Category Archives: Religion

Jewish Concerns Regarding the Pope’s Concern about Jewish Concerns, Self-Perpetuating Peer Selection at Penn State………

         


 Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter      

“The selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina to be the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church is being seen as a move that will continue to cement Catholic-Jewish relations. Bergoglio, 76, who took the name Francis I and is the first Jesuit ever to be chosen pope, has “demonstrated his profound solidarity with the Jewish community of Argentina in both times of sorrow and joy,” said Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee. He was referring to the high marks Bergoglio received in his response to the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed more than 100. The bombing, believed to be the work of Hezbollah terrorists with the backing of Iran, was one of the worst anti-Jewish attacks ever in Latin America. In 2005, Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz of the Center for
Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield,
Conn., praised Bergoglio’s leadership, saying: “He was very concerned with what happened.”..…………..”

The Jewish Weekly sees this new Pope as being ‘sensitive’ to Jewish
concerns. You’d think the National Socialist thugs still rule from the Baltic to the
Alps and Il Duce rules in Rome. (And WTF does a Pope have to do with Hezbollah or Hamas or Mossad or the Strait of Hormuz?)

Speaking of that: what about Muslim concerns?
Don’t we have some: Sunni concerns, Shi’a concerns, Wahhabi concerns. How about
despotic concerns? Interesting that so much gushing praise and goodwill is issued by world media
about the new pope: you’d think he was elected instead of being appointed by a few
of his pears. Sort of like the Saudi king or the Iranian Ayatollah or the
Yemeni president are selected. But that is okay: even the Saudi Mufti is not elected or
appointed by his peers, but appointed by the princes.

Obviously a Pope selected
by his peers can only do so much reform, until he collides with the special (or perhaps peculiar) interests
of the peers who appointed him. IF he does: he usually doesn’t as we discovered
in the recent couple of years regarding the continuing, er, problems of Penn
State
the American Catholic Church and the reported alleged continued cover-u
p.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]




Crazy Holy Hair from Hijaz to India: Buffalo Bill and the Wichita Lineman……

   


    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter                    
   
                          Neck of the woods
“I am a lineman for the county and I drive the main road

Searchin’ in the sun for another overload

I hear you singin’ in the wire, I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line……” 
Wichita Lineman (James Taylor)


The Yemeni Deputy Minister of Culture for Manuscripts and Books has announced that a hair of the Prophet Mohammed has been found at a religious school in Zubaida. The vice minister said that the hair had been described in a historical document found early this month (July) which had mentioned a hair of the Prophet in Yemen more than one hundred years ago………..

This business of the hair of the Prophet is no doubt a hoax and the hair is a fake. Otherwise how the hell would a hair, one hair, of the Prophet reach Yemen, hundreds of miles away from where he hung around in Hijaz? I recall some violent riots in Pakistan years ago about another hair of the Prophet Mohammed that was supposedly stolen…. “In December 1963 a sacred relic, allegedly a hair of the Prophet Mohammed, who was the founder of Islam, was reported stolen from the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar. This alleged theft resulted in numerous demonstrations and riots by Muslims in Kashmir, Pakistan, and India…..
This last one is even more ridiculous, since there is no way the Prophet could have ever gotten to India. They can always do a DNA test, but that requires access to the tomb of the Prophet in Madinah, a highly unlikely thing.
Back to the USA: I hear that some Republicans have found a hair of Ronald Reagan in American Samoa, inside some Methodist church. My unreliable source also just informed me that they may also have found a hair of Calamity Jane (Canary) in Wichita, Kansas. There is a dispute over that one: someone claimed it was in fact a hair of Buffalo Bill Cody.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Culture: Caliph Omar and the Christian Actor………

   


    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter                     
   
                       Neck of the woods
The Director, Hatim Ali, insisted that the actor Thamer Ismael, who plays the role of Omar Ibn El-Khattab (the second Caliph of Islam) in the program is a ‘Sunni Muslim”. He said that after rumors spread that the star is a Christian, adding that he has no problem whether the star was Muslim or Christian, but…………..
On the other hand, some Egyptian ‘activist’ commented that it is okay for an actor to play the role of the Caliph Omar, provided that he will not again play roles that show him drinking or gambling or womanizing. Maybe she was doing it ‘tongue-in-cheek’, but I’m not sure……….
Important, weighty religious issues, no?

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Ramadan Kareem: Wars and Zalabia and PF Chang………..

   


    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter                
   
                       Neck of the woods
Traditionally, Ramadan, which began Friday in most of the Arab world, is a time for introspection, for charity toward the poor, for an increased focus on religion. It is a time when Muslims strive to avoid not only drinking, smoking, eating and having sex during daylight hours, but also gossiping and swearing — and even fighting with one another. The holy month is a time for solemn reflection during the day, and festive meals with family and friends at night……. This is the second Ramadan to fall during the Arab Spring, and in Syria especially, violence showed no sign of taking the holy month off, as government forces clawed back ground from rebels in the capital, Damascus………… Roundups of dissidents continued in Bahrain. Even in Dubai, where relatively timid activists have asked for more rights to free speech, United Arab Emirates authorities have responded with the arrests of 14 people since Monday on murky charges of antigovernment activity. Ramadan begins on Saturday in Iran, Iraq and many Shiite Muslim areas, unlike Friday for much of the Sunni world………...”

Even within each country, Ramadan is often on different days, based on the advise of the clerics. Back home, my family starts on Saturday while some neighbors started on Friday. It is supposed to be based on sighting of the moon’s earliest waxing crescent, but nobody really sees the early crescent anymore. Times have changed since the days of the Prophet, since even the days of my own childhood (long after the days of the Prophet). Too much light in the cities and towns and villages, too much pollution, even weaker eyesight, make it nearly impossible to see the moon on the first lunar night. Maybe some rural Bedus deep in the Saudi desert can still see that crescent, but not the top clerics ensconced in their palaces in the cities.
Another issue is that it is not just a Shi’a-Sunni difference. Morocco is Sunni, yet its Ramadan starts Saturday, along with Iran and Iraq and the people of Bahrain. So do a few other countries.
A third observation is that the most delicious food, the most plenty, is consumed in Ramadan. Which is a lot of fun, but it might make it the least healthy month as well. Of course all this can be just sour grapes on my part since I am far away and don’t have access to the Mehalbiyya and Harees and Zalabia and Lqimat and Kunafa and Gabboot and ……… As a consolation, we shall break our fast at P.F. Chang tonight.

(FYI: Muslims and Arabs never stop their wars because of Ramadan. The Libyan and Syrian fighting continued and continue through Ramadan. The bloody Iran-Iraq war continued through eight Ramadans. Bureaucrats are even less helpful, more difficult in Ramadan. Despots are at least as despotic during Ramadan. Kelptocratic princes and dictators continue to rob their country and people during Ramadan, but they pray more for forgiveness).

In other words: the people get better during Ramadan, but the rulers remain as rotten and pray more to cover it up.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

Comrade Khamenei at Patrice Lumumba? a Manchurian Ayatollah?………

   


    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter                
   
                       Neck of the woods
“Is Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a graduate of the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University in Moscow? Did the KGB recruit Khamenei as a spy in the 1960’s? Is Soviet indoctrination and ideological training to blame for Khamenei’s hatred of the United States? The Persian blogosphere is boiling over with speculations about Khamenei’s alleged Soviet connections. The affair started Wednesday, as Iranian bloggers discovered Russia Today’s February 5, 2010 report on the 50th anniversary of the People’s Friendship University in Moscow, in which Khamenei is mentioned among the university’s “most notable graduates.” A claim also appears on Russia Today’s website, although the reference is made to “Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini,” an obvious mistake. Subsequently, Iranian bloggers identified other Russian sources making the very same claim: The November 25, 2003 issue of Kommersant presents Khamenei as a People’s Friendship University graduate…………….”

Patrice Lumumba University was named after the murdered first Congolese prime minister after independence from Belgium. Lumumba was allegedly killed by Congolese rivals and Western intelligence services. I believe that to be true: Lumumba was perceived as a ‘communist’ by the West during the peak of the Cold War. The Soviet university attracted many third world students, and it is possible that a young Khamenei was among them, but it is highly unlikely. I doubt it very much: he must have started as a student of Islamic faith at a young age. Or maybe he was groomed as a communist mole inside Qom, a potential Manchurian Ayatollah. If true this would mean that Khamenei also speaks Russian in addition to Persian, Arabic, and Turkish. He is as much a communist as the Saudi Mufti is a secret Shi’a, as much as Bashar al-Assad is a Salafi.

Cheers
mhg

[email protected]

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

 


    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter    
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



[email protected]

Saudis to Convert Fish and Scuba-Divers: Underwater Madrassas, Pigskin and Miswak, Freudian Towers………

 


    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter    

Saudi Arabia has built the world’s first underwater mosque off a northwestern coast close to the Jordanian border, according to reports in an Arabic newspaper. The mosque was built by a group of private divers from Saudi Arabia, who used plastic pipes filled with sand under the sea off the coast in the north-western city of Tabuk, Almadina Arabic language daily reported. “One of our colleagues came up with this idea last summer and we decided to carry it out,” diver Hamadan bin Salim Al Masoudi told the Emirates 24/7 website. “We have just completed the construction of the mosque… when we put the final touches on it, it was time for afternoon prayers, so we performed group prayers in the first underwater mosque in history………………..

My first inclination was that they wanted to convert Western scuba divers, before I remembered than non-Muslim scuba divers are frowned upon, especially inside a mosque.  Yet, it would be interesting to see the King of Saudi Arabia and his princes diving toward the mosque on opening day. I bet they can sell tickets for that opening event and recoup the cost of the under-water mosque.

Or

maybe it is built for all these madrassas of fish that the Red Sea is famous for. I am not sure how the Wahhabi Salafi zealots feel about all this. These guys are obsessed with wtf the very early Muslims did: they pretend they would do exactly as these ancient gentlemen did, some even famously rumored to eschew the modern toothpaste in favor of scented toothpicks (miswak). I’d love for them to give up other infidel things the ancients never cottoned up to: like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Speaking

of miswak: I half expect the Wahhabis in my hometown may pass a law banning toothpaste, making it as illegal as pigskin (talking four-legged swine here, exclusively four-legged). There is no doubt that the very early Muslims (Sahaba and the others) had no interest in either toothpaste or scuba-diving, not even to get to a mosque. They even had a famous Arab verse around that time about a fear of dissolving in the sea (as in man being made of mud which dissolves in water).
We can chalk this one under “culture” category, I think. Or maybe “religion”. Or both.
(I think I shall soon post something Freudian about this mad race to “erect” the world’s tallest tower in Mecca or was it Dubai or was it Abu Dhabi………..)

Cheers
mhg



[email protected]

America and a Song of Persepolis: A New Tunisian Hypocrisy on Freedom………………..

 


    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   
“Burn this city to the ground
Take a torch and spread the fire”

Persepolis / Now a pile of dust

A blackened carcass / A land of ash

Persepolis / You lost your crown

Persepolis / Burned to the ground

Consumed by hate / Ablaze by pride

Persepolis / Naked as the sand……..” 
Persepolis (Septic Flesh)
 
Tunisia on Tuesday denounced “American interference” in judicial affairs after the U.S. ambassador criticized a ruling that fined a television station boss for showing a film that depicted God. The U.S. ambassador in Tunis, Gordon Gray, last Thursday expressed “serious concerns” after a court fined the Nessma station’s chief executive Nabil Karoui for broadcasting the Franco-Iranian film “Persepolis”. “The declarations of the American ambassador to Tunisia constitute interference in Tunisian justice,” the foreign ministry announced in a statement reported by the official TAP news agency. “The Tunisian government declares itself to be deeply astonished” by these statements. The film, which looks at the Iranian revolution through the eyes of a little girl, features a controversial scene showing a depiction of God. Muslims consider portrayals of Allah to be blasphemous. Karoui was fined on May 3, 2,400 dinars (, $1,700) in a high-profile trial on conviction of “broadcasting a film that disturbs public order and threatens proper morals.” Gray then issued a statement saying that the verdict “raises serious concerns about tolerance and freedom of expression in the new Tunisia.”……..

When the politicians currently ruling Tunisia were in opposition and in exile, they railed against the United States and the West for not opposing (and for supporting) the dictatorship of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. They also complained about repression and not allowing the freedom of expression under the old dictator. Now that they are in power, they have made a 180 degree turnaround about the freedom of expression: now they rail against the United States for asking them to allow freedom of expression.
When out of power, they wanted world powers to seek more freedom of expression in Tunisia; now that they are in power, they want world powers to stay out and not push for freedom of expression. That is ‘somewhat’ hypocritical.
Somewhat.
Cheers
mhg



[email protected]

Ring of Fire on the Persian Gulf: Salafi Six-Pack and Burning an Iranian Allah………..

    

    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   
   


                           Partying Wahhabis set Allah on Fire

          Ring of Fire
Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire

I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down and the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire
The ring of fire………..
Johnny Cash (not a Salafi)


Someone in Kuwait allegedly tweeted what was considered insults against the prophet Mohammed (I haven’t read them). He allegedly did it on Twitter, on the world wide web, not within any country’s borders. He was arrested and a high official announced to a fundamentalist tribal mob facing him that “He is a scum and is under arrest“.
Local Wahhabi types, mainly Salafis and Muslim Brothers and members of certain border tribes were not satisfied, they knew there was some political mileage to be gained from this. They staged a public rally where Wahhabi politicians and the usual climbers called for the man to be executed forthwith. (I bet most of them haven’t even read what this tweeter allegedly tweeted). Then they called for more restrictions on the freedom of expression (especially expressions that don’t fit the Wahhabi line). After that they decided they might as well put the occasion to some more use and spent some time insulting and attacking the country’s Shi’as. After that they got in a Taliban mood and burned the Iranian flag.
Nobody could explain what the Iranian flag has to do with the incident, but apparently these guys love to party with a bonfire. What is a rally or beach party without a nice bonfire? It’s a good thing these Salafis aren’t fond of beer, at least not in public (I don’t know what they do in private but several wives ought o keep them busy). With some beer it would have gotten out of hand. Salafi Six-Pack ain’t no Joe Six-Pack, not a good idea at all, can’t hold their liquor.

(PS: Oddly, the Iranian flag has the word “Allah” designed in calligraphy at the center. These Salafi and MB and Wahhabi types are not supposed to burn anything with the name of Allah on it. They tell everybody that you can go to hell for doing that. I hope they are right this time; that way they can all go to hell. One of my most ardent wishes my come true after all.)


Cheers
mhg



[email protected]

Meshugenner American Evangelicals and the Rapture of Israel………

    

    Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter   
 




“The prominence of the Iran issue in the current Republican primary race also incenses Klein, who is quick to elaborate that the force behind the rhetoric is not just a “small group of Jewish neoconservatives.” “There is this whole bunch of meshugenner Evangelicals who love their little Jewish ‘sisters and brothers,’ who they believe are going to incinerate themselves once the Rapture comes … The Evangelicals are a major force in American politics and the Republican politicians listen to what they are is saying. When you have a politician like [Newt] Gingrich or [Rick] Santorum say that Iran’s government is completely irrational, that it is a death cult – using words like ‘satanic cult that will use the bomb as soon as it gets it’ – they are following a Rapturian line, No. 1, and No. 2, there are people in the Israeli government – and I know this for a fact – who are selling that to them.” ……

Also sprach Joe Klein on Iranian cultists, American cultists, and their Likud manipulators…..
Cheers
mhg



[email protected]