last Sunday by Muslim terrorists, if we go with the news reports, was merely another not unusual blood-soaked event in the daily cycle of news from Muslim countries.
But if such an atrocity was not just another criminal event in a “normal” day across the Arab-Muslim world, then we should have heard of a special meeting being called at the UN, or in one of the capitals of member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, to express outrage against those who killed innocent worshippers inside Our Lady of Deliverance Syriac Catholic Church in Baghdad.
We then should have heard of Muslim political and religious leaders expressing their grief over the dead and wounded — there were some 120 Iraqi Christians in attendance at the Sunday evening mass when Muslim terrorists attacked the church and left 58 dead with only a dozen escaping unhurt. …
“That is the best-organized lobby; you shouldn’t underestimate the grip it has on American politics–no matter whether it’s Republicans or Democrats.”[1] This recent comment by the European Union trade commissioner and former Belgian foreign minister, Karel de Gucht, epitomizes the pervasive belief that a Jewish-Zionist-Israel lobby has undue influence on U.S. Middle East policy.
This idea predates the establishment of the state of Israel. For the most part, the discussion was kept behind closed doors and limited primarily to State Department Arabists, but it gradually became popular among those who held a grudge (such as Congressman Paul Findley, who blamed his defeat in a reelection bid in 1982 on the lobby[2]) or who were open enemies of Israel (e.g., Pat Buchanan).[3] The recent publication of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,[4] however, gave a patina of academic legitimacy to the long whispered complaints of the anti-Israel establishment.
“Today we gather to pay tribute to the life and legacy of the greatest Jewish leader of our time,” said Gennadiy Fabyshenko, a Russian-Jewish activist who taken the lead role in organizing previous yahrzeit commemorations for Rabbi Kahane, ZTK”L. Over 500 people gathered at the Ocean Avenue Jewish Center in Brooklyn on Sunday, November 7th to commemorate the 20th yahrzeit of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and head of the Kach party in Israel. Rabbi Kahane was assassinated on November 5, 1990 at the Marriott Hotel in New York by Egyptian terrorist, El Sayyid Nosair.
Kochav Segal HaLevi, a Jewish security guard, legally bought a house in the mixed Muslim-Christian Arab village of Ibillin in northern Israel, east of Haifa. Upon moving in, however, he discovered that the locals [Arabs] are unwilling to let Jews live there.
It is a well known fact in Israel that Jews who try to live in Arab villages risk their lives, while Arabs live freely in Jewish neighborhoods. While leftist journalists and politicians, inside Israel and out, portray Israeli Jews as racist for fighting Arab invasions of their cities, stories like this one — which show Arabs’ zero tolerance for Jews in their neighborhoods…
The Department of Justice annually awards millions of dollars in grants to local governments to compensate for the cost of jailing illegal aliens, even when those governments have policies obstructing immigration law enforcement or encouraging illegal settlement. In 2010, the grant program, known as the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), doled out a total of roughly $400 million to about 850 cities, counties, and states.1 Among them were 27 jurisdictions widely considered to be sanctuary jurisdictions, which together received more than $62.6 million, or 15.6 percent of the total (see Table 1). For example, the 2010 SCAAP grantees include some jurisdictions — such as San Francisco, Chicago, Santa Clara County, Calif., and Arlington, Va. — that are trying to opt-out of Secure Communities, the program that automatically flags criminal aliens for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attention at the time they are booked into jail.2
–The UN annual Human Development Report for 2010 ranks Israel at number 15 of 169 countries in the world in terms of the health, education, freedom, and income of its citizens.
–Well worth reading, Steven J. Rosen, “The Arab Lobby: The European Component.” Despite the title, it also includes new information on the history of U.S.-Israel relations and on Arab lobbies in the United States.
–Danny Seaman, director of the Foreign Press Office, discusses the Western media and Israel in a long interview. But the article also includes what might be the best succinct statement I’ve ever seen on the development of Israeli worldview and perceptions:
I have just been told that the global protests against the imminent execution of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani have been successful; her execution has, once again, been delayed.
… in December 2007. … Over a U.S. objection, the other U.N. member states voted to approve the budget. This decision not only demonstrated a general disregard for the concerns of the U.N.’s largest financier–the U.S. is currently assessed 22 percent of the U.N. regular budget and over 27 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget–but also broke a 20-year tradition of adopting budgetary decisions only by consensus. …
At least Bush the administration objected to this madness, but “the Obama Administration did not even demand a vote on the proposed budget this past December.” What are we? Sheep? After last week’s elections, I’d say, “No,” but our country still has a sheep in the Oval Office. Baaaahhhhh. To add insult to injury in this three-ring circus, UN Watchreported yesterday:
… The U.S. was ambushed today at its first UN Human Rights Council review after Cuba successfully stacked the speakers list with rogue regimes and other vehement critics. Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, China, Algeria, Bolivia, Nicaragua and several Muslim states accused America of genocide, war crimes, and systematic anti-Muslim and anti-African racism. …
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