Category Archives: Muslims

Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

U.S. Elections: Self-Hating Arabs, Self-Hating Muslims………

   

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                          Neck of the woods

I was thinking about the U.S. elections, with all the convention circus going on for the second week.
I wonder if any Muslims will vote Republican this year? And what do we call them? What do we call an Arab or a Muslim who votes for the party that has been vilifying and threatening them for the past few years? The party of Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Peter King, et al, who vilified Muslims and Islam every day for months this past year. And Romney who is threatening to wage a new war in our homelands and virtually to make Israel an actual 51st state. A party that threatens to treat the Arabs, in their own region, like past victims of racism in the old American Southwest, the Apaches and Comanches and others, to be terrorized and displaced as so many wild savage animals.
Benjamin Netanyahu has a name for American Jews and other Jews who oppose his policies: he calls them “self-hating Jews“. Ironically a very Hitler-ite way of vilifying your opponent, an irony he probably misses.
How many self-hating Muslims and Arabs are out there?

(FYI: there is such a thing as the lesser of two………)
Cheers
mhg
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Middle East, Muslims, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Warrior Romney: Return of Imperialism Seeking More Enemies in Muslim Lands………..

   

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                          Neck of the woods
“If we take the candidate at his word, a Romney presidency would move toward war against Iran; closely align Washington with the Israeli right; leave troops in Afghanistan at least until 2014 and refuse to negotiate with the Taliban; reset the Obama administration’s “reset” with Russia; and pursue a Reagan-like military buildup at home. The Washington Monthly dubbed Romney’s foreign policy vision the “more enemies, fewer friends” doctrine, which is chillingly reminiscent of the world Obama inherited from Bush. In March the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention told the Romney campaign it could win over “recalcitrant conservatives,” reported the Washington Post, by “previewing a few Cabinet selections: Santorum as attorney general, Gingrich as ambassador to the United Nations and John Bolton as secretary of state.” That suggestion, which might seem ludicrous, not to mention terrifying, is more plausible than one might think………..”

People in the Middle East, Arabs and Muslims, believe Mr. Obama has expanded the war-making policies of George W Bush. He is now involved in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, East Africa, Northwest Africa, Libya (was), Syria (on the side of the rebels: weapons, intelligence, most likely with special forces and intelligence agents as well), Bahrain (on the side of the regime: weapons), Iran (economic, intelligence, cyber warfare, drones). The only people in the region who think Obama is not waging enough wars in Muslim lands are the Israeli right.
Willard Mitt Romney, if elected, seems set to appoint a bunch of right-wing war-mongers, gunboat diplomats, and old-style imperialists of the kind we have not seen since early 20th century. These are people who actually believe that the United States has the “right” to attack, invade, blockade, or otherwise boycott other countries simply for opposing its government’s policies.
Of course most people in places like Mississippi and Alabama and Oklahoma and Idaho also oppose US government policies. Yet none of these states has been invaded, not since 1861, unless you consider Little Rock (Eisenhower) and Birmingham (JFK) invasions.
Cheers
mhg
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Ali Khamenei, Iran, Iraq, Muslims, Saudi Arabia

Iraq: Ali Sistani’s Successor, Iranian Mullahs, and the Saudi King in Bahrain………

 

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“As the top spiritual leader in the Shiite Muslim world, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has instructed his followers on what to eat and how to wash, how to marry and to bury their dead. As a temporal guide, he has championed Iraqi democracy, insisting on direct elections from the earliest days of the occupation, and warned against Iranian-style clerical rule………… Frail at 81, he still greets visitors each morning at his home on a narrow and sooty side street here, only steps from the glimmering gold dome of the Imam Ali Shrine. But the jockeying to succeed him has quietly begun, and Iran is positioning its own candidate for the post, a hard-line cleric who would give Tehran a direct line of influence over the Iraqi people, heightening fears that Iran’s long-term goal is to transplant its Islamic Revolution to Iraq………..”

This is truly nonsense, and shows complete Western ignorance of the degree of independence the Shi’a Hawza has of any government. Even the intrusive Baathist regime could not meddle directly in its affairs. Even Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can’t intervene in the selection of Iranian religious leaders, let alone the Hawza in Iraq. The Najaf Hawza selects its own top Marj’e, the top Shi’a theologian, based on his scholarship, seniority, and how other clerics judge him. It is completely independent of any regime. This is not like the Saudi king appointing and firing his own palace Mufti at will or appointing the members of the Ulema (senior clerics) Council.
 
FYI- speaking of the Saudi king: soon he may be able to appoint the king of his new province of Bahrain and fire him at will.
Cheers
mhg


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Egypt, Iran, Muslims, Religion, Turkey

History: al-Nahayan Take Aim at al-Afghani and Mohammed Abdu and British Intelligence and the Grinch……

 

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Shaky (at best) analysis from someone in the UAE aiming at the current ‘enemies” of the al-Nahayan rulers of Abu Dhabi: the Muslim Brothers and the Iranians. He is tying the Muslim Brotherhood to Jamaliddeen al-Afghani (who resided in Cairo for some years) and al-Azhar and Mohammed Abdu (of Egypt) and British intelligence and the Grinch who stole Christmas and the Wicked Witch of the East and the al-Nahayan (at that time they were busy killing each other for power).
He claims that al-Afghani was hiding his Shi’ism, which can be true but is unlikely at the time. In those days (late 19th century) people were not as sectarian as today, mainly because the al-Saud and al-Khalifa did not have access to the vast media they have now to spread their sectarian poison across the Muslim world (actually I believe the al-Saud were exiles in Kuwait at the time). It is true that al-Afghani and Egypt’s Mohammed Abdu influenced the later creators of the Muslim Brotherhood, but their teachings and writings are also claimed by some to have influenced Salafi thought (I doubt this assertion: I had thought these came from the Wahhabi doctrine. But what do I know, I am just an economist).
This piece is political (like my blog postings) and is aimed at ‘discrediting’ the Muslim Brotherhood (M by tying them to Shi’as and to British intelligence (who created the UAE) because the fundamentalist MB are having a dispute with the UAE rulers these days. Personally I don’t care for either one, but this is a transparent attempt by an al-Nahayan pen-slinger. Besides, he is accusing al-Afghani and Mohammed Abdu of being British agents at a time when the whole of the Omani Coast and its sheikhdoms, including the al-Nahayan, were under British control. As I said, the UAE itself was created by the British in 1971 (not necessarily a bad idea). (Speaking of which, whatever happened to the foreign mercenary brigade formed last year by the al-Nahayan brothers from Blackwater veterans and Colombians and Australians and white South Africans and other foreigners?)

Jamal-ad-Din Asadabadi (a k a al-Afghani), was an influential but mysterious character (both Iran and Afghanistan claim him) who resided in Iran, Egypt, India, Iraq, and Istanbul, among other places (including Europe where he visited London and Paris but most likely avoided the Moulin Rouge in Pigalle). He traveled for learning at a young age and influenced Islamic thought and the response to Western expansion and imperialism. Apparently he had a beef with Western materialism although he was not a fanatic like the Salafists or some of the Gulf Muslim Brothers of today. Whether he was an agent of British intelligence or the Russian Tsarist Okhrana or the Knight Templars or the Nabati Poets Diwaniyya ديوانية شعراء النبط, I have no idea. Interestingly the Jewish Virtual Library has a good but brief biography of him:

“Journalist, reformer. A founder of modern Muslim anti-colonialism, he advocated a religious and cultural revival to counteract European influence. Jamal al-Din Afghani is considered to be the founding father of Islamic modernism. …….”
Cheers
mhg


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Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics

America in Danger of an Arab and Muslim Takeover……….

    

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“Yet Wasserman Schultz decided to abruptly pull out of speaking at EMERGE’s annual dinner last week. “We never agreed to do a fundraiser, nor an event,” claimed Wasserman Schultz spokesman Jonathan Beeton. Yet EMERGE had previously widely advertised Wasserman Schultz’s participation at the fundraising dinner without apparent complaint from the congresswoman’s staff. “We were interfacing with congresswoman Wasserman Schultz’s people for about a year to try to get something together,” said Siddiqui. “So when she agreed to the banquet, we were elated.” There’s a much more likely explanation for her abrupt refusal to attend the event than a simple miscommunication. For months, Islamophobic websites and a far-right congressional candidate waged a smear campaign against EMERGE, pressuring Wasserman Schultz to back out of the event. With her withdrawal, it appears that they won. The smears can be traced back to an article in right-wing McCarthyist David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine. In a February article, Joe Kaufman – who is vying in a Republican primary to challenge Wasserman Schultz for her seat in Congress – teamed up with Militant Islam Monitor’s Beila Rabinowitz to claim that EMERGE was part of a “nefarious agenda of placing Islamists into positions of American power and influence.”……..”

Speaking of “placing Islamists into positions of American power and influence”. Come on now, I hate to be “ethnic” oriented but, just to show the absurdity of that point: Wasserman Schultz (an excellent person, probably better than most Muslims that I know or possibly even those I don’t know), David Horowitz, Beila Rabinowitz, Joe Kaufman, Joe Lieberman, Edelstone, Abe Foxman, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Michael Bloomberg, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Eric Cantor (poor lonely guy)? Most of the elected ones among those listed are excellent public servants (with the exception of Lieberman and Cantor). The bloggers and opinion-ators among them are just the usual racist idiots that come in all shapes, colors, and faiths. Not to mention all the Christian (real or nominal) ones. I haven’t even got to the Vegans yet. And these guys worry about “Arabs or Muslims” in positions of power?
I am tempted to type exactly the sound that I just expressed to the consternation of my best friend: hahahahaha.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, GCC, Gulf states, Kuwait, Muslims, Persian Gulf, UAE, US Foreign Policy

Dhahi Khalfan in Kuwait: Warns Gulf GCC of a Muslim Brotherhood Plot….

    

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Dhahi Khalfan, the Dubai Chief of Police, is the most outspoken official in the United Arab Emirates. The most outspoken official in all the Gulf states. He rose to public prominence after the Israeli Mossad killed a Palestinian Hamas official in a Dubai hotel. Mossad botched the killing by reportedly using more than 35 operatives just to kill one man, all with false passports, and it was all caught on hotel cameras.
Since then Colonel Khalfan has been venturing into the realm of regional politics more than law enforcement.
These days
 Dhahi Khalfan has his sights on the  fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. He started with a dispute with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian cleric who is close to the Qatari rulers. Apparently Qaradawi had criticized the UAE rulers and Khalfan could not help responding, noting that Qaradawi is now banned from the UAE and that he ought to issue an order for his arrest.
Yesterday
 he publicly opined in an interview with the Kuwaiti daily al-Qabas that the Muslim Brothers are plotting to take over the Gulf GCC states. He warned that they will take over power in Kuwait in 2013 then move on to the other Gulf states. (Kuwait’s current parliament, elected last month, is dominated by Islamic extremists allied with reactionary tribal elements. Some argue, credibly, that it is the worst parliament in the country’s history. The deputy speaker is a Salafi multimillionaire, wtf that may mean in the grand scheme of things). Khalfan opined that by 2016 the Muslim Brotherhood will dominate all the Gulf GCC states. He claims reports of the plot have been leaked by Western intelligence agencies.
This
 is quite a departure from the usual Saudi and Salafi (and local Gulf Muslim Brotherhood) claim that the Gulf GCC states face some wild Iranian or a Shi’a plot, or a combination plot from both.
I have no comment on this today. Maybe later. definitely later.
Cheers
mhg


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Culture, GCC, Iran, Middle East Women, Muslims, Saudi Arabia

Sigheh (Mut’ah) and Misyar: Iran’s Hookup Marriage, Gulf’s Hookup Marriage………..

 

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“This week, Iran’s parliament approved a new amendment to a controversial law in the civil code that allows men to have as many sexual partners as they want – all sanctioned by sharia law under the term “temporary marriage”.
Sex outside marriage is a crime in Iran punishable by 100 lashes or, in the case of adultery, potentially a sentence of death by stoning. However, a man and a woman can marry for a fixed period of time after performing specific religious rituals, in a practice called sigheh. The marriage can last for a few minutes up to several years without need to be officially registered. The man can end the sigheh almost at any time, but there is no divorce right for women in temporary marriages.
The new amendment, passed on Monday by 104 MPs who were all male, requires registration in certain circumstances such as those leading to a pregnancy but still largely allows sigheh without formal registration. An opposing MP, Sattar Hedayatkhah, was quoted in the reformist newspaper Etemaad as saying: “From tomorrow, no woman can be sure that her husband is not in a sexual relationship with another woman. Therefore, there is now no difference between here [Iran] and the west. Anyone can have a sexual relationship………………..”


The Shi’as call it Mut’ah in Arabic and Sigheh in Persian. The Sunnis also have their own version in some Arab states, mainly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, called the Misyar. There are also other variations of the same theme. They are based on some ‘reported’ practices in early Islamic history when men traveled far and for long periods away from their wives. Some senior religious leaders in both sects oppose these so-called marriages. They are basically sexual oriented arrangements, with little commitment between the partners. It is almost equivalent to the Western “hooking up”, but it can last longer and has a veneer of ‘legality’. All these forms of funny marriage should be banned, or called what they really are, sexual “hook-ups”.

Cheers
mhg


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Cairo, Cinema, Egypt, Muslims, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Egypt: a Fateful Salafi Nose Job, Catholic Riyal and Princely Saksooka…………

 

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“Egypt’s Islamist Salafist al- Nour party has dismissed one of its parliament members from its ranks after he received a rhinoplasty surgery he claimed was meant to cover up an operation on his nose. Salafist member of the People’s Assembly Anwar al-Balkimy claimed that he was robbed and beaten on the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway and that he sustained injuries and bruises on his face that required an operation. The state-run MENA news agency confirmed that masked gunmen attacked Balkimy on the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway and robbed the MP of 100,000 Egyptian pounds. Balkimy told MENA he was surprised when five masked people in a black Jeep stopped his car and stole the money. They wanted him to step out of the car but he resisted, so they beat him, he said………… A doctor in a beauty hospital in Cairo reportedly notified the authorities that after an operation Balkimy insisted to leave the hospital without the hospital’s clearance………..”

That Salafi son of a gun. He probably had matrimonial plans: third or fourth wife or maybe trade in one of the older models. Celebrating his new political fortune. A nose job: that won’t make him look like Joan Rivers. Must have cost a bundle of Saudi Riyals. At least the Saudi princes aren’t into nose jobs, not yet, not from the looks of them hooked Hollywood-style noses; straight out of Central Casting. Not a one of them has a nose like Joan Rivers, not yet. Somehow the hooked nose goes with the jet-black dyed goatee (a k a saksooka).
FYI: did you know that the Riyal (or Rial) comes from the Spanish “real” meaning “royal”? Very Catholic of the Saudis and Qataris and Omanis and Iranians to honor Torquemada in such a fruitful monetary way. Back to the Egyptian Salafi and his nose……
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Muslims, NATO, Persian-American Gulf, Racism, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Kipling on My Gulf: Native Rights, White Man Rights, Muslim Rights, NATO Rights…………

   

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 “Take up the White Man’s burden
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror……..” Rudyard Kipling (White Man’s Burden)

When Israelis threaten Iran with a preemptive attack, unprovoked, the West takes it for granted: oh well, boys will be boys, as long as they are white boys. Western media like CNN immediately spin it as self-defense.

When Iran “threatens” to defend herself, the West acts shocked, calling for more sanctions, choking off the economy, leaving “all options” on the table until after the 2012 elections (after the American November elections not after the Iranian March elections; definitely not after the Saudi elections for that would be just after hell freezes over which would be no time for a war).

Western (and Saudi media) continue to call the Iranian presence in our region a “threat”. Iranian warships in their own neighborhood in the Gulf are called a danger, while “foreign” Western warships from ten thousand kilometers away, practically clogging the Gulf, are not a “danger”. Now, where else can the Iranian navy go? After all it is the “Persian” Gulf according to the UN resolutions (okay, Persian-American Gulf now). It is jointly “owned” solely by Iranians and Arabs and by nobody else. Yet Israeli and Western leaders and assorted political climbers continue to threaten to bomb Iran for just ‘being there’, or for looking sideways at Netantyahu.
Such threats are considered a right, an entitlement of the “white” man, something God-given. Even Ban-Ki Moon (Mooney) agrees with that, although not in so many words. Moony does want to be re-elected for another term and he knows the history of Butrus Ghali (Egypt) and Kofi Annan (Ghana).
Even the Wahhabi Salafis agree on that last point, the one of going to war against Iran for looking sideways at Benjamin Netabyahu. They also agree with Rick Santorum and the other GOP clowns about the necessity of another war in the Gulf. As long as they don’t have to fight it (with three or four wives, one has no time for war). They pray for it to some Salafi God of their own, as their royal princes pray for rain, even as they curse the Gods of their “heathen” benefactors whom they want to wage war “on their behalf”.

Who would have thunk life would get so complicated in our region in just a few years.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism

European Racism: New Ghettos, Same Old Bierhalle Mentality……………..

 

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“The victimization of Muslims in Europe is all too real. During the Bosnian Genocide and Kosovo War in the 1990s, over 200,000 Muslims were massacred, 50,000 Muslim women were raped and 2.2 million Muslims were forced to flee their homes, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. These brutal actions were taken in part of an “ethnic cleansing campaign.” In a 2009 referendum, Swiss voters approved a ban on new minarets on Muslim mosques. Minarets neither pose a threat to the national security of Switzerland nor disrupt the pristine beauty of the Swiss Alps. The ban is narrowly targeted towards Muslim places of worship. The tower-like shikara of Hindu temples or the dome of the Sikh Gurudwaras are exempted from this ban. As a person of Hindu heritage, I do not find any solace in this exemption. This past April, France implemented their ban on the niqab, a full face-covering veil. In a study titled, “Are French Muslims Discriminated Against in Their Own Country?”, it was found that in the work force, Muslims have only a 2.5 percent chance of receiving a job interview compared to others. These prejudices are also harbored by minorities. In a private conversation, an Indian restaurant owner in Southern France related, “In India, like in France, most of the problems are because of these Muslims.”……..”

This writer is saying nothing really new, nothing that we didn’t know; but she is citing some interesting examples, also some quite interesting, nay shocking, data.
Everybody who is sober knows that racism is openly rampant in Europe now, that it is mainly aimed at Muslims and Arabs these days. It has always been there, but not so virulent, not so openly accepted, not so legitimized. That is especially true on the “continent”.
Racism and xenophobia have always been a European trait. Sometimes they are submerged for various reasons. That racism is becoming almost institutionalized in the New Europe, with right wing parties from France to Holland and Austria winning elections based on their own un-compiled little “Mein Kampfs“. It is becoming “halal” now in much of Europe to be openly anti-Muslim, just like it used to be “kosher” to be antisemitic, in fact still is in some quarters.

Cheers
mhg


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