ISLAM ON FOCUS

Respecting the Faithful vs. Respecting the Faith

2009-06-24T06:12:00.000-07:00

by Raymond Ibrahim
Pajamas Media
June 3, 2009

During the pope's recent Mideast visit, the media reported that he has "deep respect for Islam." That exact phrase appeared in the Associated Press, AFP, BBC, Jerusalem Post, Washington Times, and Al-Jazeera.

Yet he said no such thing; instead, he mentioned his "deep respect for the Muslim community." There's a world of difference between respecting a religious group and respecting their religion, and the pontiff knows this.

As a Christian — indeed, as pope — by evoking his "deep respect" for Muslims, Benedict probably meant that Muslims, who believe in one God, pray, fast, and follow a strict set of moral principles, are, from a religious perspective, worthy of "deep respect."

Even the non-religious uphold this position. In fact, that is what makes the secular West unique: the right to follow any (or no) religion is guaranteed, is "respected."

Due to this, however, a subtle conflation has come to dominate our way of thinking: respect for people's right to believe any religion has somewhere along the line — and thanks to political correctness — morphed into respect for the religion itself (excluding, of course, cheek-turning Christianity, the secular West's "punching bag"). It was therefore only natural for the (increasingly sloppy) media to portray Benedict's respect for Muslims as respect for Islam.

But is this logical? Does respecting a person's right to believe necessarily lead to respecting what they believe?

Consider: billions of non-Muslims adhere to other religions or are simply atheistic; by default, this means they do not believe in the veracity of Islam. A Christian following Christian doctrine, such as the Trinity, cannot also believe that the Koran, which fiercely denounces the Trinity, is the word of God, while an atheist believes all religions and their scriptures are not divinely inspired (i.e., all euphemisms aside, are built on lies).

At the same time, however, Christians and atheists cannot "empirically" prove their position; faith is required — even for the atheist (accounting for the origins of the universe requires "faith"). As such, it is only logical that non-Muslims should respect Muslims' right to believe what they will — and, ideally, vice versa.

But short of truly believing Islam's first premise — that the Koran is the verbatim word of God and Muhammad his messenger — how can one "respect" Islam itself, considering it is entirely built around this assumption? In other words, if you yourself believe a particular system of belief is built atop lies, how can you personally respect it?

If the Koran was not dictated by an angel to Muhammad, what is it? If Muhammad was not sent by God, who was he? As with all who profess to be men of God, Muhammad must have been either who he said he was (prophet of God) or else the antithesis: a false prophet, a fraud. The first possibility is not a logical option for active non-Muslims. Nor are silly "postmodern" mantras — "just because I do not believe something does not necessarily mean it is not true, in its own existential way" — very meaningful.

Of course, this position applies to all religions and their founders. Without believing that the Bible is the inspired word of God, everything contained therein becomes suspect, including the person (and nature) of Jesus. As Christians themselves have long maintained, Jesus can only be viewed as lord, liar, or lunatic — nothing in between. Likewise, Muhammad was either messenger, mendacious, or moonstruck. Admittedly, most people are not comfortable thinking out such thoughts to their logical conclusions; they're happy to end it with an "it's not for me" attitude, without any further ado.

So why scrutinize Islam and its founder in the first place? Because unlike all other major religions, Islam is daily associated with violence, beheadings, misogyny, child marriage, and hostility for infidels and their ways. Pseudo-respect from non-Muslims shields it from open analysis.

Moreover, though non-Christians must ultimately conclude that either Jesus or (as Islam maintains) the Gospel writers were deceivers or delusional, the fact remains: As with most religions, Christianity revolves around the spiritual, the metaphysic; true or false, it does not intrinsically impose itself on politics. Islam, on the other hand — as embodied in Islamic law — is politics, indeed, dominates all aspects of human affairs.

As such, Islam's connection to "unpleasant" daily headlines becomes clear once non-Muslims allow their thoughts to develop logically and sequentially. Stripped of its hagiographic veneer, the history of Islam is the history of a warlord and his followers who conquered, subjugated, and plundered much of the old world, insisting that God told them to do it. For Muslims, it is only logical to rationalize this 1,400-year jihad as a means to an end — the establishment of Islamic law, from a Muslim perspective, the embodiment of all good. Non-Muslims do not have this luxury and must interpret the origins and essence of Islam a bit more cynically.

But why this philosophical exposition in the first place? To show that, while there have been countless talking heads, books, debates, seminars, and hearings dedicated to evaluating whether Islam is intrinsically at odds with the modern world, good old-fashioned common sense could have put the matter long to rest:

After all, do you really find it shocking that a comprehensive way of life, where right and wrong are meticulously based on the improvised "law" of a seventh-century warlord — who, according to your own inevitable conclusions, was an opportunistic liar or deluded megalomaniac — just so happens to be riddled with complications, especially vis-à-vis the 21st century?

This seemingly simple consideration has profound implications. Former Al-Azhar Muslim scholar and imam Mark Gabriel abandoned his faith by simply musing on such matters:

Did the true God of heaven give him Islam, or did Muhammad invent it? ... Did Muhammad express the heart of the true, merciful God, or did he merely express the dark corners of his own faulty human heart? The implication shook me to the core: If the true God never spoke to Muhammad, then I am a slave to the manipulative imagination of a desert tribesman from the seventh century! These were dangerous thoughts, and I had crossed a dangerous bridge in my mind that all Muslims are taught to walk away from.

In closing, let us respect everyone's right to believe what they will; however, let us at least be sincere to our own convictions. It's one thing to let political correctness stifle free speech; it's quite another to let it stifle the development of our very own thought processes, to the point that we fail to connect such clear dots in the privacy of our own minds.

And while we're at it, let's not distort the well-measured words of the pope, who most surely knows the distinction between respecting the Muslim community and respecting Islam.

Raymond Ibrahim is the associate director of the Middle East Forum and the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.
Originally published at: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/respecting-the-faithful-vs-respecting-the-faith/

Will and can the reformation come to Islam?

2009-06-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Fehmi Koru/Taha Kivanc wrote about how he happened to sit next to "Islam expert" Reza Aslan at some gathering, as another lucky encounter.

While Koru was mentioning Aslan, he described him as someone a "little confused." I am not sure how much Koru is familiar with his writings, but his "little confused" remarks urged me to read his long overdue book. I know it seems as if I, somehow, suggest that if there is something Mr. Koru disdains, it becomes worth paying attention to because I will likely find some jewels. I do not mean that necessarily. What I mean is, I remembered the book again.

I know Reza Aslan from his writings in the Daily Beast, also from talk shows and news hours on American TV that he joins occasionally. His sharp-witted humor with quick and intellectually superb arguments and jokes made him kind of a star.

So as I started to read Aslan’s "No god but God" book from 2006, first it seemed the book was one of those books which talks about the miraculous history of Islam and the flawless life of the Prophet Mohammad that I have read over again. Though, at some point in my life, I realized that whenever I read about the Prophet’s life and his wonderful actions, I was usually getting disappointed, because he was always so faultless and perfect and that comparison usually crushed my faulty life.

Here, however, Aslan brings an authentic look to the Prophet Mohammed’s life. We see that Mohammad’s pre-Islamic life wasn’t watertight. For example, his participation in pagan rituals, something that unheard of, actually is not contrasting with Koranic verses. Aslan is also analyzing the political aspects of the Islamic movement, with many checks and balances that Prophet Mohammed was paying attention to while he was constructing his religion.

As the book flies by, one feels like reading a real history, rather than some fairy tales. However, Mr. Koru can be relaxed, Mr. Aslan is still making the case ’for’ Islam, though a new Islam that is clean from its new idolsÑbigotry and fanaticismsÑthat have replaced Mohammed’s original vision of tolerance, against hatred and discord.

Mr. Aslan claims Prophet Mohammed was a social reformer before anything else. The Prophet’s first message was simple: the Day of Judgment was coming and those who did not "free the slave" or "feed others in times of famine" would be surrounded in fire. Mohammed was demanding economic justice, and trying to attract plebs, before challenging the leadership of Mecca. The messages of social and economic reforms were coming before monotheistic teachings.

With the unprotected of Mecca, whose rights he first started to advocate, Mohammed was also going after the "elite young men," from "the most influential families in the most influential clans," who felt the same discontent with Meccan society as Mohammad did. And this majority of less than thirty-year-old was relatively an easy target.

Not directly challenging the leadership of the Meccan society, and bringing a new religion to the already crowded religious field of Mecca, Mohammad was not making the powerful angry. After all, religion was what Mecca was making money out of. Therefore the more religion there was, the more merrier/money for them.

One of the most courageous assertions of Aslan is his challenge of the history and of the seemingly "strong" hadiths, or Mohammed’s sayings. Many of the hadiths, Aslan explains, even the ones that have been narrated by the Muslim and Bukhari, the most trusted two books, contrast with Mohammed’s own behavior and actions. The egalitarian (male-female equality) face of the early Islamic teaching and rituals seem to have taken the biggest beating by the male-dominated Orthodox Islam hadith transmission exercise throughout Islamic history.

Although Mohammad’s biographers present him as repeatedly asking for and following the advice of his wives, even in military matters, many hadiths have been transmitted intentionally to enable men to be superior and care for women as if they, with much-celebrated Koranic commentator Fakhr ad-Din ar-razi’s words, "were created like animals and plants and other useful things [not for] worship and carrying the Divine commands."

The reason of the huge difference between Mohammad’s approach and orthodox Islam, Aslan says, is that for fourteen centuries, the science of Koranic commentary has been the exclusive domain of Muslim men. Even the "untouchable" Omar, the second Caliph, was evidently ready to destroy this equality of Prophetic view.

Omar’s misogynist tendencies were apparent from the moment he ascended to the leadership of the Muslim community. He tries (and fails) to confine women to their homes, and institutes segregated prayers and forces women to be taught by male religious leaders, which all are an apparent and direct violation of the Prophet’s exercise. Incredibly, Omar also instituted a series of severe penal ordinances aimed primarily at women; "chief of among these was the stoning to death of adulterers, a punishment that has absolutely no foundation in the Koran."

Today, it is clear that Islam needs a reformation with a daring and unyielding interpretation for the modern world.

Today’s Islam can be enough for many who live in their backyard and haven’t changed their environment for centuries; however Islam feels stretched and falls short for those who are struggling to merge their values and beliefs with contemporary life.

Like other religions, Islam has encountered many historical and social adaptations on the way, and it also needs a course of elucidation.

As Aslan claims, and I believe, the voice of moderation, contrary to the common belief, is winning against the voice of extremism. Though this is not sufficient. The voice of moderation also needs tools to prove Islam has answers to many of today’s challenges that it can participate and live together with modern life that desperately lacks currently. When can the reformation come to Islam and who will lead the charge to reinterpret it more courageously to make it open its arms all humanity? And can it really make this historic leap forward? These are the questions.

I am curiously following Fehmi Koru about what to read, who to follow and not. It has been very useful so far.

Source: ILHAN TANIR

Families distraught by sexual violence in Afghanistan

2009-06-02T01:25:00.000-07:00

Court reinstates breastfeeding fatwa scholar at Al-Azhar University

2009-05-27T05:43:00.000-07:00

CAIRO: The Administrative Court annulled Al-Azhar’s disciplinary committee’s decision to expel Ezzat Attiya, president of the hadith department at the university, after he issued a controversial fatwa concerning breastfeeding in 2007.

“No one can argue with a court order …we respect the Administrative Court and follow its orders without thinking twice,” said Sheikh Fawzy El-Zefzaf, head of the religions dialogue committee at Al-Azhar.

Attiya was expelled in 2007 when he suggested that symbolic breastfeeding could be a way around strict segregation of males and females. He had drawn on Islamic traditions which forbid sexual relations between a man and a woman who has breastfed him.

However, the court’s ruling did not come as a surprise to Sheikh Mahmoud Ashour, former deputy of Al-Azhar and member of the Islamic Research Center.

“This is only natural … I was sure that this was going to be the court’s decision,” Ashour said, “Attiya didn’t make anything up, it is stated in the fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) books and it’s a topic of debate among Islamic scholars with some supporting it and others opposing it,” he explained.

Both clerics agree that Attiya is an exceptional teacher and speaker. “Attiya is a great teacher and is well educated, informed and knowledgeable, plus he is a great speaker at lectures and discussions so he is always a plus to Al-Azhar University,” said Ashour.

In 2007 when the disciplinary committee had made its decision, both Islamic thinker Gamal El-Banna and Sheikh Khalid El-Gindy condemned the fatwa but maintained that Attiya shouldn’t have been expelled.

Attiya first made his statement regarding the issue on Al-Arabiya, a Dubai-based news channel, where he said that that after five breastfeeding sessions the man becomes a symbolic relative of the woman and the two were allowed to be alone together and the women could remove her headscarf in his presence.

The statement has caused a media frenzy and an uproar from Islamic scholars forcing Attiya to issue a retraction and apology. In his apology, Attiya stated that breastfeeding a male colleague at work is reserved only for a special situation and that only a minority of scholars had supported this position.

Source: thedailynewsegypt.com

Controversy over the ’hadith reform’ (Turkey)

2009-05-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

If you are well versed enough in the Turkish language to follow the Turkish media (and also happen to have the stomach for it), I strongly recommend reading Milli Gazete.

The daily newspaper of Milli Görüş, the Islamist movement of Necmeddin Erbakan, which is currently represented by the marginal Saadet, or Felicity, Party, Milli Gazete acts almost like a party organ. It often tries to convince its readers that the 82-year-old Erbakan’s victory over the forces of "global Zionism" is imminent. The writers of Milli Gazete dislike two groups in Turkey. The first, as you can guess, is the hard-line secularists. The second group, which you might not guess right away, is what the hard-line secularists themselves most despise: the "moderate Islamists," such as the incumbent Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and Islamic individuals or groups with "modernist" attitudes. For Milli Gazete, these misguided Muslims are the enemies within who dilute the Islamic cause and make it subservient to the demands of the Western infidels.

Reform or reinterpretation?

One of the heavyweights of Milli Gazete is Mehmet Şevket Eygi. To his credit, Eygi has some good insights about pious Muslims in Turkey, such as his critiques of their "lack of a sense of aesthetics." But on matters of theology and jurisprudence, he is way too conservative. Any deviation from the classical sources and norms of Sunni Islam is, for him, a dangerous heresy.

For some time, Eygi has been harshly criticizing the "hadith reform," as he, and the Western media, call it. This is a project initiated by Turkey’s official Directorate of Religious Affairs (also known as the Diyanet) and its aim is to revise, re-catalog and re-interpret the sayings, or hadiths, of Prophet Mohammed. Right after it began in 2006, the project made global headlines because it aimed to deal with some of the misogynistic statements in the classical hadith literature, spurring Western media, from the BBC to the Christian Science Monitor, to start talking about a "reform" in Islam.

In the Western sense, that wasn’t an incorrect statement. One of the project’s goals was to put some apparently misogynist hadiths into their rightful historical context and thus keep them from being used in the modern world to suppress women’s rights. But the term "reform" does not sound nice to Muslim ears. When they hear this word, most Muslims think that it is about excluding a fundamental part of their religion for some secular, if not completely wicked, agenda. Therefore, from the very beginning, Diyanet officials took great pains to emphasize, "This is not a reform at all."

But they could not persuade Eygi. He has been repeatedly writing about "this treacherous project carried out by Orientalists, free thinkers and even atheists," and calling on fellow Muslims to take a stand against it. "They are deleting our Prophet’s words simply to succumb to the Europeans," he argued in one of his articles, continuing:

"O Muslims! You are in deep sleep. You sleep in bed, you sleep when you are awake, you sleep when you talk. You sleep on land you sleep on the sea. But they are not sleeping! They are working day and night to delete the prophet’s hadiths!"

This ranting went on for a while, and led Diyanet Deputy President Prof. Mehmet Görmez to write a long response, which Eygi published in his column last Friday. Prof. Görmez took great pains to argue that devout Muslims (rather than "Orientalists and Jesuit priests") were carrying out the project and that its aim was not to delete the hadiths of the prophet, but to interpret them rightfully. If Eygi continued with his "unjust accusations," Prof Görmez warned, he might be held responsible for this in the eyes of "divine justice."

Whether this will convince Eygi and other conservatives in the Muslim world remains uncertain. What is certain is their reaction to the idea of "reform." Since the 19th century, modernist Muslims have repeatedly faced this hostility: They have been accused of being paid agents of the West, crypto freemasons with sinister goals and apostates who sold their souls to the devil.

Two lessons

There are two lessons to be inferred from this. First, Muslim would-be reformers should be careful in how they frame their arguments. There are tools for change within the Islamic tradition, and using them is more legitimate and efficient than pushing for revolutionary steps.

The second lesson is for Westerners. They, too, should be careful with the language they use. And they should not engage in religion building that is really not their business. Their concern over extremely conservative, sometimes violent, interpretations of Islam is quite understandable. But they should also understand that they only empower those interpretations by appearing, at least in the eyes of oversensitive beholders, as the architects of reform in a religion they don’t subscribe to.

Source Hurriyet.com.tr

BMI told stewardess to wear Muslim robe

2009-05-22T04:15:00.000-07:00

A BRITISH air stewardess was sacked for refusing to fly to Saudi Arabia after she was ordered to wear a traditional Islamic robe and walk behind male colleagues.

Lisa Ashton, a £15,000-a-year stewardess with BMI, was told that in public areas in Saudi Arabia she was required to wear a black robe, known as an abaya. This covers everything but the face, feet and hands. She was told to follow her male colleagues, irrespective of rank.

Ashton, 37, who was worried about security in the country, refused to fly there, claiming the instructions were discriminatory. She was sacked last April.

“It’s not the law that you have to walk behind men in Saudi Arabia, or that you have to wear an abaya, and I’m not going to be treated as a second-class citizen,” Ashton said last week.

“It’s outrageous. I’m a proud Englishwoman and I don’t want these restrictions placed on myself.”

Saudi experts and companies that recruit women to work in the country say it is a “myth” that western women are required to walk behind men. There is no requirement for them to wear the abaya in public, though many do.

Earlier this year an employment tribunal in Manchester ruled that BMI was justified in imposing “rules of a different culture” on staff and cleared it of sexual discrimination. Ashton has consulted Liberty, the human rights organisation, and may seek a judicial review of the decision.

Ashton joined BMI in March 1996, flying to the Caribbean, the United States and India. Based in Manchester, she was told in the summer of 2005 that BMI was starting a service to Saudi Arabia and she might be required to work on it.

The Foreign Office was then advising visitors of a “threat of terrorism” in the country. Ashton did not want to travel there because of the security risks, and was offended by the rules for staff travelling to the region.

A BMI document circulated to staff who might travel to Saudi Arabia stated: “It is expected that female crew members will walk behind their male counterparts in public areas such as airports no matter what rank.”

Staff were also given abayas and were required to put them on when leaving the aircraft. Ashton, a practising Christian, was advised by union officials that it was considered a part of the uniform and she could face disciplinary action if she did not wear it.

Ashton said she did not want to fly to Saudi Arabia, but wished to continue flying long-haul routes. The firm said she could transfer to short-haul flights but that would have meant a pay cut of about 20%. She declined to switch to short-haul flights.

On June 13, 2007, she was told she was rostered for a flight from London to Saudi Arabia and refused to go. She was dismissed for refusing to fly and for making it clear she would not travel to Saudi Arabia.

Her letter of dismissal said it was “proportionate” to ask female employees to walk behind men out of respect for Saudi culture. BMI has also defended its decision to require female staff to wear abayas.

The Foreign Office advises women to dress “conservatively” but does not specifically advise wearing an abaya in public places. It also does not refer to any rule or convention that western women should walk behind men.

In a legal case in 2002 Colonel Martha McSally launched a legal action over American military orders that female servicewomen should wear an abaya in public places in Saudi Arabia when American women diplomats and the wives of servicemen were not expected to wear the garment. The Senate subsequently passed legislation that prohibited defence officials from requiring female personnel to wear abayas.

In the employment tribunal decision over Ashton’s case it was ruled there was no evidence that women would regard BMI’s requirements on wearing the abaya, or walking behind men, as “placing them under any disadvantage”. Ashton’s case was dismissed.

The firm said last week the tribunal ruling was “self-explanatory” and would not comment.

Since leaving BMI, Ashton has embarked on a musical career. She said one of her first songs, Shame, Shame, Shame, performed by the band Looby, was inspired by the airline.

Source: Times on Line

Also a good comment made on the section 'Have your say'
If BMI had dimissed a black employee for refusing to walk behind white employees when they flew to pre-apartheid South Africa, would British unions and the Manchester government have argued that the black employee should accept South Africa's "different culture"? What utter rot.
Notadhimmi, USA,

Taliban threatens politicians in troubled Swat, says report

2009-05-15T00:43:00.000-07:00

ISTANBUL - Pakistani Taliban warned local politicians in the troubled Swat Valley that they and their families would be attacked unless they quit their posts protesting against the continuing army offensive in the region.

Speaking to Qatar-based Al Jazeera network yesterday, Muslim Khan, a Pakistani Taliban spokesman, gave members of the national and regional assemblies a three-day deadline to denounce the military assault on Taliban fighters.

The warning came hours after suspected Taliban militants stormed a depot in northwest Pakistan that handles supplied for NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan and torched eight trucks. Also yesterday Pakistan’s embattled President Asif Ali Zardari called for global help to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. "The warning signalled a dark turn in the unfolding events in Swat where the Pakistani army is battling Taliban fighters. They [Taliban] can make these threats and people will take them very seriously," Al Jazeera’s correspondent said.

Trapped residents

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have escaped the punishing offensive in the Swat valley, fleeing Taliban fighters who have terrorized the population in a bloody campaign to enforce Islamic law, or Shariah, and expand their control. Residents trapped in Mingora, the district's main town, told Agence France-Presse by telephone that militants had planted mines and were digging trenches. "People are becoming mentally ill, our senses have shut down, children and woman are crying, please tell the government to pull us out of here," said one shopkeeper contacted by AFP who did not want to give his name. "Forget the lack of electricity and other problems, the Taliban are everywhere and heavy exchanges of fire are routine at night."

Airstrikes targeted Taliban bastions across Swat, which has sunk from a stunning ski resort favored by Westerners to a crucible of Taliban violence, where ground troops have yet to take control. Helicopter gunships also swung into action in the neighboring district of Lower Dir, where the military has been on the offensive since April 26 after Taliban fighters advanced to within 100 kilometres (60 miles) of Islamabad.

A military spokesman reported "heavy fighting" in Swat's northern mountains at Peochar, the suspected stronghold of firebrand Taliban commander Maulana Fazlullah, where airborne commandos on Tuesday opened a new front. Overall, the military says more than 750 militants and 33 troops have been killed in its operations.

Source: Hurriyet

All pigs must die because they descend from Jews

2009-05-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

All pigs must die
because they descend from Jews:
According to Egyptian Islamic scholar

by Itamar Marcus & Barbara Crook, May 13, 2009

All pigs alive today are descendants of the Jews who were turned into pigs by Allah, according to a senior Egyptian religious leader. Since all pigs are descendants of Jews, it is obligatory to kill all pigs, says Sheikh Ahmed Ali Othman.

Presumably if pigs were merely animals, they would not face destruction. It is their Jewish ancestry that condemns them to death.

The Jordanian newspaper Al-Hakika al-Dawliya adds that this is not the only opinion. It cites Sheikh Ali Abu Al-Hassan, head of the Fatwa Committee at Al-Azhar [Sunni Islamic university], who believes that all the Jews who were turned into pigs by Allah died out without reproducing, and therefore there is no relationship between today's pigs and Jews.

The following is the transcript from Al-Moheet Arab News Network:

"CAIRO -- Sheikh Ahmed Ali Othman, supervisor of the Da'awa [Islamic Indoctrination] of the Egyptian Waqf [Islamic Holy places], has issued a Religious Ruling (Fatwa) that pigs in our time have their origins in Jews who angered Allah, such that He turned them into monkeys, pigs, and Satan-worshippers, and it is obligatory to kill and slaughter them [the pigs].

Othman based his ruling on the respected Quranic verse, 'Say [to the People of the Book - Jews and Christians], Come and I shall make known to you who receives the worst retribution of all from Allah: those whom Allah has cursed and upon whom He has poured His wrath, whom He has made into monkeys and pigs, and who have served abominations. Their place is worst of all, and their deviation is the greatest of all...' (Quran, sura 5, verse 60)

Sheikh Othman noted that this verse concerning the nation of the prophet Moses descended [from Allah to the Quran], and the books of commentary confirm this. There are two opinions among the Ulama [Islamic scholars] in this regard: The first is that the Jews, whom Allah transformed and turned into pigs, remained in that state until they died, without producing descendants. The other opinion is that the Jews who turned into pigs multiplied and produced descendants, and their line continues to this day. Sheikh Othman also cited Hadiths (traditions attributed to Muhammad) as support...

The Jordanian newspaper Al-Hakika al-Dawliya quoted Othman: "I personally tend towards the view that the pigs that exist now have their origins with the Jews, and therefore their consumption is forbidden in the words of Allah: 'A carcass, and blood, and the flesh of a pig are forbidden to you....' Moreover, our master Jesus, peace be unto him - one of the tasks that he will fulfill when he descends to earth is the killing of the pigs, and this is proof that their source is Jewish.

Sheikh Othman said that whoever eats pig, it's as if he ate meat of an impure person, and stressed that this Religious Ruling is backed by the Islamic Sages of Al Azhar, but they are afraid to say this publically... so the Sages won't be accused of Anti-Semitism.

Sheikh Ali Abu Al-Hassan, head of the Fatwa Committee at Al-Azhar [Sunni Islamic university], said that the first view is accurate, because when Allah punishes a group of people he punishes only them. When Allah grew angry with the nation of Moses, He turned them into pigs and monkeys as an extraordinary punishment... but they died out without leaving descendants."

[Al-Moheet Arab News Network, May 10, 2009]
[Al-Hakika al-Dawliya, May 9, 2009]

Source: Palestinian Media Watch

Islamist Terrorism, Terror and Iraq

2009-05-14T00:44:00.000-07:00

A briefing by Shimshon Issaki
April 30, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2136/islamist-terrorism-terror-and-iraq

Shimshon Issaki is a leading expert on Islamic terrorism. He served for 44 years in the IDF and other Israeli security agencies as an intelligence analyst and operations officer, retiring with a rank equivalent to brigadier general. His new book, Terror and Iraq: How We Can Better Combat Islamic Terrorism, evaluates al-Qaeda's strategies and tactics. On April 30, Mr. Issaki addressed the Middle East Forum via conference call.

Shimshon Issaki opened with a holistic overview of al-Qaeda, from its roots in the battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan to its far-reaching terrorist activities during the past two decades.

According to Mr. Issaki, al-Qaeda opposes Christians, Jews, and even other Muslims who do not subscribe to Osama bin Laden's Wahhabi ideology; it seeks to attack and "overthrow all regimes that are non-Muslim," or that adhere to an unacceptable brand of Islam. Its preferred instrument is terrorism.

Mr. Issaki claimed that 9/11 could have been averted "if things had been done in the right way," but he sees similar barriers hindering intelligence work seven years later. In particular, he stated that Barack Obama's release of documents on enhanced interrogation techniques has done "irreversible damage to security because [terrorists] are learning how to behave" during questioning.

Asked whether American-Israeli intelligence cooperation has changed since President Obama took office, Issaki reported that it remains "very good," since "the interests [of the U.S. and Israel] are the same interests, the targets are the same targets, and the experience is the same experience."

However, he noted that significant differences of opinion between the United States and Israel have emerged over Iran, Hamas, and other strategic issues. Mr. Issaki said that the Obama administration may be "correct to explore all the possibilities. But where is the time limit? For how long?" He lamented that nothing has been done to deal with Iran since the U.S. election.

Finally, Mr. Issaki warned that al-Qaeda's demise in Iraq has been greatly exaggerated. Recent events show that the organization still is capable of generating chaos there, to the undisputed benefit of Iran.

Summary account by David Rusin.

Source: The Middle East Forum

Porn dominates Saudi mobile use

2009-05-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

Up to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers' mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

The study quoted in Arab News focussed on the phones of teenagers detained by religious police for harassing girls.

The same researcher also found that 88% of girls say they have been victims of harassment using Bluetooth technology.

Saudi Arabia has toughened penalties for misuse of mobile phones which challenge its strict social traditions.

"The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7% of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6% were related to violence," said report author Professor Abdullah al-Rasheed.

He presented his study at a seminar organised by the King Fahd Security Academy, Arab News reports.

Social contact between genders is banned in public in Saudi Arabia, which enforces a strict interpretation of Islamic law and morality.

But the spread of Bluetooth technology, allowing wireless connection between mobile phones, has allowed for increased opportunities of communication as well as abuse by predatory young men.

Source: BBC

Cairo youth break sex taboos

2009-05-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

As part of a series about young people in the Middle East, the BBC News website explores relationships in Cairo where sex outside wedlock is taboo - but some say not uncommon.

Fatima and her boyfriend had been together for about two years when she discovered she was pregnant.

"I had to have an abortion. I didn't want to do it, but in this society I didn't have any choice," she says, now an outspoken 27 year-old.

"I hate it when I remember it, because it was a very, very bad experience." Her family know nothing of her ordeal.

Mido, 28, has had four serious girlfriends. He has had sex several times and feels no guilt, but would never tell his parents.

"I don't have the courage to shake their beliefs - especially my father's," he says.

Niveen, 24, has been seeing her boyfriend for four months. They plan to move in together without their parents finding out.

"Whenever you have a relationship here you have to take risks, and this is the risk I'm taking," she says.

Spending the night together is difficult as both live at home with their families. Even going to a hotel means checking into different rooms and sneaking between them.

Hidden lives

With their secret lifestyles, these three young people from Cairo's liberal, intellectual elite are pushing at the limits set by a society dominated by traditional views.

Even among educated urbanites, the concept of an unmarried mother simply does not exist. A bride's virginity is so highly prized that doctors charge up to 1000 Egyptian pounds (US$173) to reconstruct a young woman's hymen.

But there are perceptions that in general, at least in Cairo, sex before marriage is widespread and increasing as spiralling costs and high unemployment push marriage ages up.

On any summer evening along Cairo's 6th October Bridge, veiled figures nestle up to young men. The couples gaze down into the Nile, engaged in intimate conversation amid the blaring horns and traffic fumes.

Locals will tell you this is increasing as it becomes more socially acceptable, and that many of these couples are from Cairo's poorer areas.

But there is debate over whether this new openness about courtship is resulting in more premarital sex.

Gynaecologist Rima Khofash works among both rich and poor in Cairo and estimates that about 50% of young people have pre-marital sex.

"I think now there is a revolution in sex between young people - they do it haphazardly - often in short-term relationships."

Abortion is illegal in Egypt in all but a few cases. Approximately one woman a month comes to her clinic with complications resulting from a backstreet termination, she says.

Dr Khofash is certain that the number of abortions is increasing: "All gynaecologists know this, but we don't know how much it is increasing by."

'Not widespread'

But Dr Sahar Tawila of Cairo University, who co-ordinated one of the most comprehensive studies ever of young people in Egypt, believes the prevalence of sex before marriage has been dramatically overblown in the Egyptian media.

"It is not widespread. Sexual relationships do exist, but they should be put in proportion."

In the 2001 nationwide study, 21% of young men with higher education said they knew someone who had had pre-marital sex - and this dropped to 1.4% among the uneducated.

Dr Tawila says young people, particularly girls, are highly aware of the risks of pre-marital sex.

For example, Shaymaa, 20, is in love with Ashraf, her boyfriend of 18 months. But she refuses anything more intimate than holding hands.

If she has sex with him, she explains, she may end up being forced to marry him, which she is not yet sure she wants to do. "Virginity is your whole life," she says.

Ashraf, 26, says he has been pushing her towards intimacy: "I just have to stop at a point when I am sure she will refuse to sleep with me - that means she is a good girl."

Many more young women say they plan to stay virgins until they marry. Several point out that girls face more pressure to do so than boys.

"Boys I know have many girlfriends, even at the same time. One of my best friends told me he made love with his girlfriend and then said 'I won't ever marry her - she's not a virgin'," one 19-year-old female student said.

Illegal operation

This pressure drives the demand for hymen reconstruction operations, which can even involve stitching a small capsule of red fluid into the vagina to ensure wedding night "bleeding".

Gynaecologist Ahdy Wahid Rizk says that each week, two or three young women visit his central Cairo clinic to ask about hymen reconstruction, despite the fact that he has always refused to carry out the illegal operation.

But even so, those having premarital sex may well still be a small minority. For those who would like to, there are still many barriers.

Mona, 27, was with her boyfriend for two years: "We didn't have full sex. We didn't have a place to do it. If it was easier, yes, I think I would have liked to. But it's also our traditions that stopped me. I felt guilty about what we did."

And many others simply believe it is wrong, like Cairo University student Mohammed Esmat, 20: "I'm a Muslim and in Islam sex before marriage is forbidden, so I am against it."

Some names have been changed to protect the identities of interviewees.

Source: BBC

Egypt arrests 'wife swap' couple

2009-05-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

Egyptian police have arrested a senior civil servant and his wife accusing them of swapping sex partners with other couples, local media reports say.

The pair are said to have held at least three "swinger" parties at their home in Cairo, after soliciting other married couples over the internet.

Extra-marital sex is illegal in Egypt, where the constitution says Islamic law is the main source of legislation.

Police say they are looking for others who participated in the sex acts.

The couple, who media reports say have children and used the aliases Magdy and Samira, face up to three years in prison if convicted of facilitating prostitution.

'Snooping'

Egyptian media reported that the main suspect - a government employee - set up a website to promote wife swapping and posted ads in chat rooms linked to popular Arabic porn sites.

He and his wife - a school teacher - then interviewed some 44 couples, usually at coffee shops in downtown Cairo, before they swapped partners.

Press reports said the pair turned down over 40 couples because they were not officially married, causing concern that they would not guarantee confidentiality.

It said police also arrested a lawyer at a cafe in the Cairo suburb Giza while he was finalising a swap deal, adding that another swap was set for the weekend with a young man from the Gulf and his wife.

Many of the ads on the website used by the couple are said to contain personal email addresses and phone numbers.

A human rights group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, criticised police for snooping on the couples.

"The case raises serious concerns about due process and the privacy rights of those arrested, especially in light of press reports about police interception of defendants' electronic correspondence," spokesman Hossam Bahgat told the AFP news agency.

"We're also of course worried that police seem to be still going after many people based on the intercepted emails of the two main defendants."

Source: BBC

A Peaceful Islam...

2009-05-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

These pictures are of Muslims marching through the STREETS OF LONDON during their recent 'Religion of Peace Demonstration.'

Lebanese woman fined for losing unborn baby in Dubai car crash

2009-05-04T23:51:00.000-07:00

DUBAI: A woman who lost her unborn baby in a Dubai road crash has been convicted of manslaughter and ordered to pay blood money, in the first such ruling in the UAE, local newspapers reported on Monday. The court found the 27-year-old Lebanese woman had failed to exercise due diligence when driving and caused her car to collide with another vehicle in October when she was nine months pregnant, the Arabic-language Al-Emarat Al-Youm said.

The National reported that the woman's car was struck from behind after she braked on a highway in Dubai, which like the rest of the UAE is notorious for fatal road accidents.

The Dubai Traffic Court ordered the mother to pay 20,000 dirhams ($5,450) in diyyah or blood money to the unborn baby's next of kin and fined her another $540 for "unintentional homicide," Al-Emarat Al-Youm said. The judge based the verdict on Islamic or sharia law, it added.

"This may be the first case of its kind and may appear unusual to some, but the case highlights the fact that an unborn foetus also has rights as any human being," chief traffic prosecutor Salah Bu Farousha was quoted as saying in The National.

Highways in the UAE have a top speed limit of 120 kilometers an hour but motorists often drive much faster. - AFP

Source: The Daily Star - Lebanon

Airline sorry for omitting Israel

2009-05-04T23:48:00.001-07:00

British airline BMI has apologised after in-flight maps on its London-Tel Aviv service did not identify Israel.

The moving maps marked Islamic holy sites but showed only the city of Haifa in Israel, identified by its Arabic name, Khefa.

Israeli officials accused BMI of trying to "hide the existence of Israel".

But BMI said it was a technical error - the maps had not been changed since the planes were taken over from a former airline which flew to the Middle East.

"If BMI had any political agenda in order not to anger neighbouring countries, it would not have invested so much in the Tel Aviv line," AFP news agency quoted a spokesman as saying.

BMED, which was taken over by BMI in 2007, had flown from the UK to many Muslim countries in the Middle East and so the maps had pointed out sites which were relevant to passengers.

A BMI spokesman told the BBC the maps should have been deactivated before the planes were deployed on the new route but "due to a technical error this did not take place".

Israeli transport ministry Director General Gideon Sitterman, said it was "unacceptable" that Israel had been "wiped off the map".

"Doing business with Israel has its advantages and disadvantages, but we will not agree to a situation where they hide the existence of Israel but want to do business with Israel," he told Israeli army radio.

BMI has withdrawn the two planes from service while new maps are installed, but said larger planes had been scheduled to take over the route last Sunday anyway.

The spokesman told the BBC there had been "quite a bit of upset" from customers but that it had been a genuine error and the airline was sorry for any offence caused.

Saudis clamp down on women's gyms

2009-04-27T23:14:00.000-07:00

Many women-only sports clubs and gyms in Saudi Arabia face closure under a government clampdown on unlicensed premises, Saudi media have reported.

Women's gyms have become popular in the ultra-conservative Muslim country where the sexes are heavily segregated.

But only clubs linked to medical groups can get licenses and others will be closed, the Arab News newspaper said.

Saudi women were reported to have launched an online campaign in protest called Let Her Get Fat.

Government departments are not allowed to issue licenses for commercial gyms and sports clubs for women, unlike facilities for men, the newspaper reported.

Beauty salons

It quoted club manager Bader al-Shibani, who tried to open a women's sports club along with the one he runs for men in Jeddah.

"I ran into a stone wall at every turn. Every department I visited denied that they had the authority to give permission to establish a women's club," he said.

Many clubs are registered as beauty salons, and offer fitness facilities and even exercise classes in addition, the newspaper said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs told the newspaper that commercial clubs do not have registration for the provision of sport and health services.

"It's clear that one department is now taking the decision to put an end to the increasing number of unlicensed clubs," lawyer and community activist Abdulaziz al-Qasim told Arab News.

A group of women launched an internet campaign in protest against the move, saying facilities linked to medical clinics were too expensive, and their health would suffer as a result of the closures.

Women in Saudi Arabia are banned from driving, must wear a head-to-toe cloak when out in public and must obtain permission from a male relative to work, travel, study or marry.

Source: BBC

Honor Kiling versus Domestic Violence

2009-04-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

Honor Killings	Domestic Violence
Committed mainly by Muslims against Muslim girls/young adult women.	Committed by men of all faiths usually against adult women.
Committed mainly by fathers against their teenage daughters and daughters in their early twenties. Wives and older-age daughters may also be victims, but to a lesser extent.	Committed by an adult male spouse against an adult female spouse or intimate partner.
Carefully planned. Death threats are often used as a means of control.	The murder is often unplanned and spontaneous.
The planning and execution involve multiple family members and can include mothers, sisters, brothers, male cousins, uncles, grandfathers, etc. If the girl escapes, the extended family will continue to search for her to kill her.	The murder is carried out by one man with no family complicity.
The reason given for the honor killing is that the girl or young woman has "dishonored" the family.	The batterer-murderer does not claim any family concept of "honor." The reasons may range from a poorly cooked meal to suspected infidelity to the woman's trying to protect the children from his abuse or turning to the authorities for help.
At least half the time, the killings are carried out with barbaric ferocity. The female victim is often raped, burned alive, stoned or beaten to death, cut at the throat, decapitated, stabbed numerous times, suffocated slowly, etc.	While some men do beat a spouse to death, they often simply shoot or stab them.
The extended family and community valorize the honor killing. They do not condemn the perpetrators in the name of Islam. Mainly, honor killings are seen as normative.	The batterer-murderer is seen as a criminal; no one defends him as a hero. Such men are often viewed as sociopaths, mentally ill, or evil.
The murderer(s) do not show remorse. Instead, they experience themselves as "victims," defending themselves from the girl's actions and trying to restore their lost family honor.	Sometimes, remorse or regret is exhibited

The Earth Is Flat and Much Larger than the Sun

2009-04-24T00:58:00.000-07:00

Nothing more to say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F5kYWceTsI

The Politics of Palestinian Demography

2009-04-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

by Yakov Faitelson
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2009, pp. 51-59

With every generation, it seems, a new demographic panic strikes Israel. Opening the Israeli Knesset (parliament) on October 8, 2007, after the Jewish New Year, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned of "a demographic battle, drowned in blood and tears," if Israel did not make territorial concessions. As a new administration in Washington seeks to revive the peace process, the demographic question has again moved front and center. Citing Israel's eroding demographic position, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen urged Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton to try "tough love" to force Israeli concessions. Proponents of the argument that demography mandates concessions might be sincere, but they get the science wrong. Not only does demography not show an imminent Jewish minority in Israel, but even a cursory look at Palestinian numbers shows just how false and politically motivated recent Palestinian surveys are.

On February 9, 2008, Luay Shabaneh, the new president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), published the results of a December 2007 Palestinian Authority population census. According to the new data, since 1997, the Arab population has increased to 1,460,000 in the Gaza Strip and 2,300,000 in the West Bank (including 208,000 in East Jerusalem) to a total of 3,760,000 people—an increase of 30 percent in one decade. East Jerusalem is under Israel's administration, but the Palestinian Authority nevertheless counts its Arab population as part of the territory it administers. Thus, the East Jerusalem Arabs are double-counted: once as part of the Arab population of Israel, and again as a part of the population of the Palestinian Authority.

The 30 percent population increase again caused renewed demographic panic in Israel. According to a BBC news report, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said that failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians would bring the end of the State of Israel.

But unlike what had happened during previous demographic panics, Israeli experts began to raise serious questions about the accuracy of the census. Such questions had been a long time in coming: Most of the middle- and long-term demographic forecasts for Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—formulated by demographers over the last 110 years—have turned out to be unsound, often dramatically so. This is due to the fact that long-term military, political, economic, and social changes in the region particularly, and in the world in general, cannot be accurately predicted; what is presented with a patina of scientific legitimacy is often simply someone's best guess. Added to this problem is a more troublesome one: Population statistics and birth rates play such an important role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from the way that foreign aid is allocated to Israel's decision to hold or relinquish territory—that those attempting to manipulate the perceptions of both the public and policymakers are irresistibly drawn to the field.

Those who questioned the new Palestinian census were correct: The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' demographic data arrived at its data not through objective scientific inquiry but rather by overstating the size of the Arab population residing in the territories administered by the Palestinian Authority.
The History of Demographic Forecasts

In a March 1898 letter, the famous Jewish historian, Simon Dubnow, criticized Zionist ideas, writing,

During seventeen years of tense work to encourage substantial emigration, after the expense of vast means and with the help of millions donated by Rothschild, we managed to place on the land of Palestine only about 3,600 settlers, which makes up approximately 211 people per year. Let us allow that the Western Zionist committees will work with significantly larger capitals and energy and will move to Palestine not two hundred, but one thousand settlers annually … then in a hundred years the Jewish population of Palestine will reach one hundred thousand men. Let's increase this number five times and add to this the natural increase and inflow of the industrial population to the cities, then we shall receive about a half million Jews in Palestine after one hundred years … Certainly, all of us treasure the hope to see at the beginning of the twenty-first century about a half-million of our brothers living in our ancient homeland, but can it solve the problem of 10 millions Jews, who are dispersed?

In May 1948, only fifty years after Dubnow's projections, the Jews in Palestine already numbered 649,600 people.

Such mistaken projections, however, have been the rule rather than the exception. At the end of 1944, Roberto Bachi presented to the Jewish National Council, the main institution of the Jewish community during the British Mandate, a secret demographic report that included four forecasts: optimistic and pessimistic, and with Jewish immigration as a variable. Bachi based his forecasts on the existing demographic data for 1938-42 and on estimates of trends that could be accepted as reasonable. He assumed that Arab fertility for the ensuing sixty years would continue to be very high (seven children or more per woman) or that it would decrease only slightly (six children per woman). He also assumed that Jewish fertility would remain at about two children per woman but might increase slightly to three children per woman. He also predicted that Jewish immigration might bring about one million Jews to Israel during the five to fifteen years starting from 1946.

These estimates could not be treated as prophecy, wrote Bachi, since the differences between reality and forecast increase as the projected time period lengthens. According to Bachi's pessimistic scenario, by 1971, the population of Palestine would include 2,467,000 Arabs and 604,000 Jews without Jewish immigration or 1,695,000 Jews should there have been one million Jewish immigrants. According to Bachi's more optimistic forecasts, the population of Palestine in the same year could consist of 2,186,000 Arabs and 698,000 Jews without immigration or 1,898,000 Jews with a million Jewish immigrants.

Fast-forward to 1971. Israel controlled the whole territory of the former British Mandate in Palestine, and 2,662,000 Jews already lived in Israel—about half a million more than in Bachi's most optimistic projection. The Arab population stood at 1,460,000, about one million fewer than he had predicted. Then in 1972, Bachi predicted, as he had in 1956, that immigration to Israel would stop as the Jews of the West were indifferent and the Jews of the Soviet Union were forever trapped. Nevertheless, over the next seven years, more than a quarter million Jews migrated to Israel.

His projections for 2001 were similarly off-base: According to the pessimistic forecast, the population of Palestine in 2001 would comprise 5,871,000 Arabs and 563,000 Jews without immigration or 1,580,000 Jews with a million Jewish immigrants. Following his optimistic forecast, the population of Palestine in 2001 should have been 4,415,000 Arabs and 831,000 Jews without immigration or 2,258,000 Jews with a million Jewish immigrants.

The reality was quite different. The Jewish population reached 5,025,010, nine times more than his pessimistic projection, and 2.2 times more than his most optimistic forecast. When combined with the immigrant population from the former Soviet Union, the total comprised 5,281,300 people The total Arab population reached 3,570,000, some 1,300,000, or 39 percent less than Bachi's projection for 2001.

Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics forecast in 1968 that, by 1985, the Jewish population would increase to 2,923,000, and the Arab population would rise to 49 percent of Israel's total population. In reality, there were 3,517,200 Jews in 1985, representing 62.7 percent of the total population.

Amidst the 1987 Palestinian uprising against Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza, demographic predictions—no matter how sloppy—became the stuff of headlines. In 1987, the Israeli newspaper Yedi'ot Aharanot quoted Arnon Sofer's bombshell forecast: "In the year 2000, Israel will become non-Jewish." The New York Times' Thomas Friedman picked up Sofer's prediction and ran with it in an 1800-word, page one story. Sofer claimed that by 2000 there would be "4.2 million Jews versus 3.5 million non-Jews. The 3.5 million Arabs would include: 1.2 million Israeli Arabs within the Green Line, one million Arabs in the Gaza Strip, and between 1.1 and 1.5 million in the West Bank." Sofer's tally indicated for 2000 a range of between 2.1 to 2.5 million Arabs in the Palestinian territories.

Putting aside the fact that the figures did not justify the headlines proclaiming a Jewish minority, Sofer actually miscalculated the Arab population twice: First, by using the 1986 Central Bureau of Statistics forecast made for 2002 for all Arabs—defined officially as citizens and permanent residents of the State of Israel, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights—as the Arab population of Israel only "within the Green Line," i.e., exclusive of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights; and, second, by folding the Arab population of East Jerusalem into the forecast of the Arab population in the Palestinian territories. Then, he presented the forecast for the West Bank and Gaza Strip including East Jerusalem, as it was usually done by the U.N., CIA, and Palestinian sources. In effect, this results in double counting the East Jerusalem population, first as permanent residents of the State of Israel and then as the residents of Palestinian territory.

A month later, Sofer explained his forecast: "Without even considering birth rates, to make up one percentage point today, we need an additional 170,000 Jews ...Who among us really expects that sort of aliya (migration to Israel) in the near future?" Two years later, though, just such a migration occurred, underlining the inability of the demographers to forecast political developments. Over the ensuing decade, more than one million Jews were repatriated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Including mixed Jewish families, this wave of immigration totaled 1.2 million people and increased Israel's Jewish population by 31 percent. Demographic prediction is such an uncertain science that even Israeli specialists get it wrong repeatedly.
A Demographic Intifada

Palestinian Arab numbers have always been spotty. There is very little historical data. As University of Illinois economics professor Fred M. Gottheil has noted,

Palestinian demography of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has never been just a matter of numbers. It has always been—and consciously so—a frontline weapon used in a life-and-death struggle for nationhood … The problem with staking so much on so narrow a focus as past demography is that the data generated by demographers and others since the early nineteenth century are so lacking in precision that, in some matters of dispute concerning demography, "anyone's guess," as the saying goes, "is as good as any other."

Justin McCarthy, a University of Louisville historian with a specialization in demography, notes that Israel's 1967 census of Gaza's population was the first in more than thirty-five years; before that census, procedures were not rigorous. At best, McCarthy notes, pre-1967 counts of Palestinian Arabs are "estimations" although he also notes that subsequent Israeli-conducted censuses were scientific and objective.

In 1997, three years after the Oslo accords handed control of large portions of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestine Authority, the Palestinians conducted their first independent census, according to which the Arab population numbered 2,895,683 people: 1,873,476 in the West Bank (including 210,209 in East Jerusalem) and 1,022,207 in the Gaza Strip. It also included 325,253 Arab emigrants contradicting international standards regarding the enlistment of only permanent residents in the population registry. According to the "U.N. Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses," people to be enumerated by the census are defined as "usual residents":

Usual residents may have citizenship or not, and they may also include undocumented persons, applicants for asylum, or refugees. Usual residents then may include foreigners who reside, or intend to reside, in the country continuously for either most of the last 12 months or for 12 months or more, depending on the definition of place of usual residence that is adopted by the country. Persons who may consider themselves usual residents of a country because of citizenship or family ties, but are absent from the country for either most of the last 12 months, or for 12 months or more, depending on the definition adopted, should be excluded.

Even without contesting the professionalism of the count itself, the Arab population stood, in fact, at only 2,360,231 people when the East Jerusalem and emigrant Arabs are subtracted.

Yet the numbers of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics themselves seem improbably high. According to data released by the Israeli census bureau at the end of 1993, the Arab population numbered 1,084,400 in the West Bank and 748,400 in the Gaza Strip, for a total of 1,832,800. If the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics census was accurate, the Arab population in the Palestinian territories increased by an astonishing 527,431 people, or 29 percent, in only four years. In order to reach such phenomenal population growth, the geometrical mean of the annual growth rate would have to be an improbable 6.6 percent per year during this period.

U.N. data for 2006 indicate that the natural growth of the Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip was much smaller: an annual average of 3.89 percent per year between 1990 and 1995, 3.7 percent between 1995 and 2000, and 3.56 percent per year between 2000 and 2005. Even these U.N. estimates may be high, as they accepted Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics data uncritically.

In contrast, a 2003 study conducted by this author demonstrated that the Palestinian population grew by about one million people from 1990 to 2000. By coincidence, this figure seemingly offsets the mass immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union during the 1990s. The study found that Palestinian data suggested that the Arab population had doubled and that the Palestinian Arab population nominal growth was actually larger than the Jewish population growth at the time of the migration of Soviet Jews to Israel. Given the strain and management problem that a population growth of 31.2 percent represented for Israel, it defies logic that Palestinian growth could double without outside observers noticing. As McCarthy noted,

It is difficult to see how the agricultural or industrial base of Palestine can cope with the increased numbers that will result from high Palestinian fertility … Possessing neither the agricultural potential nor the economic base … Palestine can expect a demographic crisis.

This study prompted Haggai Segal, an Israel-based Ma'ariv, Makor Rishon, and BeSheva columnist, journalist, and commentator, to undertake additional investigation on this subject, which he published in BeSheva.

In 2005, an American and Israeli demography team headed by Bennett Zimmerman and Yoram Ettinger confirmed the 2003 findings and, again, criticized both the illegitimate inclusion of Arab emigrants from the Palestinian Authority and the double counting of the East Jerusalem Arab population. The Zimmerman and Ettinger study also revealed that, at the end of 2000, the Arab population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip numbered 2,246,000 people—1,280,000 in the West Bank and about 966,000 in the Gaza Strip.

According to the data provided by the Palestinian Authority at the end of 2005, in contrast, the population in the territories numbered 3,762,005—2,372,216 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and 1,389,789 in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian numbers get even stranger: According to estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2006, the population of the Palestinian Authority jumped to 3,952,354—an increase of 190,349 over the previous year, or more than 5 percent in a single year. Not only is this improbable but, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the rates of natural population growth were half of this: 2.4 percent in 2003, 2.6 percent in 2004, and 2.5 percent in 2005.

In February 2005, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a study conducted by Yousef Ibrahim, a professor of geography and population studies at al-Aqsa University in Gaza, which said that the Arab population would reach 6.3 million in 2010, compared to 5.7 million Jews, provided that the current growth ratios continued along the same pattern, consciously utilizing the words of Israeli demographic expert Sergio DellaPergola, who said that "the direction is quite obvious. Before the end of this decade, Jews will become a minority in the lands that include 'Israel,' West Bank and Gaza Strip." The Atlantic, a widely read American monthly, asked shrilly, "Will Israel Live to 100?"

Then, in December 2006, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics issued a statement asserting that a "population dichotomy at 5.7 million is expected at the end of 2010," i.e., that in 2010 the number of Palestinian would be equal to the number of the Jews, a discrepancy of 600,000 in less than two years.

In February 2008, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistic, using data from the Palestinian Authority's December 2007 census, found that the population of the Palestinian Authority reached 3,760,000 people: 1,460,000 in the Gaza Strip and 2,300,000 in the West Bank, including 208,000 in East Jerusalem, an increase of 30 percent from 1997. But, according to these data, the population in East Jerusalem is 2,209 less than it was in 1997. This report provoked harsh criticism from the Palestinian Authority, which demanded that these "distortions" be "corrected." Hatem Abdel Kader, an adviser on Jerusalem affairs to Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, said he did not believe the Jerusalem figures were reliable and that the Palestinian Authority believed that census takers had failed to visit many households.

Once again, by coincidence, the results of the population census for the end of 2007 were almost identical to the estimates of the Palestinian Authority at the end of 2005. What happened to the 192,354 people that existed according to the estimates of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics at the end of 2006? Two answers are possible: During 2007, there was a massive emigration of Arabs from the Palestinian territories, unprecedented since the Six-Day War, and the results were registered in the population census; or this was a crude manipulation of the data and estimates of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, especially the gaps in their data for 2005 and 2006. The latter is more plausible. As Hassan Abu Libdeh, director of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in the 1990s, told The New York Times, "In my opinion, [the data] is as important as the intifada. It is a civil intifada." Indeed, such an attitude explains why the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Health has erased from their Internet site official reports containing demographic data since 2000, which might contradict the Palestinian leadership's current line.

The 2007 census clearly shows that the yearly growth rate of the Arab population, according to a calculation of the annual geometric mean over the last ten years, should have been 2.66 percent. By extending this 10-year period to fourteen years, and basing calculations on the data of the Israeli census bureau for the population of the Palestinian territories for the end of 1993, the population of these areas should, in fact, stand at 2,646,871—1,113,129 fewer than the 2007 Palestinian census. The difference between the likely actual Palestinian population and the results of the two Palestinian censuses (1997 and 2007) is probably around one million people, just as the Zimmerman and Ettinger study showed four years ago. The major data distortion was made in 1997, and then the overstated population number became the basis for the future estimates.
Conclusions

On May 15, 2008, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics president Luay Shabaneh claimed that the Arab population in Palestine would become equal to the Jewish population by 2016, echoing similar predictions of an impending Jewish minority by earlier generations of demographers and analysts: Bachi in 1944, Patrick Loftus in 1947, Bachi again in 1968, Pinkhas Sapir in 1973, Sofer in 1987, DellaPergola in 2005, and the Palestinian bureau in 2005 and 2006.

Then, three months after this last Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics statement, DellaPergola once again postponed his previous projection of Arab and Jewish populations reaching equality from 2010 to 2020. From DellaPergola's statement, it seems that the gap of one million persons could be closed in ten years, making necessary an additional annual yearly increase of 100,000 Arabs, more than double the current numbers. But, far from doubling, Arab fertility and natural increase are decreasing following the demographic transition rules.

Why fudge the numbers? There are two important reasons: First, overstating the Palestinian population is good for Palestinian morale, bad for Israeli morale, and heightens Jewish fears of the so-called "demographic time bomb"; second, there is a significant financial incentive, as the international community provides money to the Palestinian Authority according to the number of its inhabitants. When the Palestinian Authority pads its population numbers, the Palestinian Authority receives more money.

Careful demographic analysis, however, should lead to a conclusion in stark contrast to the demographic time bomb thesis. The natural increase of the Jewish population in Israel—that is, its yearly birth rate less its yearly death rate—stabilized thirty years ago and, since 2002, has even begun to grow. The natural increase of the total Arab population, comprising both Israeli Arabs and the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, continues to descend toward convergence with the Jewish population, probably in the latter half of this century.

The data, moreover, point to rising levels of Arab emigration, particularly among young people. According to the survey conducted by Bir-Zeit University, 32 percent of all Palestinians and 44 percent of Palestinian youth would emigrate if they could. The official Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida has reported similar numbers. A public opinion poll conducted by the Near East Consulting Corporation in the Gaza Strip reveals an even higher rate—47 percent of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Translated into numbers of people, as of 2006, more than a million Arabs in the Palestinian territories wish to emigrate. As journalist Amit Cohen noted in 2007, "Close to 14,000 Palestinians, more than 1 percent of the population in the Strip, have left the Gaza Strip since the implementation of the withdrawal program, largely for financial reasons.

In an interview reported in the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat around the same time, Salam Fayyad, head of the Emergency Palestinian Government, commented: "How will we be able to deal with the problem of 40,000 to 50,000 Palestinians who have emigrated and many more that are not emigrating just because they do not have the means? We are losing in this respect."

The misuse of demography has been one of the most prominent, yet unexamined, aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many Israelis have so thoroughly absorbed the repeated claims of a diminishing Jewish majority that they do not consider whether their conventional wisdom is false. Before an accurate demographic picture of Israel and the Palestinian territories trickles down to the consciousness of the residents of the region, it must first be understood by Israeli and Palestinian policymakers, academics, and journalists, who need accurate, factual information to do their jobs. The impact on the conflict of such a development would be substantial.

Yakov Faitelson is the author of Demographic Trends in the Land of Israel, 1800-2007 (Israeli Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS), 2008).

Source: Middle East Forum

Arabian Sex Tourism

2009-04-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

Indian media have been publishing exposés documenting the foul behavior of Gulf Arabs in the southern Indian town of Hyderabad. "Fly-by-night bridegrooms" by R Akhileshwari in the Deccan Herald and "One minor girl, many Arabs" by Mohammed Wajihuddin in the Times of India are two important examples. Wajihuddin sets the stage:

They are old predators with new vigour. Often bearded, invariably in flowing robes and expensive turbans. The rich, middle-aged Arabs increasingly stalk the deprived streets of Hyderabad like medieval monarchs would stalk their harems in days that we wrongly think are history. These Viagra-enabled Arabs are perpetrating a blatant crime under the veneer of nikaah, the Islamic rules of marriage.

(I have silently corrected some typos). Wajihuddin then specifies the problem:

Misusing the sanctioned provision which allows a Muslim man to have four wives at a time, many old Arabs are not just marrying minors in Hyderabad, but marrying more than one minor in a single sitting. "The Arabs prefer teenage, virgin brides," says Jameela Nishat, who counsels and sensitises young women against the malaise.

The Arabs usually "marry" the girls for short periods, sometimes just a single night. In fact, Wajihuddin reports, marriage and divorce formalities are often prepared at the same time, thereby expediting the process for all involved. Akhileshwari notes that "their girl children are available for as little as 5,000 rupees to satisfy the lust of doddering old Arab men." Five thousand rupees, by the way, equals just a bit over US$100.

An Indian television program recently reported on a show-casing of eight prospective brides, most of them minors, at which they were offered up to their Arab suitors. "It resembled a brothel. The girls were paraded before the Arab who would lift the girls' burqa, run his fingers through their hair, gaze at their figures and converse through an interpreter," recalls one of Nishat's assistants.

Wajihuddin also offers a specific case history:

On the first of August, forty-five-year-old Al Rahman Ismail Mirza Abdul Jabbar, a sheikh from the UAE, approached a broker in these matters, seventy-year-old Zainab Bi, in the walled city, near the historic Char Minar. The broker procured Farheen Sultana and Hina Sultana, aged between thirteen and fifteen, for twenty thousand rupees [DP comment: that equals US$450]. Then he hired Qazi [DP comment: an Islamic judge, usually spelled qadi in English] Mohammed Abdul Waheed Qureshi to solemnise the marriage. The qazi, taking advantage of an Islamic provision, married the girls off to the Arab. After the wedding night with the girls, the Arab left at dawn.

So much for that "marriage."

Sunita Krishnan, head of an anti human-trafficking organization, Prajwala, makes the only too-obvious point that girl children are not valued. "If a girl child is sold or her life ruined, it is not a national loss, that's why this is a non-issue, both for community and to society." With the exception of Maulana Hameeduddin Aqil, the head of Millat-e-Islamia (a local organization, apparently not connected the notorious Pakistani terrorist group), who speaks out against these sham marriages ("They are committing a sin. It's not nikaah, it's prostitution by another name"), the Islamic authorities in India are almost all silent about this travesty of the Shari'a.

For their part, Muslim politicians in the city of Hyderabad apparently could care less. "It's not on the poll agenda of any politician," says Mazhar Hussain, director of a social welfare organization, the Confederation of Voluntary Associations. The Majlis-e-Ittihadul Muslameen, the main party of Hyderabad's Muslims, is blissfully unconcerned: "You cannot deny that the fortunes of many families have changed through such marriages," MIM's president, Sultan Salahuddin Owaisi, cheerfully points out.

Comments:

(1) Ironically, the girls thus proffered appear all to be Muslim – no Hindus or others need apply.

(2) The behavior of Arabs in India in some way parallels that of Japanese and Westerners in Thailand, with the notable difference that the Indian case involves marriage, an emphasis on virginity, and local authorities seemingly pleased with providing their minor girls for sex tourism.

(3) Arabian sex tourism is not exclusive to India but also takes place in other poor countries.

(4) This trade in persons is merely one dimension of a problem that prevails through Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (for another dimension, see "Saudis Import Slaves to America").

(5) Concubinage, forced labor, indentured servitude, slavery – these deep problems are nowhere near being addressed in the Gulf region, much less solved. Indeed, one prominent Saudi theologian has gone so far as to state that "Slavery is a part of Islam" and whoever says it should be abolished "is an infidel." So long as such attitudes can be articulated publicly, without censure, abuses are certain to continue.

(6) The hypocrisy of this trade is perhaps its vilest aspect. Better prostitution, frankly acknowledged, than religiously-sanctioned fake marriages, for the former is understood to be a vice while the latter parades as a virtue.

(7) Wajihuddin compares the Arabian men to "medieval monarchs" and the analogy is apt. These transactions, involving Muslim minors and conducted under the auspices of Islamic law, point yet again to the dominance of premodern ways in the Muslim world and the urgent need to modernize the Islamic religion.

_________

Oct. 7, 2005 update: A bibliography of my writings on "Sex and gender relations" provides background to the problem described here. See especially "Female Desire and Islamic Trauma."

Oct. 8, 2005 update: A reader points out the irony of men from the U.A.E. going to India in search of sex when Dubai, the largest U.A.E. city itself is notorious for its sex trade. On this, see Peyman Pejman, "U.A.E.: Muslim Federation Of States Is Hub of International Prostitution."

Feb. 21, 2006 update: The Abdul Jabbar story above is told differently by the Times of India in "80-year-old Arab buys Indian bride for Rs 10 k":

In August last year, two minor girls were married to a middle-aged Arab from the UAE in one sitting by a cleric. However, the girls escaped from his clutches. The Arab, Shaik Al Rahama Ismail Mirza Abdul Jabbar fled the country. Police had then arrested the cleric and the broker and claimed that the marriage racket had international ramifications.

The same article also provides a host of other examples, including the title case involving a 27-year-old Indian bride bought for US$225 and a variety of other travesties.

June 29, 2006 update: One hardly knows whether to cry or laugh on learning the comments of Indonesia's Vice President Jusuf Kalla at a travel industry seminar on attracting more Arab visitors to Indonesia.

Kalla noted that many Arab tourists currently traveled to Puncak - a hill town near Jakarta notorious for prostitution, where signs in Arabic at restaurants and hotels testify to the its popularity with Arabs - to enter into short-term marriage contracts with Indonesian women. "We need different kinds of marketing campaigns, more targeted. At the moment most Arabs go to Puncak. If they go there looking for widows or divorcees that is not our business, it is not a problem. So what if the man goes home, the lady gets a small house, that is good isn't it?"

Aug. 16, 2008 update: Summer "tourist marriages" are emerging as a pattern during the summer months, when Saudis travel to Indonesia to escape the heat and some men marry local women only to abandon them in the fall. The marriages are facilitated by matchmakers with albums of pictures of potential wives, which customers can select for SR2000 or US$530.

In one instance, reports the Saudi Gazette, relying on information in Al-Watan from Faraj Al-Dawseri of the Saudi Embassy, four young Saudis married four Indonesian girls in the town of Bandon but then

alleged the marriages were unofficial because they did not acquire a permit from the Ministry of the Interior in Saudi Arabia and instead the marriages were officiated by a mosque's Imam in the presence of the girls' father. They alleged they did not deceive their father-in-law because they declared the marriages were only being conducted to "protect them from temptation." They also said they were being cautious not to father children with the women because the marriages were strictly "tourist marriages."

The result of such marriages, according to Dawseri, are thousands of children in Indonesia abandoned by their Saudi fathers. The embassy facilitates contact between the Saudis and their abandoned wives and children; often, Indonesian families settle for payments of SR2,000.

Apr. 18, 2009 update: According to Khaled Al-Arrak, director of Saudi affairs at the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta, misyar (temporary) marriages between Saudi sex tourists and Indonesian women are commonplace. "Some poor Indonesians marry off their girls to Saudis hoping it would put an end to their poverty and miseries." In fact, these are temporary marriages that end within days, often leaving the women with unwanted children. The Saudi Embassy in Jakarta received 82 calls last year regarding children of Saudis who had married Indonesian women and then abandoned them. So far this year, it has received 18 such calls.

The artcle P.K. Abdul Ghafour in the Arab News tells about Aysha Noor, 22, an Indonesian woman from Sikka Bhumi, 160 km east of Jakarta.

She said that her parents married her to a young Saudi man when she was 16, thinking it would be a blessing for the family and end their poverty. "We in Indonesia consider people of Makkah and Madinah as blessed ones. The man gave me a dowry of six million Indonesian rupiahs [US$540]. The dowry helped us to solve some of our economic problems. My family did not know that the man was intending to have a temporary marriage." She adds: "After a few days he paid us the remaining amount of three million rupiahs [US$270] and left the country." Noor said she later had a similar marriage with another Saudi before finding a job at a nightclub as a singer and dancer.

The consul for information at the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah, S.P. Dharmakirty, confirmed the problem of temporary marriages involving Saudi men and Indonesian women. "Indonesian authorities have taken appropriate measures to curb this practice," adding that some people involved in such illegal marriages have been detained.

Source:Daniel Pipes

Al-Azhar Lecturer Suspended after Issuing Controversial Fatwa Recommending Breastfeeding of Men by Women in the Workplace

2009-04-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

The head of the Hadith Department in Al-AzharUniversity, Dr. Izzat Atiyya, recently issued a controversial fatwa dealing with breastfeeding of adults. The fatwa stated that a woman who is required to work in private with a man not of her immediate family - a situation that is forbidden by Islamic law - can resolve the problem by breastfeeding the man, which, according to shari'a, turns him into a member of her immediate family.

The fatwa sparked a storm of protest in the Egyptian public arena, especially within the religious establishment. It was harshly criticized by Muslim Brotherhood MPs, who even brought it up for discussion in parliament, as well as by Egyptian intellectuals and columnists.

In response, Al-AzharUniversity formed a special committee to debate the fatwa, and on the recommendation of this committee, Dr. Atiyya was suspended. The Egyptian information minister ordered the removal from sellers' shelves of the issue of the government weekly Al-Watani Al-Yawm in which the fatwa had been published.

Dr. Atiyya, on his part, published a retraction and apologized, saying that the fatwa was no more than a personal interpretation of a certain hadith, and furthermore, that the hadith in questionrelates a particular incident that occurred under specific constraints, and has no general applicability. However, Al-Azhar refused to accept his apology.

Head of the Al-Azhar Hadith Department: Breastfeeding Allows a Woman to Be With a Man in Private

Dr. Izzat Atiyya explained his fatwa in an interview with Al-Watani Al-Yawm, the weekly of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Front party. He said: "The religious ruling that appears in the Prophet's conduct [Sunna] confirms that breastfeeding allows a man and a woman to be together in private, even if they are not family and if the woman did not nurse the man in his infancy, before he was weaned - providing that their being together serves some purpose, religious or secular...

"Being together in private means being in a room with the door closed, so that nobody can see them... A man and a woman who are not family members are not permitted [to do this], because it raises suspicions and doubts. A man and a woman who are alone together are not [necessarily] having sex, but this possibility exists, and breastfeeding provides a solution to this problem... I also insist that the breastfeeding relationship be officially documented in writing... The contract will state that this woman has suckled this man... After this, the woman may remove her hijab and expose her hair in the man's [presence]...

Dr. Atiyya further explained that the breastfeeding does not necessarily have to be done by the woman herself. "The important point," he said, "is that the man and the woman must be related through breastfeeding. [This can also be achieved] by means of the man's mother or sister suckling the woman, or by means of the woman's mother or sister suckling the man, since [all of these solutions legally] turn them into brother and sister...

"The logic behind [the concept] of breastfeeding an adult is to transform the bestial relationship between [two people] into a religious relationship based on [religious] duties... Since [this] breastfeeding takes place between [two] adults, the man is still permitted to marry the woman [who breastfed him], whereas [a woman] who nursed [a man] in his infancy is not permitted to marry him...

"The adult must suckle directly from the [woman's] breast... [This according to a hadith attributed to Aisha, wife of the Prophet's Muhammad], which tells of Salem [the adopted son of Abu Hudheifa] who was breastfed by Abu-Hudheifa's wife when he was already a grown man with a beard, by the Prophet's order... Other methods, such as [transferring] the milk to a container, are [less desirable]...

"[As for the possibility of using a breast-pump, which] increases the production of the milk glands... that is a matter for doctors and religious scholars who must determine if the milk [thus produced] is real milk, i.e., if its composition is identical to that of the [woman's] original milk. If it is, this method is permissible...

Dr. Atiyya also said: "The fact that the hadith regarding the breastfeeding of an adult is inconceivable to the mind does not make it invalid. This is a reliable hadith, and rejecting it is tantamount to rejecting Allah's Messenger and questioning the Prophet's tradition."

Al-Azhar Examines the Fatwa, Suspends Dr. Atiyya

In response to the uproar caused by the fatwa, Al-Azhar university formed a committee of several experts on hadiths to investigate the matter. According to a senior Al-Azhar source, the university president also ordered Dr. Atiyya to publish an apology, and the latter complied and retracted his fatwa, explaining: "My statements on the issue of breastfeeding an adult were based on the imams Ibn Hazm, Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Al-Qayyim, Al-Shawkani and Amin Khattab [Al-Subki], and on conclusions I drew from the statements of Ibn Hajar [Al-Askalani]. However, I hold that only the breastfeeding of an infant creates a family relationship [that prohibits marriage between the parties and allows them to be together], as the Four Imams [i.e., the founders of the four Sunni legal schools] said, while the [act of] breastfeeding a grown man [mentioned in the hadith] was a [specific] incident that came to serve a [specific] purpose, and the fatwa I issued was based solely on my personal interpretation. Based on what I have learned with my brothers the religious scholars, I apologize for my earlier [statements] and retract my opinion, which contradicts [the norms accepted] by the public."

However, the Al-Azhar Supreme Council, headed by Al-Azhar Sheikh Dr. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, refused to accept Dr. Atiyya's apology, saying, "We must not be too lax in matters of religion, especially when the matter at hand is a fatwa that significantly affects people's actual lives, inclinations, and views - because it speaks to their natural emotions which [lead them to] embrace what is permitted and shun prohibitions." Tantawi said, "Society cannot tolerate [a fatwa] that undermines its religious stability. There is enough chaos with all the unsupervised fatwas [published] on some satellite channels. We will never permit this chaos to spread to the religious establishment and to Al-Azhar."

By the recommendation of the special committee formed to examine the fatwa, Al-Azhar decided to suspend Dr. Atiyya pending further investigation of his case.

Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Dr. Muhammad Hamdi Zaqzouq likewise criticized the fatwa, saying: "Fatwas like these harm Islam, serve our enemies and push the public towards backwardness and ignorance."

*PUBLIC UPROAR OVER DR. ATIYYA'S FATWA

Muslim Brotherhood MPs: This is an Erroneous Fatwa

The issue of breastfeeding adults was brought up for debate in the Egyptian parliament. Sabri Khalaf Allah from Muslim Brotherhood bloc in the parliament told the Al-Arabiyya TV website that some 50 MPs had discussed the issue, had expressed concern over the fact that the fatwa had been published in the media, but had refrained from submitting a parliamentary question in order to avoid creating too big an uproar.

Dr. Sayyid Askar, a Muslim Brotherhood MP and former member of the Academy of Islamic Studies, said that the hadith on which the fatwa is based is indeed authentic and valid, but that the accepted view among Muslim scholars is that it refers to a specific case and cannot be applied to other cases. Therefore, he concluded, Dr. Attiya's fatwa is an erroneous fatwa that goes against the consensus. "In our modern society," he added, "it makes no sense to talk of breastfeeding adults."

Intellectuals Object: The Koran Forbids the Breastfeeding of Adults

Dr. Abd Al-Fatah Asaker, who studies Muslim tradition, denied the validity of the hadith on which the fatwa is based, claiming it is nonsense and criticized the publication of Abd Al-Qadir's book which regarded it as valid. In an interview withAl-Watani Al-Yawm, he said: "Would Dr. Abd Al-Mahdi [Abd Al-Qadr] agree [to let] his wife, daughter, sister or even his mother breastfeed a grown man - whether a stranger or a family member? Would the Muslim scholars [want people] to say that their wives breastfeed any man who comes along?

Asaker argued that the hadiths of Muslim tradition, even those that appear [in reliable compilations like those of] Al-Bukhari and Muslim, are invalid if they contradict what is said in the Koran, which states: "Mothers shall suckle their children for two whole years; [that is] for those who wish to complete the [full period of] suckling [Koran 2:233]." Asaker argued that after this period ends, breastfeeding is forbidden, and added that the story of Salem is a legend spread by the enemies of Islam with the aim of discrediting Aisha, to whom the hadith is attributed. "It is inconceivable," he concluded, "that Islam, which commands the believing [men and women] to lower their eyes [in modesty], should permit a strange man to place his mouth on the breast of a married woman and suckle from [it]."

Liberal Muslim thinker Gamal Al-Banna argued that, in ancient times, the issue of breastfeeding adults was not sensitive, but today times and perceptions have changed. He added, "We always call [to distinguish] within Islamic tradition [between] hadiths which were published in [certain] circumstances that have changed [and hadiths that remain valid]..."

Egyptian Columnist: The Fatwa Reflects Intellectual Petrifaction

Al-Sayyid Abd Al-Rauf, former editor of the Egyptian religious government weekly Aqidati, wrote in his regular column: "Strange and bizarre fatwas [like the one published by Dr. Atiyya]… sometimes stem from a desire to gain publicity by unusual means that lie outside the consensus, and [sometimes stem] from failure to understand the [current] reality of the Islamic nation. The reality of the modern world, with all its struggles and changes, requires new outlooks that acknowledge the Islamic legal tradition and maintain its principles, [but at the same time] deal with the changes in [this tradition] - in accordance with the principle that fatwas must change with time and place.

"In some instances, fatwas like this also reflect a frozen outlook, a petrified point of view, and an insistence on drawing conclusions from an incident that occurred to specific individuals in specific circumstances, applying them to a different reality, and [then] publicizing [this] ruling…

"Some clerics are dragging the nation back [into the past] or are spreading opinions that provoke conflicts and struggles. Some do it to satisfy the rulers, whether in quest for power, publicity and money or out of belief in ancient opinions, and without exercising their own minds…"

Uproar in Ruling Party Weekly over Publication of Fatwa

The interview with Dr. Atiyya published in Al-Watani Al-Yawm, the weekly of the ruling National Democratic Party, caused an uproar among party members, and the Egyptian information minister ordered that the issue with the interview be removed from sellers' shelves. Dr. Ali Al-Din Hilal, member of the party's general secretariat, said: "Al-Watani Al-Yawm is the newspaper of the party, which expresses its ideas and opinions." Hilal decried the publication of Dr. Atiyya's opinions, saying that "they are damaging to all of us, especially since we bring them into our homes, and our children read them." Many party members sent faxes to the party secretariat in which they expressed their opposition to the articles on the fatwa in Al-Watani Al-Yawm. They claimed that these articles were damaging to the newspaper and to party members, especially during the elections campaign, when there are more people looking out for the party's mistakes."

In response, Al-Watani Al-Yawm published a clarification: "We emphasize that we are opposed to the fatwa. When we published it... our aim was to direct attention to the existence of such ideas in Al-Azhar, [and to the fact that these ideas] are to be studied in Al-Azhar in the coming year… We emphasize that our aim in publishing [the interview] was not to endorse the fatwa; rather, it was an attempt to bring [the fatwa] to the attention of the senior Al-Azhar scholars, so that they would investigate its author, especially since he is head of the Hadith Department in the Faculty of Theology, and the alumni [of this faculty] are thousands of preachers who occupy the pulpits of the mosques, and spread [the opinions] that they have learned to the public in Egypt and in the [rest of the] world. We hoped that Al-Azhar would speedily intervene and clarify the truth to the public…

"Since Dr. Atiyya has expressed very bold opinions on the Egyptian culture channel, which is broadcast into every Egyptian home - and this without needing [any] permit, as he is part of the Egyptian Information Ministry - and since his ideas were provocative to us, we saw it as [our] duty to approach him and discuss [his ideas] with him, and so we did… We recorded his answers on two tapes. Due to their boldness, we feared that he would [later] retract [them], so we asked him to write them out in his own handwriting. But he did not retract his ideas, [but] wrote us his bold opinions in his own hand…"

By: L. Lavi

The 'script' at Zeynep Sultan Mosque

2009-04-10T03:01:00.000-07:00

Are we going to ‘hide’ some of the Koranic verses because they do not perfectly fit into the domestic/international political agenda of the ruling elite

Burak BEKDİL

This is an excerpt from this column more than a year ago (Israel's war of existentialism, Turkish Daily News, Aug. 2, 2006):

"…Avoiding alcohol and pork and having ‘covered' women around is fine, but how would a dogmatic Muslim, like (Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdoğan, interpret the Koran in state affairs?

Several sura in the Koran mention the Israelis (Jews) and Christians, and not really encouragingly. For example, "the Israelis (Jews) are condemned because they broke their word (Maida, Verse 13)." Or, "We have plagued the Christians with hatred till the Doomsday (Maida, Verse 14)."

But there is something stronger the Koran dictates: "O (Muslim) believers! Don't make friends with the Israelis (Jews) or Christians! They (the Israelis and Christians) are friends of each other. Whoever makes friends with them is one of them (Maida, Verse 51)."

Just like Mr. Erdoğan (or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in this instance) does not consume alcohol or eat pork, for the dogmatic interpretation of the Koran, he should not make friends, for example, with those like George W. Bush, Silvio Berlusconi or Kostas Karamanlis (and Mr. Ahmadinejad with Hugo Chavez for his part).

Every holy book has religiously discriminating verses. If "foreign affairs" in the 21st century should shape in line with the holy verses Christians, Muslims and Jews should begin to slaughter each other, and, at times of truce, join their forces to slaughter all atheists…"

The verse on display:

It is too improbable that my article could have inspired the revered Imam of the Zeynep Sultan Mosque in Istanbul's busy Eminönü district, but he chose that last verse (Maida, 51) as the ideal display for the board at the mosque's entrance: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them is of them. Verily Allah guideth not a people unjust."

So what? Imams often choose and display Koranic verses and hadith at mosques. But as one newspaper, Hürriyet, thought it would be worth to investigate what had prompted the imam to choose that particular verse, an interesting debate has emerged.

We learn the rest of the story from Hürriyet's editor-in-chief, Ertuğrul Özkök. Apparently, as Hürriyet dug deeper into the story interesting comments from the religious authorities have surfaced. For example, when asked about the verse on display, the mufti of Eminönü said that he would warn the imam and have the display removed at once.

But we also learn from Mr. Özkök's column on Nov. 24 that the acting mufti of Istanbul, a more senior figure in the religious hierarchy, defends the display. He first reminds that that verse commands Muslims to avoid making friends with Jews and Christians "due to their faith." "Should we not have that verse displayed just because that (Zeynep Sultan) one is a mosque visited by tourists?" the mufti of Istanbul said.

Then Hürriyet went through the higher echelons of the religious bureaucracy. Finally, the vice president of the Religious affairs Directorate, which reports to the prime minister, speaks: "…We encourage displaying verses… And imams may have different choices (of verses)… We have instructed the office of the mufti of Istanbul to warn that imam… We don't approve (the display of) that script at the Zeynep Sultan Mosque…"

That's the story. But what should we make of it? Another Hürriyet columnist, Ahmet Hakan, asked how was it possible, according to the Koran, that Muslim men can marry Jewish or Christian women while at the same time not making friends with them, also according to the Koran.

We can always ask several more questions – like this column has done several times before – about the "selective dogmatism" of our devout Muslims. Like, for example, why do they insist on strictly defending a vague verse on how women must cover themselves or another about dietary practice while at the same time silently neglecting more clear commandments including interest/usury or about not making friends with Jews and Christians? Remember the attributions "my good friend Kostas," or "my good friend George" from somewhere? I do. But that's not the heart of the matter.

A few unholy questions:

I have carefully read the story over and over again. It has left a few questions marks behind which hopefully some voluntary Justice and Development Party (AKP) sympathizer or a theologian (which I am not) will answer soon, be it in the form of an elegant newspaper article or an e-mail message, preferably not containing holy curses and insults to this columnist.

Let's begin with the Imam of Zeynep Sultan Mosque. What did he do to deserve a warning from his bosses since imams are free to put a Koranic verse on display? Why is he being treated as if he had displayed the front page of a pop music magazine at the mosque? Why is he being warned? What did he do wrong? Is what he chose for display not from the holy book? Are there rules within the religious bureaucracy as to which verses can be displayed and which ones cannot?

The acting mufti of Istanbul… Is he not perfectly consistent with the fact that the Koran commands Muslims to avoid making friends with Jews and Christians when he asks why should that verse not be displayed "just because that mosque is visited by (mostly Christian) tourists?"

Is a verse not a verse? Are we going to "hide" some verses because they do not perfectly fit into the domestic/international political agenda of the ruling elite? Would that not be a sin? Are our devout Muslims not proud of each and every verse? Or do they treat them "selectively?" Why do "good Muslims" like the president and the prime minister insist on practicing some verses and not the others? Or do they really practice the Koranic commandments fully and really avoid, for example, making friends with Jews and Christians, like they avoid un-turbaned wives, alcohol and pork? Or is their "friendship" with the Kostas's and George's and Jack's and Gordon's and Silvio's and Vladimir's and Shimon's and Ehud's all fake?

The vice president of religious affairs… Why does he not approve the ‘script' at the Zeynep Sultan mosque? On what grounds? How come he can approve/disapprove the display of a holy verse? With what authority? How can he talk about a holy verse as a "script?" Why does he think the imam must be "warned?" Warned about what? About deliberately avoiding certain verses and highlighting others? If so, which ones are to be ‘concealed' and which ones are to be put under the spot light? And who decides? Are verses debatable? Are the conditions they are displayed debatable?

All of those questions lead us back to the one question in one of the preceding lines: Are we going to "hide" some verses because they do not perfectly fit into the domestic/international political agenda of the ruling elite?

Note:

I apologize for the typo/error which appeared in this column last week (Leaving the floor to a reader on ‘Kemalist cult,' Turkish Daily News, Nov. 23, 2007). The text of the reader's letter mistakenly said that the O.J. Simpson's jury was all-white. My thanks to another reader who recognized the error. Naturally, I take full responsibility for the error which I believe never intended to twist the facts. I also firmly believe that the typo/error did in no way discredit the ideas the reader expressed.

Source: Turkish Daily News

The Verse at The Gate — and a Koranic Debate

2009-04-10T02:52:00.000-07:00

Is the Koran a “created” or an “uncreated” book?

This question might sound vague and even meaningless to many modern minds, but it was a crucial one among Muslims during the initial centuries of Islam. Indeed, there were bitter disputes and even clashes between those who gave different answers.

Those who thought that the Koran was “created” were mainly the followers of the Mutazilite school. They were also known as “Rationalists,” because they made emphasis on the role of human reason in understanding God’s will. For the Mutazilites, both the Koran and human reason were created by God, and a believer had to use both of them in harmony to make a sense of the world.

Rationalists versus Traditionalists

On other side, there were the “Traditionalists,” which were spearheaded by Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. They were skeptical of reason, which they saw as a potential to lead men astray. They rather insisted on the “imitation” of the Prophet: a Muslim had to try to emulate all the details of the life of Muhammad, instead of using his own judgment.

If reason was one issue that divided the Mutazilites and the Traditionalists, the nature of the Koran was another. The question I mentioned — whether the Koran is a “created” or an “uncreated” book — was actually their toughest bone of contention. The Mutazilites said that the Koran is a “created” book, which meant that it presented God’s message to a specific society at a specific point in time. The Koran’s principles were eternally valid, they said, but its “wording” was affected by temporal realities. So, they said, the Koran should be interpreted by looking at its context — and with the help of reason.

The Traditionalists, on the other hand, believed that Koran was “the uncreated word of God.” This meant that the Koran existed in eternity with God himself. So its verses could not have been influenced by the context of a specific period in human history. They thought not only the principles but also the literal details of the Koran were eternally valid.

The dispute between the two groups lasted for centuries, until when the Traditionalist won over the others around the 13th century. But the Mutazilite thought did not totally disappear. Moreover, new schools emerged which found middle ways between the two opposing view. The Maturidi school, which became popular mainly among the Turkish speaking peoples, was the most popular of these compromises. On the other hand, the strictest form of Traditionalism survived in the form of Wahhabism — which is the official faith of today’s Saudi Arabia.

Enter Zeynep Sultan mosque

What made me recall all this “Islamic hermeneutics 101” knowledge is the recent controversy in the Turkish media about a Koranic verse (5/51) put on the entrance of an Istanbul mosque by its imam. “O you who believe! Do not the Jews and the Christians as your friends and protectors,” the verse reads. “They are the friends of one another; any of you who takes them as friends is one of them.”

The daily Hürriyet made a news story out of this Koranic display, which apparently commended Muslims to not to be in good terms with Jews and Christians. Can each verse of the Koran be displayed like this, the paper asked, or should Muslims be a selective?

Then some secularist commentators started to question whether the Koran should be taken seriously at all. Fellow TDN columnists Burak Bekdil took a similar line yesterday in his piece, “The 'script' at Zeynep Sultan Mosque.” According to Mr. Bekdil, “dogmatic Muslims” had to stop being “selective.” They had to either take everything literally, or stop taking the Koran as a guide in daily life. Otherwise, according Mr. Bekdil, Muslims would end up in being unprincipled. At least, he argued, that was the case with the vice president of the Religious Affairs Directorate, who asked the imam of the aforementioned mosque to remove that Koranic verse on Christians and Jews. “Why does he not approve the ‘script' at the Zeynep Sultan mosque,” Mr. Bekdil asked. “On what grounds?”

Yesterday, an answer came from the vice president of the Religious Affairs Directorate, Dr. İzzet Er. “We have commended our imams to use verses that will not create misunderstandings” he said. Then he explained the problem in this particular case:
“Misunderstandings take place when verses are taken out of their context. This verse relates to a war situation… At the time, Muslims were at war with Jews and the verse was basically warning them for not establishing close links and passing information that could amount to war secrets. In peace, the verse does not apply, and all Muslims are indeed supposed to be friend with other peoples.”

Dr. Er also noted to the famous motto of the Turkish Sufi sage Yunus Emre, “Loving all creation for the sake of the Creator,” as the Islamic ideal. He could also have pointed out to another Koranic passage, 60/8-9, which indeed puts the controversial verse about Jews and Christians in context:

“God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them... God merely forbids you from taking as friends those who have fought you in religion and driven you from your homes and who supported your expulsion.”

A principled effort

Here is my take on the whole affair: Turning some particular Koranic verses into slogans might indeed create big problems, because these verses need to be understood within their contexts. (Similarly, quotes from the books of Joshua or Leviticus could give very harsh messages, by which most contemporary Jews and Christians would not stand.)

Therefore, it was indeed a mistake to put the “don’t take Christians and Jews as friends” verse on the gate of a mosque. There are many other verses of the Koran which are not bound with context — such as the ones relating to God’s majesty, mercy or justice, or human morals — and which can be freely quoted. But not all verses are like that.

Making this distinction is not treason to God’s word, as some fundamentalists would angrily claim — and some secularists would sarcastically conclude. No, quite the contrary, it is indeed a sincere and principled effort to understand what the divine message really means. It is also the effort which will help creating a bright future for the Muslim world — if there will ever be one.

Source: Mustafa Akyol

Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad

2009-04-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad

(follow the link to get the book on electronic format)

by ALI DASHTI

Translated from the Persian

About Ali Dasti

Ali Dashti was born in 1896 in a village in Dashtestan, a district adjoining the port of Bushehr on the Persian Gulf in Iran. His father brought the young Ali Dasti to Karbala in Iraq and lodged him in a madrasa for training in Islamic and theological studies so that he could become a cleric. He received a full madrasas education, acquiring a thorough knowledge of Islamic theology and history, logic, rhetoric, and Arabic and Persian grammar and classical literature. But realizing what Islam was all about as this book will reveal ― he chose not to undertake a clerical career, when he returned to Iran.

Instead, he became an author and novelist and a parliamentarian. After the Islamic revolution in 1979 in Iran, he was arrested and tortured by the Khomeini regmie which left him with a broken thigh. He was released but not allowed to return to home at Zargandeh, a northern suburb of Tehran. A notice in the Iranian periodical Ayanda reported his death in the month of Dey of the Iranian year 1360, i.e. between 22 December 1981 and 20 January 1982.

Textbook Lies About Islam

2009-04-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

In recent House hearings dedicated to examining Islamic extremism, I stressed that the fundamental stumbling block to effective policy-making is educational and epistemological. What people are taught about Islam needs a serious overhaul before we can expect to formulate strategies that make sense.

Worth heeding is former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop's 2006 lament that "the senior service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered."

Three years later, the situation appears worse. After the War College published something of an apologia for the terrorist organization Hamas, defense analyst Mark Perry concluded, "It's worse than you think. They have curtailed the curriculum so that their students are not exposed to radical Islam. Akin to denying students access to Marx during the Cold War."

Why, at a time of war, are students at top U.S. military schools denied an objective treatment of Islam's war doctrines? A report by the American Textbook Council sheds light by showing how these academic failures have much deeper roots.

After reviewing a number of popular textbooks used by American junior and senior high schools, the report found that, due to political correctness and/or fear of Muslim activists, "key subjects like jihad, Islamic law, [and] the status of women are whitewashed." Regarding the strikes of 9/11, one textbook never mentions Islamic ideologies, referring to the 19 al-Qaeda hijackers as "teams of terrorists" — this despite the fact that al-Qaeda has repeatedly articulated its hostile worldview through an Islamist paradigm, with a stress on hating "infidels" and waging holy war (see The Al Qaeda Reader).

Speaking of jihad, one seventh-grade textbook explains, "Jihad represents the human struggle to overcome difficulties and do things that are pleasing to God. Muslims strive to respond positively to personal difficulties as well as worldly challenges. For instance, they might work to be better people, reform society, or correct injustice." By not informing students that all these aspects mean something different for Muslims — killing an apostate is considered "correcting injustice" and spreading Islamic law is "reforming society" — the textbook misleads by projecting Western interpretations onto Islam.

Compare this textbook's definition of jihad with that of an early (non-PC) edition of the venerable Encyclopaedia of Islam. Its opening sentence simply states, "The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general. … Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam. … Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated." Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.

The report finds other disturbing aspects regarding Islam's whitewashing in textbooks: the well-documented Muslim military conquests demarcating most of what is now known as the "Islamic world" are glossed over or distorted; Islam ambiguously "spread" or was "brought." Well-defined aspects of Islamic law — the subordinate status of women and non-Muslims, execution of the apostate and homosexual, and other issues that appear almost any given day in headlines — are either ignored or obfuscated. History is distorted to portray Muslims as tolerant and progressive, Christians as intolerant and backwards.

In my testimony to the House, I wrote: "It should be acknowledged that educational failures exacerbate epistemological ones, and vice versa, leading to a perpetual cycle where necessary knowledge is not merely ignored, but not even acknowledged as real in the first place. When American universities [or high schools] fail to teach Islamic doctrine and history accurately, a flawed epistemology permeates society at large. And since new students and new professors come from this already conditioned-towards-Islam society, not only do they not question the lack of accurate knowledge and education; they perpetuate it."

This report demonstrates the validity of this vicious cycle. In fact, every last one of those flagrant textbook errors indoctrinating America's youth is an indisputable "fact" for many of America's Islam "experts," particularly those advising the government. The effects are dramatic. For instance, far from objectively examining Islam, the government is now pushing to ban Arabic words connotative of Islamic ideology from formal analysis — such as "mujahid," "umma," "Sharia," "caliphate" — asking personnel to rely primarily on generic terms, such as "terrorists."

The greater irony is that not only do children's textbooks in Muslim countries openly teach hatred and hostility for non-Muslims, or "infidels" — those same people fervently trying to whitewash Islam in the U.S.— but so do Muslim schools operating on American soil.

At any rate, from American junior high texts obfuscating the motivation of 9/11 to censored intelligence analysts who cannot prefix more meaningful adjectives to the word "terrorist," until Islamic ideologies are addressed forthrightly, the U.S. — leadership and lay alike — will remain philosophically unprepared against the threat of radical Islam. Objective knowledge — properly taught and disseminated — is the first step to formulating any long-term strategy. When knowledge is unshackled from the bonds of political correctness and wishful thinking, strategies will naturally present themselves as common sense.

Bottom line: if children are sheltered from ugly truths today, how can they ever be expected to confront them as adults tomorrow?

Source: Pijamas Media

by Raymond Ibrahim
Pajamas Media
April 5, 2009

Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Torments of the Grave

2009-04-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

Why do some Muslims become suicide bombers or "martyrs"? In fact, these two near antithetic words — on the one hand, broken, desperate suicides, on the other, heroic martyrs — intrinsically demonstrate the radically different epistemologies the average Westerner and Muslim will articulate their answer through. In other words, that Westerners consider them suicides while Muslims consider them martyrs in and of itself speaks volumes on motivation.
To the secular Western mind, such Muslims are simply frustrated: oppressed and depressed, and with nothing to lose, these Muslims (so the logic goes) end their suffering in the name of some "noble" cause — be it the "liberation of al-Aqsa" or the razing of U.S. skyscrapers. All their talk about Islam, "obligations," or 72 dark-eyed virgins is but a cover for their true motivation: "revenge" on the one hand, escape from an oppressive existence on the other. Most recently, "shame" has been cited as another culprit: al-Qaeda has been raping and thereby shaming women — and men — into becoming "martyrs."
Conversely, from a purely Muslim point of view, becoming a martyr is not only a guarantee to eternal paradise — which, if many secular Westerners deem "silly," the devotees of Allah take very seriously — but a paradise that may appeal to some of man's most libidinous desires. Thus, whereas the Christian heaven is purely spiritual — "they shall neither marry nor give into marriage" (Matthew 22:30) and not necessarily "enticing" — some Muslim accounts of paradise are downright hedonistic.
Scriptural references demonstrative of this are many. Consider Koran 36:55-56: "For the inhabitants of paradise on that day shall be engaged in joyous activities [shughlin fakihun] — they and their wives, reclined on raised cushions." A number of the most authoritative exegetes, such as Ibn Kathir (see here), have interpreted "engaged in joyous activities" as meaning "they will be busy deflowering virgins." (See also al-Jalalayn's tafsir, where he concurs.)
That said, it is of course difficult to accept that any Muslim man would become a suicide bomber primarily because he wants to copulate in perpetuity — even if Islam's prophet is on the record saying that men in heaven will have the sexual potency of 100 men (to better handle the countless maidens). Also, what about women, who have increasingly taken to becoming suicide bombers? Surely sex is not their motivation.
However, before concluding that Muslims become suicide bombers purely out of desperation, frustration, or shame, it should be borne in mind that, aside from the theological guarantee of a hedonistic paradise, there is yet another, antithetical reason that may subtly compel Muslims to seek martyrdom.
This is the little-known doctrine of 'adhab al-qabr, or the "torments of the grave." Anyone familiar with Islam's texts has repeatedly come across this curious phrase; anyone who has listened to Muslim sermons has been severely warned against it. The torments of the grave are a very real doctrine that has the tendency to drive believers to despair — I have watched grown men and women on Arabic satellite relay the terror this doctrine has worked in their lives — making them eager to do whatever is necessary to avoid it.
Based on a close reading of Islam's texts, the following account represents Sunni Islam's standard teachings of after-death experiences:
First, the soul is said to return to the corpse while it is interred. As the pallbearers carry the body to the grave, its soul follows behind crying, "Oh my, wherever are they taking me?!" — all while the gaping grave moans, "I am the house of strangeness; I am the house of loneliness; I am the house of dust; I am the house of worms."
After being laid to rest by the gravediggers, the dead "hear" the gravediggers as they walk away — implying, as the forthcoming torments suggest, and ulema maintain, that the dead experience "physical" sensations. (Perhaps this is why Muslims are in the habit of offering audible "greetings" to the dead — who "hear" — whenever they pass their graves?)
Every soul, once entombed along with its body, is tried by two angels. The hadith states: "His [the dead's] soul returns to his body; then two angels arrive and sit him up for questioning" — specifically, "Who is your lord, what is your religion, who is your prophet?" If he answers Allah, Islam, and Muhammad, respectively, he is granted paradise; if not, the torments begin.
While these questions appear deceptively easy to answer, and thus even the most nominal Muslim should be able to pass this ghoulish inquisition unscathed, the reason Muslims fear failing the test may be associated with Islam's infamous fatalism: "Those who believe, Allah will strengthen with a firm word, in this world and the hereafter; but the unjust he leads astray [in this world and the hereafter]. Allah does what he will" (Koran 14:27). Ulema have interpreted this verse as revolving around the angels' interrogation and the ability of the dead — or rather, Allah's desire for them — to answer right or wrong.
As for infidels and nominal Muslims (al-muslim al-'assi), their response to each of the angels' questions is inevitably: "Uh, uh … I don't know." After being verbally chastised by the angels and a "voice from heaven," the torments begin in earnest.
First, the angels pulverize the body with a "massive iron hammer" — one that "has no equal [in power and size] in the world." In the process, "he [the dead] cries out in such a manner that all creation — minus humans and jinn [supernatural beings] — hear him." Another hadith states that this hammer is such that "if a mountain was struck by it, the mountain would crumble into dust; the dead [man] is struck such a blow that he crumbles into dust — but Allah reassembles him, and he is struck again," apparently in perpetuity.
Next, the grave is said to "tighten" around the corpse, till its bones pop and crack — all while the soul is still trapped inside, suffering, suffocating. Some ulema maintain the dead — with their souls experiencing these travails — stay in this position till judgment day.
Then comes the turn of the tomb-snake, known as al-shaja' al-aqra' (roughly translated as the "bald brave one"); designed by Allah to torment the dead, this snake "eats his [the dead's] flesh, from head to toe; then his flesh returns, and it [the snake] eats his flesh from toe to head, and so on." Yet another hadith has not one snake, but 70 dragons: "Allah shall set upon him 70 dragons, such that if one of them were to blow upon the earth, the earth would fail and wither away. They will rend and tear, maul and mull upon him until the day of reckoning" — all while he continues screaming, though no human or jinn hears. Still another hadith declares that the dead will be attacked by 99 dragons; each dragon will consist of 70 serpents; each serpent will have nine heads — for a total of 62,370 serpent heads tormenting the corpse in perpetuity.
At this point, the (especially) Western reader may think all this absurd, that no Muslim can truly believe such things, that this is all moot and can hardly ever drive anyone to action, much less suicide. That (according to Muhammad) one of the greatest "sins" responsible for sending people to the torments of the grave is failing to properly clean oneself after urinating may further lead to the conviction that this is all farcical, hardly a reason to bring Muslims to despair.
Yet here again we are entered into the tricky realm of epistemology: every civilization has its own particular sources, physical or metaphysical, whence knowledge, and thence "truth," is articulated. For mainstream Islam, the Koran first, followed by the vast corpus of hadith — particularly the "canonical six," which the aforementioned account of graveyard torments is mostly based on — form the basis of all truth and reality.
Moreover, everything written in these sources is generally taken literally. Thus the same literalism that compelled Islam's most authoritative institution, al-Azhar, to issue a fatwa prompting women to "breastfeed" strange men, compels Muslims today to accept the torments of the grave literally — pounding mallets, 62,370 snapping serpents, and all.
Anyone who closely follows Arabic-Islamic TV will further know that the torments of the grave, as described, have instilled fear and terror in the lives of Muslims. I have personally watched an al-Haya TV episode where a young Muslim woman, in tears and almost hysterical, was describing her morbid fear of the torments. I have also seen the ulema on Iqra TV, also in tears, lament the fate of those ("moderate") Muslims who are destined to experience the torments of the grave. Other recovering Muslims maintain that sheikhs regularly cultivate fear of the torments of the grave in the lives of the youth.
The fact is, Muslims, even the most pious among them, have good reason to be fearful of the torments of the grave: Talking about his pious dead companion, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, Muhammad observed, "The grave has an oppressive tightness, and were [it possible for] anyone to escape this, Sa'd ibn Mu'adh would have done so, for he is the one for whom the Throne of the All-Merciful shook." Moreover, there is the famous hadith where Muhammad said, "My ummah shall be split into 73 sects — all of which will go to the fire [hell], except one which shall be saved." In other words, few Muslims have any guarantees that they will not visit the torments of the grave.
Still, what does any of this have to do with the jihad in general, or suicide bombing/martyrdom operations in particular? Plenty. Inasmuch as the torments of the grave clearly terrify Muslims, so too are there clear-cut ways of evading them. Three have been ascertained. The first two are quite haphazard: Muslims who happen to die on Friday (al-jum'a, the day of Muslim congregation) and Muslims who happen to die of stomach aches are exonerated from the torments. Why? The prophet said so.
However, the ulema have been quick to point out and stress a third way — dying as a "martyr" fi sabil Allah (in the cause of Allah), i.e., during the jihad. In fact, in a hadith I first encountered when translating al-Qaeda texts for The Al Qaeda Reader, Muhammad said:
The martyr is special to Allah. He is forgiven from the first drop of blood [that he sheds]. He sees his throne in paradise, where he will be adorned in ornaments of faith. He will wed the 'aynhour [wide-eyed virgins] and will not know the torments of the grave and safeguards against the greater horror [hell]. Fixed atop his head will be a crown of honor, a ruby that is greater than the world and all it contains. And he will copulate with seventy-two 'aynhour and be able to offer intercessions for seventy of his relatives.
And here one sees that, alongside the enticement of celestial copulation, the torments of the grave have the potential to terrify Muslims into "martyrdom." This also begs the question: if these torments of the grave have the capacity to terrorize Muslims into considering a premature death fi sabil Allah, how much more can fear of Islam's hell — the "greater horror" — goad Muslims to seek out martyrdom, which not only safeguards against the torments of the grave but hell itself?
The torments of the grave are a reminder of how important it is to take Islam's doctrines — no matter how quaint or esoteric — seriously; dismissing them out of hand, since they seem silly to "us," is arrogance. Anyone who truly wishes to ameliorate the phenomenon of Muslim suicide bombings, while taking into account all those "secular" reasons — poverty, frustration, desperation — should also, to be thoroughly holistic, take into account the psychological damage created by such arcane doctrines.
Finally, it is well to observe that, if little-known doctrines such as the torments of the grave have the capacity to goad Muslims into seeking martyrdom, how much more can be expected from the very well-known doctrinal obligation of jihad itself?

by Raymond IbrahimPajamas MediaMarch 14, 2009

Source: The Middle East Forum

Studying the Islamic Way of War

2009-04-07T05:44:00.000-07:00

At the inaugural conference for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) back in April, presenter LTC Joseph Myers made an interesting point that deserves further elaboration. Though military studies have traditionally valued and absorbed the texts of classical war doctrine — such as Clausewitz's On War, Sun Tsu's The Art of War, even the exploits of Alexander the Great as recorded in Arrian and Plutarch — Islamic war doctrine, which is just as if not more textually grounded, is totally ignored.

As recently as 2006, former top Pentagon official William Gawthrop lamented that "the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Muhammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered [emphasis added]." Today, seven full years after September 11, our understanding of the Islamic way of war is little better.

This is more ironic when one considers that, while classical military theories (Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, et. al.) continue to be included on war-college syllabi, the argument can be made that they have little practical value for today's far different landscape of warfare and diplomacy. Contrast this with Islam's doctrines of war: their "theological" quality — grounded as they are in a religion whose "divine" precepts transcend time and space, and are believed to be immutable — make Islam's war doctrines unlikely ever to go out of style. While one can argue that learning how Alexander maneuvered his cavalry at the Battle of Guagamela in 331 BC is both academic and anachronistic, the exploits and stratagems of the prophet Muhammad — his "war sunna" — still serve as an example to modern-day jihadists.

For instance, based on the words and deeds of Muhammad, most schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that the following are all legitimate during war against the infidel: the indiscriminate use of missile weaponry, even if women and children are present (catapults in Muhammad's seventh century context; hijacked planes or WMD today); the need to always deceive the enemy and even break formal treaties whenever possible (see Sahih Muslim 15: 4057); and that the only function of the peace treaty, or "hudna," is to give the Islamic armies time to regroup for a renewed offensive, and should, in theory, last no more than ten years.

Quranic verses 3:28 and 16:106, as well as Muhammad's famous assertion, "War is deceit," have all led to the formulation of a number of doctrines of dissimulation — the most notorious among them being the doctrine of "Taqiyya," which permits Muslims to lie and dissemble whenever they are under the authority of the infidel. Deception has such a prominent role that renowned Muslim scholar Ibn al-Arabi declares: "[I]n the Hadith, practicing deceit in war is well demonstrated. Indeed, its need is more stressed than [the need for] courage."

In addition to ignoring these well documented Islamist strategies, more troubling still is the Defense Department's continuing failure to appreciate the pertinent "eternal" doctrines of Islam — such as the Abode of War versus the Abode of Islam dichotomy, which maintains that Islam must always be in a state of animosity vis-à-vis the infidel world and, whenever possible, must wage wars until all infidel territory has been brought under Islamic rule. In fact, this dichotomy of hostility is unambiguously codified under Islam's worldview and is deemed a fard kifaya — that is, an obligation on the entire Muslim body that can only be fulfilled as long as some Muslims, say, "jihadists," actively uphold it.

Despite these problematic — but revealing — doctrines, despite the fact that a quick perusal of Islamist websites and books demonstrate time and again that current and would-be jihadists constantly quote, and thus take seriously, these doctrinal aspects of war, senior U.S. government officials charged with defending America do not.

Why? Because the "Whisperers" — Walid Phares's apt epithet for the majority of Middle East/Islamic scholars and their willing apologists in the press — have made anathema anyone who dares to point out a connection between Islamic doctrine and modern-day Islamist terrorism — as witness, the Steven Coughlin debacle. This is an all too familiar tale for those in the field (see Martin Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand: the Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America).

While there exists today many Middle East studies departments, one would be sorely pressed (especially in the more "prestigious" universities) to find any courses dealing with the most pivotal and relevant topics of today — such as Islamic jurisprudence and what it says about jihad or the concept of the Abode of Islam versus the Abode of War. These topics, we are assured, have troubling international implications and are best buried. Instead, the would-be student is inundated with courses dealing with the evils of "Orientalism" and colonialism, gender studies, and civil society.

The greater irony — when one talks about Islam and the West, ironies often abound — is that, on the very same day of the ASMEA conference, which also contained a forthright address by premiere Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis ("It seems to me a dangerous situation in which any kind of scholarly discussion of Islam is, to say the least, dangerous"), the State Department announced that it would not call al-Qaeda type radicals "jihadis," "mujahadin," nor incorporate any other Arabic word of Islamic connotation ("caliphate," "Islamo-fascism," "Salafi," "Wahhabi," and "Ummah" are also out).

Alas, far from taking the most basic and simple advice regarding warfare — Sun Tzu's ancient dictum, "Know thy enemy" — the U.S. government is having difficulties even acknowledging its enemy.

Raymond Ibrahim is Associate Director of the Middle East Forum and editor of The Al-Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.

by Raymond Ibrahim
National Review Online
January 11, 2009

Source: The Middle East Forum

Conflating History with Theology Judeo-Christian Violence vs. Islamic Violence

2009-04-07T05:31:00.000-07:00

Especially after the terrorist strikes of 9/11, Islam has often been accused of being intrinsically violent. Many point to the Koran and other Islamic scriptures and texts as proof that violence and intolerance vis-à-vis non-Muslims is inherent to Islam. In response, a number of apologetics have been offered. The fundamental premise of almost all of these is that Islam's purported violence—as found in Islamic scriptures and history—is no different than the violence committed by other religious groups throughout history and as recorded in their scriptures, such as Jews and Christians. The argument, in short, is that it is not Islam per se but rather human nature that is prone to violence.

So whenever the argument is made that the Koran as well as the historical words and deeds of Islam's prophet Muhammad and his companions evince violence and intolerance, the counter-argument is immediately made: What about the historical atrocities committed by the Hebrews in years gone by and as recorded in their scriptures (AKA, the Old Testament)? What about the brutal cycle of violence Christians have committed in the name of their faith against both fellow Christians and non-Christians?

Several examples are then offered from the Bible as well as Judeo-Christian history. Two examples especially—one biblical, the other historic—are often cited as paradigmatic of the religious violence inherent to both Judaism and Christianity and usually put an end to the debate of whether Islam is unique in regards to its teachings and violence.

The first is the military conquest of the land of Canaan by the Hebrews (c. 1200 BC), which has increasingly come to be characterized as a "genocide." Yahweh told Moses:
But of the cities of these peoples which Yahweh your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, but you shall utterly destroy them—the Hittite, Amorite, Canaanite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite—just as Yahweh your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against Yahweh your God (Deuteronomy 20: 16-18).

So Joshua [Moses' successor] conquered all the land: the mountain country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as Yahweh God of Israel had commanded (Joshua 10:40).

The second example revolves around the Crusader wars waged by Medieval European Christians. To be sure, the Crusades were a "counter-attack" on Islam—not an unprovoked assault as is often depicted by revisionist history. A united Christendom sought to annex the Holy Land of Jerusalem, which, prior to its conquest by Islam in the 7th century, was an integral part of Christendom for nearly 400 years.

Moreover, Muslim invasions and atrocities against Christians were on the rise in the decades before the Crusades were launched in 1096. For example, in 1071, the Seljuk Turks had crushed the Byzantines in the pivotal battle of Manzikert and in effect annexed a major chunk of Byzantine Anatolia (opening the way for the eventual capture of Constantinople centuries later). A few decades earlier, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim desecrated and destroyed a number of important churches—such as the Church of St. Mark in Egypt and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—and decreed several even more oppressive than usual decrees against Christians and Jews. It is in this backdrop that Pope Urban called for the Crusades:
From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians [i.e., Muslim Turks]…has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion (from the chronicles of Robert the Monk).

Nonetheless, history attests that these Crusades were violent and bloody. After breaching the walls of Jerusalem in 1099, the Crusaders slaughtered almost every single inhabitant of the Holy City. According to the Medieval chronicle, the Gesta Danorum "the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles." Moreover, there is the 1204 sack of Constantinople, wherein Crusader slew Christian.

In light of the above—one a prime example of "Hebraic" violence from the Bible, the other from Christian history—why should Islam be the one religion always characterized as intrinsically violent, simply because its holy book and its history also contain violence? Why should non-Muslims always point to the Koran and ancient history as evidence of Islam's violence while never looking to their own scriptures and history?

While such questions are popular, they reveal a great deal of confusion between history and theology, between the temporal actions of men and what are understood to be the immutable words of God. The fundamental error being that Judeo-Christian history—which is violent—is being conflated with Islamic theology—which commands violence. Of course all religions have had their fair share of violence and intolerance towards the "other." Whether this violence is ordained by God or whether warlike man merely wished it thus is the all-important question.

Old Testament violence is an interesting case in point. Yahweh clearly ordered the Hebrews to annihilate the Canaanites and surrounding peoples. Such violence is therefore an expression of God's will, for good or ill. Regardless, all the historic violence committed by the Hebrews and recorded in the Old Testament is just that—history. It happened; God commanded it. But it revolved around a specific time and place and was directed against a specific people. At no time did such violence go on to become standardized or codified into Jewish law (i.e., the Halakha).

This is where Islamic violence is unique. Though similar to the violence of the Old Testament—commanded by God and manifested in history—certain aspects of Islamic violence have become standardized in Islamic law (i.e., Sharia) and apply at all times. Thus while the violence found in the Koran is in fact historical, its ultimate significance is theological, or, more specifically, doctrinal. Consider the following Koranic verses, better known as the "sword-verses":
Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the pagans wherever you find them—take them [captive], besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due [i.e. submit to Islam], then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful (K 9:5).

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger [i.e. do not adhere to Islamic law], nor acknowledge the religion of Truth [i.e. Islam], from the people of the book [i.e. Jews and Christians], until they pay tribute with willing submission, and feel themselves utterly subdued (K 9:29).

As with Old Testament verses where Yahweh commanded the Hebrews to attack and slay their neighbors, the sword-verses also have a historical context. Allah first issued these commandments after the Muslims under Muhammad's leadership had grown sufficiently strong enough to invade their Christian and pagan neighbors. But unlike the bellicose verses and anecdotes of the Old Testament, the sword-verses became fundamental to Islam's subsequent relationship to both the "people of the book" (Christians and Jews) and the "pagans" (Hindus, Buddhists, animists, etc). For instance, based on 9:5, Islamic law mandates that pagans and polytheists must either convert to Islam or be killed, while 9:29 is the primary source of Islam's well-known discriminatory practices against Christians and Jews.

In fact, based on the sword-verses (as well as countless other Koranic verses and oral traditions attributed to Muhammad), Islam's scholars, sheikhs, muftis, imams, and qadis throughout the ages have all reached the consensus—binding on the entire Muslim community—that Islam is to be at perpetual war with the non-Muslim world until the former subsumes the latter. (It is widely held by Muslim scholars that since the sword-verses are among the final revelations on the topic of Islam's relationship to non-Muslims, that they alone have abrogated some 200 of the Koran's earlier and more tolerant verses, such as "there is no coercion in religion" 2:256.) Famous Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun, who is revered in the West for his "progressive" insights, also puts to rest the notion that jihad is "defensive" warfare:
In the Muslim community, the holy war [jihad] is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force...The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defense... They are merely required to establish their religion among their own people. That is why the Israeilites after Moses and Joshua remained unconcerned with royal authority [e.g. a "caliphate"]. Their only concern was to establish their religion [not spread it to the nations]… But Islam is under obligation to gain power over other nations (The Muqudimmah, vol. 1 pg. 473).

Perhaps what is most unique about the sword-verses is the fact that when juxtaposed to their Old Testament counterparts, they are especially distinct for using language that transcends time and space, inciting believers to attack and slay non-believers today no less than yesterday. Yahweh commanded the Hebrews to kill Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—all specific peoples rooted to a specific time and place. At no time did Yahweh give an open-ended command for the Hebrews, and by extension their descendants the Jews, to fight and kill gentiles. On the other hand, though Islam's original enemies were, like Judaism's, historical (e.g., Christian Byzantines and pagan Persians), the Koran rarely singles them out by their proper names. Instead, Muslims were (and are) commanded to fight the people of the book—"until they pay tribute with willing submission and feel themselves utterly subdued" (Koran 9:29) and to "slay the pagans wherever you find them" (Koran 9:5).

The two conjunctions "until" (hata) and "wherever" (haythu) demonstrate the perpetual and ubiquitous nature of these commandments: there are still "people of the book" who have yet to be "utterly subdued" (especially in the Americas, Europe, and Israel) and "pagans" to be slain "wherever" one looks (especially Asia and sub-Saharan Africa). In fact, the salient feature of almost all of the violent commandments in Islamic scriptures is their open-ended and generic nature: "Fight them [non-Muslims] until there is no more chaos and all religion belongs to Allah" (Koran 8:39). Also, in a well-attested tradition that appears in the most authentic hadith collections, Muhammad proclaims:
I have been commanded to wage war against mankind until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; and that they establish prostration prayer, and pay the alms-tax [i.e., convert to Islam]. If they do so, their blood and property are protected [Sahih Muslim C9B1N31; also in Sahih Bukhari B2N24].

Aside from the divine words of the Koran, Muhammad's pattern of behavior—his "Sunna" or "example"—is an extremely important source of legislation in Islam. Muslims are exhorted to emulate Muhammad in all walks of life: "You have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern [of conduct]" (Koran 33:21). And Muhammad's pattern of conduct vis-à-vis non-Muslims is quite explicit. Sarcastically arguing against the concept of "moderate" Islam, terrorist Osama bin Laden, who enjoys half the Arab-Islamic world's support per an al-Jazeera poll, portrays the prophet's Sunna thus:
"Moderation" is demonstrated by our prophet who did not remain more than three months in Medina without raiding or sending a raiding party into the lands of the infidels to beat down their strongholds and seize their possessions, their lives, and their women" (from The Al-Qaeda Reader, page 56).

In fact, based on both the Koran and Muhammad's Sunna, pillaging and plundering infidels, enslaving their children, and placing their women in concubinage is well founded (e.g. 4:24, 4:92, 8:69, 24:33, 33:50, etc.). And the concept of "Sunna"—which is what 90% of the billion plus Muslims, the "Sunnis," are named after—essentially asserts that anything performed or approved by Muhammad and his early companions is applicable for Muslims today no less than yesterday. This does not mean that Muslims in mass are wild hedonists who live only to plunder and rape. But it does mean that those particular persons who are naturally inclined to such activities, and who also happen to be Muslim, can—and do—quite easily justify their actions by referring to the "Sunna of the Prophet"—the way al-Qaeda, for example, justifies its attacks on 9/11 where innocents, including women and children, were killed: Muhammad authorized his followers to use catapults during their siege of the town of Taif in 630 A.D., though he was aware that women and children were sheltered there. Also, when asked if it was permissible to launch night raids or set fire to the fortifications of the infidels if women and children were among them, the prophet is said to have responded, "They are from among them" (Sahih Muslim B19N4321).

While law-centric and legalistic, Judaism has no such equivalent to the Sunna; the words and deeds of the patriarchs, though recorded in the Old Testament, never went on to be part of Jewish law. Neither Abraham's "white-lies," nor Jacob's perfidy, nor Moses' short-fuse, nor David's adultery, nor Solomon's philandering ever went on to instruct Jews or Christians. They were merely understood to be historical actions perpetrated by fallible men who were often punished by God for their less than ideal behavior.

As for Christianity, much of the Old Testament law was abrogated by Jesus. "Eye for an eye" gave way to "turn the other cheek." Totally loving God and one's neighbor became supreme law (Matt 22:38-40). Furthermore, Jesus' "Sunna"—as in "What would Jesus do?"—is characterized by altruism. The New Testament contains absolutely no exhortations to violence. Still, there are some who strive to portray Jesus as having a similar militant ethos as Muhammad by quoting the verse where Jesus—who "spoke to the multitudes in parables and without a parable spoke not" (Matt 13:34)—said, "I come not to bring peace but a sword" (Matt 10:34). But based on the context of this statement, it is clear that Jesus was not commanding violence against non-Christians, but was predicting that strife will often exist between Christian converts and their environment—a prediction that was only too true as early Christians, far from taking up the sword, passively perished by the sword in martyrdom (as they still do today in many Muslim nations). At any rate, how can one honestly compare this one New Testament verse that metaphorically mentions the word "sword" to the literally hundreds of Koranic injunctions and statements by Muhammad that clearly command Muslims to take up a very real sword against non-Muslims?

And it is from here that one can best appreciate the Crusades. However one interprets these wars—as offensive or defensive, just or unjust—it is evident that they were not based on the "Sunna" of Jesus, who exhorted his followers to "love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you" (Matt 5:44).

In fact, far from suggesting anything intrinsic to Christianity, the Crusades ironically help better explain Islam. For what the Crusades demonstrated once and for all is that, irrespective of religious teachings—indeed, in the case of these so-called "Christian" Crusades, despite them—man is in fact predisposed to violence and intolerance. But this begs the question: If this is how Christians behaved—who are commanded to love, bless, and do good to their enemies who hate, curse, and persecute them—how much more can be expected of Muslims who, while sharing the same violent tendencies, are further validated by the Deity's command to attack, kill, and plunder non-believers?

by Raymond Ibrahim
Jihad Watch
March 15, 2009

Source: The Middle East Forum

Arabs, Israelis, and Underdogs

2009-04-07T01:07:00.000-07:00

"Who, a century back, would have imagined Jews making the better soldiers and Arabs the better publicists?" I asked back in 2005.

A foremost example of the Arabs' p.r. prowess lies in their ability to transform the map of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the early decades, maps of the Arab-Israeli conflict showed Israel in a vast Middle East, a presence so small, one practically needed a magnifying glass to locate it. These days, however, the conflict is typically portrayed by a huge Israel looming over the fractured West Bank and Gaza areas.

This shift in size implies a shift in underdog status; whereas Israel's weak-actor status once came through clearly, the Palestinians have now usurped that position, with all its attendant benefits.

A recent study by Joseph A. Vandello, Nadav P. Goldschmied and David A. R. Richards, "The Appeal of the Underdog," in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin takes as its starting point the assumption that "When people observe competitions, they are often drawn to figures that are seen as disadvantaged or unlikely to prevail. … If people are drawn to sympathize with figures seen as underdogs, attitudes about the parties in this conflict might be strategically shaped by emphasizing the underdog status of one group over the other."

The trio then tested this hypothesis by looking, in part, at the Arab-Israeli conflict. To uncover the possible advantage of being perceived as the underdog, the authors conducted an experiment in which they operationalized underdog status by subtly reinforcing physical size disparities through maps that shifted the perspective to make salient Israel as large, surrounding the smaller occupied Palestinian territories, or conversely, by making Israel appear small by showing it surrounded by the Arab countries of the greater Middle East.

Having set up the experiment with two maps, the authors "predicted that this shift in visual perspective would create perceptions of underdog status, which would in turn predict support for the underdog side."

They predicted correctly. Small size turns out to be key to being perceived as the underdog:

Participants were asked which side they considered the underdog in the conflict. When Israel was portrayed as large on the map, 70% saw the Palestinians as the underdog. In contrast, when Israel was portrayed as small on the map, 62.1% saw Israel as the underdog,

Being perceived as underdog does indeed confer advantages for winning political sympathy:

Participants were also asked toward which group they felt more supportive. When Israel was portrayed as large on the map, 53.3% were more supportive toward the Palestinians. In contrast, when Israel was portrayed as small on the map, 76.7% were more supportive toward Israel.

That's a 23 percent difference, which is huge. Small size, they found, also has a "significant" impact on intensity of support:

Participants were asked to rate how much sympathy they felt toward each side in the conflict on a 1 (none) to 5 (a lot) scale. When Israel was portrayed as large on the map, participants expressed slightly more sympathy toward the Palestinians (3.77 vs. 3.73), but when Israel was portrayed as small on the map, participants expressed more sympathy toward the Israelis (4.00 vs. 3.30).

Click here to enlarge image.

Comments:

(1) There is something peculiar about rooting in a life-and-death situation for the underdog, as though there were nothing more at stake than a sporting championship, but so be it. Modern life asks one to make decisions on many issues where knowledge is lacking; and the views of a poorly uninformed public then can drive the poll-driven politics of mature democracies.

(2) Pulling for the underdog fits into a larger context. For example, I documented in 2006 (in "Strange Logic in the Lebanon War") that "taking casualties and looking victimized helps one's standing" in the battle for public opinion.

(3) Wanting to appear the underdog or to be taking heavier casualties inverts the historic imperative "whereby each side wants to intimidate the enemy by appearing ferocious, relentless, and victorious."

(4) This inversion is one of the many ways in which warfare has fundamentally changed during the past 60 years, turning into a nearly unrecognizable variant of its historic identity.

(5) The framing of a war – shaping how it is perceived – has reached such importance that, as I put it in 2006, "the Clausewitzian center of gravity has moved from the battlefield to the op-eds and talking heads. How war is perceived has as much importance as how it actually is fought."

(6) Weak but innovative organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas have better adapted to this new reality than have powerful but tradition-bound Western governments.

(7) Those governments need to wake up to the fundamental importance of public relations in war.

by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
April 1, 2009
Source: DanielPipes.org

Does Turkey Still Belong in NATO?

2009-04-07T00:46:00.000-07:00

Smack on its 60th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself facing a completely novel problem – that of radical Islam, as represented by the Republic of Turkey, within its own ranks.

Ankara joined NATO in 1951 and shortly after Turkish forces fought valiantly with the allies in Korea. Turks stood tough against the Soviet Union for decades. Following the United States, Turkey has the second-largest number of troops in the alliance.

With the end of the Cold War, NATO's mission changed and some saw Islamism as the new strategic enemy. Already in 1995, NATO Secretary General Willy Claes compared Islamism to the historic foe: "Fundamentalism is at least as dangerous as communism was." With the Cold War over, he added, "Islamic militancy has emerged as perhaps the single gravest threat to the NATO alliance and to Western security."

Indeed, NATO first invoked Article 5 of its charter, calling on "collective self-defense," to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, responding to the 9/11 attacks launched from that country.

More recently, former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar argues that "Islamist terrorism is a new shared threat of a global nature that places the very existence of NATO's members at risk" and advocates that the alliance focus on combating "Islamic jihadism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." He calls for "placing the war against Islamic jihadism at the center of the Allied strategy."

Claes and Aznar are right; but their vision is now in jeopardy, for Islamists have penetrated the 28-state alliance, as was dramatically illustrated in recent days.
As the term of Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer concludes in July, a consensus had emerged to make Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, his successor. But Fogh Rasmussen was in office in early 2006, when the Muhammad cartoon crisis erupted and he insisted that as prime minister he had no authority to tell a private newspaper what not to publish. This position won him much criticism from Muslims, including Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who instructed Fogh Rasmussen at the time that "Freedoms have limits, what is sacred should be respected."

When Fogh Rasmussen came up for the NATO post, Erdoğan continued his grudge, saying that his government looks "negatively" on Fogh Rasmussen's candidacy because, Erdoğan explained, "I asked for a meeting of Islamic leaders in his country to explain what is going on and he refrained from doing that. So how can I expect him to contribute to peace?"

Eventually, Fogh Rasmussen was selected as the consensus candidate, but at a steep price. The Dane won the job only after engaging in intensive negotiations with Turkish president Abdullah Gül hosted by Barack Obama. Fogh Rasmussen promised to appoint at least two Turks and publicly to address Muslim concerns about his response to the cartoons. More broadly, Erdoğan announced. Obama "gave us guarantees" concerning Turkish reservations about Fogh Rasmussen.

The hoops that Fogh Rasmussen had to jump through to win Ankara's support can be inferred from his cringe-inducing, dhimmi-like remarks on winning the appointment: "As secretary general of NATO, I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world to ensure cooperation and intensify dialogue with the Muslim world. I consider Turkey a very important ally and strategic partner and I will cooperate with them in our endeavors to ensure the best cooperation with Muslim world."

We appear to be witnessing the emergence not of a robust NATO following the Claes-Aznar model, one leading the fight against radical Islam, but an institution hobbled from within, incapable of standing up to the main strategic threat for fear of offending a member government.

Nor is Islamism NATO's only problem with Turkey. In what is emerging as a Middle Eastern cold war, with Tehran leading one faction and Riyadh the other, Ankara has repeatedly sided with the former – hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, advocating for Iran's nuclear program, developing an Iranian oil field, transferring Iranian arms to Hezbollah, openly supporting Hamas, viciously condemning Israel, and turning Turkish public opinion against the United States.

Noting these changes, columnist Caroline Glick urges Washington to "float the notion of removing Turkey from NATO." The Obama administration is not about to do that; but before Ankara renders NATO toothless, dispassionate observers should carefully think this argument through.

by Daniel Pipes

Philadelphia Bulletin
April 6, 2009
Source: DanielPipes.org

Saudi call to ban film screenings

2009-04-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

Hundreds of conservative Islamists in Saudi Arabia have signed a petition demanding a stop to what they say is a trend of films being shown in public.

The petition has been motivated in particular by the showing of a home-grown Saudi film in Jeddah last year.

It was financed by the Rotana network, which dominates Arab entertainment and is owned by the billionaire Saudi Prince Waleed bin Talal.

There have been no cinemas in Saudi Arabia since the 1970s.

And there are unlikely to be any soon.

But even such a rigorously controlled event as the showing of the first Saudi feature film at two venues in Jeddah late last year has aroused the suspicions of Islamic conservatives.

They say cinemas fill people's minds with evil and pollute the purity of their souls.

The introduction of radio, TV, satellite TV and other communication technologies have all, in the past, been opposed by the Saudi conservative establishment.

More recently, camera-phones have been vehemently condemned - although that has done nothing to dent their huge popularity.

Source: BBC

A weekend of suicide bombs in Pakistan

2009-04-06T00:31:00.000-07:00

A religion of peace, why all of this is happening?

A religious centre for minority Shiite Muslims in central Pakistan has been blown up by a suicide bomber, killing and injuring many people.

Only one day ago, another deadly suicide attack occurred in the capital, Islamabad.

The latest bombing happened in the central Punjab city of Chakwal, about 100 kilometres south of Islamabad.

The attacker struck in the midst of a Muslim prayer service, which around 2,000 members of the Shiite Muslim group were attending.

Islam and the apostasy debate

2009-04-06T00:17:00.000-07:00

Leaving Islam can be fraught with difficulty.

Despite the well-known Quranic injunction "There is no compulsion in religion", issues of religious freedom have persisted into the 21st Century.

A recent report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (co-authored with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights) throws a spotlight on problems in Egypt.

Suppose a Christian woman converts to Islam, for example when she marries a Muslim man, but later wants to convert back.

Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch relates what happened in one case.

"We had one woman telling us how, when she converted to Islam, it was 'Just hold on, when you've finished your coffee your documents will be ready'.

"But in trying to convert back to Christianity, she's had to go to court - she's been completely frustrated in those efforts."

Identity crisis

The problem was aggravated when the Egyptian state computerised identity documents over a decade ago.
Christians seeking to re-convert encountered bureaucratic hassle in getting their ID cards changed.

Another issue arose from the fact that the state officially recognises only three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

This put the small Bahai community in an obvious difficulty.

Human-rights groups have welcomed two recent court cases as steps in the right direction.

In one, Bahais were allowed to leave blank the entry for religion on their ID cards.

In the other, a group of Christians seeking to re-convert were told the state should acknowledge their change of status on their identity documents.

Root of the problem

Apostasy - the abandonment of one's faith - is not just a problem in Egypt.
In 2006 an Afghan Muslim who converted to Christianity was sentenced to death and fled to Italy.

A new penal code that has been drafted in Iran would, if ratified, formalise the death penalty for apostasy.

The late Ayatollah Khomeini famously denounced the author Salman Rushdie as an apostate for his novel The Satanic Verses - and said he should be killed.

So what is the root of the problem? Why do some Muslim scholars favour such a severe penalty?

Abdal Hakim Murad, a lecturer at the faculty of divinity at Cambridge University, says Islamic law is extraordinarily diverse.

"There's a few things on which everybody agrees - pray five times a day, fast in Ramadan - but, in terms of public law, on most issues there is no consensus."

So some scholars favour the death penalty; others say the punishment should be left to God on the day of judgement.

Dr Murad says he recently attended a conference of Muslim scholars from around the world - and only one took the hard-line view. The others said the death penalty should no longer be applied.

But, for now, the debate goes on - and individuals continue to suffer.

Source: BBC

Trying to lift the veil on Qatar

2009-04-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

This week Qatar hosted the annual Arab Summit in its capital Doha. It was dubbed the reconciliation summit after months of serious rifts in the Arab World. The tiny country had put the noses of some of the big players out of joint by trying to adopt the role of regional mediator, traditionally played by heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Our Middle East correspondent Katya Adler reported on the summit and set out to find out more about Qatar, one of the region's richest nations.

Foreigners outnumber locals by four to one in Qatar

This was my first visit to Qatar and I admit I failed in one of my main missions, to get under the skin of the country.

On Qatar Airways, I met Filipino cabin crew.

The airport ground staff were Pakistani, the hotel receptionist, Sri Lankan, the barista who made my cappuccino on the way to the Arab Summit, Nepali.

My hunt to meet Qataris in Qatar had begun.

Statistically, foreigners in Qatar outnumber Qataris by four to one.

Hidden society

"They get us to do all their hard work for them," a Palestinian called Mazan Barakat told me. I met him in a lift.

"Asians do the menial jobs," he went on, "other Arabs, Americans and Europeans work in the gas and oil industry. We don't care. We earn a lot more working here than we ever would in our own countries."

Mazan has worked in the gas business in Doha for 20 years. How many Qatari friends does he have, I wonder. "Erm, none, came the slightly reluctant reply.
"Of course I know Qataris at work," Mazan hastened to add. "We drink tea, they invite me to their wedding parties."

But had he ever been invited in to a Qatari home?

"Never," Mazan told me. "In two decades here I have never met the wives or children of my Qatari colleagues. Foreigners don't, can't rent properties in Qatari compounds. However long I live here, I can't get Qatari citizenship."

Qatar is very much a veiled society, physically and socially.

Qatari women dress head to toe in black. Most cover their faces, some even their eyes and hands.

Men also keep their heads covered. Public signs of Qatari life are limited to seemingly endless shopping malls and wide-laned dusty roads, lined with skyscrapers and packed with shiny tank-like cars.

This Bedouin nation has changed dramatically since discovering oil and huge natural gas reserves. GDP per capita here is the second highest in the world.
"It's wrong to say Qataris are born with a silver spoon in their mouths," schoolteacher Naima told me. "It's a gold spoon, encrusted with diamonds."

Naima and her husband Jamil are Lebanese and have lived in Doha for 16 years.

They laughed at my determined efforts to get to know Qatar.

"Not even Qataris really know what's happening here," they said.

"They're not allowed to. Unless they're a member of the ruling family. Just look at the press here.

"There are state hangings, more and more drug abuse, growing extremism preached in the mosques. But in public the emirate has to appear perfect."

No opinions

The Qatar-based satellite news channel al-Jazeera boasts it tells things like they are.

But not when it comes to Qatar. It is so close to the emir who rules the country that al-Jazeera staff were employed by the Qatari Foreign Ministry to look after the press centre at this Arab Summit.

Jovial, pot-bellied Faris joked with international journalists throughout, chain-smoking so hard that ash was permanently falling down his once-pristine galabia .

But he looked nervous when I asked him about Qatar, its character, its role in the world.

"Hey, I just work for TV," he told me. "I have no opinions. Qatari, all Arabs. We just talk and talk, you know. But we never do anything. Give me football any day."
I tried foreign ministry officials. Saud bin Ahmad Il Thani is a thin, moustached member of the ruling family.

He put me in mind of the Spanish saying used to describe enigmatic types, "If you met him on the stairs, you wouldn't be quite sure if he were going up or coming down."

"Qataris are the realists of the Arab world," Saud told me with conviction.

"We accept everybody. We've worked with Israel in the past. Unlike a number of other Arab states we don't fear Iran, we understand it," he said.

"It's our neighbour. Ours is a transparent society. We're straightforward. Straight-talking."

The straight talking did not last long at the Arab Summit. The meeting closed suddenly after only a day.

The official reason - everyone agreed with everything. The real reason, a Qatari official told me off the record, was that the longer the Arab states stayed in one room, the more they would bicker.

Qatar preferred things to go smoothly.

Mystery unresolved

My last-ditch attempt to get under Qatar's surface was to book a Doha City tour.

The guide was Indian. I told him I was keen to understand Qatari culture. He suggested we go to the equestrian centre, Olympic sports complex, the main golf club, the biggest mall in the world oh, and the best bit, the Waqif market.

Two hundred years old but knocked down and recently rebuilt. Here you can buy so-called Qatari antiques from South Asian shopkeepers.

I hope to return to Qatar and renew my efforts to get to know the country.

As my Philippine-staffed Qatar Airways flight took off, Doha and the rest of the tiny country were soon shrouded. Swallowed up and hidden in the sandy dust.

Source: BBC

Call for Egypt Bahai attack probe

2009-04-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

Human rights groups in Egypt are calling for an investigation into alleged assaults against followers of the minority Bahai religion.

Dozens of people gathered in a village in southern Egypt on Saturday chanting that Bahais were the enemies of God, six human rights groups report.

The groups say the attacks were incited by a journalist.

He is alleged to have said on Egyptian TV last week that a prominent Bahai was an apostate and should be killed.

The villagers threw firebombs at Bahai homes and cut off water supplies so that the fires could not be put out, and the police then ordered the Bahais to leave the village, the groups say.

The violence in al-Shuraniya, about 345 km (215 miles) south of Cairo, lasted five days and no-one was injured, the Associated Press reported.

Police have not allowed the village's 15 Bahai residents to return to their homes, the agency reported.

The Bahai religion was founded in the 1860s in what is now Iran. Bahais believe the faith's founder is the most recent in a line of prophets that included Buddha, Abraham, Jesus and Muhammad. The religion emphasises the spiritual unity of all humankind.

Bahais across the Middle East have faced severe persecution. In Egypt they have been denied recognition as an official religion.

Source: BBC