This is what happens when religionists run countries:
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Magdi Khalil of Coptic Solidarity: treatment of Meriam is typical of Shariah Law
June 13, 2014 — xanthippaUPDATE: Senator Cruz adds his voice:
If you have not of the plight of Dr. Mariam Ibrahim, blame the media who are unwilling to bring to light the worst kinds of suffering women must endure under Sharia.
An educated MD, she was raised Christian by her Christian mother – and married a Christian man.
But, because her father (who had abandoned the family when she was little) was a Muslim, under Sudan’s Sharia-based legal system, she is officially a Muslim. And while a Muslim man may marry a non-Muslim woman, a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man.
Why?
It all goes back to Sharia.
Sharia states that under no circumstances may a non-Muslim be in a position of power and/or dominance over a Muslim. (This, by the way, includes employment – which is why, in Sharia-compliant countries, non-Muslims may only hold the lowest levels of jobs in every profession, because they are not permitted to attain a higher rank than the lowest Muslim in the same workplace.
Sharia also states that a husband is in a position of power and dominance over his wife – she must obey him and submit to his will in every way. Therefore, if the husband were non-Muslim, and his wife were a Muslim, that would put the husband, a non-Muslim, in a position of power and dominance over a Muslim – the wife.
Which is why a Muslim woman is, under Sharia, strictly forbidden from marrying a non-Muslim man.
Back to Mariam…
Mariam’s crime is that she married a non-Muslim, and she is a Muslim by the virtue of her father having been a Muslim (there is no right to convert under Sharia – if your father, whether he raised you or not, was a Muslim, then under Sharia, you and your children will also be Muslims….any conversion is not only legally not recognized, it is punishable by death.
As such, her marriage is not legally recognized. But, mote than that – she is, according to Sharia, committing adultery every time she has relations with her not-legally-recognized husband.
For this crime of adultery, she has been sentenced to 100 lashes and then death.
Mariam – and her toddler son – were unceremoniously dumped into prison…a prison with a high mortality rate for toddlers and infants.
It gets worse…
When Mariam was tossed into prison to await her sentence, she was heavily pregnant – and gave birth to a daughter in prison, chained to the ground…
Atrocious!!!
But, really, not all that unusual… That IS Sharia!!!
The twist to this story is that Mariam’s husband and the father of her children is an American citizen – which, of course, makes his children also American citizens.
Yet, the US Embassy personnel in Sudan is unwilling to lift a finger to help the father, the mother or the children…
What was it that Obama said about not leaving anyone ‘behind’?
What about ‘no child left behind’?
Oh, but let Magdi Khalil have his say on this:
Please, don’t forget Dr. Mariam Ibrahm!
TSEC’s report on the Muslim Brotherhood in Canada
May 27, 2014 — xanthippaThis report is making national news today and deservedly so.
CAIR-Can, now re-branded as the NCCM, and named as a Muslim Brotherhood front, is on the warpath about this article –Terrorists in our midst, penned by the report’s authors – Anti-Muslim diatribe promotes false suspicion – so you know they’re doin it right;)
See also Legal Insurrection for more report coverage – Muslim Brotherhood in North America
The report was written by Tom Quiggin, a member of the Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada Network (TSEC). Concurrent research at the TSEC network includes a methodology project for intelligence analysts involved in the analysis of extremism. A Horizon Scanning project on the convergence of extremist ideologies is being readied for distribution in late 2014.
This project was funded internally by the TSEC network. There is no government, corporate, media or foreign money involved. The report may be accessed directly at the TSEC site.
KEY JUDGEMENTS
- Canada has a significant presence of Muslim Brotherhood adherent individuals and organizations. Their values and actions are frequently the antithesis of the Canadian Constitution, values and law. Despite statements to the contrary, the Muslim Brotherhood considers itself above local laws and national constitutions.
- The Muslim Brotherhood’s use of settlement and the “process of civilization jihad” has proven effective. The long term aim is to globally impose a virulent form of political Islam to the exclusion of other faiths or systems.
- Internationally, the Muslim Brotherhood is realigning under pressure as old alliances crumble and opportunities arise. An aggressive posture is re-emerging which has used extensive political violence in the past.
- The policy and process of denial is deeply rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood.
- Muslim Brotherhood adherent groups should not be given governmental accreditation, access to public grants nor should they have charity status.
- Canada’s stance against Muslim Brotherhood adherent organizations in recent years has been more aggressive than the USA, especially in financial areas.
NB – The report is in 11 sections.
1) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Canada/USA)
2) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Back to the Past, The Palestinian Cause)
3) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America: (Violence, Current Events, Law, Extremism)
4) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America – (Prejudice and the Muslim Community)
5) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Front Organizations, Policy of Denial)
6) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Canadians with Leadership Roles)
7) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Three exampes, Charity Status Revoked for several entities)
8) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Other Countries, USA Role, Intel, Recommendations, Conclusions)
9) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Glossary, Bibliography)
10) The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Annex A 1991 Memorandum and Annex B The Ikhwan in America)
11. The Muslim Brotherhood in North America (Annex C to Annex K)
Ezra Levant & Tarek Fatah – Jihad “as Canadian as maple syrup”
May 8, 2014 — xanthippaWhy ‘moderate Muslims’ are silent
March 3, 2014 — xanthippaSometimes, it takes me a really long time to ‘get’ even the most obvious of things – I know I am a very, very slow thinker. But, I really ought to have seen this one clearly much, much earlier…
Like many others, I understand perfectly well that the first targets of fanatics within any group (and this applies not only to human groups) are the moderates within the ranks of that group. This makes it that much more important for these moderates to speak up, in order to preserve themselves and protect their group from being overtaken by the extremists.
We have seen this though our history and the modern-day Muslim community is no different from the rest of us.
Yet, most of the voices we hear speaking ‘for the Muslims’ in today’s world are increasingly more and more only the radicalized ones…
In the past, I, too, have asked: “Where are all the moderate Muslims and why are there so few of their voices being heard?”
Now, I think I’m beginning to understand…
In order to explain, please, indulge me in telling you a story or two.
When my mother was just an iddy-biddy baby, following WWII, the communists took over my homeland and stole her grandparents’ properties. Her mom’s daddy made (and repaired) washing machines and her mom’s mommy operated a chain of stores that retailed them. Her daddy was a top engineer at her grandpa’s factory, but had been born to a farming family. Very successful farming family. Her daddy’s mom was actually one of those women who went to work in the fields even in early stages of labour, went home to give birth – and returned to the fields afterwards. No joke! That is how hard they worked – and it showed: the were known far and wide as THE people to go to for help with anything, without any obligations in return.
Yet, when the communists were in power, they labelled my grandpa as ‘a son of a kulak‘ – a deeply pejorative term in the 1950’s for a person living behind the Iron Curtain.
What I am trying to say is that even in one of the most industrialized countries in the world at that time (as Czech was), a country where people had unlimited ‘class mobility’ (my own grandfather had gone from ‘farmer’ to ‘engineer’ to ‘industrialist’), it took very little for his status to ‘devolve’ to that of ‘a son of a kulak’…
I must stress, before WWII, Czech was philosophically a fully ‘Western’ country, with emphasis on individual rights, even if located in Central Europe.
Yet, it took a few short years for the decades of individualism to devolve into judging a person by their parents’ and other relatives’ actions. Guilty by blood association!
Now, please, let me jump to the second story.
This one takes place in Canada in the late 1990’s. I had been running my own company and an ex-employee of mine approached me with a very unusual request…
When I had first hired him, I had not realized I already knew his father. I had met him about 5 years earlier, at a party, under the table – we were both trying to sneak food to the host’s dog. Anyhow, he was a capable young man and worked his way up, so that for about 5 years, he had been my second-in-command, and only left because his dream opportunity of working in the intelligence community presented itself. By this point, I saw him as more of a brother to me than an employee and we not only parted on the best of terms, but remained close.
Which is why I was thrilled when he brought his girlfriend to meet me – and asked what my opinion of her was. He thought she was ‘the one’, and I was happy to tell him I thought she was intelligent, beautiful and a perfect match for him. They truly made a wonderful couple and I was very happy for them.
Yet, the path to their happiness was more complicated than I could have suspected!
When he had proposed to her, he came to me with a most unusual request: would I please write a letter to the government of Iran to certify that I was still his employer, and that he had a sufficient income to comfortably support a wife and a family?
His fiance had not been born in Iran – she was born in Italy, to Iranian emigres.
Yet, if she were to get married without this certificate to the Iranian government that her fiance had sufficient income to properly support her and her children, the extended family she still had in Iran would be penalized for her parents’ acceptance of a marriage proposal without this document!!!
And, he did not want them to know of the particulars of his current work for the Canadian government, and so he had approached me for help…and as I had right away contracted him to do a ‘job’ for me, I could honestly write that letter – which I did.
Ok, enough stories…let us now look back to the origins of Islam.
Islam originated in Arabia in a deeply tribal society.
‘Right and wrong’ were not based on any absolute morality, but on tribal membership: ‘right’ was what the leaders/members of your tribe deemed was ‘right’, ‘wrong’ was what their opponents/enemies deemed was’right’…
In such a tradition, ‘morality’ is a vastly different concept from what it is the ‘individualist’ tradition (though not nearly as different from the ‘communitarian’ tradition…which may explain the ‘socialist’ empathy for the Islamists): rather than measuring ‘right vs.wrong’ based on some objective values (whatever their source), ‘right vs. wrong’ becomes ‘what gives an advantage to our group’ vs. ‘what gives an advantage to their group’.
In a tribal society, members of one clan/family are interchangeable for each other.
Aside: Actually, that is where the ‘Western’ tradition of ‘bridesmaid’ and ‘groomsmen’ originates from: if the bride or the groom were found to be unsuitable for the marriage union, the next-best-maid/groomsman’ would step in and replace them so that the clans could enter into a socioeconomic union through that particular marriage contract.
In such a society, if one member of a family/clan steps out of line, any other member of the family/clan can be harmed/killed in retaliation… because the bloodline’s ‘politics’ is answerable for by ALL the members of the bloodline. Thus, if one of your relatives commits a crime, and cannot be caught, it is ‘fair’ for YOU to pay the price. The ‘individuals’ are subordinate to the ‘clan’, instead of having individual rights and freedoms.
Now that I have set the stage, I need to go a bit into the history of the Koran.
Mohammed, the Islamic prophet, had, at one point, been excommunicated by both his mothers and his father’s Arabic clans. Thus, Mohammed had been forced to seek shelter with other communities.
During this period, he had spent time with a Christian sect, and when he had been excommunicated from there, with a Jewish sect. It was only after he had been excommunicated from the Jewish sect that his uncle had agreed to adopt him and thus gained a permission for him to re-enter the Arabic society…which is where he caught the eye of his uncle’s employer, Khadija, who then extended her protection over him by marring him (and thus defying her society’s standards).
While among the Christians. Mohammed saw just how splintered the Christian sects had become: some believed that Jesus was the son of God who died on the cross and was bodily resurrected and lifted into heaven, others believed that he was a human who had been crucified and died on the cross, others yet believed that (whether the son of God or Man), he had escaped death on the cross (either by the use of a substitute or because he had been removed while unconscious but still alive and had then been revived by Esenne healers). Yet other Christians believed that Jesus Christ could never ever have been imprisoned in a corporal body by ‘Rex Mundi’, but had always been a being of pure energy…
Mohammed really, really did not want his religious movement to be fractured among various factions the way Christianity had become. Therefore, he said often that his revelations were literal and not open to interpretation – and that is why he stated clearly an openly that anyone who wishes to or attempts to ‘reform’ Islam of interpret any passages in any other way than literally is ‘a hypocrite’ and ‘an apostate’ and, according to the Koran, ‘hypocrites’ MUST be put to death…
Summary:
Mohammed decreed that anyone who attempts to interpret his teachings in any way other than literally is a ‘hypocrite’ and that ‘hypocrites’ MUST be put to death…and it comes from a tribal society which holds ALL members of a family/clan accountable for the tansgressions for all of your relatives…
Thus, if a moderate Muslim in Canada, the US or another Western country speaks up against the extremists’s interpretations of Islam, their (even distant) blood relatives who live within Islamists’ jurisdiction will pay the price for it with their lives.
It is one thing to stand up to an oppressor if it is your own life/well being on the line: it is quite different if your relatives, even distant relatives and their children might be killed for you speaking your mind!!!
And THAT FEAR – not for their own selves, but for the well being of their even distant relatives’ children – is why most moderate Muslims are silent…
After all, if it were not just your own neck, but the necks of your cousins’, their children, and their children’s children – how likely would YOU be to stand up to the radicals?!?!?
Who are the ‘moderate Muslims’?
February 10, 2014 — xanthippaThere is a number of questions people have been asking me about Muslims. I’ve tried to answer some before, but, upon further reflection, there are a few I’d like to re-visit.
Here, I would like to explain why I consider some Muslims to be ‘moderates’ – but not others.
Yes, there are some who do not see the distinction, pointing out that to follow Islam, one would have to skip large bits of the Koran in order to practice a ‘moderate’ version of the faith. True. But that is also true of the Bible – Jesus famously claims to bring not peace, but the sword. And it is not that many generations ago that my paternal grandmothers’ relatives were burned alive by the Jesuits for practicing the ‘wrong’ branch of Christianity.
In other words, it is not the dogma itself that makes a person a ‘moderate’: rather, it is the bits of the dogma that one takes and ‘owns’ and lives by that makes one a ‘moderate’ or not, regardless of the faith/religion (theistic, atheistic or non-theistic alike)/doctrine/dogma.
When it comes to Islam, I see the divide as being between those Muslims who demand official recognition of Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence) and those who do not.
What is Sharia?
Books have been written on this, but, in short, it is ‘Islamic Law’. There are 4 main Sunni and 4 main Shia schools of Sharia and they do indeed differ in some minor aspects, but, on those bits that they all agree, the ‘Islamic Law’ is unalterable.
Sharia evolved over several centuries. Scholars studied the Koran, the sayings of their prophet Muhammed and stories about the life of the prophet Muhammed as told by his companions. None of these were written during the life of Muhammed himself, but rather when many of his companions began dying off and the rest of the Muslims were afraid that his teachings and traditions would be lost, the ruler at the time had all the companions write down all they remembered, gathered all the materials, weeded through them to pick out the ‘most authentic’, recorded those as the only permitted version and had all the rest burned. A lot like the role the Council of Nicaea had in writing the Bible.
So, for centuries after the Koran and the Sayings and Traditions of Muhammed were written down, jurists would look to the scriptures themselves to see what the proper sentence should be. Not all jurists read the same things in these texts, yet, still, over the centuries, a body of jurisprudence had indeed been built up from which some rulings emerged as so common as to constitute laws. The formal collection of these laws is called Sharia.
While it is still being added to (in the form of fatwas, or pronouncements/rulings of learned clerics on legal questions),the major body of it had been codified at around 1100 CE or so – just as the end of the ‘golden age’ of Islamic science came to its end. Those two are closely connected, because Sharia is very inimical to any form of inquiry, including the scientific one.
It is important to keep in mind that while Sharia is based on early scholars’ reading of Koran and the life of Muhammad, it is not actually the Koran and Sunna itself.
The way Sharia is implemented in various Islamic countries does vary, even if the cores are common to them all: the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man, her inheritance is half that of a man’s, a woman is a perpetual minor in they eyes of the law so any and all of her property is managed for her by her guardian, and this guardian is also the one who enters into legal contracts on her behalf (including marriage: under Sharia, a woman is herself not a party to her marrige contract, only her guardian and husband have legal standing in the contract), apostates must be put to death (though one school of thought says female apostates are only to be under house-arrest for life), and so on.
Many Muslims do not like living under Sharia and its harsh rules – or, at least, the way it is imposed on them from the outside.
Thus, they have come to The West in order to practice Islam according to their own understanding and without the straight jacket jurisprudence that is Sharia. These are people who are happy to follow our secular laws and impose any additional religious rules onto themselves, from the inside, without compulsion from anyone else.
These are the people I consider ‘moderate Muslims’.
As opposed to the Muslims who want to live under Sharia – but to do so in our lands, in The West.
The problems with this desire are numerous – not the least of which is that in order to retain integrity and social cohesion in a land, one set of rules has to apply equally to each and every citizen. Equality before the law is such a fundamental cornerstone of our society that to have one class of people ruled by a parallel legal system means it has already been destroyed.
Another problem with Sharia is that it is deeply supremacist. It sees itself as above all mere man-made laws, and wherever there is a conflict between the two, Sharia demands supremacy. And since only Islamic scholars are permitted to issue Sharia rulings, permitting Sharia in a country effectively takes the application of law from the hands of trained jurists and places it in the hands of Islamic clerics…which could, indeed be problematic, to say the least.
Did I mention that non-Muslims are not permitted to speak at a Sharia court, even to defend themselves – even though Sharia reserves the right to rule over them?
And then there are the moderate Muslims – the ones who immigrated to the West specifically to get away from Sharia…if we permit it in our lands, they will automatically be subject to it, whether legally (as in Indonesia) or through peer pressure (as in the UK). Do we not owe them equality under our laws, just like every other citizen?
Though I have barely scratched the surface, I do hope I have demonstrated both that Sharia is incompatible with our governance and that we owe it to the moderate Muslims among us to protect them from it.
Which brings me to the other type of Muslim – the ones who demand Sharia in our lands, under the terms of ‘religious accommodation’, necessarily at the expense of our ‘freedom from religion’.
Sharia is the politico/judicial arm of Islam and not theological teachings.
As such, anyone who wishes for any form of Sharia to be implemented (accommodated is the term used, but due to its supremacist nature, in reality, this ‘accommodation’ requires putting Sharia above our own common laws) in The West is calling not just for freedom of religion, but for the imposition of Islamic law. And not just for themselves, as an act of private worship, but as something to be imposed on the whole of society because Sharia’s laws extend to both Muslims and non-Muslims.
This, by definition, makes them Islamists and not ‘moderate Muslims’.
To recap: those Muslims who call for Sharia accommodation/implementation in The West are not moderate Muslims, they are Islamist colonists who ought to be called out as such and resisted, if we want our culture of tolerance preserved.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 