Bloodthirsty Liberal

In a story about slavery in Mauritania and Sudan, I commented that slavery was forbidden in Islam. Reader Carol piped up to cite theory and practice indicating otherwise.

But not only is she not a Moslem, she’s not male, so why should I believe her?

Now, I’m a believer:

Following are excerpts from a statement by Dr. Saud Al-Fanisan, former dean of Islamic law at Imam Muhammad Bin Saud Islamic University, Saudi Arabia, which aired on Al-Risala TV on March 16, 2012:

Dr. Saud Al-Fanisan: Allah permitted the purchase and sale of slaves. Slaves are the property of their owners. This is slavery in the shari’a, yet a slave enjoys a great deal of freedom. The only thing he is deprived of is the right to own [himself]. That’s it. He enjoys freedom of thought, freedom of belief, the freedom to work, the right to deny [Islam], and the right to command good and forbid evil. A slave enjoys all these liberties, so how can it be claimed that there is no freedom [in Islam]?

I regret the error.

PS: While we’re on the subject of sharia:

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub, which aired on Al-Nas TV on March 16, 2012 :

To the lives of people and to the life of the Islamic nation… The shari’a must be exalted.

…

Anybody who attacks a home, a shop, a bank, a factory, or anything… When an armed gang enters a place in order to take things by force, they are fighting Allah and His Messenger.

The [hiraba] punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and who strive to spread corruption in the land, is for them to be executed, or to be crucified, or to have their hand and foot chopped off on opposite sides, or to be banished from the land. The implementation of this punishment will guarantee security.

I’ve argued against the notion of sharia law in Western societies. But if it’s what they want…

So goes Libya?

The Arab Spring may quickly become an Islamist Winter in Libya, reads a new report circulated among federal law enforcement and written for policymakers on Capitol Hill.

An advance copy of the report entitled “A View to Extremist Currents In Libya” and obtained by Fox News, states that extremist views are gaining ground in the north African country and suggests a key figure emerging in Libya formerly tied to al Qaeda has not changed his stripes.

“Despite early indications that the Libyan revolution might be a largely secular undertaking … the very extremist currents that shaped the philosophies of Libya Salafists and jihadis like (Abd al-Hakim) Belhadj appear to be coalescing to define the future of Libya,” wrote Michael S. Smith II, a principal and counterterrorism adviser for Kronos LLC, the strategic advisory firm that prepared the report.

…

On Nov. 3, 2007, senior al Qaeda leaders announced that LIFG had officially joined Usama bin Laden’s network, according to the State Department which designated LIFG as a terrorist organization.

Belhadj, who joined the group at its inception, had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. He was arrested in Malaysia in February 2004, reportedly interrogated by the CIA, before he was sent home to Libya. He was released from prison in 2009 as part of a rehabilitation program.

…

“Libyans have been featured prominently in the history of core al Qaeda. Libyan LIFG member Abu Yahya al-Libi is regarded as core al Qaeda’s top Sharia official and many analysts anticipated he would be appointed bin Laden’s successor. His brother is Abd al-Wahad al-Qayid, a founding member of the LIFG who was one of the six LIFG leaders who authored the group’s corrective studies while imprisoned in Libya.”

The Kronos report says that “Libya is of such strategic interest” to al Qaeda that for years it was its own entity separate from its north Africa affiliate — al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
Libya was considered important to al Qaeda because of its geographic proximity to Egypt and its perceived ability to “affect the jihadist political situation in Egypt.”

For this reason, among others, al Qaeda’s new leader Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri in April 2011 called on jihadis to prepare to mount an insurgency against any Western forces in Libya.

I guess I should have written as Libya goes, so goes Egypt.

Effing Belgium, man. What’s up with that?

Following are excerpts from a statement by Belgian Islamist Sheik Abu Imran opposite the Atomium Monument in Brussels, which was posted on the Internet on December 11, 2011:

In the name of Allah, the Merciful the Compassionate. Praise be to Allah, and prayers upon the Prophet, his family, his companions, and his followers. This is a short message to the King of Belgium, the Belgian government, the Belgian people, and specifically to the Muslims in Belgium. This is the flag that, Allah willing, will soon be flying on top of that building over there. There you see the flag of the Taghut, of the infidels, and soon, the flag of “there is no god but Allah” will be flying there, on top of that palace…

Demonstrator: Say: Allah Akbar.

Crowd: Allah Akbar.

Abu Imran: …and on top of all the other palaces in Europe, until, Allah willing, we reach the White House. We will not rest, despite the lawsuits and intimidations, and despite the war they wage against the Islamic nation. We swear by Allah, the one and only God, that we will not rest, we will not stop, until this flag flies on top of that building.

Demonstrator: Say: Allah Akbar.

Crowd: Allah Akbar.

…

Abu Imran: We can see nowadays how people are taking photos, and how people from Brussels and from all over Europe come here for what is called “tourism,” and take photos of this monument. They hold on to this monument. Allah be praised. On top, you can see the Belgian flag. This monument is a symbol of Belgium. They have put this symbol on the euro, and they have printed it on banknotes. This is a symbol of the state of Belgium. Soon, Belgium will fall apart. May Allah disperse them and their country.

Crowd: Amen.

Abu Imran: Then this symbol will be useless to them. Look how people view this monument as their Taghut, their idol.

[…]

Between 1995 and 2001, Mullah Omar, may Allah protect him, destroyed the symbols of idolatry [in Afghanistan], so we too should destroy these monuments. How can we demonstrate that we are Muslims? When we see that in Egypt, people hold on to pyramids, to the Sphinx… They have become places for tourists, for millions of businesses, and they even make little souvenirs for tourists, just like they have done with this monument here, the Atomium. They make little models of it for tourists, and sell them in souvenir shops. That is why we must free ourselves from this idolatry, and why we call upon everyone to stay away from idols and idolatry.

One of these idols is this Taghut here behind us, with the flag of the Taghut government on top of it, a symbol of the Taghut regime, the Taghut system, ruling this country. But Allah willing, Belgium will soon be freed from polytheism and idolatry. Belgium will be freed from the system of idolatry. We promise to clean Belgium of the system of idolatry, as well as of the idols themselves. Then we will demolish this symbol, this monument. Andy why? Not because of hatred.

I know people will try to twist my words, in order to prove that I call to destroy things. So why? Simply because the Belgian community could better use all the millions spent on renovating this monument, spent on electricity, spent on tourism.

That is why we say: We do not need these things. What we do need is free water, electricity, and gas for the Belgian people. We need to ensure the safety of Belgian Muslims and non-Muslims in the Islamic state that will replace this Taghut. Allah willing, the more Muslims who participate, the faster we will reach our goal of freeing Belgium from injustice, from tyranny, and from idolatry, and of implementing the purest form of Tawheed in our lives.

Demonstrator: Say: Allah Akbar.

Crowd: Allah Akbar.

Abu Imran: Let us live in an Islamic state, in which there is no idolatry, and there is only “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet.”

Title reads: “Support our troops”

“http://www.shariah4belgium.com”

Take Belgium already, it’s yours! Nobody will miss it. Just shut up. God, what noise.

There is a video at CNN, and an article here.

DUBAI – Rights group Amnesty International has described as “deeply shocking” Saudi Arabia’s beheading of a woman convicted on charges of “sorcery and witchcraft”, saying it underlined the urgent need to end executions in the kingdom.

Saudi national Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was executed on Monday in the northern province of al-Jawf after being tried and convicted for practicing sorcery, the interior ministry said, without giving details of the charges.

“The citizen… practiced acts of witchcraft and sorcery,” Saudi newspaper al-Watan cited the interior ministry as saying. “The death sentence was carried out on the accused yesterday (Monday) in the Qurayyat district in al-Jawf region”.

Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, has no written criminal code, which is instead based on an uncodified form of Islamic sharia law as interpreted by the country’s judges.

“While we don’t know the details of the acts which the authorities accused Amina of committing, the charge of sorcery has often been used in Saudi Arabia to punish people, generally after unfair trials, for exercising their right to freedom of speech or religion,” Philip Luther, interim director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program, said in a statement.

The related articles have to do with an Australian national who was accused of blasphemy while making the Haj, and who is serving one year in prison and will experience 500 lashes. And there has apparently been another huge fire in a girl’s school in Saudi Arabia. In 2002, they wouldn’t let the girls out with their heads uncovered.

So anyway, why is it that we support these guys, whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in power? How is this useful for the United States?

- Aggie

We look at Obama’s response to the so-called Arab Spring, and say why? Obama looks at the rise of the Moslem Brotherhood and other Islamist movements across Araby, and says why not?

In a recent article, Egyptian Coptic liberal ‘Issam ‘Abdallah attacked the Obama administration for supporting the Islamist forces in the Middle East “deliberately and in an organized manner,” rather than giving its support to the secular democrats. He said that the administration had allowed the Islamist lobbies in the US, chiefly those of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and Iran, to gain enough clout over the years to influence US Middle East policy. These same lobbies, he said, were waging all-out war against the Arab liberals and anyone else who stood up for democracy and freedom in the Middle East.

Why Do the West and the US Support the Islamists instead of the Secular Democrats in the Middle East?

“The most tragic and dangerous means of oppression [being used] against the revolutions in the Arab world is not internationally forbidden arms or the Arab dictatorships, like [that of] Mubarak [in Egypt], Al-Qadhafi [in Libya], Bin ‘Ali [in Tunisia], Saleh [in Yemen], and Al-Assad [in Syria], but that being used by the Islamist lobby in the US – or, more precisely, ‘the Islamist lobbies,’ which are the most influential and powerful [lobbies] in Washington.

…

“We have come to understand, like [the rest of] the enlightened people in the world, that the Obama administration is resolved to support the new tyrannical forces, which have come to power by way of ‘formal democracy.’ The MB in Egypt, the Islamist Al-Nahda party in Tunisia, the Al-’Adala party in Morocco, and the transnational Islamist militias (Al-Qaeda) in Libya were supported by Washington deliberately and in an organized manner, at the expense of the liberal and secular forces in the region.”

A disputable assertion, I suppose, but the facts on the ground (and all the liberal reformers in the ground) would support it.

Cold:

Dr. Mahmoud Saad Alkatani, Director of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice party, told Al Sharq al-Awsat Friday: “The report in the newspaper is completely unfounded. There have been no contacts or understandings with the American or Israeli side about the peace treaty that President Anwar Sadat signed in 1979.”

He remarked that his party “adheres to respecting the international agreements, as long as they fulfill the purpose that they were meant to, and believes that Parliament has the right to reevaluate any agreement.

“A long time has passed since the Camp David accord was signed and like the other agreements it needs reevaluation and this is in the hands of the Parliament… Generally, Israel does not honor the agreement,” he added.

And getting colder:

Democracy is heresy because it contradicts the principle of allegiance that was used after the death of prophet Mohamed, whereby people choose their caliph once and then remain loyal to him, said the Salafi Nour Party at a rally in Giza.

The party called the campaign of the liberal Egyptian Bloc a campaign of “Zionism” and “Freemasonry.”

“We must obliterate the liberalism that was introduced by Sadat and Mubarak and reinstate the rule of Islam,” said Shaaban Darwish, a member of the party’s supreme committee.

“The liberals have corrupted political life in the last 60 years,” he added. “All they want is to protect their interests with the Americans and the Arabs.”

But every toxic cloud has a silver lining:

Party candidate Adel Azazy said Islamic laws in Saudi Arabia helped reduce the crime rate substantially.

And if they had any trains, you bet they’d run on time!

That’s a reasonable way to describe the election results from down Nile-Delta way:

The Muslim Brotherhood claimed the first round in the Egyptian parliamentary elections Saturday, after polls said it has won 40% of the votes. The official results of the elections are still pending.

The elections – Egypt’s first free vote in six decades – have seen a record turnout. According to Egyptian media, the Muslim Brotherhood has so far won 40% of the votes, the radical Salafi al-Nour party has won 20% of the votes, the liberal bloc has 15% of the votes, and the rest of the votes were split between the smaller Left-wing parties.

Cairo’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was reportedly “vexed and concerned” by the apparent Islamist victory.

Sorely vexed, I bet.

But who didn’t see a result like this coming? I’ll admit I didn’t know the parties more fundamentalist than the ‘Hood would do so well, but a 60% turnout for the Islamist set is surprising only because it’s so low.

For now. From Mark Steyn today:

As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, if that’s how the urban sophisticates vote, wait till you see the upcountry results. By the time the rural vote emerges from the Nile Delta and Sinai early next month, the hard-core Islamists will be sitting pretty. In the so-called “Facebook Revolution,” two-thirds of the Arab world’s largest nation is voting for the hard, cruel, bigoted, misogynistic song of Shariah.

So, yet again, the media sold us a lie. And I think I know why.

If that title sounds familiar, it should be:

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT [Obama]
ON A NEW BEGINNING
Cairo University
Cairo, Egypt

…

And I’m also proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaamu alaykum. (Applause.)

We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world — tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

I don’t suppose it makes much sense to go over this nonsense two and a half years after he bloviated it, but I can’t help it, at least a little bit. Anyway, as this was his much-ballyhooed overture to the Moslem world, it’s reasonable to examine how his remarks may have led to the situation as we see it today.

Egypt achieved independence from Britain in 1922. What is he talking about? And if he’s apologizing, why? Does he think he’s President of Great Britain (or England, as he recently referred to the British embassy in Iran)? And I’m mystified by what he means about the Cold War. To some extent, all countries were proxies in that struggle. How was the Cold War particularly hostile to the “aspirations” of Moslem countries?

And apologizing for modernization? That’s the most absurd of all. Sorry, Islam, but check your sundial: tempus fugit. How can a calendar be be hostile? Anyway, progress is not a Western/Colonial/American conspiracy. (Or is it…?)

I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

Islam and America do indeed share the principle of justice, just not the same one. And he just told us that Islam holds progress as hostile. I didn’t, he did.

I’m willing to believe that there are Moslems who believe in tolerance and the dignity of all human beings, but anyone who reads this site knows that there’s not an Egyptian cleric among them. Within the turbaned crowd, it’s the exact opposite. Don’t make me cite chapter and verse.

That’s enough of his tripe. I don’t want to get gout. Obama’s adorers told us he would remake the world in his image, and they were right.

You know good ol’ BTL: always looking for the silver lining in the dark cloud.

And vice versa:

Tens of thousands of Egyptians rallied in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday, to protest against what they say are attempts by the country’s military rulers to designate themselves as the guardians of a new Egypt.

The Associated Press reported that it was one of the largest rallies in Egypt in recent months and that while most rallies in Tahrir have been led by liberal groups…

No, don’t tell us! We don’t want to know! Let us believe in the progressive nature of the revolution, in which young Egyptians are calling for liberty, justice, and lattes for all.

Sorry:

…this rally was dominated by the extremist Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood had until recently avoided confrontation with the ruling military Supreme Council, AP noted, but is now warning of escalating its protest campaign if plans to give permanent political powers to the military are not scrapped.

The protesters, according to the report, held up banners which read: “Down with military rule. Egypt our country is not a military camp.”

Some demonstrators flew the Egyptian flag while others including waved a banner declaring the Quran to be “our constitution.”

Damn you, BTL! Get your reality out our faces! You’re killing our delusional left-wing buzz!

Sayyid Qutb was an Egyptian, and these are his offspring. Seriously, what did you expect?

You have a nice day, now!

It seems almost insulting to post this on Veteran’s Day, but whom do we not insult?

A group of armed men have stoned and shot dead a woman and her daughter in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province, security officials have told the BBC.

The officials blamed the Taliban, who they said had accused the women of “moral deviation and adultery”.

The police said two men had been arrested in connection with the murder.

“Murder”? That’s awfully judgmental. They were just dealing with “moral deviation” as they do over there.

And the community agrees:

Security officials said armed men entered the house where the young widow lived with her daughter and took them out to the yard, where they were initially stoned and then shot dead.

“Neighbours did not help or inform the authorities on time,” an official said.

Officials said a number of religious leaders in the city had been issuing fatwas (Islamic religious edicts) asking people to report any one who was “involved in adultery”.

Our interest in Afghanistan goes only as far as we see it as a threat to our security. While some of the more gullible among us (I plead guilty) might have once hoped for more from that literally godforsaken place, now I just want to see it muzzled and neutered. Literally.

That’s how Brits describe people who are too smart for their own—and our—good:

“This is not an Islamic Revolution.”

So opined Olivier Roy, arguably Europe’s foremost authority on political Islam, in an essay published days after Hosni Mubarak was forced from power in February. “Look at those involved in the uprisings, and it is clear that we are dealing with a post-Islamist generation,” he wrote. “This is not to say that the demonstrators are secular; but they are operating in a secular political space, and they do not see in Islam an ideology capable of creating a better world.”

Mr. Roy wasn’t alone in the sangfroid department. “I am not in the least bit worried about the Muslim Brotherhoods in Jordan or Egypt hijacking the future,” confided New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, with the caveat that their secular opponents would need some time to organize. Added his colleague Nicholas Kristof in a dispatch from Cairo: “I agree that the Muslim Brotherhood would not be a good ruler of Egypt, but that point of view also seems to be shared by most Egyptians.”

If it’s Tom Friedman’s world, I don’t want to live in it. Anyway, his head alone requires the entire land mass of South America, Australia, and East Timor to support it.

All of these people seem to suffer from the same affliction as President Obama, AIDS: Acquired Intellectual Deficiency Syndrome. They might have had a reasonable IQ once, but it has atrophied from lack of use. So long have they been told how brilliant they are, they have come to believe it. When not required to employ thought or logic, they don’t—with repellant results.

Radical Islam won’t fill the vacuum after the fall of Arab dictators??? Are you high?

Why do you think they were dictators? Why do you think the Islamists were in the deepest and darkest dungeons? Serial murderers and rapists enjoyed walks in the yard and ping-pong privileges, while Muslim Brothers hung in irons from the stone walls.

And how ignorant of history do you have to be to think that it matters what “most Egyptians” think or want? The more committed the minority, the more they can do with less—just ask the Nazis. Islamofascism is more fascist than Islamic (or so I like to believe), so it doesn’t matter if two out of three Egyptians want MTV and Macallan 18 y.o. single malt. They’ll get sharia law, courtesy of the Muslim Brotherhood, and they’ll like it.

Anyway, that’s me talking. Here’s more from the author:

What reassurance. Nine months on, the Islamist Nahda party has swept to victory in Tunisia, the one Arab state in which secularist values were said to be irreversibly fixed. Libya’s new interim leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, came to office promising “the Islamic religion as the core of our new government”; as a first order of business, he promises to revoke the Gadhafi regime’s ban on polygamy since “the law is contrary to Shariah and must be stopped.” Later this month, Islamist candidates—some of them Muslim Brothers, others even more religiously extreme—will likely sweep Egypt’s parliamentary elections.

It doesn’t stop there. Hezbollah has effectively ruled Lebanon since it forced the collapse of a pro-Western government in January. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, cruised to a third term in parliamentary elections in June. Hamas, winner in the last vote held by the Palestinian Authority in 2006, would almost certainly win again if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas dared put his government to an electoral test.

Why have Islamists been the main beneficiaries of Muslim democracy?

…

Closer to the mark is Mideast scholar Bernard Lewis, who noted in an April interview with the Journal that “freedom” is fairly novel as a political concept in the Arab world. “In the Muslim tradition,” Mr. Lewis noted, “justice is the standard” of good government—and the very thing the ancien regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya so flagrantly traduced. Little wonder, then, that Mr. Erdogan’s AK party stands for “Justice and Development,” the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s new party is “Freedom and Justice” and, further afield, the leading Islamist party in Indonesia calls itself “Prosperous Justice.”

…

The national-socialist brew imported from Europe in the 1940s by Michel Aflaq became the Baathist tyrannies of present-day Syria and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Pan-Arabism’s appeal faded well before the death of its principal champion, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Socialism failed Algeria; Gadhafi’s “Third Universal Theory” failed Libya. French-style laïcité descended into kleptocracy in Tunisia and quasi-military control in Turkey. Periodic attempts at market liberalization yielded dividends in places like Bahrain and Dubai but were never joined by political liberalization and were often shot through with cronyism.

That sour history leaves Islamism as the last big idea standing—and standing at a moment when tens of millions of young Muslims find themselves undereducated, semi- or unemployed, and uniquely receptive to a world view with deep historic roots and heroic ambitions.

Was all this unknown to the Smart Power authority in Washington? Or do self-proclaimed smart people listen only to other self-proclaimed smart people? Did they actually listen to Tom Friedman over Bernard Lewis?

It’s that classic Bridge on the River Kwai moment:

What have I done?

Only Team Obama says, “Look what I’ve done!”