Islam must always have the final word

Perhaps you have read much about the absurdities of the United Nations "Human Rights" Council. But there is nothing like seeing it in action to really appreciate how we can no longer take seriously, and must work to disband, an organization that refuses to allow any comments that touch on, and might be critical of, "religion", i.e. in this context, Islam.

It is a central belief in today's Islamic world that anyone who does anything that might lead Muslims to call into question their unquestionable faith in their "religion", or the declarations of its powerful representatives, must be silenced. There can be no God - no "human right", no campaign against violence against women - ever higher than the God of Islam. It is simply unthinkable.

Have a look and you will better appreciate why our relations to the Islamic world necessarily involve questions of war or surrender. June 2008 video, edited by vlad tepes
(follow link for additional information and texts) via Gil Bailie.

UPDATE: video currently unavailable (follow comments here for updates and see also full transcript of the video.)

Littman UN video rev 4 from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

Have Europeans or even Canadians become mercenaries?

What does it take to recognize a basic covenant in which you work to guarantee the security of women neighbors? Among the now-familiar claims about the death-cult nihilism of Western multiculti liberals, this comment in a recent Ayaan Hirsi Ali piece stands out:

Women's shelters have adapted their curriculum - instead of teaching the women who come to them how to become self-reliant, the shelters facilitate prayer rooms and employ mediators from the Islamic community. All this mediation serves only one purpose - that is, to return the woman to the circumstances of abuse she left.

Here is a system, which was a tool to emancipate, that has been completely transformed to serve the Muslim purpose of obedience. If the wife obeys, then the husband no longer needs to beat her. The matter is settled.
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In reality, if Europe falls, it's not because of Islam. It is because the Europeans of today - unlike their forbears in the Second World War - will not die to defend the values or the future of Europe. Even if they were asked to make the final sacrifice, many a post-modern lily-livered European would escape into an obscure mesh of conscientious objection. All that Islam has to do is walk into the vacuum.

It's time lily-livered Europe stood up to Muslim bigots | Opinion | The First Post
That title had me wondering, what is the origin of this interesting expression? I wonder if "random" has it right:

The word 'lily' does not mean white, it means of an unregulated order or uncategorised. It originally referred to a wide variety of flowering plants that were lumped under the genaral title 'lily'. The word liver or in its earlier form, liber, means someone or something dependant on the direction of another. It once refered to middle ranking people in the service of large household. Being liveried meant to wear the colours or uniform of the house to which you were indentured. Hence to be liberated meant to be set free from an indenture. It is only recently that the prospect of 'liberation' has been viewed as an attractive prospect. The liver as applied to the body organ is a lateral extension and is so named because it is the organ in the body at the direction of the other organs. It processes everything for the continued function of the body.Its function therefore is determined by what the rest of the body throws at it. The extension to the colour 'red' or 'reddish brown' is a figurative one. Being 'lily livered' therefore meant you were not attached to anyone, you were unclassified. It originally referred to mercenaries who were apt to go home when the pay ran out.

Meanwhile, Phyllis Chesler continues to explore the case of the Afghan "Canadian" who killed his sister and her fiance in an apparent "honour" killing. Speaking first of the mother of the victim and the murderer:

In court, she described herself as “more open minded” than her husband.

But the close-minded monster held onto his “property,” his children. He did not allow them to see their mother for six long years. The (unspecified) paternal abuse “worsened.” In poor Khatera’s case, her father drove her to at least one suicide attempt and ultimately caused her to flee to her mother in Vancouver. Fayez sent tickets to all three children to join her. Her two daughters came. Hasibullah did not do so. In fact, Hasibullah tried to have Khatera return to their abusive father.

One can only speculate as to why Hasibullah did not break with his father. Perhaps his father treated him differently, better, because he was a son, not a mere daughter. Perhaps Mr. Sadiqi humiliated and beat Hasibullah as well, turned him into his personal servant too– but nevertheless, he became Hasibullah’s male role model.

In the Dallas honor killings of Sarah and Amina Said, their brother, Islam, cleaved to his father, agreed with him, stalked his two sisters on his father’s behalf and on behalf of the family’s “honor.”

Likewise, Hasibullah became his father’s eventual enforcer and avenger. He rejected his mothers’ version of reality: “Don’t talk to me about my dad like that.” His mother wept.

Please remember that, in 1989, Marc Lepine, who mass-murdered fourteen female engineering students in the Ecole Polytechnic in Montreal, also had a wife-beating Algerian father. This fact, which I found crucial, was completely ignored by the police and by all those who wrote about this tragedy. The police saw this as the isolated act of a madman.

So, if we too become blind when thinking about women brutalized by their "brothers" have we not too become mercenaries in the service of whatever local thug, or post-national bureaucratic tyrant, scares or controls some or all - be he of any particular ethnoreligious background, or a postmodern nowhere man sitting above all as politically-correct emperor/serf? If there is a covenant that promises we each will strive to give full effort to guarantee every citizen's freedom, in the face of violent men of any stripe, what kind of "father figure" must rule us all? How do we remember a time when the worst thing a man could do was to beat women, an act sure to be punished by his patriarchal god, the kind of god who makes demands of an individual with the freedom that clearly distinguishes one, as a full person, from any social role (like father or son or bricklayer) that one sometimes plays?

So, to return to Hirsi Ali's question, why would a modern European listen to calls to fight and perhaps self-sacrifice for the freedom of Muslim women, or for any fellow citizen? Why would you as an individual give up your life for a stranger?

Well, you never will if you do not believe that Muslims, or any other kind of person, are capable of living in a freedom comparable to yours. But in asking whether they are, first you must understand how your own person and its freedom is indebted to a shared "god" of personhood, to a history of shared agreements to make the individual sacred above all other claims, above claims advanced in the name of "group rights". Only when you truly love this personal "god", or the covenant s/he seems to guarantee, can you begin to find the love and courage that makes you a full person and not a mere narcissist.

I put "god" in quotes because while some will give him a name, what we really need to understand is the human freedom and history by which people come to share certain understandings, or signs, as sacred. For every human, from the most primitive tribe to the most advanced societies, there is a "god" on which any and all freedom depends, to whatever degree the community is freer than our animal brethren. Even the god of the honour killers allows for some significant degree of collective human freedom, generally accessed through the good graces of the local and chief tyrants who are given freedom to protect the community from outsiders.

But a god who will allow for a greater freedom and equality to women, that they may live like modern Westerners, without falling into the heresies that lead to cultural suicide, is actually, in some respects, rather more demanding, as our present suicide watch suggests. Any freedom is a form of discipline, a way of remembering and honoring, through your actions, history's revelation of the signs or gods that made you freer, as a community, nation, or civilization, than you were before. But it is also a faith in your shared ability to discover new signs when faced with new conflicts, new peoples, and new situations.

If you forget the need for discipline, you soon enough lose some freedom. So don't listen to those who tell you not to challenge the less free other within, in the name of multicultural sensitivities. That is a sure road to worshiping the lowest common denominator, the lesser degree of freedom. Real respect for the other entails insisting on the inevitably of either a shared covenant in which all will be equal in legal freedom and normal discipline, or one or another form of war or tyranny.

Italian judges hate women, roll over and die.

Via Ghost of a Flea, my first exposure to this amazing story: Shari'a making inroads in the West | Op-Ed Contributors | Jerusalem Post

In Italy, three members of a Brescia-based Maghrebi family (father, mother and eldest son) were accused of beating and sequestering their daughter/sister Fatima because she had wanted to live a "Western" life.

In the first trial, the three were sentenced for sequestration and abuse. The court acknowledged that the teenager had been "brutally beaten up" for having "dated" a non-Muslim and, in general, for "living a life not conforming with the culture" of her family. But on appeal, the family was acquitted because the court deemed that the young woman had been beaten for "her own good."

The Bologna public prosecutor's office then disputed the acquittal of the three accused parties, but the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation dismissed it and ruled in favor of the charged parties.

Interestingly, two Italian political leaders on opposite sides of the political spectrum - Isabella Bertolini, vice president of the MPs of the right-wing party Forza Italia, and Barbara Pollastrini, a post-communist former minister - condemned the Supreme Court decision, calling it "one of the darkest pages in the history of the law in our country." Bertolini was upset that the court had "allied itself with radical Islam." Pollastrini is now pushing for parliament to pass a law condemning violence against women. "Now more than ever, it is urgent to defend the rights of a large number of immigrant women victims of an intolerable patriarchal culture," she says.

Muslim women were quick to denounce the Supreme Court's decision. Among them was Souad Sbai, president of the Organization of Moroccan Women in Italy. She said, "It is a shame, this verdict is worthy of an Arab country where the Shari'a is vigorously enforced. In the name of multiculturalism and respect for traditions, the judges apply two kinds of rules: one for the Italians and one for the immigrants. A Catholic father who had acted this way would have been severely sentenced."

According to her organization, at least nine Muslim women have recently been killed in Italy by close relatives. The number of young girls forced to wear the hijab "as early as eight or 12" is on the rise, as is the number of female teenagers fleeing home, and "lots of them are looking to flee to France." But France might not be the panacea either...

One wonders how such madness inflicts a judiciary in what was at least to some degree a Western democracy founded on the sacredness of the Christian person: do they suffer some confused idea that recognizing "diversity" in this way is tto maintain social peace and order? But how can any thinking person come seriously to think that a people living under different laws in the same state can come together in anything other but a seriously diminished capacity for building a common order? I fear that Flea has it right:

It is not only the Swat Valley that has been conceded to the Taliban. For many in the West, there is nothing to surrender - no patriotism, no pride, no history, no civilization - so why not get it over with. The nullity they have made of modern life makes the prospect of a new Dark Age appealing to them.

As to their sisters and wives and daughters - let alone their daughters' daughters - to hell with them. Such is the selfish logic of a suicide.

And so our only response is to act and say to hell with those who have given in to nihilism and civilizational despair. To hell with those who would procure our young women, our fellow citizens under our common law, for the brutal trade in sharia.

Condemn the nihilist, wherever you find him.

Muslims and free humanity against Sharia

I am happy to find a comment from Muslims Against Sharia at one of our November posts.

I'm not sure which member of the group posted that, but it recalled to mind a Front Page interview with Khalim Massoud, president of Muslims Against Sharia:

Most of American mosques are financed and run by Wahhabis. Wahhabi imams are anything but moderate, hence most of religious leaders are radicals. So-called "civil rights" groups, i.e., CAIR, MPAC, ICNA, MAS, etc. that comprise Muslim establishment are nothing more than offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood and fronts for Hamas and al-Qaeda. They are very well financed and are extremely skilful manipulators of the media. And most of the people in government and media truly believe that those groups are moderate, because they are either too lazy to do research or they choose to ignore terrorist ties.

As a result, when either the government or the media needs an Islamic point of view, Muslim establishment groups are go-to "experts" by default. With the "expert" seat being filled, moderate Muslims are left out.

Another problem with moderate Muslims is they are scared and not organized. They are scared because they cannot speak up in mosques for fear of being kicked out and there are virtually no organizations that represent their views. They are not organized, because, unlike the radical, they do not receive tens of millions of dollars in financial support, therefore they have to work for a living.
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Their strategy is very simple. They constantly claim that they are peaceful and moderate, and Western media is more than happy to repeat that nonsense. They do not praise terrorism in public, but they justify it by playing the Muslim victimhood card. And they are very effective at it.

Many radical organizations have already been exposed by counter-terrorism researchers like Steven Emerson, John Loftus, Rachel Ehrenfeld, Joe Kaufman, Paul Sperry, Zeyno Baran, and many others. The proof that the Muslim establishment is anything but moderate is widely available. However, the government and the media either for political reasons or out of sheer stupidity completely ignore it.

Front Page's Jamie Glazov went on to ask:

I would like to touch on your intriguing point that “the Koran has been corrupted over the centuries, and all we want to do is to revert it as close as possible to the original." Is there any textual support for such a notion? And doesn't this notion run counter to the Islamic doctrine of the perfection of the Qur'an, which insists that the Qur'anic text is the same as it was in the time of Uthman? In light of these considerations, do you think you will gain much support in the Islamic world?

Massoud: We do not have any direct evidence that the Koran has been corrupted over the centuries. However, there is some circumstantial evidence supporting our point. First, if you take two English Korans translated by two different people, the difference could be very substantial. Substantial to the point that the same verses could have completely different meaning. Case in point: a recent arrest of Ghows Zalmay, who, according to the fundamentalists, misinterpreted some verses in the Koran.

Based on these facts, it is reasonable to conclude that when the Koran was copied many times over, the mere mortals who did the copying might have "adjusted" the texts to reflect their personal views, or the views of their superiors.

Second is deductive reasoning. The Koran contains verses that represent mutually exclusive concepts, i.e., human 'life is precious' vs. 'kill the infidels wherever you find them' or 'respect the People of the Book' vs. 'do not take Jews and Christians for friends'.

Allah is infallible and cannot contradict himself, which means that some of those verses are not the literal word of Allah. Also, how can Allah, who is the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate be a source of "kill them [infidels] wherever you find them"?

The only logical explanation is that the Koran we have today was significantly altered.

Glazov was not convinced that Islam could be reformed, pointing out that the violence in the Koran is not incidental to the transcendent meaning of the text, but fundamental to it, a fact confirmed by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence in their calls for the Muslims to subjugate the infidels to the Ummah. Glazov also notes that Massoud's arguments about contradictions in the Islam seem to be answered by the mainstream's doctrine of abrogation - the later verses of the Koran supersede the earlier, more pacific, ones. Read the rest of the interview, to decide whether Kalim Massoud gives answers that are likely to convince a large number of Muslims who want to live in peace with modernity and its freedoms.

In any case, the comment we received yesterday is full of links to the project of Muslims Against Sharia to provide a reformed version of the Koran, rid of all verses "that promote violence, divisiveness, religious or gender superiority, bigotry, or discrimination". They want readers to check out their reformed version of the Koran and to let them know (koran@reformislam.org) if they are failing in their mandate to rid the Koran of violence. There's a project that could make use of certain bloggers we know.

As anyone who has read the Koran knows, this will not be an easy task. The curses directed towards the unbelievers are ubiquitous in that book, and the more explicit denunciations of the infidels are common.

In any case, Muslims Against Sharia left us with a link,
In Memoriam of Aqsa Parvez.

The recent Canadian media coverage of the Parvez murder is full of all the sins that Massoud discussed at the opening of the Front Page interview; the media seemingly take the words of Islamist front groups that this was "just a horrific incidence of domestic violence" that Muslims condemn, and "nothing to do with religion or Islam", at face value. For example, even when the media reports they are being manipulated, so as to not be able to attend and report on Aqsa's funeral, they still take the blather of CAIR at face value: ""We're not here to talk about religion or culture - it has nothing to do with it - we're just here based on the fact that she lost her life and we just want to work toward stopping this from happening in the future," Ms. Dadabhoy said."

Of course anyone who thinks an honor killing over a daughter's desire to escape from the Islamist dress code has nothing to do with religion is being intentionally disingenuous. The media should just dump the commentators from groups like CAIR, and make people like Khalim Massoud their go-to guys when they need an example of moderate Muslim opinion. And let the CAIR warriors cry to they're wet that people like Massoud are not real Muslims.

As David Warren comments, there are other girls in Canadian society trying to free themselves of Islamic strictures who, like Warren's friend "Harata", know full well "That [Aqsa] could have been me." Anyone with a grain of integrity will want to protect these girls. And that means stopping in their tracks the Saudi-funded apologists for orthodox or "radical" Islam that pervade North American mosques.

Dag wrote a long post on this topic on Saturday at No Dhimmitude.

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