As I was writing about earlier, it sometimes amazes me how some Americans can be so out of touch with the reality of the Middle East. I wrote a bit about the current Hamas - Israel conflict, but the much larger issue is really one of freedom versus intolerance and oppression.As I said I had read several articles lately that remind me of how different the cultures, traditions and laws of the United States and the west are compared to many places in the Middle East. It is almost frightening that many in the west would so naively embrace and defend certain regimes and organizations in the region not out of national self interest such as our need for oil or for political expediency but more as a protest against their own much freer and tolerant countries and governments.
This is not a knock on Islam as a whole but that aspect of it which is so destructive and restrictive to what any rational person would consider an enlightened world. Yet today we have many in the west who protest in defense of backward, repressive cultures and belief structures and condemn those that speak out against these archaic views. Terrorist are heroes and lovers of liberty are labeled as oppressors. It truly is an "Alice Through the Looking Glass" outlook on the world.
Personally I have problems with some of the fundamentalist Christian community's rhetoric and even some of their beliefs, but all in all the Christian community is a source for good in our society far outweighing any negatives anyone could have with their philosophical outlook or utterances. Yet in the upside down world we live in many of the same people who attack both verbally and and on occasion physically fundamental Christianity or Mormons or Catholics for opposition to Gay Marriage will embrace and defend regimes, organizations and theologies that not only ban Gay Marriage, they ban homosexuality. You remember the Ahmadinejad visit to Columbia. From NPR
In an address to an audience at Columbia University last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. The comment prompted derisive laughter from his audience and put a spotlight on the hostile treatment of gays and lesbians in the Muslim world.and Iran is by no means alone in its persecution of homosexuals in the Mid East
Parvez Sharma, the filmmaker behind the documentary A Jihad for Love, discusses the underground world of homosexuality in Muslim countries. Filmed in 12 countries and nine languages, the documentary profiles men and women who struggle daily against persecution, danger and social isolation.
Shari'a law, as interpreted and enforced in Saudi Arabia, also allows punishment for consensual homosexuality, ranging from imprisonment to 'flogging'. In 2007, two gay men were given 7,000 lashes by prison authorities in Saudi Arabia.
Some Christians in the west may have strong theological and moral objections to homosexuality but our culture and legal system has advanced to the point where Gays while in some cases are unfortunately shunned, they certainly are not legally persecuted or condemned.
This persecution is not reserved for homosexuality but intolerance and medieval traditions and attitudes are ingrained into the fabric of cultures by a warped interpretation of religion which subjugates an entire gender into a prison of archaic customs and chauvinistic destructiveness.
Many of the same self professed advocates for the equal right of all peoples who speak piously of their idealistic view of humanity by condemning the bastion of freedom and liberties every slight miscue, then turn around and embrace and coddle the most despicable of all ideologies. Nowhere is this more evident than the treatment of women.
Take the case of Dr Zahra Bani Yaghoob in Iran, she was murdered or more accurately executed in 2007 her crime?
Dr Zahra Bani Yaghoob arrested by the head quarter of Basig’s Militia at the publics park in Hamadan while she was walking with her fiancé, the couple has been stopped by Militia and requested to show a legal marriage certificate. For the reason of not having that marriage certificate handy to show, she was arrested and 2 days latter she died suspiciously.
Remember this is the ideology that is shared with most Islamic terrorist groups, this is the cultural heritage of certain regimes that have absolutely no desire to evolve into the modern world. Yet so called "progressives" in the west see these oppressive regimes as the oppressed, defending them while condemning the very democratic institutions which allow then their freedom of dissent, something not tolerated by the very people they champion.
Freedoms and opportunities that they and we take for granted are and will be destroyed given the success by force, not ideas , of radical Islam.
Taliban militants in a former tourist region of Pakistan have banned girls from school beginning this month, claiming female education is contrary to Islam.
"From January 15, girls will not be allowed to attend schools," Mullah Shah Doran, the Taliban second in command in the scenic Swat Valley, announced in a recent radio address. Mullah Doran said educating girls is "un-Islamic."
he announcement is a further blow to a system in which female enrollment already has plunged because of ongoing violence. Three years ago, more than 120,000 girls attended schools and colleges in the region, which has a population of 1.8 million. Now only about 40,000 are enrolled.
"More than 30 percent [of the] girls dropped out of educational institutions in 2006 and 2007 due to speeches of [militant leader] Mullah Fazlullah on his FM radio against girls' education," said an official in the Swat education department, who asked not to be named to avoid becoming a target for militants.
"Half of the remaining girls dropped out or could not attend their studies due to attacks on their schools and colleges.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from the mid-1990s until it was ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001, it barred girls from attending school. Women were banned from appearing in public unless completely covered, their faces hidden and accompanied by an immediate male relative.
The very idea that women would be treated as sub-human slaves, not worthy of advancement or respect of any kind is the teaching of a backward and archaic belief structure that not only has no desire to change but in fact believes it is superior to all others.
Acid attacks and wife burnings are common in parts of Asia because the victims are the most voiceless in these societies. Naeema Azar, above, was attacked by her husband after they divorced. Her 12-year-old son, Ahmed Shah, looks after her. NYT
This month in Afghanistan, men on motorcycles threw acid on a group of girls who dared to attend school. One of the girls, a 17-year-old named Shamsia, told reporters from her hospital bed: “I will go to my school even if they kill me. My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies.”
When I met Naeema Azar, a Pakistani woman who had once been an attractive, self-confident real estate agent, she was wearing a black cloak that enveloped her head and face. Then she removed the covering, and I flinched.
Acid had burned away her left ear and most of her right ear. It had blinded her and burned away her eyelids and most of her face, leaving just bone.
Do you believe they are unaware of our cultures, our ideals, our system of laws that imperfectly protect us from our own worst instincts? Yes they know, but their theological mind set is based on something many naively believe can be changed in a few short years through dialog and understanding, perhaps.
From the story above
The most haunting part of my visit with Ms. Azar, aside from seeing her face, was a remark by her 12-year-old son, Ahsan Shah, who lovingly leads her around everywhere. He told me that in one house where they stayed for a time after the attack, a man upstairs used to beat his wife every day and taunt her, saying: “You see the woman downstairs who was burned by her husband? I’ll burn you just the same way.”
I personally am opposed to the death penalty, for many reasons, though from time to time I tend to want to equivocate, but one thing I am sure I believe in is that I am opposed to this.
Iran says man stoned to death for adultery
Iran said on Tuesday that a man convicted of adultery had been stoned to death in a village in northwestern Iran, the first time it has confirmed such an execution in five years.
"This case has been recently executed in the village that was mentioned," judiary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi told reporters about the stoning of Jafar Kiani in a village in Qazvin province.
Under Iran's Islamic law, adultery is still theoretically punishable by stoning although in late 2002, judiciary head Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi had issued a directive suspending the practice.
In June, the Fars news agency reported that the judiciary had halted the stoning of a man and a woman in Qazvin province, believed to be the same man who has now been executed.
The judiciary had up until now vehemently denied any stonings since 2002, although rights activists and press reports have on occasion claimed that such verdicts have been carried out.
Under the punishment of stoning, a male convict is buried up to his waist with his hands tied behind his back, while a female offender is buried up to her neck with her hands also buried
It is obviously not quite as rare as Reuters would have us believe
Three men were officially stoned in the city of Mashhad in Eastern Iran on Thursday, one of whom survived the ordeal.
An informed source in Mashhad told RoozOnline that three were stoned in the Behesht Zahra cemetery in Mashhad. Mahmud M.G of Afghan nationality succeeded in pulling himself out of the ditch where he had been buried for the stoning and escaped death. The other two dies of wounds inflicted by the stones. Under Islamic punishment, if a person can survive or escape the ordeal, s/he is considered kosher.
I am more than willing to let Islam take care of its own idealogical nut cases. However the delusion is that if we just leave them alone, or stop abusing them?, they will leave us alone. The truth is that this brand of Islam believes that we are the enemy, regardless of our actions.
I know it is popular to label such talk as neo-con propaganda, well I do not consider myself a neo-con, but I do consider myself a thinker and an observer. After years of observation and serious thought on the subject, I have come to believe that the people that would perpetrate the above actions as part of their mind set and cultural tradition, are not to be trusted. I'll trust the idealogical and cultural traditions of the basically good and generous people I know and see every day, over those that would not only slam airplanes into buildings, but throw acid on the faces of their wives.
If Islam truly is not the religion of these monsters, then it is time for it to condemn these type of actions and deeds, until then, and after then God Bless the USA.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
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