Afghanistan: Christian Convert May Face Death Penalty

Big Pharaoh is covering the case of Abdur Rahman, an Afghan man facing a death sentence because he converted to Christianity.
To Kill or Not to Kill

Today I was reading what Al Arabiya visitors wrote about the story of Afghan man who might be executed for converting to Christianity. Many of the comments I read made me want to vomit, others were breezes of rationality.

I chose a few of these comments. I included the good, the bad, the ugly, and the very ugly.

"We hope that rationality supercedes the implementation of laws that contradict innate human traits. There is no other option besides freedom of religion for all. Only then will the religion be for God"

"The missionaries use the poverty of the people to spread their faith. By the way, the power of their religion is short lasting because it is abrogated" (BP: Idiot, the guy converted 16 years ago and he was outside Afghanistan)

"There is no compulsion in religion...you have your religion, I have mine" (BP: That's a verse in the Quran)

"I am a female medical student. Converting out of Islam is forbidden" (BP: a medical student and she think that way! God help us!)

"I hope other Islamic nations will learn from this nation (Afghanistan) how to apply Islamic law"

"Fear God Al Arabiya..and cease such useless news stories" (BP: yea yea, the life of an innocent man is useless to you idiot! Ops, I forgot, he's a dirty apostate!)

"If I were in his shoes, I would have pretended that I returned to islam then escaped and practiced my faith somewhere else"

"I was not surprised when I read that. Bush and his ilk are waging a crusade and this is an expected outcome. Coverting people to Christianity occurs in poor areas....I hope Muslim youth will rise up and carry out charity work in order to fight Christian missionaries."

"Once again Islam is being portrait as the religion of sword. Let Allah judge him. Show mercy and many many others will join our religion. Kill him and many many more will resent being Muslims and the enemy of Islam will have the most effective ammunition to attack our religion." (BP: thank you for having a good mind) ...

The Taliban Live On

The Taliban regime ended in Afghanistan but it seems their legacy is still there. An Afghan man might face the death penalty after he committed a "henious" crime. He converted to Christianity - 16 years ago. Abdul Rahman appeared in court last week and his case is being widely monitored by the local media in Afghanistan.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what I meant when I said that ballot boxes and happy voters casting ballots are not reminiscent with democracy. A country that doesn't adopt the values of liberal democracy can never be called democratic even if it held 365 elections in a year. I'll give anyone a million dollars if s/he dug in my blog archives and came up with a post where I labeled what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, and several other countries in the Middle East as "democracy". I have used other terms such as "better state" and "better condition". [my emphasis - aa]

Bulletin from Stratfor (subscription service):

Italy will move at the "highest level" to save the life of Abdur Rahman, a convert to Christianity who an Afghan court said may face the death penalty if he does not become a Muslim again, the Italian Foreign Ministry said March 21. Separately, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was deeply concerned by the situation, and would intervene if necessary.

Go read Big Pharaoh's full posts at the links.

Afternoon Roundup

Trent Telenko at Winds of Change:

It is a wonder that the Blogosphere hasn’t picked up on the latest media “Frame” on the war in Iraq – that Iraq is in purportedly in the middle of a civil war - and taken it apart like the propaganda it is.

What is going on in Iraq today is a losing terrorist campaign hyped by media spin as a civil war because the public no longer believes their prior “frame” that we were losing to the terrorists . This is easily proven with a simple comparison with Bosnia Herzegovina’s real civil war in the early-to-mid 1990s. Today there are 26 million Iraqis, according to the CIA’s Fact Book. There are four million Bosnians of whom about half (two million) are Muslim.

Bosnia Herzegovina’s Muslim population lost 200,000 dead in four years from 1992-1995’s civil war with the Serbs. That averages about 50,000 dead a year of two million Muslims, about one killed per forty people per year.

If the civil strife in post-liberation Iraq matched that of real civil war in Bosnia ten years ago, there would be 650,000 Iraqi fatalities per year – say 1800 dead Iraqis a day from “sectarian strife” to match the average death rate of Bosnia Herzegovina’s civil war.

That is not happening and neither is Iraq’s “Civil War.” It isn’t even close. There have reputedly been only about 37,000 Iraqi civilian fatalities (not including terrorists - the MSM likes to count terrorist casualties – including foreign aka non-Iraqi terrorists - as Iraqi “civilian” casualties) from violence in the three years of American occupation. That would be less than a month’s losses if Iraq were suffering from a real civil war like the one in Bosnia.

The MSM is flat out lying about a civil war in Iraq just as they have lied about everything else in Iraq. They invent new lies when their old ones are disbelieved. Yet they wonder why their audience and circulation drop.

Neo:

There is no question that one of the important lessons of this war for the enemy (a lesson already learned in Vietnam, but driven home now in modern form) is that the "spotlight"--i.e. worldwide and domestic US press coverage--is worth its weight in gold.

At this point in time, winning the propaganda war is the way to go for militarily weaker entities, be they states or stateless terrorists, if they ever hope to win against the US and its interests. It is actually the only way to do so at present; even the acquiring of nuclear weapons by our enemies would not really change that picture, since it's highly unlikely that any of those entities would ever achieve parity with the US on that score. Such weapons would merely up the ante and cause more carnage; they wouldn't change the general equation.

The "spotlight" is another word for propaganda ...

The Belmont Club, recapping the tumultuous events of the past few years, concludes:

It would have been surprising to discover a really simple narrative behind the events of the last four and half years. The public is only now beginning to catch a glimpse of the fantastic complexity that somehow lay beneath the placid exterior of the 1990s, an era that came to an end with everyone worrying about the millennium software bug but which failed to anticipate September 11. The emergence of bewildering detail is reassuring in this respect: the events since are not the simple contrivance of a few bureaucrats at the Mossad or the CIA. Real historical forces and not cheap conspiracies are at work, though perhaps not every politician has realized that yet.

Fighting Rape

Victoria Brownworth is back in form with a very fine column in the April 2006 print issue of Curve. You need to buy the magazine to read the whole article, but I want to just recap a few of Brownworth's major points here.

Citing DOJ statistics, Brownworth notes that a rape occurs in the United States every two minutes - and only 39 percent of rapes are reported. But the college campus is an especially dangerous place for women: some 25 percent of college students reported being raped. In a majority of cases, the perpetrator is the victim's boyfriend or a male acquaintance.

Brownworth contends that "any man can become a rapist." This might sound like gratuitous anti-male rhetoric, but she is simply pointing out that all of us are responsible for our own actions. It's also important because "the average rapist is just that: average" and he will not necessarily oblige you by looking sleazy and dangerous.

Last spring, Brownworth writes,

a couple of basketball players at a Philadelphia university were charged with raping a female basketball player at the same school. The young woman told police the men rapedand sodomized her at a party. She admitted she had consumed at least nine drinks, which made her extraordinarily intoxicated (and thus unable to give consent). ...

The players were tried and acquitted. The judge deemed the sexual encounter sonsensual, despite the victim's testimony that it was not, because the young woman had willingly gone to the party. The alleged victim reported the incident immediately to campus authorities, but it was not reported to police until much later; campus authorities considered it an internal matter. This too weighed against the woman at trial. The men continued to play on the basketball team. The young woman left school.

Via Alas, we get the repulsive details of the Orange County rape case:

As most "Alas" readers know, the three boys videotaped themselves gang-raping their classmate Jane Doe over and over (including rape with a pool cue and a lit cigarette), and then spent years legally harassing and smearing Jane Doe in every way they could.

The victim's punishment:

It wasn't just the predictable "she's a slut" attacks during the trial, but also paying jurors from the first trial to try and change the minds of jurors from the retrail (is that legal?), and recruiting several of Jane Doe's "friends" to tell stories about her which were later proved to be lies. When Jane Doe moved to a new school, under an assumed name, to try and start over, the defense's private detectives stood in the parking lot of her new school screaming her real name at her.

Read the post at Alas to find out the sentence these vermin received.

Meanwhile, Pinko Feminist Hellcat has complete coverage of the case. Don't miss the survivor's statement:

I will relive forever in my head the morning that my father got a call from the Newport Police Department telling him they had a videotape of his daughter being gang-raped. I remember waking up to my parents standing over me, the look of horror and disgust in their eyes. My father asked me what happened on July Fourth and I told him, "I don’t know," because I couldn’t remember what happened to me.

That is when he grabbed me and he held me in his arms and tears rolled down his cheeks. He proceeded to tell me a videotape was given to the police that unveiled myself being brutally gang-raped by three men, the three men that I gave all my trust to and thought were my friends. ...

The harassment and torture started immediately after the assault became known to the public. It started with private investigators sitting in front of our house day in and day out, watching our every move. Our family’s privacy was completely eliminated. The private investigators got worse when they began watching my parents at their places of work. One day I was driving home and a private investigator began following me. I panicked. I did not know what to do. I called my mom on her cell phone for help. All she could do was tell me to drive to the police station and try to calm down. In the parking of the police station the private investigator cornered me and began taking pictures of me. ...

The worst day of my life was when I heard the verdict of the first jury. I was in my room waiting for the verdict. I remember my mom walking into my room. She sat next to me on the bed and hugged me, looked me in the eye and said it was a hung jury. I felt my stomach drop and my heart being ripped out of my chest. There was no way this could be true. My mom had to be mistaken. When she started to cry I knew she wasn’t. I was in such shock I didn’t know what to feel. I became hysterical and started screaming.

All my anger I had towards these men and the verdict came out. I thought I was going crazy. Why didn’t anyone believe me? ...

Before the second trial I was asked if I wanted to see the videotape of the assault. I was terrified. What if I watched it and it literally put me into a mental institution? I spent many weeks deciding. I knew that if I saw the video I would be able to express my feelings better to the jury while testifying, but I also knew how real it would make the assault to me.

In my heart I knew I had to see it with my own eyes, to be able to know exactly what these three men did to me, so I chose to watch it. I remember my mouth started burning while I was watching the video because it was so dry from hanging open in disbelief. I cannot and don’t think I will ever be able to describe what I felt while watching that video. I remember asking myself, "When did I become a piece of meat and not a human being to these men? How could any sane human do these things they did?" They did things not even savage animals would do. They violated me in every way possible.

As I watched that video, I remember feeling two distinct feelings. I remember becoming furious at the animals that were attacking me because no human could do such a thing. And I remember feeling my soul and inner being completely deteriorating. I was empty. They had now taken every last bit of who I was and no longer felt human. I was like a lifeless and feelingless doll that these men thought they could use and abuse in any way they wished.

A part of me died that day, a part that I don’t know if I’ll ever get back.

The rape happened when she was 16 years old.

Back to Alas: It's pretty sad that Ampersand has to write,

Two years is nowhere near enough, but it is almost a miracle that the OC rapists are being punished at all.

Amp argues that changing rape law alone isn't going to solve the problem; what's needed most is a basic change in the thought patterns of ordinary, "average" people. Amp concludes:

Real reductions of rape - and increases in the likelihood of convictions - may be accompanied by legal reforms, but they won't be caused by legal reforms. It's only by a massive alternation in how our society thinks of rape at every level - so that "boys will be boys" and "the slut defense" is understood by the average person, the average judge, and the average juror as not merely wrong but also repugnant - that real change will happen.

Harvard, U of Chicago: America is the victim of a Zionist conspiracy!

Shmuel Rosner at Ha'Aretz:

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Middle East policy is not in America's national interest and is motivated primarily by the country's pro-Israel lobby, according to a study published Thursday by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Chicago.

Observers in Washington said Thursday that the study was liable to stir up a tempest and spur renewed debate about the function of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby. The Fatah office in Washington distributed the article to an extensive mailing list.

"No lobby has managed to divert U.S. foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. and Israeli interests are essentially identical," write the authors of the study. ...

Here's the study.

And here's Shmuel Rosner's blog post:

Exclusive!!! The secret weapon of the pro-Israeli lobby

The new study on "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" presents an interesting dilemma to the writer: Do you ignore it - having concluded it is biased, one-sided, foolish, repetitive, and most of all, has nothing new to offer - or do you write about it, knowing that the "Harvard," "Chicago," "professors," "Kennedy school" labels will make it acceptable anyway, even news-worthy, in the eyes of many.

In short: Does one need cooperate with the advancement of the cause of academic garbage?

... Here's the scholarly explanation: "One might assume that the bond between the two countries is based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives. As we show below, however, neither of those explanations can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel. Instead, the overall thrust of U.S. policy in the region is due almost entirely to U.S. domestic politics and especially to the activities of the 'Israel Lobby.'"

Whhhoooo - sounds scary. And how did the lobby succeed in achieving all that? It had a super-secret weapon: "The charge of anti-Semitism".

Read the rest.

Best of Dreams Into Lightning

ORIGINAL FICTION
I enjoy reading science fiction, fantasy, and conventional "literary" or "realistic" fiction. What I write is mostly science fiction, at least in the broad sense of dealing with issues of power and technology. In general, I try to keep my fiction non-political, except insofar as it reflects my basic beliefs about human nature and society. The first two stories linked below are loosely based on, respectively, the Book of Genesis and King Lear.
The Rose of Paradise
The Zero Ring
The Death Wish

AMERICA
Journey to America

POLITICS AND MEDIA
These are some of my opinion posts on the Middle East, media coverage, and liberalism today. I still class myself as a "liberal", mostly because my basic beliefs haven't changed; what did change was my understanding of how the so-called "liberal" institutions have (in my opinion) largely betrayed the ideals they claim to represent.
Disengagement: The Messy Divorce (May 2004)
Bambi Sheleg on Disengagement
Something's Rotten in the State of Denmark
Poison Pill: The Media Today
Saudi Women are Happy!
Liberals, Conservatives ...
TNR Deconstructed: "The New Republican" series
Response to Thomas Friedman: America's Addiction
Response to E.L. Doctorow: The Unfeeling Left
September 11: "I Told Them Not to Talk About Their Dreams"
The Moral Struggle

ARTS AND CULTURE
The literature essay is from my undergraduate coursework at PSU. It's neither brilliant nor particularly scholarly, but it gives you some idea of my approach to books. Following it (at the same link) there's a paper I wrote for a Women's Studies class in which I criticized some aspects of the course.
On American Literature
Trina Schart Hyman
N. Scott Momaday
Audre Lorde
Music and Encyclopedias

PERSONAL
The Hours, the Days, and the Years
The Reading Hour
The Long Road Home
The Trip Home

Morning Report: March 9, 2006

Debka on Iran's IAEA referral. Debka reports: 'The IAEA report on the Iranian nuclear program goes to the Security Council for consideration of possible punitive action. The council is expected to give Tehran 30 days to comply with nuclear watchdog directives. Tehran has threatened the US with “harm and pain” for pushing the issue to the world body, a threat the White House dismissed as provocative and further isolating Tehran. U.S. delegate Gregory Schulte said "the time has now come for the Security Council to act." He said the 85 tons of feedstock uranium gas already to hand in Iran could produce enough material for about 10 nuclear weapons if enriched. DEBKAfile’s Gulf sources disclose that Tehran accompanied the 35-member International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision Wednesday, March 8, by launching a new, locally-built submarine, the Nahang (whale) in the Persian Gulf. With the capability to carry multipurpose weapons, the sub is especially adapted to Gulf waters. Military experts report Iran also has six Russian-built SSK or SSI Kilo class diesel submarines patrolling the strategic waterway. ... Separately, France, Germany and Britain, which spearheaded the Feb. 4 IAEA resolution clearing the path for Security Council action, warned that what is known about Iran's enrichment program could be only "the tip of the iceberg." However, both the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers stood aside from the US-EU view.' (Debka)

Musharraf offeers aid to NW Pakistan. Stratfor (subscription service) reports: 'Pakistan has offered the tribal region along its northwestern border with Afghanistan development assistance on condition that foreign Islamist militants are expelled from the area, the official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency reported March 9. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf gave tribal chieftains a detailed development plan for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas that entails enhancing agriculture, irrigation, livestock and industry. It also calls for creation of reconstruction opportunity zones in which companies would be exempt from export duty.' (Stratfor)

Philippine soldiers held over coup plot. AFP via Yahoo reports: 'Twenty-five soldiers including eight officers have been detained, accused of involvement in an alleged coup attempt against President Gloria Arroyo, senior military sources said. Among those being questioned are two lieutenant colonels. All but one of the officers are from the elite Army Scout Rangers, the sources said. An officer from the Special Operations Command was also held. The former Scout Ranger commander, Brigadier General Danilo Lim, was removed from his post on February 24 accused of involvement in the alleged coup plot.' (AFP)

CTB: Immigration fraud overwhelms DHS. INS veteran Michael Cutler at The Counterterrorism Blog reports: 'Simply stated, immigration fraud can be thought of as a lie put on an application that enables an individual to gain an immigration benefit that he/she would not receive if all of the relevant facts were known. Additionally, fraud can be thought of as coming in two broad categories, document fraud and fraud schemes. Both areas leave our nation vulnerable and virtually nothing is being done to address these issues in meaningful ways. While much attention has been paid to the situation at our nation's borders, immigration benefit fraud has been all but ignored by the government and by most of the news media.' Cutler cites a Washington Times article, which cites a Government report alleging that 'the agency that would oversee any future guest-worker program doesn't have a handle on fraud, doesn't do enough to deter it, and won't have a fraud-management system in place until 2011 ...'. Cutler concludes: 'The GAO report discussed in this article was the result of a request from Representative John Hostettler, the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. His unflagging efforts to address so many of the immigration issues confronting our nation should be appreciated by all of us who share my concerns about the dire need that exists to fix the immigration system. Our nation desperately needs to view immigration as a system in which all of the components need to work effectively and with great integrity- no less than the safety and survival of our nation is at stake!' Full articles at the links. (CTB, Washington Times)

ITM on forming Iraq's new government. Iraq the Model: 'The political dispute between the UIA and the rest of the political bodies is still up and growing with both parties stubborn and not showing signs compromising. The UIA still insist that their decision to choose Jafari for PM must be respected while the Kurdish alliance, Accord Front and Iraqi list are still pushing towards changing Jafari with someone else from within the UIA (or to a lesser possibility from another bloc). President Talabani wanted to bring the discussion to the halls of the parliament- a step I admired him for taking-but the UIA through the vice president AbdulMahdi halted Talabani's call by refusing to put his signature on it. Legal experts and politicians have different opinions on whether the constitution has been breached or not by this delay in seating the parliament but the text is clear and frank; the parliament had to be called to convene two weeks ago thus the constitution is already breached even though politicians refuse to admit it and further delay can only be more illegitimate. ...' Read the rest at the link. (ITM)

Winds of Change on school choice. Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has some thoughts on a Wall Street Journal column covering school choice in Minnesota. (Winds of Change, WSJ)

news
March 9, 2006

Little Safety for Gays in the Middle East

From the Forward:

ONLY HUMAN: For Gay Palestinians, Tel Aviv Is Mecca
By kathleen peratis
February 24, 2006
Al-Fatiha — which calls itself the principal international organization promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Arabs — is located not in Beirut or Cairo, but in Washington, D.C. And no wonder: The international movement for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people hardly exists inside the Muslim world.

Arab human rights organizations sometimes advocate for gay rights, but they do so sotto voce. In fact, the only country in the Middle East in which gay people may safely leave the closet is Israel. Which is why, for gay Palestinians, Tel Aviv is Mecca.

Gay Palestinian men flee to Israel because they are not safe in the West Bank and Gaza. They also have no place else to go.

"Israel is close and far at the same time," says Haneen Maikey, a gay rights activist with Jerusalem Open House, one of the principal gay rights organizations in Israel. If the sexuality of a gay man in Palestine is exposed, his family might torture or kill him and the police will turn a blind eye.

Because they are so vulnerable to blackmail, it is assumed by the families and neighbors of gay Palestinian men — sometimes correctly — that they have been blackmailed into becoming informers, either for Israeli intelligence or for opposition Palestinian factions. So when they meet a violent end, the motivation of the killers is not entirely clear.

And in Israel? Misinformation abounds. In a 2004 speech at the University of California, Berkeley, Alan Dershowitz said: "I support Israel because I support gay rights. Recently, a progressive congressman, Barney Frank from Massachusetts, worked with me and Israel to grant asylum for 40 Palestinian gays."

Alas, not a word of this is true.

When gay Palestinian men run for their lives into Israel, they do not seek — and they cannot get — "asylum," which is a special status under international law available to those who can establish a "well founded fear of persecution" in the country of their nationality or "place of habitual residence." Israel has never granted asylum to Palestinians, gay or not, says Anat Ben-Dor of the Refugee Rights Clinic at the Tel Aviv University Law Faculty — even those who can credibly claim they will be killed if they are sent back to the West Bank or Gaza. ...

Regime Change Iran: Netherlands to Repatriate Gay Iranians

Iran Press News: Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.
Dutch immigration minister Rita Verdonk plans to send Iranian homosexual asylum-seekers back to Iran after canceling a six-month stay, a letter to parliament made public on Friday revealed. READ MORE

The Netherlands had granted the reprieve for gay Iranians after reports that two homosexual teenagers were hanged in northeastern Iran in July last year.

Mrs. Verdonk, a former prison governor, said that contacts between Dutch diplomats and Iranian officials had established that the teenagers were not hanged because they were homosexual, but because they were found guilty of the abduction and rape of a minor.

In the letter Verdonk said that it was now clear "that there is no question of executions or death sentences based solely on the fact that a defendant is gay", adding that homosexuality was never the primary charge against people.

Iran's Islamic law imposes the death penalty for the offense of consensual sodomy, when the act is repeated and when the offender is judged to be an adult of sound mind.

Despite this law Verdonk said that research from the Dutch foreign ministry showed that "it is not completely impossible for gay men and women to function in Iranian society although it is important not to be to open about your sexual orientation".

The Dutch gay rights organization COC branded the minister's decision as "revolting". ...

Imam Abu Laith Luqman Ahmad: Rethinking Muslim Methods

Muslim WakeUp carries a wonderful piece by Imam Abu Laith Luqman Ahmad (hat tip: Big Pharaoh) on the need for reform in the Islamic world:

Anyone who hasn’t capitalized on the recent malicious caricature portrayal of the Prophet (SAWS) to express their outrage, promote their organization, get their name in the paper, pontificate the loftiness of Islamic ideals, start a membership drive, do a little political posturing, or to open dialogue, or defend the Prophet (SAWS) has missed their opportunity. The issue has now officially become a non-issue. There was no fatwa or official sounding consensus of scholars declaring cessation of protest. On the contrary, the media puppeteers, knowing what motivates Muslims to action, simply turned off the cameras and directed them to another venue. Muslims are well trained to tailor their activity on the basis of subliminal media directives, and it looks like we were duped again. In other words ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been had. Or as al-Hajj Malik Shabaaz (Malcolm X) used to say, bamboozled, hoodwinked, flimflammed. ...

Of course there are those in denial and that’s to be expected. After all, Islam is our universal adapter. All we need to do is preface an action with; “this is for the sake of Allah” or, “this is for Islam”, or, “this is in defense of Islam” and it assumes immediate legitimacy irregardless of whether it’s fair, Islamic, prudent, or in agreement with the shariah. Since as Muslims, everything we do is ostensibly in the name of Islam, for Islam, for the Muslims, for Allah, in defense of Islam etc., we are never wrong about anything, ever. Perhaps this is how we justify suicide bombings where the innocent (including women and children) are casualties. ...

Whether we care to admit it or not, we’re slowly evolving into a people so consumed with self righteousness; rage, indiscipline, and intolerance, we cannot admit that we also make mistakes. Let’s grow up folks. Even Adam (AS) admitted his mistake and performed a healthy self assessment. To say that we overreacted to the cartoons is not only an understatement, it also raises questions about who we are and what we stand for. ...

There's so much more. Please go read the whole thing.

Courage in the Muslim World

Kesher Talk salutes Nonie Darwish:

Thank God there still are people in this world who stand up for moral courage - instead of the complex moral quagmire of relativism so prized by the Hollywood clique.

One of those people is Nonie Darwish, herself the daughter of a Gazan "martyr" and a very brave woman.

Last Friday she presented a petition with 36,000 signatures on it to the Academy, denouncing its selection of Paradise Now, a film that glorifies suicide bombers and the culture that produces them. That's the petition we had earlier mentioned here.

Nonie Darwish harshly criticized the Palestinian film about two suicide bombers for "putting a human face on the murderers of children."

She warned that if Paradise Now, one of five nominees in the best foreign film category, wins an Oscar at Sunday evening's ceremony, "it will send a message to young Arabs that we are accepted in the West and we have won."

I have no idea if this film will win. But undoubtedly the idiots who vote for it think they are being brave and subversive. ...

Meanwhile, one truly brave and subversive woman is speaking out on al-Jazeera, courtesy of MEMRI (Windows Media Player). Read the subtitles, but listen with the volume up, even if you're not fluent in Arabic, to get a sense of the beauty and power the Arabic language can express - especially in the mouth of a brave, articulate, and intelligent woman like Wafa Sultan. (And don't miss the scene of the religious guy fidgeting with his papers at the end!)

It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on the other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat women like human beings. What I see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.

... Who told you they [the non-Muslims] are "People of the Book"? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them "those who incur Allah's wrath"?

... I do not believe in the supernatural, but I respect others' right to believe in it.

... Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don't throw them at me.

... The Jews came from the tragedy [of the Holocaust] and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror. With their work, not their crying and yelling. Humanity owes most of the discoveries and science of the 19th and 20th centuries to Jewish scientists. ... We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant.

Somehow the phrase "not mincing words" doesn't even come close. Go catch it all at the link.

Nonie Darwish
Wafa Sultan

ISM Wins the Tasteless Event of the Week Award

Rachel Corrie Pancake Breakfast. And no, it's not a joke, and no, I don't think it's funny either, but there it is. Via Israpundit, who says:

Rachel Corrie Pancake Breakfast by by Melvin Kassam (Sunday March 05). “The Rachel Corrie Memorial Committee of Victoria Invites you to a pancake breakfast at Denny’s Restaurant Sunday March 12 , 2006 10 am.” Although we disagree with what Rachel Corrie was doing in the Middle East, we have always considered “pancake” jokes to be in bad taste and we are surprised that the International Solidarity Movement itself would hold a “Rachel Corrie Pancake Breakfast.” ...

Read the rest at the link.

Ampersand at "Alas" Rebuts Anti-Gay Claims of "No Basis"

Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai seek to discredit 49 peer-reviewed studies supporting gay adoptions in the document No Basis (pdf). Ampersand at Alas, a Blog writes:

Lerner and Nagai claim that studies of same-sex parenting don't meet minimum standards of scientific respectability. But are the standards they put forward ones they genuinely believe in, or are they standards that Lerner and Nagai opportunistically take on for the specific purpose of rejecting same-sex parenting studies?

Amp looks at a 1996 study done by Lerner himself and finds that "this study flunks the standards advocated in No Basis." Read the rest at the link.

gay adoption

Pakistan Blocking Blogs

Pakistan is blocking blogs that carry the ever-popular Mohammed cartoons, Plus Ultra reports, citing a BBC report. Pakistan is also seeking an international law against blasphemy. (No, really, I'm not making this up.) Go read the BBC item.

The diligent Plus Ultra provides a list of things besides blogs that are being blocked in Pakistan: kites, "decadent" films from India, alcohol, and the root-beer-swilling Jon of the Garfield comic. Read the full list at the link; you don't want any surprises on your next fun-filled trip to Islamabad.

Pakistan blocking blogs