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Michael Coren & Tarek Fatah – Omar Khadr’s useful idiot supporters
May 1, 2014 — xanthippaDear Campbell’s Company Canada:
April 8, 2014 — xanthippaUPDATED BELOW!!!!
The following is a comment I have just submitted at the Campbell’s Company Canada’s contact page – if/when I get a response, I will be sure to post it here:
Hello Campbell’s!
I have always enjoyed your soups, especially Cream of Mushroom. I love cooking and used it a lot.
However, the last time I went to purchase it, I noticed that it had a ‘Halal’ certification marker on it. I am not sure if you are aware of this, but Christian and Sikh teachings strictly forbid the consumption of Halal food. Some of my Hindu friends also avoid it, because of Halal’s meat connotation of animal cruelty.
Sikh religion forbids Halal food explicitly.
Christian religion, in both the Old and New Testament, forbids the consumption of food that had been prayed over/sanctified to any religion/god other than its own. Since ‘Halal’ means ‘having been made ritualistically pure in the eyes of Allah’, that makes ‘Halal’ food sanctified to a non-Christian religion and thus forbidden for observant Christians to consume. As more Christians are becoming familiar with what it means for food to be Halal, more of them are becoming aware that it is indeed forbidden for them to consume it.
On the other hand, Sharia rules that in non-Muslim land, the consumption of Halal food is not compulsory, only recommended when easily available: ‘If no transgression is intended, then none is incurred, for Allah is merciful’.
As mine is a very inclusive home and I love cooking for my friends from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, I cannot, in good conscience, purchase Halal food and serve it to people for whom it may be religiously forbidden. Therefore, it will be more culturally sensitive for me to shy away from purchasing your brand of products from now on.
It saddens me greatly that I will not be able to include your products in my household in the future. If, however, you re-introduce your soups without Halal certification, please, do let me know and I will be very glad to become your customer once again.
Sincerely yours,
Alexandra Belaire
UPDATE: Here are some additional comments submitted to Campbell’s:
Hello Campbell’s,
I have long been a Campbell’s soup fan.
But I have just noticed that you are doing Halal certification. As an animal lover, and supporter of the humane slaughter of animals, this means that I can no longer buy your products.
Please watch the Halal slaughter of animals. Animals that have been Halal slaughtered show high levels of stress hormones – unlike, for example, animals that have been slaughtered to be kosher. The traditional slaughterhouse methods are bad enough – Halal is far worse. Again, please watch.
Then, there are also religious reasons not to do Halal certification, as this is against Christian doctrine, and also other religious doctrines. I don’t know why you are doing something that is against Christian doctrine, but conforms to Muslim doctrine. Please let me know.
A friend who is more versed in religion has put together the following:
Christian and Sikh teachings strictly forbid the consumption of Halal food. Some of my Hindu friends also avoid it, because of Halal’s meat connotation of animal cruelty.
Sikh religion forbids Halal food explicitly.
Christian religion, in both the Old and New Testament, forbids the consumption of food that had been prayed over/sanctified to any religion/god other than its own. Since ‘Halal’ means ‘having been made ritualistically pure in the eyes of Allah’, that makes ‘Halal’ food sanctified to a non-Christian religion and thus forbidden for observant Christians to consume. As more Christians are becoming familiar with what it means for food to be Halal, more of them are becoming aware that it is indeed forbidden for them to consume it.
On the other hand, Sharia rules that in non-Muslim land, the consumption of Halal food is not compulsory, only recommended when easily available: ‘If no transgression is intended, then none is incurred, for Allah is merciful’.
As mine is a very inclusive home and I love cooking for my friends from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, I cannot, in good conscience, purchase Halal food and serve it to people for whom it may be religiously forbidden. Therefore, it will be more culturally sensitive for me to shy away from purchasing your brand of products from now on.
It saddens me greatly that I will not be able to include your products in my household in the future. If, however, you re-introduce your soups without Halal certification, please, do let me know and I will be very glad to become your customer once again.
Best regards,
And:
Dear Public Relations,I disagree with buying anything that is ‘halal’. Firstly, halal is cruelty to animals and standards of hygiene are less. Secondly, part of the money paid for halal supports supremacism and misogyny.For those reasons, I will not purchase any halal product ever and will encourage all my family and friends not to buy them as well.I hope Campbell’s will abandon their support for misogynistic totalitarianism immediately.Cordially,[name redacted]
Why ‘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?!?!?
Michael Coren & Tarek Fatah – non-Muslim ejected from University’s Muslim preaching course
February 11, 2014 — xanthippaWho 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.
MUST ACCOMMODATE! ACCOMMODATE!!!
January 16, 2014 — xanthippaToday, my son and I were discussing that whole York University misogyny-accommodation fiasco on the way home from school. We discuss a lot of things during our drives – best time of my day!
As we were discussing that York issue, I mentioned that I had come across this article at The Beaverton :
‘TORONTO – After permitting a student to be excused from course work on religious grounds so he would not have to publicly interact with female peers, the Dean of York University is also permitting another student to have the right to ritually murder people to appease his gods.
“We are legally obliged to heed to the student’s wishes of human sacrifice” said Dr. Martin Singer, Dean of the faculty of Arts and Science at the university. “This wouldn’t affect many students as the festival of Tlacaxipehualiztli only lasts 20 days to celebrate the spring equinox and sometimes occurs during reading week. Additionally, the student has assured me that obsidian blades are so sharp that you will barely feel them.”
…
“I understand that people may be uncomfortable with the idea of firing arrows at someone tied to a wooden board until their blood fills a copper bowl, but York University is an inclusive campus that appreciates the values of all religions,” the Dean added.’
Yes – very funny.
But that was not my point…rather, having forwarded this article onto several people, one of them actually believed it.
Sad, very sad…because as we discussed this, my son pointed out that if the intended human sacrifice were the one demanding this religious accommodation on the grounds that they have a terminal illness and believe that being a human sacrifice to the sun god will cleanse their soul and therefore their belief ought to be accommodated – this becomes a much less far-fetched scenario than most of us would like.
Which brings me to the title of this post…
As we drove on, and as we left the uncomfortable reality and resorted to levity we got to the title of my post. Please, put on your best Dalek voice, but, instead of ‘Time Lord DNA has been detected! Must exterminate! Exterminate!!!’ we changed the wording a tiny bit:
RELIGIOUS* DNA HAS BEEN DETECTED!
MUST ACCOMMODATE!
MUST ACCOMMODATE!
ACCOMMODATE!!!
Later on, trying to relax before bedtime, I checked my YouTube subscriptions to find this little installment in the accommodation insanity:
ACCOMMODATE!!!
What I find most disturbing is that this martial arts instructor caved in, segregated the class – and even let the Muslim student proselytize at the dojo!
And the young woman, being told by her sensei to get used to it – outrageous!!!
My own experience with a dojo and Muslim demands for accommodation are refreshingly different!
Let me tell you the story.
I was always fascinated by martial arts. But, while I lived on the wrong side of the iron curtain, being a daughter of a political dissident, this was a closed door for me. Once in the refugee camp in Austria, I traded babysitting and tutoring a martial arts’ master’s kids for lessons…but, it was barely a taste…
Once in Canada, I pursued my dream of learning martial arts. And, to my parents’ credit, even though they were rebuilding their lives from nothing, they did send me to martial arts classes. But, being new in the country, my parents could not afford to send me to the dojo of my dreams: Takahashi Dojo.
Oh, how I dreamed of it!
Once I started competing, I came to the Takahashi dojo to watch Tina Takahashi and June Takahashi compete, I bought a glossy calendar featuring the one and only Phil Takahashi, and on and on.
So, once my sons were old enough to start learning some martial arts, guess what place I picked?
Because of their age difference, they were in consecutive classes, which worked out very well. And what worked out even better was that during my younger son’s class, I could take Tai Chi classes at another part of the dojo. The dojo was then run by June Takahashi (then in her late 70’s or early 80’s) and Tina Takahashi was the principal teacher, with Phil Takahashi teaching some of the classes, too. How much better could it get?!?!?
What a pleasant surprise it was for me that June Takahashi had decided to take the Tai Chi class too! All of a sudden, I was classmates with one of my idols. It was awesome.
After the Tai Chi class, I would still have an hour to wait while my older son’s class was on, but, being classmates and all, if she was not too busy, June would often spend that time chatting with me. I learned so many things from her! She told me about her childhood in BC, where she and Masao (her husband and founder of the dojo) met as children during WWII in one of those shameful camps the Canadians of Japanese descent were sent to, and much, much more.
One day, she was busy in the office and so I watched my older son’s class. He was about 11 at that time, and had been going to classes for a while – and though still a novice, he was diligent and thorough and knew all the ‘rules’ (typical Aspie!). So, it was natural that he got assigned to take a new student who was there for his first class under his wing, explain the ceremonies, why and how and what, what the significance was, and so on. He was good at this and loved helping out.
In this role, he was teaching the newbie how to bow properly during the opening ceremony, that it shows respect, and also how to show respect by bowing to your opponent before you commence working or sparring with them. So far so good – except that the boy’s father started yelling at him from the sidelines, saying ‘No bowing!’ and being loud. The father got asked to wait for his son in the changing room and the rest of the lesson went well. The new student was a good kid and did all he was asked quickly and well and with respect. End of story, right?
Not exactly…
My younger son and I were waiting outside for my older one to come out of the dojo – but so was this boy’s father. He was a big man, 190+cm tall and very buff. As soon as my son came out, he marched right up to him (my son came barely up to his chest), loomed over him and, gesticulating wildly, started screaming at him: “We don’t bow! We are Muslims! How dare you tell my son to bow!” I was afraid he was going to hit my son!
He did not get the chance because I ran over and stepped between them. Though he was much bigger than I, I put on my best mamma-bear face (and body language) and told him in no uncertain terms that he was not going to speak to my son in that manner! I have been told that in that mode, I can look a tad intimidating – and the man stepped back and visibly shrank – but continued to tell me to tell my son not to tell his son to bow during judo.
Well, I was not having any of it. I explained that my son was in the right and invited him to go back to the dojo and discuss it with June, Tina and the other instructors there. Without another word, he left rather hurriedly.
The adrenalin was coursing through my veins with so much fervor I was shaking. With my sons in tow, I went back to the dojo and spoke to June in the office. Since we were on friendly terms, she knew I was not likely to make something like this up. And, my sons were both quite pale following the experience and confirmed my story’s veracity.
So, what did June Takahashi do?
Right there and then, she looked up the kid’s record: the dad had pre-paid for a full year of classes. Not cheap. But, to June, some things were more important than money. On the spot, she reversed the credit card payment and said that neither that man nor his son would ever step into her dojo again!
June Takahashi is a true Canadian hero!
All of us felt very bad for that man’s son…
* ‘Religious’ refers to both theistic and non-theistic religions like ‘big-satetism’, communism, feminism, warmism and other irrational yet dogmatic belief systems.
Words we must speak daily – if we dare
January 14, 2014 — xanthippaHere is a list of 40 words (along with their definitions) that every free-speech lover ought to say out loud, at least once, while we still can:
Akhirat: The Islamic concept of the ‘afterlife’.
Al Qran: Literally ‘the recitation’, it is the central book of Islamic teachings. Muslims believe that these ‘revelations’ were made to their prophet Mohammed by the arch-angel Gabriel regarding the will of the Islamic god named Allah and are the literal word of God. These ‘recitations’ were not written down during the lifetime of Mohammed but only collected when it became apparent that Mohammed’s closest companions were dying out and so it became important for Muslims to preserve his teachings in a written form. It was compiled by the Caliph Abu Bakr, who ordered the Muslims who remembered Mohammad’s recitations to have them written down and sent to him. These he then organized into chapters which make up the Koran/Qu’ran/AlQran by the length of the chapters. This means that the sequence in which these chapters were dictated has not been preserved, which creates the problem regarding the Islamic principle of ‘abrogation’ which states that if two verses of the Koran/Qu’ran/AlQran are in conflict, the one that was revealed to Mohammad later is the valid one, as it abrogates the earlier revelation.
Allah: ‘The God’ in Arabic. At one point, Mohammed taught that Allah had three divine daughters, but later altered that teaching, making Islam monotheistic.
As Sunnah: Literally translates as ‘common practice’, in the Islamic context, it means the ‘righteous path’ of following proper Islamic customs.
Auliya: friend, helper, protector, patron or patron saint.
Azan/Adhan: Islamic call to prayer
Baitullah: Literally ‘house of god’ and may refer either to any mosque or to the main mosque in Mecca which houses the Kaaba, the box which houses a black meteorite, which the Muslims worship, and to which they are supposed to make a pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime (haj). Prior to Islam, Mohammed’s grandfather made his living from people making a pilgrimage to the Kaaba.
Dakwah/Dawah/Da’wah: Literally means ‘issuing a summons’ or ‘inviting’, in Islamic context, it means proselytizing Islam. It is unlawful for a Muslim to kill a non-Muslim without having first invited them to join Islam. Some Islamic leaders have criticized Osama bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks because he had failed to issue a Dawah to all the American citizens 1 year before the terrorist attack. Numerous Islamic scholars have since corrected this oversight and issued a Dawah to all Westerners. If we fail to heed this call to convert to Islam, killing us is not considered to be ‘murder’ under Islamic law (Sharia).
Fatwa: a legal judgment pronounced by an Islamic scholar. These legal judgments make up Islamic jurisprudence and ought to be followed by pious Muslims. There have been some interesting fatwas issued over the time. For example, the Penang Mufti Hassan Ahmad had issued a fatwa that prohibits non-Muslims from ever using (speech, writing, publishing or in electronic form) the very 40 words being defined in this humble post. This is legally binding in Malaysia. However, if someone reading these words in Malaysia realizes they were published by a non-Muslim, they may make a legal complaint, a warrant may be issued and Interpol will act upon it to deliver the culprits to the land where the warrant was issued. So, enjoy while you still may! Another recently issued fatwa prohibits women from sitting in chairs, because if they moved just the wrong way, they may become sexually aroused.
Firman Allah: As I could not find this exact phrase translated into English, the closes I can make it out to be is ‘that which Allah has made permitted’. Granted, I did just a quick Google search, as I’m trying to define quite a few terms here, but this seems to fit in with Islamic sayings rather well and captures the spirit of the phrase. Corrections would be appreciated.
Hadith: literally ‘tradition’, this refers to the habits and sayings of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
Haji: Someone who had completed the haj and traveled to Mecca to see the Kaaba. As non-Muslims are not permitted to enter Mecca, only a Muslim may be a Haji/Hajji/Hadji. A Muslim who has completed the haj may add this honorific to his name.
Hajjah: Not sure of this one, but I suspect it means a female Hajji.
Ibadah: Literally ‘obedience with submission’, the term is derived from practice of slavery. In the Islamic context, it means worship of Allah.
Illahi: I suspect this is an alternate spelling of ‘Elahi‘, meaning ‘my god’ or ‘my awesome one’.
Imam: An Islamic leadership position, usually denoting an Islamic cleric.
Iman: Iman is a really, really hot model. However, I doubt that is whom the good Mufti meant in his fatwa. Rather, I suspect he was referring to the Muslim believer’s faith in the metaphysical aspects of Islamic teachings.
Kaabah: literally ‘the cube’, in Islamic context, it is a black cube that Muslims have been praying to since a little over 200 years past Mohammed’s death. All modern mosques face the Kaabah, which is located in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. (For the first few centuries following the death of Mohammed, all mosques faced the ancient city of Petra, as archaeological findings have demonstrated.)
Karamah: a divine miracle (and not a conjuring trick type magic, that the other religions have)
Khutbah: public preaching, refers to the sermons delivered during formal prayers.
Masjid: a mosque, defined by Mohammed as a place of worship as well as a community centre, barracks for soldiers and materiel storage depot.
Mubaligh: a missionary (just follow the link and click on English for translation), one who is practicing dawah.
Mufti: an Islamic scholar from the Sunni branch of Islam
Musolla/Mushola: Islamic prayer room
Nabi: Prophets of Islam. Most, but not all, Muslims believe that Mohammed was the last prophet.
Qadhi: I suspect this term denotes Sharia courts.
Qiblat: The direction in which Muslims should pray. According to tradition, Mohammed is first ordered Muslims to pray in the direction of Jerusalem and to have later changed this to be towards Mecca and the Kaaba. However, the earliest mosques (from the first 200+ years following the death of Muhammad) are pointing to Petra, not Mecca, indicting that the Kibla may have changed more than once.
Rasul: prophet or apostle
Sheikh: an honorific that means ‘elder’ and denotes the front man of a tribe.
Soleh: This word is not Arabic in origin, but Indonesian and means ‘religious’. Thus, according to this fatwa, if you are not a Muslim you may not call yourself ‘religious’.
Surau: another word for ‘mosque’
Syahadah/Shahada: a ritual Islamic prayer which is also used as an affirmation that one is a Muslim. It translates into English roughly as: ‘There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet.’
Syariah: Malaysia is one of the countries with a secular legal system for non-Muslims and Sharia law for Muslims living in the country. Syariah is Malaysia’s Sharia adherent legal system which applies to its Muslim residents.
Tabligh: ‘propagation’ of Islam by ‘spreading awareness’ of the teachings of Mohammed.
Taqwa: While this definition varies somewhat between sects, the meaning ranges from ‘god-consciousness’ to piousness, love/fear of Allah, self restraint and so on.
Ulama/Ulema/Uluma: In the stricter sense of the word, it refers to the upper echelon of Islamic scholars trained in the whole field of Islamic law, but it is often applied to any senior Muslim cleric. Especially in rural areas, the cleric’s scholarship is not a significant issue.
Wahyu: This word is of Indonesian origin. From English-language version of this link: ‘In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.’
Wali: Guardian – with all that it implies: being responsible for someone, managing their material wealth as well as having the right to enter into legal agreements on their behalf. This is an important concept in Islam. A father is the wali to all his minor male children and all his female children until the daughters are married, at which point the guardianship of the woman in question is transferred to her father. If there is no father, then the closest male blood relative takes on the role of a wali for any minor males and any females. As the wali manages their wards property and is the only one permitted to enter into legal contracts on their behalf, it means that an Islamic marriage contract is between the groom and the bride’s wali, with the bride having no legal standing in the matter. Thus, a petition for divorce in a Sharia court may need to be filed by the wife’s male relatives, as she has no legal standing in the marriage contract. It also means that under Sharia, the highest legal status a woman can achieve is that of a minor.
Zakat Fitrah: At the end of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast from sun-up to sun-down, there is a celebratory feast. While ‘zakat’ means taxes (a portion of which must go towards jihad), zakat fitrah is the specific obligatory gift of food to the poor so that they may participate with other Muslims in the end-of-Ramadan feast.
Now that I have tried to define these words for your convenience, please, do speak them as often and as publicly as you can, before you loose the freedom to do so! There is already a fatwa that forbids us to speak these words, if we are non-Muslims. It is up to us, freedom-loving people, to make sure that this and/or any other fatwa never becomes applied as a law onto us.
Rights are like muscles and cognitive abilities: if you don’t exercise them, you loose them!!!
Why Muslim countries cannot recognize Israel’s right to exist – and remain Islamic countries
December 1, 2013 — xanthippaIt seems that there is a lot of misunderstanding ‘out there’ about the reasons why Israel’s right to exist is not, and cannot – EVER – be officially recognized by countries that consider themselves to be Islamic.
Sure, there is a lot of tension in the region.
Certainly, many resented British and French colonial rule in the Middle East and have not liked the political borders that were drawn up following it.
Granted, the state of Israel has has some policies for which it can be legitimately criticized.
But none of this explains the rabid anger which Israel’s continued existence awakens among some of the most devout Muslims!
What is the root of this?
In order to understand, we must go back in history and look at how the Muslim Ummah perceives historic events which had occurred and what significance this has on the events in our times.
There are two separate things, neither one of them mentionable in the politically correct chambers that our mainstream media had become, necessary to explain this visceral anti-Zionism.
The first one is the ‘Jew hatred’ which is documented in both the Koran and the Hadith in so many places, it would be difficult to name them all. It has been documented in so very many places by writers and researchers much better than I, that to repeat it at this stage seems redundant – so I will only stress the part of the story which is often left out.
We must look back to Abraham, the father of the three modern day religions we call Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham lived in a patriarchal, yet matrilinear society: so he needeed Sarah to produce an heir, because his position as ruler was only obtained by having married Sarah, the previous ruler’s daughter.
We all know the story that followed….Sarah’s hand maiden Hagar had a boy that was named Abraham’s heir, but then Sarah also had a child and tricked Abraham to switch the ‘heirship’ to her own son. Jews are descended from Sarah, Arabs are descended from Hagar and have never been able to shake neither the shame of having originated from a slave girl, nor the slight at having been cheated out of their heritage by the Mother of the Jews.
Hence the strained relationship between Jews and Arabs, even during Mohammed’s time.
This ‘Jew hatred’ is documented in the Koran and the Hadith, well known about and while it does affect the way devout Muslims must think of Jews, it is in itself an insufficient explanation for why the idea of the State of Israel evokes such venom, such bile, in the devout Muslims.
Which brings us to the second reason: Mohammed himself.
Mohammed was, according to Islam, the most excellent, the perfectest a man that could ever possibly get and that to become a better man, one should emulate Muhammad in every way possible, copying his behaviour, attitude and thoughts. Though it is not usually phrased this way, it seems to me that most devout Muslims believe in the infallibility of Mohammed.
So, we must look a little at Mohammed’s life experience before he started to preach. He was bounced around quite a bit, an orphan, a burden…
At one point in his life, he had, indeed, converted to Christianity (at least, that is what I was taught at a University course I took on this subject, long before discussing Mohammed’s life became politically incorrect). This temporary conversion to Christianity by an illiterate youth may explain why so many of the stories in the Koran are deeply evocative of misunderstood stories from the Old and New Testaments.
Yet, one belief remains very uncorrupted to man of the early Christian teachings from that area, in that era: that the defeat at Masada and the following expulsion of Jews from their homeland and their subsequent failure to establish a unified nation-state elsewhere was the divine punishment of the Jews for not having accepted Jesus Christ’s message.
This may seem academic, but it is important to note that while anti-Semitism in modern-day Europe was fueled by the belief the Jews were responsible for The Savior’s death, the early Christian sects that were roaming the Arabian desert tended to be a bit more Gnostic in their beliefs. One notable belief among the early Christians in that region was that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God, but a Prophet. Another strong defining belief of this particular time and region’s branch of Gnostic Christians (and, there were many, many sects with differing beliefs in different regions) was that Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross – that a substitute had been crucified in his place, that Jesus watched from a concealed place, and that he, in fact, died at the siege of Masada (a belief shared by the Cathars, by the way, and part of the Albigensian heresy against which a Crusade was called).
[OK – the Cathar beliefs may not have been as scholarly documented as I’d like, but, I do make this claim on the basis of childhood teaching to me of these beliefs by an adult relative who was a member of a religious sect that claimed its roots to be in the Cathar tradition: tenuous, I grant, but other things she taught me were so much borne out (by my subsequent, rather obsessive, research) to be true of early Gnostic Christian teachings that I have little room to doubt this one belonged to their ideas, especially given the Koranic confirmation that much of these beliefs were kicking about around there, about then.]
Sorry, I get sidetracked so easily…
Let me stress: these early Christians did not believe in the divinity of Jesus and thought that a substitute was crucified and that Jesus Christ himself died in Masada – and that because the rest of the Jews did not accept Jesus as their prophet, God punished them by having the Romans defeat them in war. But, more than that: because the Jews refused to accept Jesus as their prophet, God’s punishment was that they should never have a Nation State that would be their own, that there would never exist a ‘Jewish Homeland’.
And that is exactly what Mohammad preached: he claimed that the very fact that 600+ years after they had been kicked out of Judea without being able to re-establish a homeland of their own was proof of God’s hatred of Jews and his rejection of them. To Mohammed, this PROVED beyond any doubt that the Jews, the spawn of Sarah, were evil and that the Arabs, Hagar’s descendants, were the only legal descendants of Abraham, the true heirs of his heritage and the only chosen people of God.
We must remember that Mohammad’s target audience was Arab; he was not considering that other nations might become Muslim, not at that point. For, he preached that Arabs were God’s chosen people and therefore they were better than any other peoples of the world! Hence, the Arab supremacism in the Koran and the Arabization of culture in non-Arab Muslim countries.
Even today, some evil imams use this teaching of Mohammed to recruit vulnerable youths from non-Arab Muslim families, telling them that they cannot equal Arabs in the eyes of God, since he declared the Arabs to be better than and dearer to him than every other race. So, the only way that non-Arab Muslims can attain the highest level of heaven (or so these evil tongues whisper) is through Martyrdom!
Now that I have laid down the background, let me draw the line of my argument.
- Muslims are taught that the words of Mohammed are the literal words of God – and thus absolutely true.
- Mohammed preached that for not accepting Jesus Christ’s prophetic teachings, the Jews were punished by being for ever denied to have a homeland, a kingdom, a nation-state of their own.
- Israel may be a democracy that grants rights to all citizens, Jewish, Arab or otherwise, but it is, deep down at its core, a Jewish nation-state.
- But, if a Jewish nation-state exists, then God is no longer punishing the Jews and the teaching of Mohammed about God not permitting Jews to have a homeland are falsified.
- If one thing Mohammed preached is falsified, then everything else he preached cannot be regarded as true.
- Therefore, as long as Israel continues to exist, Mohammed is proven to be a liar and Islam is proven to not be a valid religion.
- Therefore, Israel must be destroyed at all costs, so that Mohammed is proven correct and ALL of the religion of Islam is no longer proven to be a fallacy.
And THAT is why devout Muslims cannot, in good conscience, accept any Jewish homeland to exist: in the historic area we now call Israel and/or Palestine or anywhere else: if it did, it would mean that Mohammed was wrong about it, and if he were wrong about it, then nothing else he preached could possibly be trusted to be true.
But, the Koran says that Mohammed’s words are God’s words: therefore, he cannot be wrong!
And, therefore, a Jewish homeland cannot be suffered to exist!!!
I hope this clarifies why countries that consider themselves to be ‘Muslim Countries’, countries who draw on Sharia (Muslim laws) as part or all of their constitution, cannot continue to be ‘Muslim Countries’ and, at the same time, accept that their prophet Mohammed was wrong about God’s judgment to deny the Jew a homeland.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 