Category Archives: Muslims

Anti-Semitism, Culture, Iran, Muslims, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Turkey

Iran Clerics Declare War on Barbie: Ugly Sara and Fat Dara and the Jewish Doll……………

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“Iran’s religious rulers first declared Barbie, made by U.S. company Mattel Inc, un-Islamic in 1996, citing its “destructive cultural and social consequences.” Despite the ban, the doll has until recently been openly on sale in Tehran shops. The new order, issued around three weeks ago, forced shopkeepers to hide the leggy, busty blonde behind other toys as a way of meeting popular demand for the dolls while avoiding being closed down by the police. A range of officially approved dolls launched in 2002 to counter demand for Barbie have not proven successful, merchants told Reuters. The dolls named Sara, a female, and Dara, a male arrived in shops wearing a variety of traditional dress, with Sara fully respecting the rule that all women in Iran must obey in public, of covering their hair and wearing loose-fitting clothes. “My daughter prefers Barbies. She says Sara and Dara are ugly and fat,”…………..”

That last one should do it, seal the deal, seal the fate of Sara and Dara.
This is not the first time Muslim clerics have had Barbie in their dour sights. Every few years some mullah or shaikh or mufti somewhere in the Middle East, especially in the Gulf region, wages a brief war on Barbie. Maybe it is time for Mattel to create a more “Islamic-looking” Barbie? The Turks and Saudis have also waged campaigns against Barbie (but not Ken) in the past:

“Saudi Arabia’s religious police have declared Barbie dolls a threat to morality, complaining that the revealing clothes of the “Jewish” toy — already banned in the kingdom — are offensive to Islam. “Jewish Barbie dolls, with their revealing clothes and shameful postures, accessories and tools are a symbol of decadence to the perverted West. Let us beware of her dangers and be careful,” said a poster on the site. ……” USA Today

“Ceylan said that “We want to protect students from the invasion of foreign culture and that is why we have ordered the technical institute for girls’ education to prepare bags and T-shirts that are decorated with images of famous Turkish citizens.” Local observers observed that Ceylan’s initiative is very similar to that launched against Barbie in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the Nineties……….”

(I don’t think these clerics, mullahs, and shaikhs realize how old Barbie is: if they did, they’d be shocked, and their own wives would be in deep deep trouble).
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Europe, France, Muslims, NATO, Turkey, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

Texas Governor Talking Turkey: Muslims and Terrorism and NATO and Republican Turkeys and Old Hickory…….

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“Well, obviously when you have a country (Turkey) that is being ruled by, what
many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists, when you start seeing that
type of activity against their own citizens, then yes. Not only is it
time for us to have a conversation about whether or not they belong to
be in NATO, but it’s time for the United States, when we look at their
foreign aid, to go to zero with it.And you go to zero with
foreign aid for all of those countries. And it doesn’t make any
difference who they are. You go to zero with that foreign aid and then
you have the conversation about, do they have America’s best interest in
mind?………..”

That was Texas governor Rick Perry talking Turkey, addressing a hall apparently full of cheering turkeys. Turks would be surprised to hear that their government is Islamic terrorist.
I wrote here once that the Hitler comparison should be banned by a United Nations resolution, and I was half serious. Now I expect Rick Santorum (and fellow right-wingers at AIPAC) to pick up the slack now and call Turkish prime minister Erdogan a new Hitler, thus joining Nasser and Saddam Hussein and Ahmadinejad in the pantheon.
Funny how Hitler was an Austro-German beer-drinking European from a Catholic background, yet Arab and Muslim leaders have the privilege of being exclusively compared to Hitler in the West. Someone like Andrew Jackson (Old Hickory himself) might object, feeling left out, his Trail of (Indian) Tears demeaned. Many Southern (post-Reconstruction) leaders, governors and “famous” U.S. senators, might feel left out as well. With Hitler’s charred remains still warm in Moscow, the French government of newly American-liberated France massacred thousands of Muslim Algerians who wanted either full equality with the white settlers on their land or independence. Europe of the EU is now full of new little leaders that might be carelessly called would be Hitlers, some of them partners in government (Netherlands and that very same Austria). They also aim their fear-mongering and venom toward people that are mostly Semitic. Again.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Muslims, Sanctions, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Panetta the Wild Political Animal: repeating Iraq in Iran?………..

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“Panetta calls for further economic pressure on Iran. The US Defence secretary believes Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons but is not yet building a bomb. Leon Panetta called for continued diplomatic and economic pressure to persuade Tehran not to take that step. As he has done previously, Mr Panetta cautioned against a unilateral strike by Israel against Iran’s nuclear facilities, saying the action could trigger Iranian retaliation against US forces in the region. “We have common cause here” with Israel, he said.
…………”

“We have common cause here“: it is more than a common cause. In fact U.S. Middle East foreign policy as regards the eastern Mediterranean and Iran is widely perceived in the region to be made by Israel, through the supremacy of its lobbyists in the U.S. Congress. The Obama administration has been relegated to rubber stamping it.


Leon Panetta is a political animal if he is anything: after all, he was White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton. You can’t get more political than that. He is talking as a politico here, not as US Secretary of Defense or a statesman. The sanctions against Iran are becoming nearly as tight as a blockade. The financial sector is sanctioned by the US Knesset Congress. The petroleum sector is about to be blocked by the US government and Western Europe. What might eventually be left un-blocked are food and medicine. In other words another Iraq blockade imposed solely by the West. We all know what the next step was in Iraq.
Fear and the desperate need for votes next November. That explain Penetta’s call for “further economic pressure on Iran“. We’ve come a long way from Mr. Obama’s 2009 speech to Muslims and Arabs in Cairo.
Cheers
mhg


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cyber war, Espionage, Iran, Israel, Muslims, Racism, Saudi Arabia

Israel and the West: only Arab and Muslim Hacking is Terrorism, Ours is Kosher………

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“Israel said on Saturday that it will respond to cyber-attacks in the same way it responds to violent “terrorist” acts, by striking back with force against hackers who threaten the Jewish state. The message from Deputy Foreign Minister Dany Ayalon came after a self-defined “Saudi hacker” from a cabal known as “group-xp” published details of more than 6,000 Israeli credit cards online. “It is necessary to send a message to everyone who attacks or tries to attack Israel, including in cyberspace,” Ayalon said in quotes published widely in Israeli media. Hackers stand warned, he said, “that they are putting themselves in danger and that they will not benefit from any immunity against reprisal actions from Israel.” Cyber-attacks amount to “terrorism that must be treated as such. In cyberspace, we have active capacities and we can hit those who try to hit us.” Ayalon also applauded the United States for declaring that “all attacks in their cyberspace will be considered as a declaration of war and they will react as if it had been a missile attack………..”

The great and very useful term of “chutzpah” must have been created for a situation like this. No wonder the Iranian officials always talk about arrogance and arrogant powers. I have thought they were being repetitive and self-righteous and boring. Now, I am see that the West and the Israelis are as repetitive and self-righteous and boring (almost more boring over the past year or two).
Western powers and Israel have been sending viruses and worms and hacking into computer systems all over the world in recent years, especially Iran. Just look up Stuxnet and Duqu and others. Western and Israeli media publicly brag about their hacking and worming prowess against other nations and their ability to disrupt industry and communications. Yet when they receive some of their own medicine, as some Saudis recently hacked into Israeli systems and published secret data, they threaten war. All I can say for now, very succinctly, is: WTF?
Cheers
mhg


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Corruption, GCC, Muslims, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, US Foreign Policy

ANHRI: Saudi Religious Police Celebrate New Year’s, Santa Claus at Large…….

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“ANHRI condemns the ongoing severe deterioration of freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as well as the arbitrary detentions of citizens and expatriates. Most recently, the Saudi Morality Police detained an expatriate in Riyadh in the New Year’s Eve as he was walking on a street holding balloons on which it was written “happy new year 2012″. It is forbidden to celebrate this holiday in Saudi Arabia, and thus the Morality Police arrested him and handed him over to the competent authorities for investigation. The balloons have been seized. Severe restraints are imposed on freedoms in Saudi Arabia, as international organizations say that the authorities continue to detain dozens of people without a charge or trial. Torture and other forms of ill-treatment while in custody are widespread. Non-Muslims are still not allowed to practice their rituals publicly. Shiites are continuously suffering from discrimination. Expatriate workers and their families are deprived of their most basic rights. “Saudi Arabia is on top of the list of countries hostile to freedoms which use repression in the name of religion. The policy Saudi Arabia pursues is nothing but a desperate apparatus that will not work out, the same way it did not with other despotic regimes in the Arab world when the winds of change and freedom crossed over them. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia apparently has not learned the lesson” said ANHRI……………”

You’d think New Year’s or Christmas are Shi’a (Shiite) religious holidays, the way the Wahhabi Salafi religious police crack down on them. Yet these are the main holidays of the allies of the Saudi princes, the ones with whom they share such cherished (at least by me if not by the current U.S. Congress) American values as freedom and justice and equality. I suspect if
Prince Whatishisface were not a Wahhabi Muslim, he’d be given a standing
ovation in the U.S. Congress for sharing American values. I mean after a
hustler and serial bull-shitter like Bibi Netanyahu was granted the
honor last year, who is left?
That is not all: the baboons have also regularly raided private homes where “the wrong” people celebrate these occasions privately. “Wrong people” means people of little or no means and influence in the Kingdom without Magic (you can get beheaded for having anything to do with magic or maybe even Disney). Yet the religious cops of the Commission for the Propagation of Vice (affectionately called the Haia by the princes) turn a blind eye to “not-so-private” parties by the potentates where alcohol flows like water does outside the Arabian Peninsula, where alcohol is not the only thing flowing freely.
In December, the country’s top Muslim cleric and mufti Shaikh Abdel-Aziz bin Abdullah Al Al Shaikh, aka Al, fatwad that all celebrations of the New Year, birthdays and marriage anniversary are un-Islamic (aka un-Wahhabi). He did not, however, fatwa against observing the King.s anniversary.
Cheers
mhg


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Islamophobia, Muslims, Racism, U.S. Politics

The Brain and the Ass: a Republican Fear that America will turn Atheist and Muslim Fundamentalist……

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““I have two grandchildren: Maggie is 11; Robert is 9,” Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. “I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American ………..”

Newt Gingrich probably meant “what it once meant to be a white American”. So the “brain” of the GOP worries that the USA will turn into an atheist society that will be controlled by radical Muslims. Some people claim that he is, essentially, the “brain” of the new regional Republican Party. If that is the logic used by the “brain” of the GOP, I shudder to think what utterances its “ass” can makes. I am not talking about Beck and Limbaugh and the usual right-wing media gasbags. I mean mostly the others in the Republican race.
Cheers
mhg


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Egypt, Middle East Women, Muslims, religious police, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Salafi Cleric Compares a Woman’s Face to a Vagina: Sexy Eyes and Oral Wahhabi Outrage…………..

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Maybe the heading of this posting should be “What’s new pussy cat?”

Arab media report that Shaikh Abu Itzhac al-Huweini, a famous Salafi cleric with whom I am not familiar although he is considered some kind of authority by many, has compared a woman’s face to her vagina. The shaikh opined that a woman who exposes her face is like one who exposes her vagina in public (her said nothing about fellatio, though).
This is not the first time opinions like this are expressed by Salafi Wahhabi shaikhs. Only a couple of weeks ago the Saudi religious police (Commission for the Propagation of Vice) threatened, again, that women who have sexy eyes should cover them in public or they would face punishment. They didn’t exactly define “sexy eyes”, but said something about eyes that are too tempting. Now that is lowering the bar in an extremely horny society. I think that in repressed Saudi Arabia, especially in the grim Nejd region, any part of a woman, including an exposed toe, would generate orgasmic outrage among some of these guys.

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Iran, Muslims, Salafi, Syria, Tunisia

Arab Revolts and Islam: Iranian Illusions, Saudi Machinations…….

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“Former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati says the use of the term ‘Arab spring’ is an attempt by the West to liken uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa to ‘color revolutions’ in East European countries. By using such a term the Westerners have been seeking to deny the significant role of “Islam” in inspiring revolutions in the Muslim Arab countries, Velayati said. The Westerners use the term “Arab spring” to convey their desired “view” of the revolutions in the region, the scholar-turned politician noted. Western countries seek to convey this view that “Muslim nations have got rid of Hosni Mubarak and Bin Ali ….to embrace Western approaches,” Velayati told the Mehr News Agency. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that the uprisings in Arab countries are inspired by Islam because it contravenes with their approach, explained Velayati, the senior foreign policy advisor to the Supreme Leader. “If Muslim nations who have risen up (against dictatorship) accept Arab spring they will have no alternative other than following the Westerners; however, the reality is that regional nations have cried Allahu Akbar (God is great) ……………”

The Iranian mullahs insist that the Arab uprisings were motivated by Islamist zeal. I have tried to explain to them many times that all these revolts started as secular movements and that the Muslim fundamentalists joined later, when they showed some success. Now, with the clear shift of political power in all these states to the Islamist fundamentalists, the Iranians may know something the rest of us don’t.

One of the most secular Arab states ‘was’ Tunisia, Bourguiba and Bin Ali made sure of that, and it is going Islamist. So is Egypt and Libya. Syria was absolutely the most secular Arab state of our modern times. Yet if the revolt against the Assad regime succeeds, as it looks like now, then Syrians will have a choice of alliances between: (1)Pro-Saudi Muslim Brothers, (1)Other Muslim Brothers, (3) Salafis (bought, signed, sealed, and delivered), (4) a weak minority of watered-down secularists. In the end the new Syrian regime will be dominated by Islamic fundamentalists of one stripe or another.
That is why I may humor the Iranians and say they may have a point. Still, the outcome may not be what the Iranians would have liked. Probably not.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Israel, Muslims, Religion

Of Iranians, Eschatology Issues, the Mahdi, End of Time Films, and Drones………..

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“Q: What are the main reasons for producing “end of the world” films in the West? Do these films show the whole truth?
A: I think there are several reasons why there are a number of “end of the world” films in the West. One reason has to do with Christian eschatology (the theological study of the end times). Many Christian theologians and pastors and priests have taught and do teach that Jesus Christ will one day return to the Earth to rule humankind in righteousness. On some widespread interpretations of the last book of the Bible—the book of Revelation—there will be a great battle between good and evil in the eschaton and this battle will usher in the end of the world as we know it.
Another reason has to do with the fact that on the Western calendar, we are now at the beginning of the second millennium (the Western calendar is based on the birth and death of Jesus). In biblical chronology, it seems that major events occur every couple thousand years, so many people have concluded that the time is ripe for something significant to happen—something of biblical proportions. Added to this was the Y2K scare in which many computer engineers and others believed that computers would crash when the year 2000 CE occurred, and in some quarters there was widespread panic about this. This fueled an end-of-the-world hysteria………..Taken together, these add up to the predicted doomsday date of 21 December 2012. Though these are simply fables, the truth is that apocalyptic films do well at the box office. In fact, the recent film 2012, which graphically depicts the end of the world next year, was enthusiastically viewed in the West.
Most serious Christian scholars maintain that the Bible does not predict a specific timeframe for the end of the world………….” Mehr News Agency (Iran)

Nothing here about the appearance of our long-awaited Mahdi nor about the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel. Without the “Rapture” and the hoped for conversion of all the Jews, many of the Christian right would have no hope, and no reason to hitch their horses to the Likud wagon. The Iranians here are not saying what ‘they’ think of all these eschatological issues. They do, however, claim to have shot down an American drone in the eastern part of the country.
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, Culture, France, Human Right, Islamophobia, Muslims, Religion, Salafi

France’s Jeannette Bougrab: Why She May be Right about Islam and Christianity and Judaism and……………

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“La secrétaire d’Etat à la Jeunesse Jeannette Bougrab réagissait dans un entretien au journal Le Parisien aux succès électoraux des islamistes au Maroc, en Tunisie et en Egypte. Elle est elle-même d’origine algérienne, fille de harki, le nom donné aux supplétifs algériens de l’armée française pendant la guerre d’indépendance. “C’est très inquiétant”, a-t-elle déclaré. “Je ne connais pas d’islamisme modéré”. “Il n’y a pas de charia +light+. Je suis juriste et on peut faire toutes les interprétations théologiques, littérales ou fondamentales que l’on veut, mais le droit fondé sur la charia est nécessairement une restriction des libertés, notamment de la liberté de conscience“, a-t-elle ajouté………………”


She says there is no such thing as “Sharia-light”, that religious law leaves no room for freedoms. On some level she is right, of course: once you apply the religious laws, any religious laws, be they Muslim or Christian or Jewish, you are pushed to go ‘all the way’. Freedoms are inevitably restricted. Salafis and Muslim Brothers who say they will apply “limited” Shari’a are playing for time. Limited Shari’a is like limited ‘virginity’ or limited ‘death’: it doesn’t exist, doesn’t make sense (at least I don’t think so). Religion can be moderated on an individual level: you pray, you fast, you lead your life the way you want within the law. Once the state starts to apply the Shari’a, or the laws of the Old Testament, the Bible and the Talmud, then there is no moderation. This applies to Muslims and Christians and Jews. Americans, more than  all other Westerners, are still grappling with this now that Christianity has become part of Republican political platforms. Jews in Israel are trying to fend off an aggressive Jewish-Salafi onslaught on civic society.
In some places, Saudi Arabia and Iran, they are mixing up Caesar with God, usurping power, and in the Saudi case wealth, in the name of Allah. Caesar was deified after he died.
Cheers
mhg


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