Archive for the 'Islam' Category
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
From the Middle East Quarterly*
Following a lengthy period during which Hamas bombarded southern Israel unopposed, Israel finally attacked Gaza in an attempt to cripple Hamas’s fighting capabilities. The ensuing conflict in December 2008 and January 2009 led to a high casualty count on the Palestinian side. Even before the war ended, the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body thought biased against Israel, met at the behest of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in a special session to condemn the Israeli assault and to call for a mandate to carry out a fact-finding mission designed to investigate the conflict.
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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Islam, Israel, Military Tactics, Palestinians, Terrorist Groups, United Nations (UN) | No Comments »
Friday, March 12th, 2010
By Barry Rubin
I’m not going to bash or rant about a Newsweek article about Turkey by Owen Matthews–shocking and dangerous as it is–but rather talk about what is wrong and inaccurate about it. That article is part of a new wave of defeatism sweeping the West, though it still remains subordinate to the more ostensibly attractive idea that there is no real conflict or at least one easy to fix by Western concessions.
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Posted in Europe, Iran, Islam, Media/Blogsphere, Military Tactics, Palestinians, Political Correctness, Syria, Turkey | No Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010
by Johanna Markind*
Is Muhammad more deserving of reverential treatment than Jesus? The New York Times seems to think so.
A Times article reporting on the collapse of Christian communities in the Middle East contains two references to Jesus. Not “Christ,” which is a religious title, or “Jesus Christ,” but simply “Jesus,” who was (or may have been) a historical figure. The same is true of other Times stories and wire service articles published by the Times which no longer appear on its website (but still appear on other sites under different titles and are linked below). A December 21 story entitled “First Jesus-Era House Discovered in Nazareth” (AP byline) contains ten references to Jesus and none to Christ. Ditto another item, “Mass. School Denies Suspending Student for Drawing” (also AP), about a second grader who may have been suspended for drawing a figure of Jesus on the cross. Three references to Jesus, none to Christ.
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Posted in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Media/Blogsphere, Political Correctness | No Comments »
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
A briefing by Magdi Khalil*
Magdi Khalil is an Egyptian-born human rights activist and prominent figure on Arabic media, such as Al Jazeera and Al Ahram. He is director of the Middle East Freedom Forum, an Egyptian think-tank that campaigns for human rights, secularism, and democracy. On February 26, Mr. Khalil addressed the Middle East Forum via conference call on the situation of Egypt’s Copts.
If Islamists failed to terrorize America on Christmas Day, they amply succeeded in terrorizing the Copts, Egypt’s indigenous Christian minority, when they shot and murdered six Copts leaving church after Christmas mass. But according to Mr. Khalil, not only are the Copts increasingly being persecuted by Islamists; the Mubarak regime increasingly scapegoats them in order to redirect public anger from its own corruption and onto the Copts, exasperating an already intolerable situation for Egypt’s Christians. (Considering that Egypt bases its constitution on Shar’ia law, which mandates the subjugation of Christians, this is only to be expected.)
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Posted in Christianity, Egypt, Islam, Racism | No Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
By Andrew Whitehead
On Wednesday, March 3, Chicago’s WLS-TV I-Team reported that the Illinois State Police have reconsidered the appointment of Kifah Mustapha as a Muslim Chaplain. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is identified as the leading cause of Mustapha’s reconsideration.
Apparently, Kifah Mustapha was slated to become the State Police’s first Muslim Chaplain after completing a course he paid for himself. Completing the course, he was issued a state police ID card and bulletproof vest as part of his uniform package for use in the field and on ride-alongs.
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Posted in Extremists, Islam, Law, Political Correctness, Pure Politics, Terrorist Groups | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
By Fern Sidman
Hip Hop artists and graffiti virtuosos from New York painting their way throughout Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Sderot? Who’d a thunk it, but it appears that a new organization called Artists 4 Israel will be doing just that. Founded about a year ago following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, young artists in the New York area had just about enough of the incessant anti-Israel propaganda being spewed forth by the “politically correct” denizens of the radically left-wing enclaves that figure so prominently in the eclectic world of the New York artist and decided to do something about it.
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Posted in Activism, Anti-Semitism, Education, Islam, Israel, Music | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
by Raymond Ibrahim*
Is it inconsistent for Muslim “holy warriors” to engage in voyeuristic acts of lasciviousness? Because would-be jihadists and martyrs have been known to frequent strip bars — such as the 9/11 hijackers and Major Nidal Hasan, whose “late-night jiggle-joint carousing stands at odds with the picture of a devout Muslim” — many Americans have concluded that such men cannot be “true” Muslims, leading to the ubiquitous conviction that they are “hijacking Islam.”
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Posted in Corruption, Islam, Philosophy / Ideology, Psychology, Society | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
by Daniel Pipes*
The arrest and indictment of top military figures in Turkey last week precipitated potentially the most severe crisis since Atatürk founded the republic in 1923. The weeks ahead will probably indicate whether the country continues its slide toward Islamism or reverts to its traditional secularism. The denouement has major implications for Muslims everywhere.
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Posted in Corruption, Islam, Military Tactics, Society, Turkey | No Comments »
Sunday, February 28th, 2010
By Andrew L. Jaffee
All you Jew-haters and Israel-haters (same thing) think you know what’s best for the rest of us, just like Hitler and Stalin did. The problem is that you’re completely out of step with the collective intelligence of the greatest nation in the world, the U.S.:
… The findings of the February 19, 2010 Gallup poll put President Barack Obama at odds with the US public, when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish state, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arabs, Muslims and Islamic terrorism.
For example, Israel maintains its traditional spot among the five most favored nations by 67 percent of the US public, despite Obama’s “even-handed” approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, in spite of his attempts to force Israel into sweeping concessions, and in defiance of the US “elite” media and academia.
On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority is ranked — along with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan — at the bottom of the list, favored by only 20% of the US public.
According to an August 10, 2009 Rasmussen poll, Israel is ranked as the third most favorable ally (70%), preceded only by Canada and Britain. The low regard toward Egypt (39%) and Saudi Arabia (23%) demonstrates that Americans remain skeptical — at least since 9/11 — of Arabs and Muslims, even as these countries are portrayed by the media and the administration as supposedly moderate and pro-American.
Moreover, only 21% of adult Americans expect that the US relationship with the Muslim world will improve in a year, while 25% expect that it will get worse. …
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Arab/Muslim World, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Media/Blogsphere, Obama, Palestinians, Public Opinion | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
Denis MacEoin interviews Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy*
Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy (b. 1950) is one of South Asia’s leading nuclear physicists and perhaps Pakistan’s preeminent intellectual. Bearer of a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is chairman of the department of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad where, as a high-energy physicist, he carries out research into quantum field theory and particle phenomenology. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and was visiting professor at MIT and Stanford. For some time, he has been a frequent contributor to Britain’s leading intellectual journal, Prospect. His extracurricular activities include a vocal opposition to the political philosophy of Islamism. He also writes about the self-enforced backwardness of the Muslim world in science, technology, trade, and education. His many articles and television documentaries have made a lasting impact on debate about education, Islam, and secularism in Pakistan. Denis MacEoin interviewed him by e-mail in October 2009.
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Posted in Islam, Pakistan, Philosophy / Ideology, Society, Technology | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
By Barry Rubin
After more than 30 years of watching people write dumb things about the Middle East, I believe that in the last month I’ve seen more nonsense than at any previous time. The problem arises from ignorance, lack of understanding of the region by those presented as experts; plus arrogance, treating the region and the lives of people as a game (Hey, let’s try this and see what happens!), fostered by the failure of such control mechanisms as a balanced debate and editing that rejects simplistic bias or stupidity; as well as a simple lack of logic.
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Posted in Arab/Muslim World, Foreign Policy, Iran, Islam, Israel, Palestinians, Political Correctness, Syria, Turkey | No Comments »
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
by Daniel Pipes*
Rashad Hussain, Barack Obama’s special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has run into a problem: He appears to be an Islamist. The evidence largely concerns a public statement he made six years ago, as Josh Gerstein reports in Politico:
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Posted in Anti-Semitism, Extremists, Governing, Islam, Obama, Palestinians | No Comments »
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
by Phyllis Chesler
Remember the case in which Faleh al-Maleki, an Iraqi-American father brutally ran over his daughter, Noor, in Arizona, then attempted to escape but was apprehended in Britain and returned to face justice?
Guess what’s just happened? The Arizona prosecutors have been scared off seeking the death penalty. Public defender Billie Little raised the specter of “How will it look for Christians to execute a Muslim?”
I kid you not. Continue reading…
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Posted in Islam, Law, Political Correctness | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
by Phyllis Chesler
By now, we have all heard about Nujood Ali, the incredibly heroic ten year girl in Yemen who fled her abusive husband and demanded a divorce. This act was the first of its kind in a country where girls as young as eight are given away in marriage.
We want her as an ally. We want her counterparts in the Muslim world as allies. We want Mukhtaran Bibi on our side. She is the young Pakistani woman who was gang-raped by her alleged social superiors in order to cover up their other crimes. She escaped. She was not silenced by shame. She did not kill herself. Unlike Phoolan Devi, India’s Bandit Queen (a girl after my own heart), Bibi did not join a gang of outlaws and then exact personal revenge. Despite numerous death threats, Mukhtaran Bibi legally pursued the criminals — and won. Continue reading…
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Posted in Extremists, Feminism, Human Rights, India, Islam, Pakistan | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
by Daniel Pipes*
The violence and cruelty of Arabs often perplexes Westerners.
Not only does the leader of Hizbullah proclaim “We love death,” but so too does, for example, a 24-year-old man who last month yelled “We love death more than you love life” as he crashed his car on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge in New York City. As two parents in St. Louis honor-killed their teenage daughter with thirteen stabs of a butcher’s knife, the Palestinian father shouted “Die! Die quickly! Die quickly! . . . Quiet, little one! Die, my daughter, die!” — and the local Arab community supported them against murder charges. A prince from Abu Dhabi recently tortured a grain dealer whom he accused of fraud; despite a video of the atrocity appearing on television internationally, the prince was acquitted while his accusers were convicted.
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Posted in Arab/Muslim World, Extremists, Islam, Philosophy / Ideology, Society | No Comments »