Ban women from TV, urge clerics

A group of hard-line Saudi clerics urged the kingdom's new information minister to ban women from appearing on TV or in newspapers and magazines.

In a statement, the 35 clergymen also called on Abdel Aziz Khoja, who was appointed by King Abdullah February 14 as part of a wide reform drive, to prohibit the playing of music and music shows on television.

"We have great hope that this media reform will be accomplished by you," said the statement. "We have noticed how well-rooted perversity is in the Ministry of Information and Culture, in television, radio, press, culture clubs and the book fair."

The clerics' recommendation will probably have little effect because the king's reshuffle removed a number of hard-line figures and is believed to be part of an effort to weaken the influence of conservatives in this devout desert kingdom.

The statement does, however, put a degree of pressure on the new minister and lets him know the feelings of the country's powerful religious establishment.

"No Saudi women should appear on TV, no matter what the reason," added the statement. "No images of women should appear in Saudi newspapers and magazines."

Saudi Arabia was founded on an alliance with the conservative Wahhabi strain of Islam that sees the mixing of sexes as anathema and believes the playing of music violates religious values.

The former information minister, Iyad Madani, earned the ire of hard-liners several years ago by allowing music in government-run TV and female journalists to interview men, despite the country's strict gender-segregation rules.

Women also appear on Saudi television with their faces showing, while most in public totally cover themselves.

Newspapers publish pictures of Saudi women, but almost always with heads covered, while pictures of Western entertainers are shown but bare arms and cleavage are painted over.

These people are so backwards. They are so obsessed with sex that they don't care about terrorism.

Seven Myths About Islam Part Two

2. The myth: “The essence of Mohammed’s message was to believe in Allah, which is Arabic for God”

The fact: The essence of Mohammed’s message was to believe in HIM not in Allah!

Muslims get shocked when they learn that the word ‘allah’ does not mean God but only a name for a god in the same way that Zeus, Apollo and Osiris are names of gods. Muslims get even more shocked when they learn that the pre Islamic Arabs already believed in God long before Mohammed was born, they even called their god Allah. Let us not forget that Mohammed’s father was named Abdu-Allah. Almost all Muslims have the misconception that the Pre Islamic Arabs used to worship stone sculptures, called ‘asnam’, which they believed to be their gods. This is not true even though some tribes carved stone sculptures to ‘represent’ their gods, but that doesn’t mean they worshiped stones. In Arabia in general, but in Mecca in particular, polytheistic religions were practiced freely alongside the monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Sabeans and Ahnaf. Pre Islamic Arabia was an exemplary multicultural society with impressive religious tolerance (1). Freedom of religious practices was a treasured value in Arabia where all the Arab tribes lived in harmony and enjoyed mutual respect. It was Mohammed who introduced religious intolerance to Arabia and it was his followers who introduced it to all places they manage to control.

Mohammed imported the Islamic beliefs and rituals from the other religions in Arabia. Islamic prayers, Fasting and Pilgrimage with all its details, were copied from the existing religions. Mohammed also copied the Islamic sharia law from the existing practices in Arabia, this included practices like circumcision, cutting the hands of thieves and marriage laws. Understandably, Mohammed added his own flavour to those rituals and laws to suit his own personal taste. For example, Mohammed incorporated the Arabs’ tradition of forbidding the marriage between a man and his stepdaughter, but as Zainab, his adopted son’s wife, developed a nice sexy figure, he cancelled the entire tradition of adoption in order to add Zainab to his harem.

At this point, one cannot help but wonder: If Allah was already being worshiped, and if the Islamic rituals were already being practiced, and if the sharia law was already being implemented, what was new about Islam?

A legitimate question that has a simple answer: the only thing new about Islam was the addition of Mohammed’s name next to Allah!

Old Mo was a conartist. I still do not understand a person's need to believe in some supernatural being to have peace in their lives, but muslims are just a hatefilled group. It all comes from the koran, the terrorist training manual.

Anti-dhimmitude in Oz: University rejects Muslim demand for separate prayer room

AUSTRALIAN universities are responsible for providing quality education, not consecrated religious spaces, according to a university involved in a bitter dispute over Muslim prayer rooms.

Dozens of Islamic students plan to protest today to demand that a dedicated Muslim prayer room replace an existing multi-faith centre at Melbourne's RMIT.

But acting pro vice-chancellor Maddy McMaster said it was not for universities to provide consecrated religious spaces.

"A university's responsibility to its students is to provide them with a quality education," she said. "Recognising that the educational experience is not confined to the classroom, RMIT offers other services, including prayer rooms. It falls to religious communities to provide the consecrated spaces."...

But Dr McMaster said the university already provided a number of prayer rooms for Muslim students across all its campuses. "It is difficult to see how we can improve on eight Muslim prayer rooms, with one more opening, as well as providing Muslim students with preferential access to two prayer rooms in the multi-faith Spiritual Centre," she said.

"(Universities) should provide quality resources for those who choose a spiritual path. But as a secular institution, such resources do not include consecrated spaces such as churches, synagogues or mosques."...

It is time for muslims to understand that a school is for learning, not for their religion. If the school does not want to conform to their demands, go to a different school. Simple.

Taliban orders the shut down of NGOs -- another name for "vulgarity and obscenity" -- for allowing women to work with men

KARACHI: The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Sunday ordered all non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to immediately leave Swat.

In an exclusive chat with IRIN, TTP spokesman Muslim Khan said, “They come and tell us how to make lavatories in mosques and houses. I’m sure we can do it ourselves. There is no need for foreigners to tell us this.”

“NGO is another name for ‘vulgarity and obscenity’,” Khan said. He said NGOs hired women who worked with men, in the field and in offices. “That is totally unIslamic and unacceptable,” he said.

Infertility: When asked why the TTP was against the polio vaccination, Khan said, “The TTP is against polio vaccination because it causes infertility.”

“I’m 45 and have never had one drop of the vaccine and I am still alive,” he said, adding that another reason the TTP was against polio vaccination was that the campaign was run by NGOs and the vaccine was imported.

Who cares if the give a vaccine for polio? Let their kids suffer. It will keep the little shahids from growing up and becoming martyrs.

Arizona: Muslim woman arrested for DUI claims she was "racially profiled"

"Offended" by standard police procedures

Her car was swerving into the bicycle lane; she failed a field sobriety test and was arrested (though she resisted); and she found standard prison procedure "offensive." Not to worry: the ever discredited but not yet defunct CAIR is on it -- concerned that this "case may be the tip of the proverbial iceberg."

The bumper sticker on Lisa Gopalan's car reads "Islam means peace."

It means submission, not peace.

But the Muslim woman and former schoolteacher believes her religion gained her the unwanted attention of Gilbert police, who arrested her for DUI when she failed a field sobriety test.

"I was so humiliated," said Gopalan, who along with her husband was recently laid off. "I do feel I was racially profiled to an extent. The whole thing was so upsetting. I'm no criminal."

While the Chandler resident awaits a possible misdemeanor charge of DUI for being impaired to the slightest degree, police opened an investigation into her claims that she was racially profiled.

"The Gilbert Police Department doesn't make traffic stops or contact based on racial descriptors," said Sgt. Mark Marino, a police spokesman.

The incident began Feb. 15 as Gopalan was headed to a Target store. When she approached Cholla Street eastbound on Warner Road, an officer noticed Gopalan's car swerve into a bicycle lane, a police report states.

Gopalan recalled pulling a calculator from her purse, when "I felt the car swerve."

The arresting officer stated the car swerved a second time before coming to an abrupt, "haphazard" stop at Gilbert and Warner roads.Fearing anti-Islamic treatment, Gopalan said she removed her headscarf, or hijab. She was then asked to step outside of the car and then attempted to explain that she wasn't under the influence of alcohol, she said.

The officer began a field sobriety test, which Gopalan performed poorly on. A short time later, a second officer arrived with a portable breathalyzer, which registered the woman's BAC at 0.00.
"In my religion we don't drink. That's just something we don't do," she said.

When police attempted to arrest Gopalan, she pulled her wrists away from officers, the report said.

En route to jail, Gopalan admitted to taking Wellbutrin XL, an antidepressant and pain reliever she has used for about three years.

"I've never experienced any problems from (the medication) before," Gopalan said.

When booked at jail, Gopalan said she was offended as guards checked her arms and fingers for signs she injected drugs.

The check is standard procedure for anyone booked on a suspicion of drug use, Marino said. "She was processed just as any other DUI suspect," he said.

Once released, Gopalan and her husband were faced with a $203 impound fee for her car.

The following day, Gopalan contacted Mayor Steve Berman and Police Chief Tim Dorn, which triggered an internal investigation.

Marino said the department does not disclose information pertaining to ongoing internal investigations.

Also awaiting the outcome of the investigation is the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR-AZ.

Executive Director Ahmed Daniels said the group is monitoring the internal investigation.

"Our primary goal is to make sure the civil rights of the Islamic community are adhered to," Daniels said.

"We want to see where the police department is taking it," he said. "What concerns me is Lisa's case may be the tip of the proverbial iceberg."

As that investigation continues, Marino warned motorists that prescription drugs can affect one's ability to drive.

"Influence is influence," Marino said. "Many drugs impact people significantly. If you're impaired, your ability to drive the car is also impacted."

What racial profiling? She is a white woman, granted an ugly one. She was clearly impared. She was on Wellbutrin and a pain killer. She was treated like any other person that is suspected of being impaired on drugs.

Israeli soldiers' T-shirts depict shooting Arabs

JERUSALEM - Israel's military condemned its soldiers for wearing T-shirts of a pregnant woman in a rifle's cross-hairs with the slogan "1 Shot 2 Kills," and another of a gun-toting child with the words, "The smaller they are, the harder it is."

The T-shirts were worn by Israeli Defense Force soldiers to mark the end of basic training and other military courses, the newspaper Haaretz said.

The appearance of the T-shirts followed allegations of misconduct by Israeli troops during the three-week Gaza war. Palestinian officials say about 1,400 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians. Thirteen Israelis died, three of them civilians.

The army said it would not tolerate the T-shirts and would take disciplinary action against the soldiers involved, although it was not clear how many wore the shirts or how widely they were distributed.

The military sought to portray the T-shirts as "tasteless" humor and condemned the soldiers involved, saying in a statement that the shirts "are not in accordance with IDF values."
They were not manufactured or sanctioned by the military.

The shirts' existence was first reported Friday by the Haaretz daily and later on broadcasts by Israeli radio and television.

Haaretz showed pictures of five shirts and said they were made at the unit level — indicating that they were made for small numbers of troops, perhaps several dozen at a time. It said they were worn by an unknown number of enlisted men in different units. The Tel Aviv factory that made many of the shirts, Adiv, refused to comment.

Few in the Palestinian territories appeared to be aware of the T-shirts. In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said it "reflects the brutal mentality among the Zionist soldiers and the Zionist society."

Hamas-controlled media consistently glorify attacks on Israelis, and cartoons in Palestinian newspapers frequently use anti-Semitic images of Jews as hook-nosed, black-hatted characters.
Hamas also mocked Israeli suffering, staging a play about its capture of an Israeli soldier in which it makes fun of the serviceman crying for his mother and father.

Israel's military has come under increasing scrutiny after soldiers alleged that some troops opened fire hastily and killed Palestinian civilians during the Gaza war, including children, possibly because they believed they would not be held accountable under relaxed open-fire regulations. The military has ordered a criminal inquiry into soldiers' accounts published in a military institute's newsletter.

On Monday, the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, defended his troops.

"I tell you that this is a moral and ideological army. I have no doubt that exceptional events will be dealt with," Ashkenazi told new recruits. Gaza "is a complex atmosphere that includes civilians, and we took every measure possible to reduce harm to the innocent."

The Gaza offensive, launched to end years of rocket fire at Israeli towns, ended Jan. 18.

Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups fire rockets from heavily populated areas, and Israel says Hamas is to blame for the civilian deaths because it leaves the military no choice but to attack them there.

U.N. human rights experts said Monday that Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield during the Gaza offensive. The military ordered the boy on Jan. 15 to walk in front of soldiers being fired on in a Gaza neighborhood and enter buildings before them, said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. secretary-general's envoy for protecting children in armed conflict.

Israeli army spokesman Capt. Elie Isaacson denied the military used human shields, saying "morals and high ethical standards are paramount" in the army.

Uzi Dayan, a former Israeli deputy chief of staff, said he was "shocked but not surprised" by the T-shirts.

"I spent many years in the army and I know that if you don't pay attention all the time, these things can happen. These are very young people in a combat situation, so you need to have a finger on the pulse," he said.

I personally think it is a great shirt. The arab muslims are breading for allah and teaching their children to hate all Jews. They are taught to love martyrdom. This has nothing to do with poverty. It is all about islam. You kill them both and you get the future shahid and the breader as well.

Israel used boy as human shield - UN

Israeli soldiers used an 11-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield during the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, UN human rights experts say.
The Israeli Defence force ordered the boy to walk in front of soldiers being fired on in the Gaza neighbourhood of Tel al-Hawa and enter buildings before them, the UN secretary-general's envoy for protecting children in armed conflict says.
The boy also was told to open the bags of Palestinians - presumably to protect the soldiers from possible explosives - before being released at the entrance to a hospital, Radhika Coomaraswamy says.
The January 15 incident, after Israeli tanks had rolled into the neighbourhood and during "intense operations", was a violation of Israeli and international law, she says.
It is included in a 43-page report published on Monday, and is just one of many verified human rights atrocities during the three-week war between Israel and Hamas that ended on January 18, she says.
Coomaraswamy accused Israeli soldiers of shooting Palestinian children, bulldozing a home with a woman and child still inside, and shelling a building they had ordered civilians into a day earlier.
"Violations were reported on a daily basis, too numerous to list," said Coomaraswamy, who visited Gaza and Israel for five days last month.
Coomaraswamy said there also have been allegations that Hamas used human shields or fired from heavily populated areas, and UN officials are investigating.
Israel criticised the report as "unable or perhaps unwilling" to address Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza or the threat of terrorism, citing Saturday's failed attempt to explode a car bomb in a Haifa mall parking lot as the most recent manifestation.
"The report claims to examine Israel's actions while it wilfully ignores and downplays the terrorist and other threats we face," Ambassador Aharon Leshno Yaar told the 47-nation Human Rights Council.
Leshno Yaar said terrorists use women and children as human shields when they launch attacks from schools, homes, hospitals and mosques. He did not address the report's specific allegation about the boy, but an army spokesman rejected the claim.
"We are an army to which morals and high ethical standards are paramount," said Captain Elie Isaacson.
Coomaraswamy said her list of Israeli violations constituted "just a few examples of the hundreds of incidents that have been documented and verified" by UN officials who were in the territory.
She was the only one of the nine UN experts who compiled the report allowed into Gaza following the war. The experts covered issues ranging from health and hunger to women's rights and arbitrary executions.
The experts also noted reports of Hamas committing other abuses. They said Hamas had been unwilling to investigate the allegations.
The report called for Israel to investigate human rights abuses that occurred during the conflict.
Last week, Israel's military ordered a criminal inquiry into published reports from soldiers that some troops had knowingly killed Palestinian civilians, including children.

This is absolute bullshit. We all know that the muslims love to use women and children as human shields. The world gets all upset about the poor muslims getting killed by the Israelis. The Israelis do not do this. I would love to see some pictures of this happening. You never get to see proof, but you know damned well that they have cameras.