Pakistan: Proposed law to improve women's rights causes "uproar"

"The proposal has prompted widespread opposition in the Islamic world."

And why is that? After all, isn't Islam and Islamic law supposed to "elevate" women? The problem is, that "elevation" is not established by standards outside of Islam, where there can be no higher "elevation" than to act in lockstep with Allah's will. Hence, anything beyond what is spelled out in the Qur'an and Sunnah is liable to be denounced as bida, or innovation. Thus, attempts to increase women's rights in society beyond that will not be seen as generous, but dangerous, and sharia will remain the chief obstacle to improving the condition of women wherever it is the basis for a society's laws.
There's an uproar over proposals by the council for Islamic ideology (CII), to reform Islamic law concerning the family, in order to provide greater rights for women in the case of divorce. Current law recognizes divorce declared "verbally" by the husband, in private, and grants few economic rights to the wife.
The CII (a significant constitutional group with a legal consulting role in parliament and the government, set up in 1962) is also proposing that the wife should be able to ask for a divorce, in writing, with an obligation for the husband to accept the request within 90 days. After this period of time, the marriage would be dissolved anyway, unless the woman withdrew the request. It is also advised that women should declare their property at the time of their marriage, because after divorce many husbands strip their wives of their own property.
Asma Jahangir, president of the Pakistani commission for human rights, explains to AsiaNews that, in any case, women have a legal right to divorce, but the real problem is that often the husband does not provide any economic support for her or her children. She recalls that many husbands throw their wives and children out of the house, without even divorcing or giving them anything.
Muslim lawyer Hifza Aziz adds that today, the man can remarry without even telling his new wife about his previous divorce.
The proposal has prompted widespread opposition in the Islamic world, and the mufti Munibor Rehman, a prominent religious leader, accuses the CII of "wanting to invent a new sharia" and "to create anarchy and chaos in the country."
Hanif Jalandhry, secretary general of the alliance of organizations of Islamic schools, accuses the CII of "exceeding its constitutional role, with the proposal to introduce non-Islamic reforms into the law." Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, president of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Sami, says that the council "is sowing confusion among the people, with mistaken interpretations of sharia."
These accusations are rejected by S.M. Zafar, president of the Pakistani society for human rights, who reiterates that "the right of the woman to ask for a divorce is already practiced under the principle of the Khula, and the CII only wants to formalize this practice."
The CII is not withdrawing the proposed law, which will be examined by parliament. On November 18, Hamid Saeed Kazmi told the national assembly that the government "does not support" these proposals, which are being advanced by the CII on its own initiative. The minister for law and justice, Farooq H. Naek, has specified that parliament will not approve a law that is in contrast with the holy Qur'an and the Sunnah.
Another controversial point is the CII's proposal to allow women to make the pilgrimage of the Hajj (which Muslims must make at least once in their lives) without a Mahram ("guardian"), in respect of the constitutional right to travel without restrictions.

Michael (Mikaeel) Jackson converts to Islam

He was feeling "a bit down." So he decided to convert to the "funnest" religion in the world -- you know, the one that bans -- and whips people for -- dancing. "Michael Jackson 'becomes a Muslim and changes name to Mikaeel,'"

Beleaguered pop star Michael Jackson has converted to Islam and changed his name to Mikaeel, it has been claimed today.
The 50-year-old singer, who has previously been photographed wearing a traditional Arab women's veil, reportedly became a Muslim in a ceremony at a friend's house in Los Angeles.
The singer, who was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, is said to have sat on the floor and worn a small hat while an imam officiated at the home of Steve Porcaro, who composed music on his Thriller album.
He is said to have been encouraged by Canadian songwriter David Wharnsby and Phillip Bubal, a producer, who both approached him after he appeared 'a bit down'.
A source told The Sun: 'They began talking to him about their beliefs, and how they thought they had become better people after they converted. Michael soon began warming to the idea.
'An imam was summoned from the mosque and Michael went through the shahada, which is the Muslim declaration of belief.'[...]
Meanwhile, Jackson is scheduled to give evidence in person at London's High Court to defend allegations that he owes an Arab sheikh £4.7 million.

Rocket Hits Israeli City, Gaza Still Sealed

JERUSALEM – Palestinians fired a rocket at an Israeli city near the Gaza Strip on Friday but caused no casualties, police said, as the Israeli military continued its closure of all crossings into the coastal territory because of ongoing rocket fire.
Early Friday's rocket landed in an industrial zone in Ashkelon, about 11 miles inside Israel, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Israel allowed a trickle of key supplies into Gaza during a five-month truce with Gaza's Hamas rulers, then shut the crossings after the truce began breaking down Nov. 4 in a flurry of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes.

Israel maintains Gaza closure despite humanitarian concerns is how this is portrayed. It is the bad Israelis that are oppressing the good "palastinians."

Thousands of Jordanians protest Israeli Gaza blockade.
Thousands of people took to the streets of the Jordanian capital on Friday to protest Israel's blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
More than 3,000 demonstrators marched in the streets of the Al-Wihdat Palestinian refugee camp in Amman and torched US and Israeli flags, organisers said.
Chanting pro-Hamas slogans, the protesters carried banners reading, "Yes for resistance" and "End the Zionist occupation of Palestine."
"We can't be silent anymore about what happens in Gaza," Hamazah Mansur, head of the Islamic Action Front's six-member parliamentary bloc, told AFP.
"If the situation in Gaza develops, Arab rulers should expect an earthquake that would shake their countries and their regimes."
Israel has imposed sanctions on Gaza since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power last year in the impoverished territory of 1.5 million residents.
The one-hour protest was organised by the IAF, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, which held a similar protest on Wednesday.
The IAF said earlier this month it was planning a trip to the Gaza Strip from the southern Red Sea port of Aqaba in a bid to break an Israeli blockade.
Jordan and Israel are bound by a 1994 peace treaty.

Australia: Report finds imams sanctioning marital rape, domestic violence, welfare fraud

Islamic Apologetics Rule #7734: Anytime Islamic practices garner bad publicity (child marriage, domestic violence, etc.), they must be blamed on "culture."

SOME Muslim religious leaders in Victoria are condoning rape within marriage, domestic violence, polygamy, welfare fraud and exploitation of women, according to an explosive report on the training of imams.
The report says some imams apply Sharia (Islamic law) when it benefits men but not when it benefits women, and that they hinder police from pursuing domestic violence charges.
Women seeking divorces have also been told by imams that they must leave "with only the clothes on their back" and not seek support or a share of property because they can get welfare payments.
And the report says some imams knowingly perform polygamous marriages, also knowing that the second wife, a de facto under Australian law, can claim Centrelink payments.
The report is based on a study commissioned and funded by the former Howard government and conducted by the Islamic Women's Welfare Council of Victoria.
It was presented yesterday at a National Centre for Excellence in Islamic Studies conference at Melbourne University.
It is the result of extensive community consultation, interviews with police, lawyers, court workers and academics, and meetings with and questions to the Victorian Board of Imams.
The board's role is to provide an Islamic view and religious guidance to the community and represent it to the media. The report claims that the 24-man board ignored or did not directly answer many of the questions.
It says women, community and legal workers and police involved in the consultation were particularly concerned about domestic violence, and suggested that imams aimed to preserve the family at the cost of women.
When cases came to court they were often dropped after family and community elders pressured women to withdraw charges.
The report says some women who were legally separated but not religiously divorced had their husbands enter their houses, demand sexual intercourse and take it by force.
"Workers who have assisted women in this situation said that the advice women received from the imams was that it was "halal" — permitted — because there was a valid "nikah" — marriage," it says.
The report also cites sexual assault allegations connected with under-age marriages.
It says polygamy is steadily increasing and gaining acceptance among Melbourne Muslims, and Shepparton police report many "de facto" relationships that are really polygamous marriages. [...]

And Islamic law is never to blame:

Community members quoted in the report believe that imams' narrow religious training in an increasingly complex world, lack of life experience, poor English and lack of understanding of Australia create problems for the community. For example, ill-informed comment by imams drew a wedge between the mainstream and Muslim communities.
The report suggests the Muslim community believes many imams are ill-equipped for the role, which involves much higher expectations in Australia than in predominantly Muslim countries, including marriage counselling, pastoral and spiritual care, marriages and divorces.
"They come from their own little village and culture and say this is what Islam is," one woman is quoted saying. "They come from a village where there is no running water and electricity, and they bring their dark ideas into this country."

Meanwhile, one imam is shocked -- shocked!

The secretary of the Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi Naji El-Imam, said he could not understand how the council could write such a report and denied the complaints "absolutely".

Britain's sharia courts: "There is no outside monitoring, no protection, no records kept, no guarantee that justice will prevail."

Any attempt at monitoring, protection, record-keeping or other oversight would be immediately seized upon as Islamophobic, racist (though they never say which race), colonialist, and just earth-shatteringly gauche.

LONDON — The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.
But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.
In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.
The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.
This is Islamic justice, British style. Despite a raucous national debate over the limits of religious tolerance and the pre-eminence of British law, the tenets of Shariah, or Islamic law, are increasingly being applied to everyday life in cities across the country.
The Church of England has its own ecclesiastical courts. British Jews have had their own “beth din” courts for more than a century.

That comparison is common, but shallow. Neither the Anglican nor Jewish systems compare to the total legal and political system that sharia is. As such, there is no assurance of how much sharia will ever be "enough" sharia, short of the whole package.

But ever since the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, called in February for aspects of Islamic Shariah to be embraced alongside the traditional legal system, the government has been grappling with a public furor over the issue, assuaging critics while trying to reassure a wary and at times disaffected Muslim population that its traditions have a place in British society.
Boxed between the two, the government has taken a stance both cautious and confusing, a sign of how volatile almost any discussion of the role of Britain’s nearly two million Muslims can become.
“There is nothing whatever in English law that prevents people abiding by Shariah principles if they wish to, provided they do not come into conflict with English law,” the justice minister, Jack Straw, said last month. But he added that British law would “always remain supreme,” and that “regardless of religious belief, we are all equal before the law.”

Practically speaking, that's a moot point when the "alternative" enshrines inequality before the law, and people choose it (or are made to submit to it) in place of British law and its guarantees.

Conservatives and liberals alike — many of them unaware that the Islamic courts had been functioning at all, much less for years — have repeatedly denounced the courts as poor substitutes for British jurisprudence.
They argue that the Islamic tribunals’ proceedings are secretive, with no accountability and no standards for judges’ training or decisions.
Critics also point to cases of domestic violence in which Islamic scholars have tried to keep marriages together by ordering husbands to take classes in anger management, leaving the wives so intimidated that they have withdrawn their complaints from the police.
“They’re hostages to fortune,” said Parvin Ali, founding director of the Fatima Women’s Network, a women’s help group based in Leicester. Speaking of the courts, she said, “There is no outside monitoring, no protection, no records kept, no guarantee that justice will prevail.” [...]

1,300-year-old Islamic note may solve mystery

Some 1300 year old grafitti could change how the muslim world looks at the koran, the terrorist traing manual. A photo of an inscription etched by an Arabic traveler. The traveler engraved his name on the block of red sandstone over 1,300 years ago in a location northwest of Saudi Arabia.

An Arabic traveler who engraved his name on a block of red sandstone over 1,300 years ago may help solve a question about the Qur'an that has vexed historians for hundreds of years: Why was the text seemingly written without diacritical marks?
Diacritical marks, which include accent marks, tildes, umlauts and other notations, help to distinguish one letter from another and aid in pronunciation. When added or removed, they can completely change the meaning of a word or sentence.

According to researcher Ali ibn Ibrahim Ghabban, who, with his wife, discovered the 644 A.D. inscription northwest of Saudi Arabia, "It is an immensely important find, since it is our earliest dated Arabic inscription."
Ghabban, a member of the Supreme Commission for Tourism, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, added that it also "shows evidence of a fully-fledged system of diacritical marks."

"Whether the Qur'an was originally written in a script that contained diacritical marks is very important because Western Qur'an scholars generally say that it wasn't and therefore feel free to make some amendments to the Qur'anic text by changing the diacritical marks to give it a different meaning, which is, of course, very unpopular with modern Muslim scholars and Muslims in general, who mostly feel that the Qur'anic text they use is the original text revealed to Muhammad by God," he said.

Although the earliest Islamic inscription, which is also the world's second oldest evidence for written Arabic, does not include punctuation or vowel marks, it does contain markings to distinguish consonants that are identical in shape. This proves such a marking system was already in place before the earliest known copies of the Qur'an, which date to sometime between 652 and 680 A.D., Hoyland indicated.

Ghabban now believes Muhammad's close associates and early followers "stripped Qur'ans of diacritical marks" in order to permit "Muslims to read the Qur'an as it was revealed to Muhammad in the various dialects of the Arabs, and allowing the skeleton of the word to bear all the meanings which appear in it."

Without diacritical marks, for example, a sentence such as, "I took with my whole hands," can also be interpreted as, "I took with my fingertips."

Illinois Muslim student pleads not guilty to fabricating hate-crime hoax

Pious hoaxer? No, lying lier, muslim.

Safia Jilani Update: she is charged with fabricating a hate crime in which a man hit her on the head and scrawled a hate message against Muslims on a nearby bathroom mirror. The entire campus united behind her; Muslim students were offered escorts to and from classes; and all of Elmhurst College was afroth with righteous indignation against the haters. The only problem is that it looks as if Safia Jilani made it all up -- and now the poor thing is "in treatment." It wouldn't be surprising if she suddenly came down with a mental illness, a la Aafia Siddiqui.

A Muslim student who allegedly made a false claim that a masked man attacked her after he wrote anti- Islamic slurs in a women's restroom at Elmhurst College pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge of disorderly conduct. Safia Jilani, 19, made no public comment.
Outside the DuPage County courtroom, her attorney, Terry Ekl, said "she is in treatment, and I hope the public wouldn't judge her until all the facts are known."
He declined to specify the type of treatment.

The followers of Old Mo love to be the victims. It plays on our political correctness. She was assumed to be the victim. Instead she is the perpetrator of a crime. She is conveniently mentally ill or something like that. But then again ALL MUSLIMS ARE MENTAL.

Islam VS Judaism

In 2007 Islam and Judaism's holiest holidays overlapped for 10 days.Muslims racked up 397 dead bodies in 94 terror attacks across 10 countries during this time... while Jews worked on their 159th Nobel Prize.

Acid Attack Part 2

This Afghan girl says she is determined to resume her studies despite being disfigured with acid by Islamic fundamentalists. Unfortunately for her, religion is first priority in Islam - even in the West, where most Muslims adamantly oppose the effort to keep the Taliban from control.

Taliban murders mullah critical of suicide operations

The mullah probably had the most recent attack in mind, where the vast majority killed or injured were fellow Afghanis (8 killed, over 70 injured); one US soldier died.
"Taliban kill mullah critical of suicide attacks," from the AP, November 14 (thanks to Dionysios):
KABUL, Afghanistan - Suspected Taliban militants killed a religious leader in western Afghanistan after he criticized the use of suicide attacks as a weapon of war in the country, an Afghan official said Friday.
Militants kidnapped Shamsudin Agha in Farah province's Anar Dara district on Tuesday, days after he led prayers condemning the practice of using suicide attacks, said provincial police Chief Abdul Ghafar Watandar.
Suicide attacks are one of the Taliban's preferred tactics in their assaults against Afghan and foreign troops. Most of the victims of such attacks have been civilians.
Authorities recovered Agha's body on Wednesday night, Watandar said.
Violence by the Taliban and other insurgent groups has spiked this year to record levels. Attacks are up 30 percent from 2007, military officials say...

The price of trying to get an education

Girl sprayed in face with acid: "I will go to my school if they [Taliban] kill me"

KABUL: An Afghan teenager whose face was burned in an acid attack by suspected extremists vowed from her hospital bed yesterday to continue going to school even if it put her life in danger.
Men on motorbikes used a water pistol to spray acid into the faces of Shamsia and around dozen other girls as they arrived at school wearing all-covering burqas in Kandahar on Wednesday.
Shamsia, 17, was the most badly wounded and had some acid enter her eyes. She was transferred to a military hospital in Kabul where she was visited yesterday by other schoolgirls, accompanied by media.
"I will go to my school if they kill me," she told reporters. "My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies."
It is not clear who carried out the attack which President Hamid Karzai and other officials blamed on the "enemies of Afghanistan" - a broad term that most often refers to extremist Taliban insurgents.
However a Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said by telephone his group would "never do such a cowardly thing against girls and children".

They only threaten to "do such a cowardly thing against girls and children"; but surely they would never really act on such threats??

The conservative Islamic 1996-2001 Taliban regime stopped girls from going to school. The education sector has since become among the main targets of a wave of unrest linked to an insurgency led by the hardliners.
This year around 115 schools have been set on fire, bombed or bulldozed in attacks education ministry spokesman Hamed Elmi blamed on "the opposition".
About 120 people in the education sector have been killed in attacks, he said.
Security fears have caused more than 640 schools to close, most of them in volatile districts in the south and east of the country, Elmi said.

Palestinian human rights activists wait on a bus.

This is what human rights activists look like in Gaza. Notice the tools of their trade, masks, AK-47s, and fatigues. Notice the beautiful neighborhood that the muslims have created for themselves. This is what any part of the West will look like if the muslims continue to be allowed to spread throughout the West.

Offensive-to-Islam decals prevent veteran from visiting grave of military son

Here's one of those "offensive" decals that have caused U.S. officials to ban a Vietnam vet from visiting the grave of his fallen son -- who died in the al-Qaeda U.S.S. Cole bomb attack of 2000.

UK: Muslim man strangles, stabs, and slits throat of "petite" 19 year-old Catholic girl

He deemed her "sexually provocative"

Also, she, a non-Muslim -- Catholic no less -- was dating his Muslim roommate. "Muslim killed Catholic girl in love with flatmate."

A TEENAGER was brutally murdered by her boyfriend's Muslim flatmate because he did not approve of him going out with a Catholic.
Lidia Motylska, 19, was strangled in an alleyway in Leeds by Iraqi immigrant Abobakir Jabari who objected to his Kurdish flatmate's relationship with her.
Yesterday Jabari, 39, who was given British citizenship in 2005, pleaded guilty at Sheffield Crown Court to murdering the petite Polish teenager.
The court heard he garrotted her from behind, using the cord from his tracksuit bottoms, before inflicting "gratuitous" wounds on her lifeless body. He stabbed her repeatedly in the chest and stomach and slit her throat.
Sentencing Jabari to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 19-and-a-half years, Mr Justice McKinnon said the murder involved an exceptional degree of violence.
"There is a suspicion that you lured this young woman to her death and marked your disapproval of her and her relationship by gratuitous violence upon her," he said.
The court heard that Jabari grew up in Iraq and was conscripted to the Iraqi army but then deserted. He became involved with the Communist party and later helped opponents of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime flee to Syria.
He came to England in 1999 with his then wife, but they separated in 2003 and he went on to gain British citizenship.
In July 2004 he began working at Symphony Kitchens in Gelderd Lane, Leeds.
Through his work, he met both Miss Motylska and Ajeen Jabaridia, a fellow Kurdish Iraqi who moved in with him at a flat in Oatland Heights in the Little London area of the city.
But he was to become increasingly hostile when the pair became romantically involved.
Prosecuting, Simon Myerson QC said: "He disliked the fact that his Kurdish friend was going out with a Polish Catholic.
"He did not like Lidia to sleep at their flat. He disapproved of Lidia's behaviour in public and thought it seemed sexually provocative."
He went on: "He told her that Ajeen should not be seeing her because she was a Polish and Catholic girl."
Miss Motylska, who lived with her mother Renata in Beeston, Leeds, thought she might be pregnant with Mr Jabaridia's child, the court heard, though this turned out not to be the case.
On the evening of the murder in October last year, she had arranged to meet Jabari and got off a bus near his home at 6.45pm.
Ten minutes later, two passers-by called 999, reporting that they had seen a woman on the ground in an alleyway in Lincoln Green, with a man sitting over her "grunting" and holding her around the neck.
When police arrived at 7pm, the teenager was dead, with deep stab wounds and her throat slit "from ear to ear".
The judge said one explanation for the slash injuries to her abdomen could have been an "expression of disapproval at her pregnancy and her relationship".
Immediately after the attack, Jabari set about creating an alibi by inviting friends to his flat to watch Arsenal play Slavia Prague in a Champions League football match.
A keen Arsenal fan, Mr Jabaridia had tried to telephone his girlfriend each time the team scored, but got no reply.
He and Miss Motylska's mother reported the teenager missing the next day.
After the sentencing, Det Supt Bill Shackleton from West Yorkshire Police said: "This was a brutal and calculated murder."
The victim's family were too upset to speak.

Afghanistan: Non-burqa wearing school-girls sprayed with acid

Three Afghan schoolgirls suffered serious burns when attackers sprayed acid in their faces as they walked to school. Two men riding a motorcycle attacked a group of 15 girls with an acid-filled water pistol in the southern city of Kandahar, leaving six needing hospital treatment, three of them for serious injuries.
A government official said the attackers ripped off the girls' headscarves before the attack and another report said those wearing the full-length burqa to cover themselves had been left untouched.
It is not known who carried out the attack but girls were banned from going to school under the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001.
One 16-year-old victim, who gave her name as Atifa, said: "We were on the way to school when two men on motorbikes stopped next to us.
"One of them threw acid on my sister's face. I tried to help her and then they threw acid on me too.
"We were shouting and people came to see what was going on, then the two men escaped."
A government statement condemned the attack as "un-Islamic", adding the attackers "cannot prevent six million children going to school."

Fatwa bans emoticons

"Emoticons are forbidden because of its imitation to Allah’s creatures whether it is original or mixture or even deformed one and since the picture is the face and the face is what makes the real picture then emoticons which represent faces that express emotions then all that add up to make them Haram."

Another fatwa states the following:

"A woman should not use these images when speaking to a man who is not her mahram, because these faces are used to express how she is feeling, so it is as if she is smiling, laughing, acting shy and so on, and a woman should not do that with a non-mahram man.
It is only permissible for a woman to speak to men in cases of necessity, so long as that is in a public chat room and not in private correspondence."

Vietnam veteran denied right to visit grave of sailor son who was killed in U.S.S. Cole bombing for displaying bumper stickers deemed "offensive" to I

To which one of his lawyers observes: “Our troops are being killed by Islamic terrorists, 9/11 was caused by Islamic terrorists, these terrorists want to destroy America, the Islamic countries persecute Christians, and now the military is victimizing a father whose son was killed by Islamic terrorists while serving our nation.”

Ann Arbor, Nov 13, 2008 / 06:56 am (CNA).- A Marine veteran whose anti-terrorist and anti-Islam vehicle decals hindered him in visiting the grave of his fallen son at Arlington National Cemetery has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the military order which rebuked his display of the decals.
Jesse Nieto, a 25-year Marine veteran, served two combat tours in Vietnam. His youngest son, Marc, was one of the seventeen sailors killed in the terrorist bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in October of 2000.
Since 1994 Nieto has been a civilian employee at the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. In 2001 he began displaying various decals on his vehicle expressing sentiments such as “Remember the Cole, 12 Oct 2000,” “Islam=Terrorism” and “We Died, They Rejoiced.”
On July 31, 2008, two military police officers ticketed Nieto for displaying “offensive material.”
After Nieto refused to remove all allegedly offending decals from his vehicle, the Base Magistrate issued a written order ordering Nieto to remove his vehicle from the base until all decals were removed. The order banned his vehicle from all other federal installations, and reportedly prevented him from driving onto the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.
The Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center filed a federal civil rights lawsuit this week on Nieto’s behalf against the Camp Lejeune Commanding Officer and the Base Magistrate in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The lawsuit claims that the military’s ban on Nieto’s vehicle decals violates his constitutional rights to freedom of speech and the equal protection of the law.
“The banning of these decals is political correctness run amuck in the military,” charged Richard Thompson, President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center. “Our troops are being killed by Islamic terrorists, 9/11 was caused by Islamic terrorists, these terrorists want to destroy America, the Islamic countries persecute Christians, and now the military is victimizing a father whose son was killed by Islamic terrorists while serving our nation.”
Thompson speculated that the Marine command would have to eliminate the Marine’s Hymn because “the phrase ‘to the shores of Tripoli’ celebrates the Marine victory over Islamic forces in the Barbary Coast War and the Battle of Derne.”...

Muslims get last laugh at Swift: Plant must pay $365,000 to Muslims fired for walking off job

MINNEAPOLIS — Under a settlement to a federal lawsuit, up to 100 Somali Muslims who are current or former workers at Gold'n Plump Inc. will receive a total of $365,000.
The settlement was filed in Minneapolis on Friday. It sprang from allegations of religious discrimination at the company's chicken processing plants in Cold Spring and Arcadia, Wis.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed lawsuits against St. Cloud-based Gold'n Plump and the Work Connection Inc., an employment agency in St. Paul, which handled some hiring for the plant.
Under the settlement, Gold'n Plump agreed to pay $215,000 to workers who were terminated for taking prayer breaks.
The Work Connection will pay $150,000 to workers who were asked to sign a form acknowledging that they might be required to handle pork, which many Muslims consider unclean....

So the proposition that Muslims have special privileges in American society, to which others are not privy, is now enshrined in precedent.

Breaking News: Political correctness "hampering battle against extremism" in UK

The EU terror-chief agrees. Meanwhile, the US government is nervous about using words such as mujahid, umma, and caliphate.

Attempts to turn young people away from Islamic extremism are being hampered by politically-correct language, according to a new report.
Ministers last year directed councils to use the terms "anti-Islamic activity" and "community resilience" instead of terrorism and extremism, as part of a drive to win over the Muslim community.
But the rebranding has spread confusion and is preventing local authorities and public bodies from talking openly about the radicalisation of young people.
A report for the Home Office and Department for Communities and Local Government found that public services were not communicating policies "for fear that using more direct language may exacerbate community tensions."
It quoted an unnamed council director as saying: "Switching language from 'extremism' to 'community resilience' causes confusion.
"The key thing is about who the words come from – if they come from a respected religious or community member they will have more impact than if it comes from a government minister."
A council chief executive interviewed in the report said: "People are worried about saying the wrong thing and being labelled as racist."
The Audit Commission and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) report urged the Government to consult local leaders before issuing further directions about how anti-extremism policies should to be communicated.
The report also found that councils and police given more than £6 million to stop young people turning to violent extremism "lacked intelligence" about where to focus resources.
Some 70 councils in England will receive a further £45 million by 2011 as part of the "Prevent" agenda.
The programme is aimed at encouraging Muslims to identify themselves as part of British society, reject extremist ideology and activities, and encourage others to do the same.
The report, Preventing Violent Extremism: Learning And Development, found some police and local authority partnerships "lacked knowledge" about how Prevent schemes should work, and had no means of measuring success or failure.
The Department of Communities said new instructions have been issued to local authorities on improving terror prevention.

"A brilliant and remarkable analysis and exposé of how Western society has succumbed corruptively to intimidation and appeasement and the demands of r

"Robert Spencer has written the definitive book on radical jihadists. It's a brilliant and remarkable analysis and exposé of how Western society has succumbed corruptively to intimidation and appeasement and the demands of radical Islam. This book is a MUST READ for anyone wanting to know the truth about radical Islam's threat to the West and to moderate Muslims." -- Steven Emerson, author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living among Us.

Robert Spencer is a great author. I personally have read many of his books. "The Truth About Muhammad" and "Religion of Peace?" are two of them. Both are well written and very informative.