Category Archives: Religion

Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia, WTF

Paid Fatwa: Using Allah in Politics…………

    

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“She said: “Kings, when they enter a country, despoil it, and make the noblest of its people its meanest thus do they behave….…..” Holy Quran, Surat al-Naml (The Ants)

“The protests in Eastern Saudi Arabia have been ongoing for several years now; the protesters from the Saudi Shiite minority, a majority in the Eastern province, are only demanding end of all forms of discrimination in public and private sector jobs, improved housing (some live in shameful slums), and a ban on incitement against their faith. The hard-line religious establishment opposes any reforms, and continues to consider Shiites heretics. Recently, and when asked on the proper punishment for protesters, the Saudi Mufti cited the following verse from the Quran:
“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter“. (below, a photo of Saudi’s mufti)…………”

The royally-paid always-accommodating Grand Mufti said: “execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land“. Nice Effing Mufti, huh?
Yet that is what is being done in the kingdom without magic, except it is easier nowadays to shoot and torture and imprison them. Waging war against oppression and corruption is twisted as waging war against God. Of course, that Hadith applies more to the princes and their retainers, for it is they who wage war against God by disobeying Quranic and Hadith rules against oppression and corruption and hypocrisy. By their very existence they disobey Islamic rules against the rule of kings and princes.

FYI for my new readers only: His Muftiness Shaikh Abdulaziz Al Al Shaikh is
a relative of that other Shaikh Al Al Al Shaikh who heads the Saudi Commission
for the Propagation of Vice (religious police). They are both relative of that
other Shaikh Al AL Al Shaikh who used to be the Saudi Minister of Justice,
among others. All these Al Al Shaiks are descendants of Mohammed Bin Abdulwahab
of Nejd, after who the Wahhabi sect is named. They have been close allies of
the al-Saud clan, sometimes more than just allies if you get my drift. Mr.
Mohammed Bin Abdulwahab should not be confused with the late great Egyptian
musician and singer Mohammed Abdelwahhab, who was no Salafi, not even a
Wahhbai, but an Egyptian-style bon vivant.


Cheers
mhg


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Religion, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics

Alibi of Scoundrels: God of Wall Street vs. God of Intolerance…….

    

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“Mitt Romney’s campaign believes it would take divine intervention for the former Massachusetts governor to lose the GOP nomination. A top campaign aide said during a briefing Wednesday that it would take “an act of God” for Romney’s opponents to overtake him for the nomination, according to Yahoo News………”

“Former Pennsylvania Gov. Rick Santorum said Wednesday that it winning the Puerto Rico primary on Sunday, where 20 delegates are at stake, would be an act of divine intervention. At a church in San Juan, the devout Catholic encouraged his supporters to “continue to pray, not just for me, not just for my family, although I want to encourage you to continue to pray for me and my family.” “One of my opponents recently said that it would take an act of God for me to win this primary. I agree with him,” Santorum added…………”

Oh, God (not the God of Wall Street, nor the God of intolerance)……….. Can’t wait to hear what Newt Whatishisface has to say about this.
Cheers
mhg


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Arabian Peninsula, GCC, Human Right, Racism, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Hateful Scientific Grand Mufti and Salafis Call for Destruction of All Gulf Churches……….

 

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“The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has said it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region,” following Kuwait’s moves to ban their construction. Speaking to a delegation in Kuwait, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, stressed that since the tiny Gulf state was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, it was necessary to destroy all of the churches in the country, Arabic media have reported. Saudi Arabia’s top cleric made the comment in view of an age-old rule that only Islam can be practiced in the region. The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia is the highest official of religious law in the Sunni Muslim kingdom. He is also the head of the Supreme Council of Ulema (Islamic scholars) and of the Standing Committee for Scientific Research and Issuing of Fatwas……….”

At least their hateful muftis do ‘scientific research’, but perhaps not the kind that deals with quantum physics or astronomy. These gentlemen deal in more useful types of research. Now the Grand Mufti (I can’t help it: this “Grand” always remind me of a piano, something His Muftiness hates) is close to the royal family. His Muftiness is appointed by the king and he issues fatwas that support the al-Saud policies at home and in the rest of the world.
About
this call for tearing down the churches: again this does not fit well with the narrative of the offshore “dialog of faiths” that the Saudis publicize in the West. Not when they and their Salafi agents around the Gulf are calling for such intolerance even as they invite millions of non-Muslims to come toil for them, to come and “defend” them. Then people like Geert Wilders, Pam Geller, Liz Cheney, and others will say: aha, we were right!

FYI

for my new readers only: His Muftiness Shaikh Abdulaziz Al Al Shaikh is a relative of that other Shaikh Al Al Al Shaikh who heads the Saudi Commission for the Propagation of Vice (religious police). They are both relative of that other Shaikh Al AL Al Shaikh who used to be the Saudi Minister of Justice, among others. All these Al Al Shaiks are descendants of Mohammed Bin Abdulwahab of Nejd, after who the Wahhabi sect is named. They have been close allies of the al-Saud clan, sometimes more than just allies if you get my drift. Mr. Mohammed Bin Abdulwahab should not be confused with the late great Egyptian musician and singer Mohammed Abdelwahhab, who was no Salafi, not even a Wahhbai, was not a “bin” but an Egyptian-style bon vivant.
Cheers
mhg


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Anti-Semitism, Arab Revolutions, GCC, Israel, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Another Saudi Killing Fatwa: on Assad and Hezbollah and Israelis and Jews…….

 

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The prominent Saudi cleric Shaikh ‘Aayidh al-Qarni has issued a fatwa that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad should be killed. He is quoted that killing Assad now has priority over “killing Israelis” under current circumstances. (Netanyahu may feel comforted by that small favor). He fatwad that obeying Assad is like disobeying the creator (God, Allah, Yahweh). He did not say it in so many words but his silence implied that obeying the absolute al-Saud princes is like obeying the creator (God, Allah, Yahweh) and that obeying the rapacious shaikhs of Bahrain is the next best thing to obeying the creator (God, Allah, Yahweh). …. … Shaikh al-Qarni added that Hassan Nasrallah (of Hezbollah) is a heretic sinner and that his testimony in defense of the Syrian regime is as worthless as the testimony of a Jew. The shaikh is quoted to address Assad “Aren’t you ashamed? Even Jews didn’t do as much to Syrians as you have done”.

Media Wahhabi faux-liberals and Salafis along the Persian-American Gulf are all excited, going orgasmic, over this Wahhabi masterpiece of bigoted fatwa (is there any other kind?).
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Revolutions, Jihadis, Religion, Theocracy

Adonis of Syria: Secular Reactionaries and Islamo-Fascist Revolutionaries……

 

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The renowned Syrian poet Adonis (nom de plume) opines that he understands why many Arab ‘progressives’ are against the Arab revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria. He said that some may be right in warning that these uprisings are creating Islamic Fascist states (Islamo-Fascist sounds like the favorite term of the American Republican extreme right wing for Muslims).
Adonis told an Austrian newspaper that the recent movements are now being led by Islamist fundamentalists and fascists and represent a move back toward the Middle Ages. He said that as an example, Tunisia had a secular system established by Habib Bourguiba but that Tunisia now has an Islamic regime. He added that the ‘opposition’ in his country, Syria, wants to change the regime form a military dictatorship to a religious dictatorship. He said that Arab elections now lead to Islamist rule and that even Hitler came to power at first as a result of elections.

ALL Arab states that had successful uprisings are becoming fundamentalist; that is a fact. But then most Arab states that have had no successful uprisings are fundamentalist anyway. Unless you think that Saudi Arabia is a secular democratic kingdom.

(Adonis. I wonder, when he was young, if he was what some American females woiuld call a hunk.)

Cheers
mhg


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Culture, Death Penalty, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

The Kashghri Case: A Fatwa to Kill, a Fatwa to Boycott, a Royal Order………

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“His Grace Shaikh Salih al-Lhaidan, member of the Commission of Senior Ulema (clergy) and former chief of the High Judiciary Council today demanded that the writer Hamza Kashghari should be put to death as an apostate, even if he repents. He also demanded that Arab states of OPEC should stop all petroleum exports to Russia and China after their veto at the United Nations Security Council……”

“Saudi King Abdullah has ordered the writer Hamza Kashghri be arrested for insulting Islam in his writings and tweets….….”

This Kashghri, I haven’t read anything by or for him, has now got a double whammy. The shaikhs fatwad that he be killed, the king (no less) has now ordered his arrest. It is usually Prince Nayef’s empire that arrests people and “punishes” them, but this time his royal majesty decided to get the credit. Unlike the shaikh, the king did not tie all this to Russia and China and their UN vote on Syrian intervention. A royal decree, no less, for an arrest: only in Saudi Arabia, what we on the Gulf used to call watermelon country (with watermelon laws).

Now
 I’ve got to read something about this guy, just to see wtf he said or wrote. They say that he soon retracted what he wrote and expressed his apology, but nothing doing. In Saudi Arabia, looking at the photo of a prince with your tongue out or your middle finger extended can get you an open-ended invitation to a cell in a cellar (not a chateau type).
Cheers
mhg


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Culture, Europe, Islamophobia, Middle East Women, Muslims, Religion, Saudi Arabia, Somalia

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Reinvents the Islamic Wheel, the Holocaust and the Two Phobias………….

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“The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression ……… The Christophobia that has plagued Sudan for years takes a very different form. The authoritarian government of the Sunni Muslim north……..”

There are three people the Western media often resort to when they want “objective” opinion on Islamic-Western relations. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one. Not that I disagree with ‘everything’ she espouses: I probably agree with her on some points. Ali hasn’t been on television as much, mostly writings and ‘utterances’. Ali makes sure everyone knows she has nothing but contempt for Islam: all its aspects, not just how it treats women. She does not distinguish between the faith and the “faithful”: an easy shot, some would say a cheap shot. We all know the “faithful” do not all follow the faith. That applies equally to Muslims and Christians. Fair enough, that is her opinion. There is room enough for both Islamophobia (of which she has a severe case) and Christophobia.

Now Christians and the world-wide assault on Christianity is apparently the cause du jour, even in the ongoing Campaign 2012. She certainly is not missing that bandwagon. In these days of fundamentalist ascendancy in the Middle East (and America), the fate of Christians is a legitimate concern. Yet is it a tit-for-tat Fox News (dare I say Geert Wilders) type of approach she takes? The point is: the West is free and democratic, and the Muslim world is mostly dictatorial, that is a fact. It is silly to insinuate that the West should persecute Muslims simply because, for example, Saudi Arabia bans any kind of worship other than Islamic even in private. That is why the West is what it is and Saudi Arabia is not. Could she be angling for a speaker’s slate at the Tea Party Republican National Convention next summer?

I am eager to read her future writings on the Endlösung and how Christians killed 6 million Jewish civilians in gas chambers in a Europe that was nearly free of Muslims. And about the 40 million (or is it 50 million) people of all faiths that were killed in the last European war. No need to mention the mass rapes and the genocide and mass graves of Bosnia. Everybody has a house of glass, but some houses are more so.
There is also a Syrian dude whom the American right wing has been celebrating for years; he is their favorite “witness” in Muslim and Islamic hearings. I suspect if anyone, he will be the one to speak at Tampa (you see, Muslim men rule, even in the Tea Party).
Cheers
mhg


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

(2) Rick Santorum & the Middle East: “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”………

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“Santorum believes “it is the duty of each and every American citizen who abhors terrorism and supports freedom to stand up and say, ‘I support Israel.'” He has attacked Obama for putting “Israel’s very existence in more peril” and says Palestine’s statehood bid at the United Nations is a sign that the Palestinians “feel weakness — they feel it, they see it, they know it — and they’re going to exploit it.“………”

Like I said earlier: (Congressmen don’t get much in-depth foreign policy experience unless that sit on certain specialized committee or subcommittee. Just look at poor Rick Santorum, the subject of my next brief posting).

Oh well, Santorum was a one-term senator. He is a rust-belt gun-slinging (shoot the duck, shoot the duck) Catholic who talks the evangelical omni-phobic Bible-belt talk, and walks the unique Bible-belt walk. He too is betting the Middle East farm on the Rapture and mass conversion when the “moment is right”.
He’s got the Bible (Old and New Testaments) and his own wild fascist ideas. I’d offer him a copy of the Quran as well, in English, except he might charge me with harassment or of being some kind of Islamo-terrorist Jihadist Salafi motha.
He hasn’t yet published “Mein Kampf gegen die Muslime und Araber”. I doubt that he ever will: remember earlier this week I posted here quoting someone who likened his campaign to a person who is dead but he doesn’t know it, although everybody else does.
Cheers
mhg


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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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Arab Counterrevoltion, GCC, Gulf states, Persian-American Gulf, Religion, Salafi, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Urge to Merge the GCC: pan-Tribal pan-Dynastic Union, a Mufti to the Rescue ………..

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                               BFF                                                  Saudi mufti

There is something urgent about this new Saudi search for a GCC merger. This is something that does not fit with the al-Saud history. Throughout the period when pan-Arabism was ascendant during the 1950s through the early 1970s, the Saudi princes spent fortunes to oppose it. Their main nemesis was Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt who actually came so close to toppling their dynasty. Unfortunately for the Arabs, Nasser and the movement he inspired failed, and the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula and our region have been paying the price since.
Of course, Nasser did not have the kind of money the al-Saud usually spend on buying people and on subversion: people followed Nasser mostly because he inspired them. The Saudi dynasty does not inspire anyone, anymore than the al-Nahayan or the al-Khalifa dynasties can inspire anyone, anyone with any wits. They buy politicians and journalists with their pocket change (especially many Lebanese ones for some odd reason, and a few on the Gulf). Just like they buy Western lobbyists and former officials.
This spring their king mumbled a proposal for GCC expansion to Jordan and Morocco, and they quickly backtracked on that one. Now they are pushing for a GCC confederation, to the excitement of their Salafi surrogates in the Gulf. There is nothing Nasser-like about this medieval Saudi urge to merge with the other Gulf states. It is not pan-Arab: it is pan-Tribal pan-Dynastic pan-Medieval. There is no pan-Arab motive behind it: it is a pure attempt at hegemony as well as at preserving their dynasty. It is more Qaddafi-like: the late Libyan dictator also sought to merge with various countries, from Egypt to Tunisia to Chad, among others.
All Saudi proposals for integration within the GCC have failed. They failed mainly because people saw them for what they are: raw attempts at asserting the hegemony of their tribal polygamous dynasty. I shall here propose one form of merger that may finally succeed:

It is a feasible proposal: a proposal to unify all the GCC fatwas. Urge their muftis to merge (and no this is not what it sounds like at first reading). Maybe they will propose their own mufti Shaikh Abdulaziz Al Al Al Shaikh (Triple-Al) as the common Wahhabi Mufti who will issue all fatwas on behalf of all GCC states. Somehow I feel that even that modest and useless proposal may also fail, but it is worth a try. It is something, no?

About the Mufti (for new readers): the Al Al  Al-Shaikh (call me Al) are descendants of Shaikh Mohammad Bin Abdulwahhab, after whom the Wahhabi sect is named. They all hold high positions at the Saudi court and bureaucracy. As I have repeated here, the shaikh is not to be confused with Mohammed Abdelwahab, the late great Egyptian musician, singer, and occasional actor from the golden (pre-Sadat-Mubarak) days of Egyptian art and culture who was no Salafi, Wahhabi, nor any kind of fundamentalist but a bon vivant in his own right).
Cheers
mhg


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