The Rights of Non-Muslims in an Islamic State
The following are several excerpts from a long and comprehensive article entitled, Rights of Non-Muslims in an Islamic State, by Samuel Shahid.
FOREWORD
Recently a few books have been written about the rights of non-Muslims who are subjugated to the rule of the Islamic law. Most of these books presented the Islamic view in a favorable fashion, without unveiling the negative facet inherited in these laws.
This brief study attempts to examine these laws as they are stated by the Four Schools of the Fiqh (jurisprudence). It aims at revealing to the reader the negative implications of these laws without ignoring the more tolerant views of modern reformers.
Our ardent hope that this study will reveal to our readers the bare truth in its both positive and negative facets.
Concept of "Islamic State"
"An Islamic state is essentially an ideological state, and is thus radically different from a national state." This statement made by Mawdudi lays the basic foundation for the political, economical, social, and religious system of all Islamic countries which impose the Islamic law. This ideological system intentionally discriminates between people according to their religious affiliations. Mawdudi, a prominent Pakistani Muslim scholar, summarizes the basic differences between Islamic and secular states as follows:
1) An Islamic state is ideological. People who reside in it are divided into Muslims, who believe in its ideology and non-Muslims who do not believe.
2) Responsibility for policy and administration of such a state "should rest primarily with those who believe in the Islamic ideology." Non-Muslims, therefore, cannot be asked to undertake or be entrusted with the responsibility of policymaking.
3) An Islamic state is bound to distinguish (i.e. discriminates) between Muslims and non-Muslims. However the Islamic law "Shari`a" guarantees to non-Muslims "certain specifically stated rights beyond which they are not permitted to meddle in the affairs of the state because they do not subscribe to its ideology." Once they embrace the Islamic faith, they "become equal participants in all matters concerning the state and the government."
Classification of Non-Muslims:
In his article, "The Ordinances of the People of the Covenant and the Minorities in an Islamic State," Sheikh Najih Ibrahim Ibn Abdullah remarks that legists classify non-Muslims or infidels into two categories: Dar-ul-Harb or the household of War, which refers to non-Muslims who are not bound by a peace treaty, or covenant, and whose blood and property are not protected by the law of vendetta or retaliation; and Dar-us-Salam or the household of Peace, which refers to those who fall into three classifications:
1) Zimmis (those in custody) are non-Muslim subjects who live in Muslim countries and agree to pay the Jizya (tribute) in exchange for protection and safety, and to be subject to Islamic law. These enjoy a permanent covenant.
2) People of the Hudna (truce) are those who sign a peace treaty with Muslims after being defeated in war. They agree to reside in their own land, yet to be subject to the legal jurisprudence of Islam like Zimmis, provided they do not wage war against Muslims.
3) Musta'min (protected one) are persons who come to an Islamic country as messengers, merchants, visitors, or student wanting to learn about Islam. A Musta'min should not wage war against Muslims and he is not obliged to pay Jizya, but he would be urged to embrace Islam. If a Musta'min does not accept Islam, he is allowed to return safely to his own country. Muslims are forbidden to hurt him in any way. When he is back in his own homeland, he is treated as one who belongs to the Household of War.
Zimmis and Religious Practices
According to Muslim jurists, the following legal ordinances must be enforced on Zimmis (Christians and Jews alike) who reside among Muslims:
1) Zimmis are not allowed to build new churches, temples, or synagogues. They are allowed to renovate old churches or houses of worship provided they do not allow to add any new construction. "Old churches" are those which existed prior to Islamic conquests and are included in a peace accord by Muslims. Construction of any church, temple, or synagogue in the Arab Peninsula (Saudi Arabia) is prohibited. It is the land of the Prophet and only Islam should prevail there. Yet, Muslims, if they wish, are permitted to demolish all non-Muslim houses of worship in any land they conquer.
2) Zimmis are not allowed to pray or read their sacred books out loud at home or in churches, lest Muslims hear their prayers.
3) Zimmis are not allowed to print their religious books or sell them in public places and markets. They are allowed to publish and sell them among their own people, in their churches and temples.
4) Zimmis are not allowed to install the cross on their houses or churches since it is a symbol of infidelity.
5) Zimmis are not permitted to broadcast or display their ceremonial religious rituals on radio or television or to use the media or to publish any picture of their religious ceremonies in newspaper and magazines.
6) Zimmis are not allowed to congregate in the streets during their religious festivals; rather, each must quietly make his way to his church or temple.
7) Zimmis are not allowed to join the army unless there is indispensable need for them in which case they are not allowed to assume leadership positions but are considered mercenaries.
Freedom of Expression
Mawdudi, who is more lenient than most Muslim scholars, presents a revolutionary opinion when he emphasizes that in an Islamic state:
"all non-Muslims will have the freedom of conscience, opinion, expression, and association as the one enjoyed by Muslims themselves, subject to the same limitations as are imposed by law on Muslims."
Mawdudi's views are not accepted by most Islamic schools of law, especially in regard to freedom of expression like criticism of Islam and the government. Even in a country like Pakistan, the homeland of Mawdudi, it is illegal to criticize the government or the head of state. Many political prisoners are confined to jails in Pakistan and most other Islamic countries. Through the course of history. except in rare cases, not even Muslims have been given freedom to criticize Islam without being persecuted or sentenced to death. It is far less likely for a Zimmi to get away with criticizing Islam.
In Mawdudi's statement, the term "limitations" is vaguely defined. If it were explicitly defined, you would find, in the final analysis, that it curbs any type of criticism against the Islamic faith and government.
Moreover, how can the Zimmis express the positive aspects of their religion when they are not allowed to use the media or advertise them on radio or TV? Perhaps Mawdudi meant by his proposals to allow such freedom to Zimmis only among themselves. Otherwise, they would be subject to penalty. Yet, Muslims are allowed, according to the Shari`a (law) to propagate their faith among all religious sects without any limitations.
Read the whole article: Rights of Non-Muslims in an Islamic State. Read more...
"No to Sharia" is Better than "No to Islam"
IN AN ARTICLE on Jihad Watch entitled, Does the SIOA name disparage Muslims?, a commentor going by the name of NoToSharia made this astute observation:
I have long been of the opinion that in Western societies, it is much better to say "STOP SHARIAH" rather than "Stop Islam". To stop Shariah IS to stop Islamisation (as the lawyer letter in effect says) but it is a slogan around which a lot more people can unite: liberals, libertarians, democrats of all kinds, drinkers, gamblers, artists, Jews, Christians, Hindus, gays, feminists and even a lot of Muslims who, while "culturally" Islamic in a general way, never want to see true Shariah law introduced.
Personally I wouldn't look to call the orgnaisation "Stop the Islamisation..." because it then brings up all these issues of religious rights, discrimination, ethnic identity and confuses liberals and democrats. But no one can argue that it is legitimate to oppose the introduction of an alien anti-constitutional legal system should not be introduced into a Western democracy.
Further down the comments, someone named Demsci wrote:
I agree, good post! In a way, thanks to Robert Spencer and people like him, we now know much so much about Islam, even more than the average Muslim! And we know that the very laws of Islam in part contradict the laws of Democratic countries. We might even say: "It's about the laws, stupid". I think we should juxtapose the laws and interests of dedicated Muslims and Democratic citizens.
Your proposal turned around in a positive way: Let us choose Democratic laws, rules, values over Islamic ones when the 2 contradict. And let us choose to further the interests of Democratic nations & organisations over those of Islamic nations & organisations when the 2 compete. Let us choose to protect the rights of religious minorities equally all around the world instead of allowing the rights of religious minorities to be so differently in law and practice in Democratic and Islamic nations.
Let us put this choice to the Islamic inhabitants of the Democratic world. After a positive response let us still monitor and evaluate them. After a negative response let us regard them as inhabitants but not as loyal and united citizens. And let us stop more of them coming in.
You are right, being against all Islam and all Muslims does not unite Democratic citizens much, but being against Islamic laws that contradict and overrule Democratic ones, and against Islamic interests that contradict and overrule the ones of Democratic nations might make many more Democratic citizens unite in defense of their very laws and interests.
Oh, if only the real loyalty and unity of Muslims were asked, checked and charted!
Counterjihad Anthem: Invincible
Sunday, July 25, 2010
I woke up this morning with a song in my head by Pat Benatar I haven't heard in years. I just listened to it and was surprised at how fitting the song is for the counterjihad movement. I think I'll consider this the Counterjihad Anthem.
I remember at the time wondering what the song was about. I'm sure it could fit several scenarios, but it fits our work perfectly. Below are the lyrics and this is the song on YouTube:
Invincible
This bloody road remains a mystery
This sudden darkness fills the air
What are we waiting for?
Won’t anybody help us?
What are we waiting for?
We can’t afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It’s a do or die situation
We will be invincible
This shattered dream you cannot justify
We’re gonna scream until we’re satisified
What are we running for?
We’ve got the right to be angry
What are we running for?
When there’s no where we can run to anymore
We can’t afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It’s a do or die situation
We will be invincible
And with the power of conviction
There is no sacrifice
It’s a do or die situation
We will be invincible
Won’t anybody help us?
What are we running for?
When there’s nowhere, nowhere we can run to anymore
We can’t afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It’s a do or die situation
We will be invincible
And with the power of conviction
There is no sacrifice
It’s a do or die situation
We will be invincible
I can't think of anything more counter-Sharia than a powerful, freedom-loving, female rock and roll singer. Someone needs to take this same song and make a counterjihad video with it. Read more...
Female Resistance to Being Subordinated
THE FOLLOWING is an excerpt from the article, Muslim Women Are On Fire—Both Actually and “Culturally”:
Given massive Muslim immigration to the West, we have massive Muslim female resistance to being subordinated, buried alive—resistance which is punished by Muslim-on-Muslim honor killings in the West. I have written about this at length, most recently in my 2010 study in Middle East Quarterly.
Families of origin carefully plan these murders. Mothers often play a key role in luring their daughters back home, in strangling or stabbing them, and in helping their murderers escape. This was the case in the honor murders of Aqsa Parvez in Toronto (2007), Amina and Sarah Said in Texas (2008), and Noor Al-Maleki in Arizona (2009). If you want to understand how mothers can actually mistreat, persecute, and collaborate in the murders of their daughters, please read my book Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.
The List of Things That Offend Muslims
Friday, July 23, 2010
Check this out. Amboy Times published an extensive linked list of things that offend Muslims. See his list here. This is his preamble:
This list is a work in progress. I welcome suggestions. Anyone who has more items to add to the list, post them in the comments.
The intent of the list is to illustrate the futility of the multicultural approach to Islam. Sharia law demands submission not only from Muslims, but from non-Muslims as well. This makes respectful coexistence nearly impossible with Muslims in Infidel lands. The examples below serve as reminder that submitting to one complaint or another only emboldens Muslims to seek to further their ultimate goal of establishing sharia.
The West needs to come to grips with this fact and start standing up for our God-given rights of free speech, free expression and freedom of religion, lest we surrender those rights to a theocratic movement bent on removing our Constitutional freedoms that we hold dear. In this case, our tolerance will lead to intolerance.
Read the list: The List of Things That Offend Muslims.
Along the same lines, here are a couple of other lists:
95 things that fuel Muslim extremism
When is Islam Oppressed?
“Enemies of Islam" Driven From Facebook
FACEBOOK GROUPS have launched a successful campaign to ban what they call "enemies" from the social network by reporting them to the site's administrators. Their main targets are human rights advocates, atheists, and those accused of being "anti-Islam" or simply "too liberal".
Lists of targets are compiled on Facebook itself, in groups like "Pesticide" and "The cleansing bureau". Hundreds of Facebook users are on the lists - especially if they're gay or women who refuse to wear the veil.
The group administrator asks members to alert the Facebook admin to the targets' accounts by signalling them as "fake profiles". And it's working. Hundreds of users, most of them from Tunisia but also elsewhere, have seen their accounts disappear.
That's because if a large enough number of people signal a profile, then it is deleted automatically, without human verification. Facebook, which is currently facing huge criticism for privacy issues, confirmed that the automatic system was in place, after an employee of the American company tested it.
“It’s probably easily influenced kids who’ve got nothing better to do”
Sarah Ben Hamad works in tourism and writes a blog. Her Facebook account has been targeted several times by deactivation groups.
The people on these lists are often bloggers and intellectuals who are accused of being atheist, pro-Zionist, anti-Muslim activists and homosexual. People of Berber origin are also targeted. The groups are calling for Tunisia and the Maghreb to be 100% Arab and 100% Muslim.
I don't know who's behind these groups; you can't see who the administrator is. I think it's probably easily influenced kids who've got nothing better to do. I'd like to know why people follow their advice without knowing who the people they're targeting are. Is it really a religious fantasy or just an irrational hatred? And why doesn't Facebook notice the unusually high amount of requests coming from them and do something about it?"
Who’s behind the “deactivation groups”
There are a number of hypotheses concerning who might be behind the groups. At first glance it seems to be Islamic fundamentalists. According to new technology blog ReadWriteWeb, however, the Tunisian government may have got involved in a bid to disrupt websites it is not comfortable with.
- The above is from the article, “Enemies of Islam" Driven From Facebook.
Islam Rising: The Movie
Order the DVD now and share it with your friends. Click here to order.
Top Ten Reasons Why Sharia is Bad for All Societies
The following list is from an excellent article entitled, Top Ten Reasons Why Sharia is Bad for All Societies:
10. Islam commands that drinkers and gamblers should be whipped.
9. Islam allows husbands to hit their wives even if the husbands merely fear highhandedness in their wives.
8. Islam allows an injured plaintiff to exact legal revenge—physical eye for physical eye.
7. Islam commands that a male and female thief must have a hand cut off.
6. Islam commands that highway robbers should be crucified or mutilated.
5. Islam commands that homosexuals must be executed.
4. Islam orders unmarried fornicators to be whipped and adulterers to be stoned to death.
3. Islam orders death for Muslim and possible death for non—Muslim critics of Muhammad and the Quran and even sharia itself.
2. Islam orders apostates to be killed.
1. Islam commands offensive and aggressive and unjust jihad.
The article goes into considerable detail about each of these ten reasons. It is well worth reading. Check it out: Top Ten Reasons Why Sharia is Bad for All Societies.
Why Sharia Law Must Be Opposed
THE FOLLOWING article is from No to Political Islam. The article is entitled, Why Sharia Law Must Be Opposed:
Sharia law is the instrument by which Political Islam seeks to control the Muslim world. Whilst the Sharia may have been inspired by the Holy Quran, it has developed and evolved through time and through the efforts of men. The Sharia should be open to analysis, research and criticism like any other system of law, practice and belief. Its divine inspiration should no more shield it from criticism than Christianity should have been spared criticism for burning heretics or massacring unbelievers. The more pernicious interpretations of the Sharia today fall far short of the minimum standards of justice widely demanded by the international community and by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
The Sharia should be opposed for its imposition of theocracy over democracy, its abuse of human rights, its institutionalized discrimination, its denial of human dignity and individual autonomy, its punishment of alternative lifestyle choices, and for the severity of its punishments.
In the west, in countries that have a sizable Muslim population, there have been calls for the Sharia to be adopted for the Muslim community. These calls should be vigorously opposed; the Sharia conflicts with many basic human values, such as equality before the law, that punishments should be commensurate with the crime, and that the law must be based on the will of the people. The Sharia as it developed in the first few centuries of Islam incorporated many pre-Islamic Middle-Eastern misogynist and tribal customs and traditions. The Sharia was developed not only from the Holy Quran but incorporates legal principles from other sects. We may ask how a law whose elements were first laid down over 1,000 years ago can possibly be relevant in the 21st century. The Sharia reflects the social and economic conditions at the time of the Abbasids and has become further and further out of touch with later social, economic, technological, cultural and moral developments. The principles of the Sharia are inimical to moral progress, humanity and civilized values.
The problem for all of us is how to oppose the violations of human rights inherent in the Sharia without being accused of blasphemy or apostasy. We would suggest that the answer lies in a return to the Five Pillars of Islam.
For non-Muslims who want to help, the problem is how to avoid charges of cultural imperialism, neocolonialism and racism, or of failing to respect “the other”. But cultural relativism is not the answer. In India, each religion has its own social laws. Muslim women do not enjoy the same rights as Hindu women. Why not? Justice cries out for secularism. One law for all – equality before the law – for Muslims and non-Muslims, for men and women alike, must be the answer.
Many of the arguments for permitting each religion or culture to determine its own laws are based on a misunderstanding of the nature of human rights. Human rights as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are vested in the individual, not the group. As soon as rights are accorded to a group rather than to individuals, conflict becomes possible not only between one group and another, but between the group and its own members. Any group that denies the right of its members to leave is in contravention of one of the most fundamental principles of human rights. Yet clearly, one of the reasons for the growth of Islam over the past century has been that becoming a Muslim is a one-way street. Whether by birth or conversion (historically likely to have been a forced conversion) once you are a Muslim the only way out, under the Sharia, is death.
When Political Islam really does advocate jihad to achieve world domination, then anyone deeply concerned with humanity and human rights will be critical. Of all the existing ideologies, Political Islam remains the greatest danger to humanity. Political Islam has been neither tamed nor moderated by progressive forces. It has the power to inspire the terrorist mind, and, through its ties to oil-rich states, the funds to pursue its plans.
Islamic apologists often claim that many so-called violations of human rights are based on a misreading of the Holy Quran and will quote this or that sura in its defense. But the arguments against Political Islam are not against the holy texts but against the Sharia as it is practiced today in Islamic states. We are told that Islam is a religion of peace and that the struggle, jihad, to impose Islam by conquest is not to be taken literally. But for Political Islam it is. Ask the suicide bombers. The only possible response to the charge of misunderstanding or misreading Islam is to look at the reality of what is happening in those countries such as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and northern Nigeria where the Sharia now holds sway.
The world is a battleground of social movements and ideas. It took people in the west over 400 years of often-bloody struggle to gain the right to criticize Christianity. Even now, that right is still not fully recognized. In Britain, for example, there is still a law against blasphemy, and many Islamic clerics have argued that it should be extended to cover Islam as well. It should be scrapped. Once we are prevented from expressing our point of view in the market place of ideas we will be heading back to the Dark Ages.
We must recognize that we now live in a global community. Society is far larger, more diverse and far more complex than the primitive tribal society of 7th century Arabia that gave birth to Islam. It is time to renounce the idea that anyone should be ruled exclusively by the Sharia. More than ever before, people need a secular state that respects freedom of religion, and freedom from religion for those that have none, and human rights founded on the principle that power belongs to the people. This means that we must reject the claims of the Islamists that sovereignty belongs exclusively to Allah – by which they mean His representatives, that is, themselves. Indeed it demands that the very concept of an Islamic state be challenged. The imposition of Sharia law for political ends must be opposed.
What is needed is nothing less than the secularization of Islamic society, and the establishment of the idea that individual conscience must be our guide and the judge of personal, private conduct. But secularization cannot be imposed from outside by force. Attempts by America and its allies to impose democracy and human rights on the Islamic world will rightly be resisted as neocolonialism and will simply drive more and more Muslims into the arms of the extremists. The onus is on us to promote the ideals of personal freedom, progress and change from within Muslim society, with help from those in the rest of the world who share our ideals and hopes for the future.
We call on all Muslims and all who value freedom, democracy and human rights to support our campaign: NO to Political Islam, YES to Human Rights.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the full text of which appears on this page. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories." Here is the declaration:
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
The Goal of Orthodox Islam
Monday, July 19, 2010
Listen to a clear statement of orthodox Islam's mission: The goal of orthodox Muslims is to implement Sharia wherever they are.
Geert Wilders Debates Job Cohen
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Geert Wilders debates Job Cohen, former mayor of Diamantbuurt, a city in Amsterdam. They debate about the danger of orthodox Islam and Muslim immigration. Wilders is masterful.
Why Ban Face Veils?
THE FOLLOWING is excerpted from an article entitled, Why France is Leading the Way in the Battle for Women's Freedom:
The French lower house of parliament approved the ban on face veils. Even the French communists caved in to feminist pressure and did not oppose this ban.
The Koran does not mandate having to cover one’s face. This is not a religious requirement. It is, rather, a hostile rejection of Western values, a refusal to integrate, a sign of political Islam, and possibly of jihad. It is also the foremost distinguishing feature of Islamic gender and religious apartheid in the West.
Some Western feminists have opposed such a ban. Most recently, in The New York Times, philosopher Martha Nussbaum claims that to do so would be hypocritical since we are the culture of bikinis, cosmetic plastic surgery, and dangerously high heels. I disagree.
Western families and Western countries do not force women to wear bikinis or to have plastic surgery, and if women refuse to do so, they are not acid-attacked or honor-murdered.
Loose clothing, which Nussbaum prizes, is not the same as cloistering, ill-fitting clothing which renders a woman socially invisible.
Quite apart from security or even human rights concerns, which I share, additionally, in my opinion, covering one’s head and face creates a serious health risk. Wearing a chaudry or burqa condemns a woman to a sensory deprivation chamber—something that is ordinarily considered a form of torture. A woman who can never feel sunlight condemns her to all the Vitamin D deficiencies, to low self-esteem, and to serious depression. How can a doctor examine such a woman?
How can a professor, a police officer, a judge or jury evaluate the credibility of a faceless being?
The article was written by Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D. a frequent contributor to Fox News who blogs regularly at Pajamas Media and NewsReal Blog. She is the author of thirteen books, including "Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman" and "The New Anti-Semitism," and may be reached at her website www.phyllis-chesler.com.
Current Muslim Population Numbers
The Muslim population is increasing at 1.84 percent.
The Muslim population in 2009 was 1.8 billion.
For the latest figures, see World Muslim Population.
The site uses the following sources for their figures:
POPULATION REFERENCE BUREAU
CIA FACT SHEET
WIKIPEDIA
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: COUNTRY STUDIES
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF STATE: BACKGROUND NOTES
US DEPARTMENT OF STATE: INTERNATIONAL INFORMATIOON PROGRAM
HOLT, RINEHART & WINSTON: ATLAS
HOPE FOR EUROPE: RESOURCE/LIBRARY SECTION
BBC: NEWS
BBC: RELIGION AND ETHICS
The Different Kinds of Veils
 |  | The burka comes in many variations, but in its most conservative form, it thoroughly covers the face of the person wearing it, leaving only a mesh-like screen to see through. This refugee is wearing the conservative burka that the Taliban regime requires women in Afghanistan to don outdoors. The burka is thought to have originated in the Arabian peninsula and can still be found there today. They are not always as conservative in form as the one shown here and often allow parts of a woman's face to show through. |
| The word hijab refers to the variety of styles in which Muslim women use scarves and large pieces of cloth to cover their hair, neck and sometimes shoulders. As shown on this Seattle-area Muslim woman, the hijab often leaves the entire face open. In the United States, the hijab is the most common form of headcovering for Muslim women. | |  |
 | | The chador is the full-body cloak Muslim women in Iran are expected to wear outdoors. Depending on how it is designed and on how the woman holds it, the chador may or may not cover the face. The chador was forbidden in Iran under the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, who was brought to power with help from the United States and sought to modernize the country. After the shah was exiled during the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the chador became required wear for all Iranian women. Many Iranians today subvert their dress-code by wearing Western-style clothing beneath the chador. |
 | | Many Pakistani Muslims, such as this one, wear some form of veil. This woman is wearing the nikab along with a bandana that reads, "God is great!" The veil existed before Islam existed, but it has been embraced and spread by the religion. Not all Muslim women wear a veil, but among those who do, styles vary wildly, from simple kerchiefs and elaborate head scarves to full face-and-body coverings. |
| The nikab is the form of Muslim veiling that comes closest to what is actually meant by the English word "veil." English speakers tend to use the word veil as a catch-all term that covers all types of Muslim head and body coverings. The nikab, worn in black by this Moroccan woman, is a veil in the true sense of the word. It covers everything below the bridge of the nose and the upper cheeks, and sometimes also covers the forehead. | |  |
The above is from an article in the Seattle Times called, Interpreting Veils. Read more...
Female Genital Cutting on ABC World News
Saturday, July 17, 2010
ON THE ONE hand, I was amazed they were able to write the story and show a video and nowhere does it mention Islam or Muslims. My first response was, that's bad. A particular ideology is driving this custom, allowing it, perpetuating it, and it seems to remove the practice, it would help if you weakened the cause rather than the effect.
On the other hand, every step we can take to end this particular practice is another step toward weakening orthodox Muslims' influence, and that's good. Probably if Dianne Sawyer mentioned Islam in the story, it wouldn't have run. So at least the story ran.
Read the story and watch the video and tell us what you think. Female Genital Cutting: Affecting Young Girls in America.
What to do if the Mosque at Ground Zero is Built
A COMMENT on the article, A mosque by any other name: Ground Zero mega-mosque group ditches name redolent of Islamic supremacism, said this:
In the unfortunate event this mosque project goes through, since Imam Rauf claims to want interfaith dialogue, perhaps non-Muslims should pour into this place daily to the point of outnumbering the adherents to Sharia.
If he wants interfaith dialogue, then Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. should all expect the same benefits and privileges as anyone else who enters the dwelling, and should practice their respective religion while inside it.
If Rauf is what he says he is, he should have no problem with that, right? Play for keeps.
We Come Not As Aggressors
Thursday, July 15, 2010
William Jennings Bryan said it in 1896 in a vastly different context, but every word applies to conservatives today:
We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defence of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!
We beg no more. We entreat no more. We petition no more. We defy them. We are not the aggressors. We are not haters. We are not racists. We are not bigots. We are not neofascists. Those who claim otherwise are knowingly or unknowingly abetting a monstrous evil. We withdraw our sanction from them. We must no longer treat journalists as if they were objective reporters when they are ideologues and propagandists. We must constantly call them out on their game. And refuse to play it ourselves.
The above is a quote from Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)" and "The Truth About Muhammad." His latest book, "The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran," is available now from Regnery Publishing, and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of the forthcoming book "The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America" (Simon and Schuster).
Read the whole conversation: Symposium: The Fear that Wilders is Right.
Read more...
Saturate the Public Consciousness
THE CULTURAL denial of the threat we face will be overcome in one of two ways. Either it will be changed by the nation being subjected to sufficient additional carnage to force it awake or – obviously preferably – it will be abandoned in response to a sustained effort to saturate the public consciousness with images that effectively convey the threat, convey it to the point where fewer and fewer are able to cling to their denial of reality.
Roger Simon notes that the Internet, which could be an effective tool for getting out the truth about the Islamist threat despite mainstream media silence and obfuscation, has actually largely cut the other way by being used to promote the Big Lie about the threat, the denying it and rationalizing it and prettifying it. The Internet is also used by the Islamist enemy to recruit to its cause. But the new media could be used to expose more effectively the Big Lie, with images. I agree with Roger Simon on the repellent non-response of Obama to last June’s mobilization of the freedom movement in Iran. The snapshots and film images captured on cell phones of the popular uprising and the regime’s brutal response were seen around the world, and brought home to many the nature of the Iranian branch of the enemy and the moral bankruptcy of Obama’s response.
Images of events in Darfur can also be mustered to convey the counter-message to the Big Lie. The people of Darfur, like those in the streets in Iran, are Muslims, but their tormentors, the rulers of the Sudan, are closely allied with the Iranian branch of the Islamist threat – its chief boosters are drawn from Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. Sudan’s rulers enjoy as well the unanimous backing of the Arab League, the friendship of Erdogan’s Islamic government in Turkey, and the support of additional non-state backers such as Al-Qaeda. Many on this roster, including the Sudanese government, are the object of Obama Administration blandishments and outreach and offerings of carrots, even as the slaughter in Darfur, and indeed in other minority areas in Sudan, goes on unabated. Images, in photos and film, of what is actually happening there can help promote public eye-opening to the broader threat and impatience with our government’s fecklessness.
Those who speak the truth, or convey it in photos and video, will be demonized, as Robert Spencer says. That is, indeed, the Islamist way, and leftist way. But one can challenge the censors. If their counterparts in Europe, including the indicters of Wilders, are largely able to escape serious challenge, we’re not obliged to give the censors a free pass here.
Material demonstrating the threat – in the words and deeds of the Islamists themselves – can be offered, in universities and elsewhere, as material to be discussed and debated. If it contains errors, let the critics demonstrate it. Those who refuse to allow the discussion, in whatever venue, should be called out for violating the norms of a free society, whether they are motivated by fears of the physical retaliation supporters of the Islamist threat so widely employ, or by fears of being labeled “racist” or “anti-Muslim,” or – as the anecdotes cited by Robert Spencer effectively convey – by refusal to recognize the nature of the threat because it is too daunting and upsetting.
During the late thirties, Churchill was censored. He was virtually blackballed by the BBC and demonized by other major media. They were afraid to have his message aired, afraid of its implications. When Chamberlain brought “peace in our time” back from Munich, Churchill was denounced as a warmonger for criticizing Chamberlain’s capitulation to the Nazi threat.
But we do have tools to circumvent the censorship of the appeasers, and only through those tools can we hope to break the dominant self-delusion by means that will spare the nation a ruder awakening via future 9/11’s.
The above is a quote from Dr. Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of "The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege."
Read the whole conversation: Symposium: The Fear that Wilders is Right.
What is to be Done
BUT BACK to “What is to be done?” Well, we must redouble our efforts in the psy-war and broaden our approach. That means not just preaching to the choir at venues like Pajamas Media and Front Page, but also finding ways to break through on their turf. The Great American Middle must be awakened and informed logically, not heatedly, about the Islamic threat. This is not about proving we are “right.” This is about saving our civilization.
The above is a quote from Roger L. Simon, the author of ten novels, including the eight prize-winning Moses Wine detective novels, which have been published in many editions and translated in over a dozen languages. He is also a screenwriter and has written for all the major Hollywood studios, including Bustin’ Loose with Richard Pryor, Scenes from a Mall with Woody Allen and the adaptation of his own The Big Fix with Richard Dreyfuss. Simon received an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of Isaac Singer’s Enemies, A Love Story in 1989. The author of Blacklisting Myself: A Hollywood Apostate in an Age of Terror, he is the co-founder and CEO of Pajamas Media.
Read the whole conversation: Symposium: The Fear that Wilders is Right.
The Most Important European Alive Today
I SEE A FORM of the Oslo Syndrome operating here. In the Oslo agreements, Israel embraced Yasir Arafat and his PLO as its “peace partner” even as Arafat and those around him were making clear, in word and deed, that their goal remained Israel’s annihilation. In looking at Israel’s self-destructive Oslo policies, I discussed the phenomenon of segments within a minority population that is under siege – whether the situation be a minority marginalized, denigrated and otherwise attacked by the surrounding majority within a polity, or a small state under constant assault by larger neighbors – commonly embracing the indictments of their enemies, however bigoted or absurd or murderous those indictments. They delude themselves that by doing so, and promoting concomitant self-reform and concessions, their enemies will be appeased and grant them peace.
While most common among minorities at risk, the same phenomenon can be seen within large and powerful populations faced with new and dangerous external threats. This became obvious in the United States after 9/11.
The perpetrators of 9/11 and their myriad supporters quickly made clear their objective of imposing their Islamist rule worldwide and their comprehension of doing so as a religious duty. Yet many in America sought, and continue to seek, to recast the threat, to rationalize it, and to urge policies aimed at appeasing Islamist leaders and followers in the delusional hope of thereby extricating the nation from the dangers it faces.
Geert Wilders argues that Islamofascism derives directly from Islamic teachings, including Koranic exhortations. His movie, Fitna, advancing this argument, is unimpeachable in its citations of Islamic scripture and in its images of Islamofascism on the march. That those who oppose him are motivated in large part by a wish to appease the purveyors of the Islamist threat is indicated by the fact that the negative responses to Wilders have focused not on rebutting his arguments but on demonizing him and using anti-democratic means to silence him. As Roger Simon suggests, they are compelled to hate Wilders because they so want to cling to their delusional denial of the threat.
The ugly, perverse, self-destructive nature of the assault on Wilders, and the necessity to defend him, have been articulated by many. Particularly noteworthy is the stance of Daniel Pipes, in that Pipes disagrees with some of the substance of Wilders’ arguments, believing in the possibility of a moderate Islam, but has forcefully supported Wilders and attacked the shoddy treatment to which he has been subjected, the anti-democratic efforts to silence him and punish him through the courts, and the broad movement – as illustrated in the indictments of Wilders - to quash free discussion of the nature of the Islamist war being waged against the West. Pipes has stated that Wilders’ unique confronting of the Islamist challenge – pursued without the baggage of neo-Fascist, nativist, or conspiricist extremism that have characterized some others in Europe decrying Islamic inroads – has rendered him the most important European alive today.
The above is a quote from Dr. Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of "The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege."
Read the whole conversation: Symposium: The Fear that Wilders is Right.
Roger Simon: How to Deal With Islam
THE WORLD is in a horrible Catch-22 and Geert Wilders is the ultimate “canary in a coal mine” for trying to tell the truth about it.
Islam is an almost unsolvable conundrum. How do you deal with a religion with a billion adherents that is expansionist in ideology and threatens to kill its apostates? How do you get a reformation of that religion when its holy book, from which those dictums come, is reputed to be dictated verbatim by God and is therefore immutable? Talk about “inconvenient truths,” these are about as inconvenient as they get. No wonder they are buried from the discussion and ignored. We in the West live in a society that cannot even begin to wrap its mind around that. I know – it’s hard for me.
So where does that leave Wilders? I believe that consciously or unconsciously those who brand him as excessive, or even racist, are living in fear that he may be right. They have to hate Wilders, because if he is correct, their whole world disintegrates. Who would want that?
He and the small group like him have therefore morphed into our clearest contemporary examples of those poor Greek messengers to be killed for bringing the bad news. A salient recent example is Nicholas Kristof’s unhinged attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the New York Times Book Review — a supposed liberal going off on a woman who had a cliterodectomy for daring to dwell on how women were oppressed in the Islamic world. It’s almost pathological. Another recent example are the similarly unhinged attacks on Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident while completely ignoring vastly more horrific acts occurring in the Muslim world on an almost daily basis. We dare not insult them lest they go mad.
It’s almost as if the world has become a giant dysfunctional family, enabling their huge Muslim branch to remain besotted — or drugged out — on sub-Medieval ideology. And the situation is getting worse. The principle bastion of hope of reformation of the Islamic world — Turkey — made its turn back toward fundamentalism years ago now.
So again, where does that leave Wilders? One lonely canary.
The above is a quote from Roger L. Simon, the author of ten novels, including the eight prize-winning Moses Wine detective novels, which have been published in many editions and translated in over a dozen languages. He is also a screenwriter and has written for all the major Hollywood studios, including Bustin’ Loose with Richard Pryor, Scenes from a Mall with Woody Allen and the adaptation of his own The Big Fix with Richard Dreyfuss. Simon received an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of Isaac Singer’s Enemies, A Love Story in 1989. The author of Blacklisting Myself: A Hollywood Apostate in an Age of Terror, he is the co-founder and CEO of Pajamas Media.
Read the whole conversation: Symposium: The Fear that Wilders is Right.
Lasting Peace Between Israel and the Palestinians
THE FOLLOWING is from an article by Victor Sharpe entitled, Mosques of War:
Here one can understand clearly that peace — true and lasting peace — between Islam and nations that adhere still to Judeo-Christian civilization, or to Hinduism, Buddhism, or all other faiths, is a forlorn and baseless hope.
The "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, for example, is thus a grand illusion, endlessly fostered by Western politicians and diplomats, along with self-deluded Israeli leaders, who all refuse to see a reality that has existed since Islam's creation in the 7th century.
This reminds me of the article: Let's Give "Giving Up On Peace" a Chance. Read more...
Mosques as Symbols of Conquest and Dominance
THE FOLLOWING is from an article by Victor Sharpe entitled, Mosques of War:
Since the time of Muhammad, synagogues, churches, Hindu temples, Zoroastrian temples, and pagan shrines have been all too often violently converted into mosques.
After the conquest of Mecca in the year 630, Muhammad transformed the Black Stone in the Ka'aba, which ancient pagan Arabs had worshiped, into the paramount Islamic holy place. It became known as the Masjid al-Haram, or Sacred Mosque.
During the Arab invasions of neighboring lands in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond, under the new banner of Islam, numerous synagogues and churches were converted into mosques. In Damascus, Syria, the church of St. John is now known as the Umayyad Mosque. Also in Syria, the mosque of Job was originally a church.
The Islamic tide swept into Egypt, and many Christian Coptic churches were converted into mosques. From North Africa, the conquests continued into Spain and Portugal, where again churches were converted into mosques. Interestingly, many churches had been built upon the sites of earlier Roman temples. But during the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Christian armies — the Reconquista — these same mosques were reconverted into churches.
In Gaza, the Great Mosque of Gaza was originally a Christian church. In Turkey, the Hagia Sophia Church was converted in1453 into a mosque and remained so until 1935, when it became a museum. Indeed, the Ottoman Turks converted into mosques practically all churches and monasteries in the territories they conquered.
The most well-known mosques, built upon previous non-Muslim holy sites, are the Al-Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, also built upon the site of the two biblical Jewish Temples.
There are four holy cities of Judaism: Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias. Hebron is the second-holiest city, and in it is the burial place of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs, known as the Cave of Machpela, where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah are buried.
Herod the Great constructed an enclosure for the burial site. During the later Christian Byzantine period, a church was built upon the site, but this was destroyed in 614 by the Persians. Later, the Arab-Muslim invaders built a mosque in its place.
Jews were not permitted to worship at their nearly-four-thousand-year-old holy place by the Muslim Arabs. They could only ascend to the seventh step leading to the tombs. Indeed, they were refused this right as a place of worship from the 7th century until 1967, when Israel liberated the territory from the Jordanian occupiers. Even before the Israeli liberation, a horrifying massacre of Jewish residents in Hebron by their Arab Moslem neighbors took place in 1929 while under the British Mandate of the geographical territory known as Palestine.
Prior to the present-day Palestinian Authority assuming control of the city of Nablus, which was the ancient biblical Jewish city of Shechem, the Tomb of Joseph, the biblical figure, was a place of Jewish pilgrimage. When it was handed over to the PA, as one of seemingly endless Israeli concessions, the tomb was desecrated by a Moslem mob, which proceeded to convert it into a mosque.
On the Indian subcontinent, Hindu temples were similarly converted into mosques. Lately, Hindu nationalists have reconverted some mosques into temples, and, as in so many other parts of the world, considerable bitterness exists between Moslems and members of other faiths or those of no faith.
Mosques now occupy vast numbers of places of worship for other faiths. In Algeria, the Great Synagogue of Oran is now a mosque after the Jewish population was driven from Algeria. Many other synagogues throughout the Arab world are now mosques from after the Jewish inhabitants were expelled.
In the 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, many Greek Orthodox churches in northern Cyprus were converted into mosques. And the process continues.
Saudi Arabia invests endless billions of dollars to build mosques throughout the world. The international blanketing of cities with mosques is just another expression of jihad. In western Europe, most famously renamed Eurabia by the writer, Bat Yeor, there may soon come a time when there will be more minarets than steeples.
Perhaps the most egregious and blatant example of Islamic triumphalism is the planned construction of a giant mosque in New York, almost upon the site of the horrific destruction of the Twin Towers by Moslem terrorists acting in the name of Allah.
The proposed mosque is to be opened in 2011 on the very anniversary of the September 11, 2001 atrocity — a flagrant insult to the memory of the thousands of innocents who died at the hands of Moslem fanatics and believers, most of them Saudis.
But this, after all, is what jihad is all about. Subdue the "infidel" at all costs. The Islamic obligation to conquer and convert the unbeliever must never lapse. Its tangible manifestation can also be characterized as the mosques of war.
Read the whole article: Mosques of War.
Sharia Attack on Our Human Rights and Democratic Ideals
IN AN INTERVIEW with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Battle_of_Tours made a comment worth reading. Here it is:
Mrs. Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is a fighter for our secular human rights and freedoms, and a feminist fighting for women's equality. She said in her own words: "We are people defending the principles of freedom and equality in a secular society. I criticize political Islam and its political manifestations. No democratic country can take this right away from anyone."
And that is what this fight is about, not against Islam per se, which is an internal problem of the Muslim world, but of our modern societies taking "steps backwards, especially in the realm of human rights and democracy" that we must be painfully vigilant against. Islamic Jihad is just the most visible manifestation of the Sharia attack on our human rights and democratic ideals.
The violence manifest, Jihad therefore must be our first target of attack, then followed with exposing the subterfuge and atmospherics of Sharia-law politics. However, those who push for Sharia's political Islam, the "stealth jihad", must be held to account as violators of our human rights. If the battle goes that way, there will be less tinder for the Left to alight on with their self-destructive rhetoric polemics and character attacks, such as witnessed above (in the interview).
Decent people of Muslim ethnicity will support this battle, even if only with tacit silence. And that is how this war on Jihad will be won, in their hearts and minds, when they too are liberated. Freedom is a universal good, even for Muslims who were born into the 7th/21st century.
Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa
Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa: Human Rights Organization for Freedom and Democracy Against Islamization.
The “CITIZENS’ MOVEMENT PAX EUROPA” (BPE) is an independent, nonpartisan movement and considers itself a European Civil Rights Movement and a Human Rights Organization. Our objectives are to protect not only the democratic, free and secular rule of law in our country but also to struggle for European culture based on the Judeo-Christian traditions and – especially – on the values of the Enlightenment. The association clearly distances itself from all right-wing or left-wing extremists and all xenophobic movements.
BPE appreciates and supports all efforts made by OSCE/ODIHR and their members and NGO's in past and present to protect individuals in their human rights “to profess and practice, alone and in community with others, religion or belief in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience.” Freedom of worship according to European standards is restricted to the RITES of religion while refraining from any attempt to implement religious rules into the secular state. All religious organizations and communities are obliged to recognize the 1948 UN-Human Rights Declaration and to guarantee the right of individuals to change their religion or leave their faith or to become a non-believer.
Equal rights for women and children are often not practiced in religious communities. Forced marriges and social discrimination of “unbelievers“ within certain religious-cultural communities are common. Therefore:
· We recommend that no religious laws of any sort be implemented into any national legislation.
· We recommend that since critisism of religion is part of free speech, any effort to ban free speech in name of religious interests on the pretext of „Islamophobia“ or racism must be prevented.
· We recommend that religious building projects not be enforced against the residents' appeals.
· We recommend that national governments take immediate measures to protect all threatened individuals leaving a religious group.
· We recommend that no religious organisation benefit from public funds if it does not respect entirely the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights“ (UN 1948).
For more information about the organization, see their forum.
Cartoons, Islam, and Free Speech
THE FOLLOWING was written by James Cohen of the International Free Press Society. See the original here: Buy Cartoon.
It looks to me like governments all over the civilized world are scrambling for new legislation to deal with ancient problems. That France for example, wants to protect the freedom and rights of women, by making certain choices of clothing illegal, when they could as easily use existing laws to make Burkas and so on inconvenient beyond any reasonable utility.
In other words, stop making exceptions in law for those who want to destroy us and our freedoms, and the problem solves itself.
In that spirit, our freedom of expression has been under direct attack for sometime now. It would be easy to start the clock at the Danish cartoon crisis which may or may not be the case, but without question, the Danish cartoon riots did mark the point at which basically any Muslim or for that matter, mid-level bureaucrat could make a complaint about a soft ice-cream-cone logo and have major corporations scramble to change it or pull it from the shelves lest it offend a volatile Muslim.
So how do we stop this sprint to hand our freedoms to the most barbaric man in the room?
Easy.
Each time a threat or indeed a real act of violence is committed to force us all to sharia standards of freedom we go the other way. Too many targets and it becomes a failed effort. I say we all draw Mohamed. We make a T shirt with a blasphemy for Islam on it.
More than once I have seen university students with T shirts sporting captions such as…
“Jesus. He did it for the chicks”
It takes about as much courage to do that as it would to eat a ham sandwich in front of Mahatma Gandhi on the 40th day of a fast and do about as much good. But if enough of us showed the same willingness to fight this irrational religious authority as we do attacking the Church on the matter of Galileo and the Solar system model, we could put this problem to bed in a weekend. It is our rapid and easy submission that fuels these attacks much more than any edict within Islam itself.
In that spirit, the IFPS is bringing another limited edition Mohamed Cartoon print. This time, from the Swedish artist, Lars Vilks, who generated a nice string of fatwa’s and death threats for putting a head representing Mohamed, on a dogs body. Here is a link to a moedoggie archive:
These limited edition prints have just been made available now, and as the Kurt Westergaard, ‘Bomb-Turban’ one sold so quickly, and rumour has it, are now showing some signs of appreciation already, I would suggest you get a copy of the Vilks-toon now while there is still a supply. For your own enjoyment and potential investment, but also because in so doing, we show that each threat against freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and what I consider perhaps the most important, freedom to criticize and indeed even mock, irrational religious authority, will only serve to generate more images, more derision, and less authority for those who would set limits for us on thought, speech and expression.
Libel Tourism and Lawfare
From the International Free Press Society:
‘Libel tourism’ bill passes California state Senate
From SFGate: Legislation designed to thwart “libel tourism” – the practice of trying
Panel on Libel Tourism and the First Amendment at American Enterprise Institute
AEI panel on Libel Tourism and the First Amendment, AEI, March 23, 2009 Floyd Abrams, Cahill Gordon & Reindel Bruce Brown, Baker Hostetler Daniel Kornstein, Kornstein Veisz Wexler & Pollard Mark Zauderer, Flemming Zulack Williamson Zauderer Rachel Ehrenfeld, American Center for Democracy Moderator:
Warfare through Misuse of International Law
From the Media Line: by Elizabeth Samson Defining “Lawfare” There is a new kind of warfare being waged across
Radical Muslims use ‘lawfare’ to battle the West
Originally posted at Examiner.com on March 16, 2009. by Kathy
Legal Jihad: The Case of Rachel Ehrenfeld
This video provides an excellent overview of the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, including interviews with Dr. Ehrenfeld herself. Thanks to STOPShariaLAWnow
Attack of the Libel Tourists
Weak laws abroad threaten First Amendment freedoms here. Congress could step in to help. The problem has lightheartedly come to be known as libel tourism, but the damage inflicted on the First Amendment and academic freedom is serious. Disgruntled subjects of articles or books produced and distributed
Specter, Lieberman Introduce Free Speech Protection Act
Washington, D.C. (February 17, 2009)-U.S. Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have introduced the Free Speech Protection Act (the “Libel Tourism”
New Yorkers Blaze Free Speech Trail
Originally posted at Huffington Post on December 8, 2008. by Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld Most Americans
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