Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award Friday for an image of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen. … the image has religious ‘almost Biblical’ overtones and noted its resemblance in composition to Michelangelo’s Pieta — but in a Muslim setting. …”
“Almost Biblical.” Not… even… close… Comparing Michelangelo’s Pietà to some snapshot of a burqa-ed Muslim woman holding some injured Yemeni street protester is an ideal example of Westerners wearing rose-colored glasses. Many Western “intellectuals” are bending over backwards to placate the largely violent and intolerant Muslim World, because they want to believe in an “Arab Spring.” The Pietà “analogy” is not an analogy at all. It is political correctness gone mad.
The burqa-ed woman is wearing latex gloves, for Christ’s sake! Is she afraid of being soiled by or soiling the wounded man she’s holding? Why is the woman covered from head to toe in black, except for an eye-slit? Because Islamists are so repressed a la Freud that they can’t trust themselves to look upon their own women. The burqa is the sure sign of the third-place status of Muslim women — they can’t drive, work, or be seen to varying degrees depending on what dysfunctional Islamic country in which they reside. Yemen ranks worst in the world according to The Global Gender Gap Report.
Jesus was a man of peace. His mother Mary stood by his side through the worst of times — and she didn’t wear a burqa or latex gloves. “Jesus publicly included many women as his disciples” (see here also for Biblical citations). When Jesus rose from the dead, the first person he appeared to was Mary Magdalene.
So to you “jurors” for selecting the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award: You got it wrong. It’s a photo — and not the best I’ve ever seen. Do you morons remember who Michelangelo was and what he accomplished — like his David? Michelangelo’s work was sublime, not the product of some digital, idiot-proof, one-shot camera.
Among the second wave of Arab Spring uprisings that followed Tunisia, Syria was the most spectacular “out of the blue” that suddenly arose in the face of the media and analytic community. Just days before Deraa exploded with protests last March, some analysts were still scrutinizing Syria’s circumstances and declaring the country to be immune from the Arab Spring. Nor did reporters who visited the country spot signs of a brewing storm.
When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, they promptly demolished the Aztec capital (Tenochtitlan) and built a cathedral on top of the natives’ great and most important twin temples — the city center. Did the desecration/destruction of Tenochtitlan and slaughter of the Aztec people legitimize the Spanish conquest of the great Valley of Mexico? Of course not. The Spanish were greedy, murderous thugs. Similarly, Arabs invaded and destroyed Jerusalem in 691 A.D. and built their al-Aqsa mosque on top of the indigenous Jews’ most holy place. So yippee for the Arabs?
So now we find that Muslim Arabs point their fannies at the “sacred(?)” al-Aqsa Mosque during their daily prayers. That’s a strange way for showing reverence for the “third most important” Muslim shrine. It’s plain silly. Watch for yourself:
I’d like to share with you a secret. Every day I read and hear things by people who claim to be experts on the Middle East. I have read them on the land; I have read them on the sea; I have read them in the air.
And they will never surrender to reality. Here are the two main causes of error:
–They think the Middle East is just like the West so they can extrapolate from their own experience. When someone would say, “If I were Yasir Arafat, I’d….” My response would be: Stop right there. I must run out to the corner store and get a pack of cigarettes. I have never smoked a cigarette. And I kept on running. You are not Arafat or Khomeini or Saddam Hussein or whatever and unless you have some understanding of how they actually think–and not your own Western pragmatic interpretation of what they should think–there’s no sense in discussing it.
In 2005, Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal donated $20 million dollars each to Harvard and Georgetown Universities. In the years since, Georgetown has earned considerably more press for its use of the prince’s largesse, through which it renamed an extant center founded in 1993 as the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU). This is due in no small part to the efforts of the center’s director, John Louis Esposito, America’s foremost apologist for ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi Islam. The result of the Saudi-Esposito lash-up has been the emergence of ACMCU as an academic institution that promotes vigorously the “Palestinian narrative” and hostility to Israel.
On August 11, 2009, the Yemeni government launched “Operation Scorched Earth,” aimed at putting an end to the Huthi uprising that had destabilized the country’s northern province of Sa’da for more than five years. As fighting spread to the province’s border with Saudi Arabia, Huthi fighters attacked a Saudi border post in early November, killing one guard and injuring eleven. The Saudi government immediately declared that the rebels had crossed a red line and began bombing Huthi positions along the border. Yet what was apparently conceived as a quick operation to clear the region of “infiltrators” turned into a major operation involving ground troops and air power, which lasted slightly over three months and exacted more than a hundred Saudi casualties.[1]
One of the principal beneficiaries of the Arab uprisings has been Al Jazeera television. Viewers are praising the English and Arabic channels’ comprehensive coverage of the revolts while the Obama administration continues to court the network as part of its signature foreign policy goal of improving ties with the Arab and Muslim worlds.
As Canada (my country) knows all too well, when you get in bed with an elephant, you get squashed. Canada now has a semi-independent foreign policy with respect to Israel (we favour Israel over violent Islamic states but the USA has begun to distance itself away from Israel) and Canada has found a way to make its own decisions despite having such a large and domineering neighbour. We have found a way to develop our own economy and society while finding mutually beneficial arrangements with our largest trading partner (and we are the USA’s largest trading partner).
Although the wave of mass protests spreading through the Arabic-speaking countries may have begun to recede, it has left a wide-ranging impact on the region. Three authoritarian regimes have collapsed, and the rest are experiencing varying degrees of duress.
This emerging political and strategic landscape has major implications for Israeli national security. Regional turmoil has effectively ruled out a major advance in Arab-Israeli diplomacy, enabled Ankara and Tehran to expand their influence, continued the decline of U.S. influence, and emboldened extremists.
The Nigerian church bombings, in which the Islamic group Boko Haram ["Western Education Is Forbidden"] killed over 40 people celebrating Christmas mass, is just the most obvious example of anti-Christian sentiment in the Muslim world. Elsewhere in this region, Christmas time for Christians is a time of increased threats, harassment, and fear, which is not surprising, considering Muslim clerics maintain that “saying Merry Christmas is worse than fornication or killing someone.” A few examples:
In the course of the present unrest across the Middle East and North Africa, it has become clear that questions of identity are going to be extremely important in deciding the future paths of the various countries in turmoil, not only as regards the divide between Islamists and secularists, but also concerning ethnic and sectarian tensions in countries like Syria, Yemen, and Libya.
For Christians in the region, the issue of identity will similarly be important in determining ways to adapt to the changing political order. This naturally raises the problem of how exactly these Christians define themselves. For example, what does it mean to speak of an “Arab Christian”? Which Christians in the region feel the strongest affinity with such a description? Which ones reject it most vehemently?
Of course, conflicts between Sunni and Shia Muslims are not at all new, but the fact that this is becoming a central feature on the regional strategic level is a dramatic shift. After all, as long as there were secular-style regimes preaching an all-inclusive Arab nationalist identity, differences between religious communities were subordinated. Once there are Islamist regimes, theology becomes central again, as it was centuries ago.
However, no one should misunderstand the situation. This is fundamentally a struggle for political power and wealth. When Sunni and Shia states or movements battle they are acting as political entities not pursuing old theological disputes.
It’s not every day that the leader of a brand-new country makes his maiden foreign voyage to Jerusalem, capital of the most besieged country in the world, but Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, accompanied by his foreign and defense ministers, did just that in late December. Israel’s President Shimon Peres hailed his visit as a “moving and historic moment.” The visit spurred talk of South Sudan locating its embassy in Jerusalem, making it the only government anywhere in the world to do so.
The so-called “Arab Spring” continues to transition into a “Christian Winter,” including in those nations undergoing democratic change, such as Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis dominated the elections — unsurprisingly so, considering the Obama administration has actually been training Islamists for elections.
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) was reelected to a third term in June 2011. This remarkable achievement was mainly the result of the opposition’s weakness and the rapid economic growth that has made Turkey the world’s sixteenth largest economy. But Ankara’s growing international profile also played a role in the continued public support for the conservative, Islamist party. Indeed, in a highly unusual fashion, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began his victory speech by saluting “friendly and brotherly nations from Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Amman, Cairo, Sarajevo, Baku, and Nicosia.”[1] “The Middle East, the Caucasus, and the Balkans have won as much as Turkey,” he claimed, pledging to take on an even greater role in regional and international affairs. By 2023, the republic’s centennial, the AKP has promised that Turkey will be among the world’s ten leading powers.
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