Saudi religious police arrest famous actors because men and women were performing together

And remember, there's no reason why we can't bring elements of the Sharia to the States! Sharia Alert from the Kingdom of the Two Holy Places: "Religious police arrest famous actors, because men and women were performing together," from AsiaNews, April 2 (thanks to Carlo):

Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) - A blitz by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (the religious police, or muttawa), who early in the morning of March 30 raided a famous hotel in Riyadh and took away the actors and production staff for a television series.

Three actors and one actress were taken to the local police station, and later released on bail. According to a local newspaper, they are the famous Omani actor Ebrahim Al Zidjali, the actors Ali Saad and Fawaz Al Jaser, and the actress Sahar.

Local sources explain that the religious police intervened because scenes were filmed at the hotel in which male and female actors were on the set together. For this reason, Sahar was also taken to a center of the Commission where female officers explained to her the consequences and dangers of being with men in public places....

It is oh so dangerous for he to be with men on stage. Hell, they are probably gay anyway. Oh wait, that is illegal too.

UK MUSLIM TAXI DRIVER BLUDGEONS RIDER WITH BASEBALL BAT - again!!

A TAXI passenger has told how he was left with a fractured skull after being beaten by a baseball bat-wielding cabbie.
Adrian Dubiel was hit twice with the bat in a Newcastle side-street just minutes after being picked up from a night out.
Doctors later diagnosed the 28-year-old – who spent six days in hospital – with a depressed fracture of the skull.
Today, private hire driver Amran Khan is starting a three-and-a-half year prison sentence after being convicted of attacking Mr Dubiel and hitting another customer in similar circumstances months earlier.
Mr Dubiel told The Sentinel how he flagged down Khan's taxi to go home on June 15, after the rest of his friends went for a curry.
He said: "I jumped in and said 'Madeley for a tenner mate?' He said 'I will show you a ride for a tenner'. Then he sped off to The Brampton. I said 'You're going the wrong way', and he stopped and told me to get out.
"I was a bit bemused and just wanted to go home. I was going to walk back to town to get another taxi when he came up behind me and clubbed me on the back of the head with a baseball bat, and again on my back.
"I didn't realise what had happened until I turned round and saw him going back to the car with the bat. I was in shock – there had been no argument, it was completely unprovoked."
Mr Dubiel, who now lives at Westbury Park, went to the police station and later had nine stitches in his head. His fractured skull was diagnosed three days later.
Father-of-three Khan, of Rushton Road, Cobridge, was convicted last month of assaulting Philip Booth, from Biddulph, on February 23 last year and causing grievous bodily harm to Mr Dubiel with intent on June 15.
The court heard Mr Booth – who had agreed to pay £20 to get him to Biddulph – was struck several times with a baseball bat after Khan demanded more money.
But Ian Metcalfe, mitigating, told Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court that 31-year-old Khan still expresses his innocence.
Recorder Martin Wasik yesterday jailed Khan for three years for attacking Mr Dubiel and six months to run consecutively for assaulting Mr Booth.
He told Khan: "The public are entitled to expect they will be safe when they get in a taxi late at night and offer to pay the fare home.
"In the pre-sentence report you say both matters were a case of mistaken identity and it was not you.
"On the evidence which was presented at trial I have no doubt the convictions were correct."

Seven Myths About Islam Part 6

6. The myth: “The Quran described the big bang”

The fact: the Quran only echoed the ancient myths about the creation of the universe.

The Quran only reflected the seventh century ignorance. Ancient cultures believed that the sky and earth were joined together until god stepped in to separate them. Muslims who make the above claim usually refer to verse “Q.21: 30 Do not the Unbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were joined together then we separated them..” in which the Quran makes the same mistake and claims that it was Allah who did the separation. This scientific misconception described in the Quran was common in ancient Arabia, which explains why the verse says do not the unbelievers see? (awalam yara) which is an Arabic expression that implies “yes they see”. It is a common Arabic usage that when you say to a person: “don’t you see that house?” you imply that the person can actually see the house. Therefore, the Quran was talking about something the Arabs already knew.

Contrary to what the verse suggests, according to the Big Bang theory there was nothing in the beginning, no earth and no sky (7).

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.”

But Netanyahu also said that Iran threatens many other countries apart from Israel, and so his mission over the next several months is to convince the world of the broad danger posed by Iran. One of his chief security advisers, Moshe Ya’alon, told me that a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. “This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region—Washington or Tehran?”...

Finally a rightwing group in charge of Israel. Someone not politically correct.

"Cringing diplomats" hear new Israeli FM say concessions to Palestinians will bring war, not peace

He told them the truth -- after all, the intransigence of the jihad doctrine makes those who hold it see a willingness to negotiate and grant concessions only as a sign of weakness. Lieberman told them the truth, and it made them cringe.

JERUSALEM - Israel's new hard-line foreign minister delivered a scathing critique of Mideast peace efforts Wednesday, telling a room crowded with cringing diplomats that concessions to the Palestinians only invite war.

Avigdor Lieberman's first speech since taking office, along with accusations by the moderate Palestinian president that the new Israeli government opposes peace, signaled tough times ahead for the Obama administration's regional diplomacy.

Lieberman warned against broad concessions, saying they "only bring pressure and more wars."

The appointment of Lieberman, head of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu, has raised international concerns because of his hard-line positions on peace and an election campaign that was widely seen as racist. Lieberman has called for stripping the citizenship of people who do not pledge loyalty to the state — a proposal that was viewed as a thinly veiled swipe at Israel's Arab minority.

Racist? Really? What about this?

His speech at the Foreign Ministry did little to ease those concerns.

Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned Wednesday that new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "doesn't believe in peace" and urged the international community to put heavy pressure on him....

The rest of the world will put pressure on the Jews to make nice to the people that do not accept Israel as a state. The arabs do not want peace in the Western sense of the word. They want all of the Jews dead. Why? Because their book tells them to kill the Jews.

"At heart they don't really want to be Swedish. They tell me so themselves."

Eurabia Alert from Sweden: Muslim immigrants don't want to integrate -- not that this will stop the learned analysts from blaming European governments for not doing enough to integrate them. "Rosengård: Integration in the eye of the storm," from The Local, March 27 (thanks to Fjordman):

While Sweden's official unemployment rate stands at around seven percent, nearly 40 percent of Rosengård working age residents are jobless.

"A lot of young people here are out of work... Their parents don't work, and they get their only social interaction in the Islamic milieu, which complicates integration," says Camara, originally from Guinea.

"They spend their time speaking Arabic," he says, adding that "at heart they don't really want to be Swedish. They tell me so themselves."...

Why don't they? What attitudes and assumptions are they being taught? Does anyone in Sweden know or care?

They are not there to integrate into Swedish society. They are there to take over the EU. They believe that the Earth was created by allah and that everyone must submit to allah. They want to take over the world and have sharia rule it. They are telling us this up front.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Completing the Mosque

If you build it, the radicals will come. Or, shall we say, once it’s built, there’s no way to keep the radicals away.

Would it be churlish at this point to say I told you so? I’m talking about the $20 million Boston mega-mosque, built on discounted city land with massive funding from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sources.

Scandal has plagued the project from the beginning. Two years ago I recounted the saga in a lengthy piece here at Pajamas Media called “The Silencing.” At the time, the mosque builders were suing a laundry list of individuals, media outlets, and activist groups — basically anyone who had the bad taste to point out and call into question the unsavory nature of many of the Islamic Society of Boston’s (ISB) connections to radicals and the unseemliness of the land deal. It was a strategic suit intended to stop public scrutiny and criticism, as one email exposed during the discovery process revealed.

The strategy was largely effective, as defendants were quickly advised by counsel to remain silent. Even after the suit was dropped, what scant media coverage there was tended to focus on generic issues regarding the land deal, while continuing concerns regarding radical influence on the new mosque went, and continue to go, largely unexamined in mainstream outlets.

It should come as no surprise that the mainstream media’s reluctance to report has been no indicator of there being nothing left to report on, but with no questions even being asked, the Muslim American Society (MAS — the Muslim group now running the mosque) hasn’t even had the inconvenience of needing to come up with excuses.

That wasn’t always the case. In the early days of the project, pre-lawsuit, the ISB was keen to answer its critics. After all, at that time the structure was little more than a hole in the ground, the funding was trickling in, and the ISB officials responsible could still have been replaced if city fathers had started asking the difficult questions and demanding serious answers. In short, the entire project was still vulnerable to public exposure and a Muslim Brotherhood foothold in America hung in the balance.

It would take another 5,000-word essay to begin to recount all of the excuses they offered at the time, but let’s focus on one particularly problematic association they’d rather not have us notice: the mosque’s association with arch-Islamist Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

From the pulpit on his popular al-Jazeera television program and as purported spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, the octogenarian Qaradawi has expounded the nuances of Islamic doctrine to enthralled millions. Whether it’s the permissibility of blowing up American troops in Iraq (he’s fer it) or killing people on buses in Israel (also fer it), to the dangers of female masturbation (he’s agin’ it, as it may lead to accusations of fornication, which may result in relatives wanting to kill her, which is unjust; at most she should be flogged), to the appropriate punishment for homosexuality (perhaps either casting them from a tall building or burning; there is disagreement on this), the old sheik has an answer for everything and millions look to follow his lead. He is undeniably a very important person in the Islamic popular consciousness.

He has, by the way, gone from holding the Jews of today responsible for the death of Jesus (like we’ve never heard that one before) to more recently proclaiming that the Holocaust was God’s punishment upon the Jews — not that there was much of a Holocaust, mind you, but to the extent that there was, by gum, next time, Allah willing, it will be done at the hand of the Muslims. Nice fella.

Mother-in-law 'kept her sons' three wives locked up like slaves or dogs for 13 years'

'Totally dominating': Naseebah Bibi, pictured outside Preston Crown Court, is accused of keeping her sons' wives as prisoners in her Blackburn home.

A mother locked up her three daughters-in-law and treated them as slaves for more than a decade, a court heard yesterday.

Naseebah Bibi, 62, is said to have ruled the women by fear - beating and slapping them if they disobeyed her, threatening to break their legs and denying them food.

Their ordeal only came to light when one wife managed to break free and ran into the street to alert a neighbour.

The court was told that Tazeem Akhtar, Nagina Akhtar and Nisbah Akhtar had arrived in Britain over several years after arranged marriages to Bibi's sons Nahim, Fahim and Nadeem in Pakistan.

Instead of living with their husbands and raising families, the women were put to work by their mother-in-law cooking and cleaning and using an industrial sewing machine.

Bibi, a mother of six, denies three charges of false imprisonment of the three women between 1993 and 2006.

Her son Nadeem, 31, denies falsely imprisoning his wife Nisbah between 2005 and 2007 and one count of actual bodily harm.

Philip Boyd, prosecuting, said: 'Mrs Bibi was clearly exploiting each of these women. They were treated like children, slaves or dogs by a regime of threats of force or actual force.

'These young women had been rejected by their husbands of their arranged marriages, they couldn't speak English, they couldn't go back to Pakistan, they were in limbo and so they were exploited by the defendant for her own purposes.'

Preston Crown Court heard that the first wife was Nagina Akhtar who had married her husband, Fahim in 1993.

The couple had three children, but she spent her days cleaning and making clothing on a sewing machine.

Mr Boyd said: 'As soon as she came to this country, she was ordered by Mrs Bibi to spend the day sewing on an industrial sewing machine.

'She sewed all day, every day. She sewed for money, but she didn't see any of the money.'

When she once left the small terraced house in Blackburn, Bibi warned her: 'How dare you leave the house. If you do it again I will break your legs.'

Mr Boyd told the court that Nagina was forced to live under these conditions for more than 13 years.

Isn't islam a great religion?

News agencies concealing Islamic names?

Muslim suspects not identified in reports of Minneapolis shooting.

Most of the local reports of a Minneapolis shooting left out the Islamic names of the suspects, notes a blogger at Newsbusters.com.

The suspects were identified in one report as Mohamud Ahmed Hassan, Hamad Ahmad Issek and Jibril Farah Mohamed, and the blogger wondered whether the Islamic names had anything to do with the omission in many other Minnesota media reports.

Blogger Warner Todd Huston said the question is "did the Old Media in Minnesota purposefully leave the names unreported so that they could cover up the fact that the criminals were Somali immigrants? And, if so, why would they do this?"

He cited the initial reports in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and on Twin Cities TV stations KTRV, KEYC, KARE and KSTP, which "all skip the naming of those arrested."

"It isn't until the Saint Paul paper, the Pioneer Press, covers the story that we get the names of the 'three suspects,'" he wrote.

"Why is it that only one news source listed the names of the arrested? Was it because the perpetrators were Somalis?" Huston asked. "If so, why wouldn't the news want these Somalis identified or even described? Are they as reticent to name other suspects in other reports?

Especially in an area that has had recent problems between the Somali immigrant community and other residents, one would think that the names would seem relevant to the story of the greater community situation there."

A contributor to Newsbusters' forum commented, "Seems the MSM considers only white, Christian males to be capable of committing crimes. This concealment is a perfect example of exactly why the old media is rapidly dying."

"Why should we know their names?" wrote another. "We weren't allowed to use Present Obama's middle name and we still don't know his real name or origin."

Police reported the investigation began after four people, including two 17-year-olds, were shot at a Lakeville, Minn., party after a man apparently became upset when he was told to leave.

Minnesota has a large Muslim population that has made news frequently, including protests by Muslim women over state driver's license photographs and conflicts over the refusal of Somali cab drivers to take a passenger carrying alcohol or accompanied by a guide dog.

A "mosque" on a publicly funded college campus also generated controversy.

This is what happens when you allow muslims to immigrate into the US. We need to ban islam, deport every muslim to the middle east, even if they are US citizens. No more islam in jails and prisons. No more refugees into the US.

Italy: Muslims try to blow up 14-century fresco

Because it depicts Muhammad being dragged into hell by a demon.

Respect Europe's culture and history? Pah! It is all worthless trash, jahiliyya! Eurabia Alert: "Corridors of Power in Milan, Italy: Bad Manners, Bad Intentions and More," by Roland Flamini in World Politics Review, March 27 (thanks to Creeping Sharia):

ISLAMIC PROTEST -- Visitors to the magnificent church of St. Petronio in Bologna are now searched by Italian police before entering because in addition to protests by Muslims offended by a depiction of Mohammed in a 14th-century fresco, there have been unsuccessful attempts to blow the painting up.

The painting of the Last Judgement, by the Renaissance artist Giovanni di Modena, shows a devil dragging the prostrate, naked body of Mohammed into hell as a heretic. Against a background of failed crusades in the Holy Land, the Catholic Church in the 14th century had no taste for religious coexistence. Now it's militant Islam that is on the offensive: sources in Bologna say security forces have stopped at least two attempts to sabotage the painting by Islamic extremists.

This is happening all over Europe. The muslims will take over within the next fifty years. I believe that Obama wants the same thing for the US.

Taliban promises attack on Washington that will "amaze" the world

I'm guessing that Mehsud is not one of the vaunted "moderate Taliban" with whom Obama wants to chat. In any case, he has issued such threats before.

The top Taliban commander in Pakistan has claimed responsibility for an attack on a police academy that left 18 dead after an eight-hour bloodbath.

And Baitullah Mehsud also promised an assault on Washington 'soon' - one he said will 'amaze' the world.

At least 18 people were dead last night after militants stormed the police academy in Pakistan.

The attackers, some wearing police uniforms, hurled grenades and seized dozens of hostages.

More than 100 people were wounded as military helicopters moved in to end the carnage.

Two gunmen blew themselves up as soldiers closed in but six were captured and were being interrogated.

Pakistani members of the Taliban were being blamed last night - and Mehsud accepted that responsibility in a phone call to reporters today.

The U.S. recently announced a $5 million bounty on Mehsud's head.

Asked about it, he said he would be happy to 'embrace martrydom'....

I really hope this happens on the Obama watch. This is just what we need to happen. Say goodbye to the Dems in charge in 2010. But is will not happen until after the 2010 elections. That is because Obama is a real muslim.

UK fire service introduces hijab for Muslim workers

Reasonable accommodation or cultural acquiescence? "Now fire service introduces hijab headscarves for Muslim workers," by Jaya Narain for the Daily Mail, March 31:

Pop into the firestation and the chances are there'd be a group of reassuringly burly men in there waiting for the call out, with uniforms and firefighting suits tailored for their use alone.

The one or two women among them would have to make do with ill-fitting adaptations of the men's outfits while the handful of Muslim women in the service would be wearing their own head scarfs.

But, with the fire service anxious to attract recruits of all sexes and backgrounds, it was decided that something had to be done.

So yesterday the results were uneveiled, including full-length skirts, hijab headscarfs and long- sleeved shirts for Muslim women recruits.

The hope is that the uniforms, designed for wearing round the station and for outings such as school trips, will be smarter and better fitting for every firefighter - even the men.[...]

Jagtar Singh, spokesman for the Asian Fire Service Association, said: 'We are pleased to note that the fire service is now taking seriously the issues of culture and religious belief when purchasing corporate and protective clothing for firefighters.'

This makes me sick. It is bad enough that they want special everything, now the fire department is giving into this too? Could you imagine a female firefighter in the US wearing this shit? How do they even work with men. I do believe that muslim women are not supposed to be alone with any non-family member males. How does this even work? I would love to see how this get up looks with an oxygen tank on her back.

CIA recruits among Muslims

What could go wrong? Surely the CIA will thoroughly vet prospective spies for adherence to the doctrines of jihad and Islamic supremacism -- as well as the old adage of Muhammad, "war is deceit" -- won't they?

One may hope that they will, but certainly it would be more reassuring in this regard if any agency in official Washington had ever shown any awareness that those doctrines even exist, much less any awareness of the implications of their existence.

The CIA is attempting to recruit more spies by advertising on the internet, radio and television, and by holding meetings with American Muslims to make up a severe shortage of Arabic speakers....

Leon Panetta, the new CIA director, will meet Muslim groups in cities such as Detroit to spearhead personally the new drive to recruit Arabic speakers. He recently lamented the fact that only 13 per cent of CIA officers speak a foreign language, and just 22 per cent come from minorities.

"In order to accomplish our vital intelligence mission we want to market our employment opportunities to speakers of Arabic, Russian, Korean, Pashtu and Urdu," George Little, a CIA spokesman, told The Times....

Earlier this month Scott White, third in command at the CIA, held meetings with Arab-American and Chaldean-American representatives in Detroit, which has heavily populated American Muslim suburbs. He told the groups that he would bring Mr Panetta to a future meeting....

What could go wrong? We are going to bring the enemy right into the spy agency? There has already been one woman that worked for both the CIA and FBI and she was a jihadist. We need to define this war as a war against islamic supremism. That is exactly what it is.

Dangerous al-Qaeda prisoners try to escape by hijacking helicopter

Al-Qaeda terrorists in a British jail were caught planning to escape in a hijacked helicopter.

Accomplices on the outside were to hire the helicopter for "business" then force the pilot to land in prison at gunpoint.

Nine Muslim inmates plotted to kidnap the jail imam during prayers with weapons hidden in the prison mosque.

Hidden in the prison mosque? Why is there a mosque in the prison? Why are these guys not watched 24 hours per day? They should never be out of site. How did they get weapons?

According to the plan they would then move to a sports field using the imam as a shield and be picked up by the helicopter.

Wardens at Full Sutton prison in Yorkshire, acting on a tip-off, went to the plotters' cells hours before the escape attempt was due to start.

The nine, including convicted terrorists, will now be transferred to other jails.

A source told the Sun: "This would have been one of the most damaging escapes ever. The intelligence was very strong and from a good source. It had to be acted on immediately.

"It involved some of the most dangerous al-Qaeda terrorists in jail, all of whom are a massive threat. It had been planned for months and the use of a helicopter shows it was sophisticated."

The prison holds notorious terrorists like Omar Khyam who plotted to blow up Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent.

Security sources said the jail imam was innocent.

The source added: "The imam is a respected figure for his ability to embrace all faiths.

You know the imam was a puppet. He was part of the plot. How did the weapons get into the mosque?

And there it is: at first, it seemed weird that these Muslims would use an imam as their shield; now it's clear they used him as they had concluded he was a munafiq (hypocrite), or worse, an apostate, deserving of death.

"But that makes him a target for the extremists in this jail who want to convert Muslims to their warped views."

A spokesman for the Justice Department confirmed a possible plot had been uncovered on Friday. He said the Prison Service was investigating.

You cannot trust any muslim. Their goal is to take over the world in the name of allah the moon god. They are telling us this. Why does no one listen?

MUSLIM NURSE LEAVES DYING CANCER PATIENT COVERED IN VOMIT

A NURSE who left a cancer patient covered in sick during the last few hours of his life has been kicked out of the profession.

Muhammed Shakeel, 32, failed to provide basic care to patients during an 11-month stint on the Critical Care Unit at The Christie hospital in 2005.

The nurse was struck off the nursing register after the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) found him guilty of misconduct.

NMC chair Anna Robinson said: "The nurse left one of his patients in vomit for two to three hours. We heard that the patient was at the end of his life and his wife was extremely upset by this.

"The nurse was asked at least twice to clean up the patient, but did not do so. This behaviour is totally unacceptable in a nurse.We have heard no evidence of any regret or apology.

"The misconduct was a serious departure from the relevant standards set out in the code of practice. We are sure that there is a continuing risk to patients if he continued to practise. Public confidence in the NMC would be undermined if he was not removed from the register."

Adrianna McDonnell, for the NMC, added: "The patient's wife was highly distressed and approached a hospital doctor following an unsuccessful attempt to liaise with Shakeel regarding the issue.

"The woman was very upset that for the last few hours of her husband's life he had been left covered in vomit."

Responsibility Mrs McDonnell said on one occasion Shakeel refused to complete handover documentation because he felt 'it was not his responsibility to do so'.

She said the nurse would not accept he had inserted a catheter into a patient's vein despite being told what had happened by a doctor.

Shakeel also 'grabbed' a patient's arm and attempted to remove a dressing without his consent.

Shakeel was asked to undergo a period of supervised practice. But problems continued, notably with his communication, record keeping and professionalism.

A spokeswoman for The Christie said: "Mohammed Shakeel qualified with a nursing diploma in Pakistan and was recruited to the High Dependency Unit with appropriate references in January 2005.

"Shortly after induction it became apparent that there were serious concerns regarding his practice and that he was not performing to a standard expected of a qualified nurse.

"He received intensive training, mentorship and considerable supervision by senior nursing staff, yet he failed to make any improvement. His progress was closely monitored under the trust's capability policy and further measures were put into place to address the significant shortfalls in his practice.

"Despite these attempts Mohammed Shakeel made no progress and was dismissed from the trust within a year of recruitment. Following his dismissal his case was referred by the trust to the NMC."

It amazes me how muslims treat people that are non-muslims.

Cinema and theatre contrary to Islam, says Saudi grand mufti

Such activities distract people from their work and prevent them from achieving professional success. Saudi society is increasingly showing signs of strains between a very conservative religious leadership and youth who want greater openness and freedom. In eight days more than 25,000 Saudis attend screening of Saudi-made comedy.

Riyadh (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Cinema and theatre are “against Sharia” because they distract people from work and weaken their efforts in achieving progress, said Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdul Aziz Alu Al Sheikh during a conference on leisure, visual arts and literature attended by students at King Saud University.

“Theatrical performance, whether it is a cinema or a song, would generally make an impression that is against Sharia. People need only those (art forms) that are useful to them to change their way of life (in an Islamic manner),” he decreed.

Last year the Grand Mufti issued an edict, in which he slammed Turkish soap operas like ‘Nour’ and ‘The Last Years,’ the hottest shows on Arab TV, describing them as “so much evil” that “they destroy people's ethics and are against our values.”

The mufti’s pronouncements are however a sign that Saudi society is increasingly split between a ruling establishment made up of very conservative clerics who espoused strict adherence to Islamic precepts and a broader group of more liberal-oriented young Saudis who want greater openness, more freedom for women and a greater range of entertainment.

Like young people across the Middle East young Saudis routinely go online which gives them access to US action movies, but they cannot go to the movies, an issue that is still taboo.

Yet the recent screening of a Saudi comedy, ‘Menahi’, in two movie theatres twice a day for eight days—with women dutifully seated in the balcony, and men in the stalls—was cheered by many Saudis.

“We put sound and visual equipment, we sold tickets for the first time in Saudi Arabia, and we even sold popcorn,” said Ayman Halawani, general manager of Rotana Studios, the production arm of a company owned by Waleed bin Talal, a financier and member of the royal family, who has become the target of ultra-conservatives for his liberal ideas and investments in the TV and show business.

Overall some 25,000 people actually saw the film.

Such desire for openness is in contrast with what the ruling class wants for Saudi society. For the old guard any overture to customs and traditions that are not strictly Islamic is a threat that must be opposed.

In his address to students at King Saud University, the grand mufti warned against playing chess because it “causes a man to lose his wealth and waste his time.”

Conversely “photography is one of the necessities of life” because it helps in “lectures, [. . .] religious activities [. . .] while maintaining public security.”

“Only the photography of sculptures and models is prohibited,” he said.

Remuneration for poets who attend festivals and cultural events is permissible if their words are good, faultless, without “abusive words or references.”

Finally, the mufti urged students to stay away from cigarettes and avoid reckless driving, especially at night or early morning.

This is amazing. How are the youth going to take control of this country? Wouldn't it be great to not have to deal with the crazy muslims elders and be able to work with the youth of the middle east?

TTP bars women from Malakand shopping centres

MINGORA: The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Sunday announced a ban on women’s entry in shopping centres in Malakand, warning of strict action against those who violated the order.

However, women can visit bazaars if a male member of family accompanies them.

The TTP in Malakand left pamphlets at the Malakand Press Club in which its spokesman Mulla Ali warned women to stop visiting shopping centres alone.

The Taliban also asked shop owners to put up banners that informed the women of the announcement. The pamphlets also warned people in the computer and mobile ring tone businesses to stop their un-Islamic practices. The Taliban also warned the government to close family planning centres in Malakand and issued directives to the Batkhela Hospital medical superintendent to hire female technicians for ECG and female doctors for ultrasound.

Meanwhile, Swat TTP spokesman Muslim Khan said that there was no ban on administration of polio drops in Swat.

You see how much they love the seventh century? They want to live in it.

Will Iraq start executing gays???

Ground Zero for the so-called 'war on terror' is a nation where gays and lesbians live in real terror every day. Among the suffering of gay Iraqis is the regular threat (and carrying out) of rape and murder. In July, CNN reported on the case of a young gay man abducted for ransom and raped daily for more than two weeks.

More than 100 prisoners in Iraq are facing execution. Many of them, says an underground gay rights organization in the country, are believed to have been convicted of the 'crime' of being gay, the UK-based Iraqi-LGBT group revealed this afternoon.

According to Ali Hili of Iraqi-LGBT, the Iraqi authorities plan to start executing them in batches of 20 from this week. There is, said Hili, at least one member of Iraqi-LGBT who are among those to be put to death.

And the London-based group, which believes that a total of 128 executions are imminent, is calling on the UK Government, international human rights groups and the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva to intervene "with due speed" to prevent "this tragic miscarriage of justice" from going ahead.

"We have information and reports on members of our community whom been arrested and waiting for execution for the crimes of homosexuality," Mr Hili told UK Gay News

China cracks down on jihad in Muslim Western China

Closing Islamic schools and conducting house-to-house searches. The ChiComs, of course, are ruthless against dissent. Their regime is abhorrent in it authoritarianism and brutality, and certainly Western governments should not imitate it in that. At the same time, China is not hamstrung by politically correct niceties preventing it from even recognizing that Islam has a political character -- and one that threatens Chinese government and society. If the West could even go so far as to recognize that political Islam does indeed constitute a societal threat, a threat to Western free societies, a great deal would have been accomplished.

BEIJING (AP) — An overseas rights activist said Monday that authorities in China's predominantly Muslim far west are closing unregistered Islamic schools and conducting house-to-house searches in a new security crackdown in the restive region.

The campaign under way for five weeks in the city of Hotan underscores Beijing's persisting concerns about separatist movements in its Central Asian border province of Xinjiang.

While anti-government protests and a security clampdown in Tibetan areas have grabbed attention over the past year, China has also been battling unrest in Xinjiang, with a flare-up in violence last year that killed 33 people. Like the Tibetans, many of Xinjiang's ethnic minority Uighurs have chafed under Beijing's rule and restrictions on the practice of religion....

A congress spokesman, Dilxat Raxit, said in an e-mail that armed police were making nighttime raids from house to house. At least seven religious schools have been shut and 39 people arrested so far, Raxit said.

The official Xinhua News Agency earlier this month reported that Hotan authorities had launched a campaign against "illegal religious activity" at the end of February and "had already achieved some initial success."

"Officials uncovered some illegal religious activities, seized a large number of illegal books, handwritten materials, computer discs, audio tapes and other propaganda materials as well as bullets, fuses, explosive and flammable materials, and other weaponry," it said.

A secretary with Hotan's Communist Party Propaganda Department on Monday denied that any religious schools were closed, people arrested or bullets, explosives and other materials seized. But he confirmed that some illegal religious activity has been halted and illegal books, writings, computer discs and audio tapes had been confiscated....

It is about time that a Country took a stand against the global jihad. The West needs to take lessons. The so called religion of Old Mo needs to be outlawed and destroyed. It is the most dangerous thing in the world right now. I still find it hard to believe that we have to worry about a religious war in the twenty first century. Time for the Crusaders to be let loose.

Turkey: Male relatives tell women, "You have dishonoured your family, please kill yourself so we don't go to jail"

When Elif's father told her she had to kill herself in order to spare him from a prison sentence for her murder, she considered it long and hard. "I loved my father so much, I was ready to commit suicide for him even though I hadn't done anything wrong," the 18-year-old said. "But I just couldn't go through with it. I love life too much."

All Elif had done was simply decline the offer of an arranged marriage with an older man, telling her parents she wanted to continue her education. That act of disobedience was seen as bringing dishonour on her whole family – a crime punishable by death. "I managed to escape. When I was at school, a few girls I knew were killed by their families in the name of honour – one of them for simply receiving a text message from a boy," Elif said.

So-called "honour killings" in Turkey have reached record levels. According to government figures, there are more than 200 a year – half of all the murders committed in the country. Now, in a sinister twist, comes the emergence of "honour suicides". The growing phenomenon has been linked to reforms to Turkey's penal code in 2005. That introduced mandatory life sentences for honour killers, whereas in the past, killers could receive a reduced sentence claiming provocation. Soon after the law was passed, the numbers of female suicides started to rocket.

By the way, islam has nothing to do with this, sure.