Posts Tagged ‘islam’

West vs East Men vs Woman

Posted: January 23, 2011 by datechguy in culture
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A person my age or older would be familiar with the term “Shotgun Wedding”. The idea being that a man who got a girl pregnant would be forced by the father of the girl, Shotgun in hand to the altar for the wedding. That line of thinking is in keeping with the idea Stacy McCain advanced about the the economics of love. Roxeanne DeLuca in comments also advanced this very Judeao-Christian idea:

These days, men think there’s just women you sleep with, that’s it. And pardon me if I think that, as a WOMAN, I should have the grounds to say, “If this isn’t emotional for you, if you could do this with any woman, or any woman with the right equipment and the right attitude, then I don’t want it from you.”

As it is, though, we’re expected to act like prostitutes, without the benefits and without the emotional reserve. When sexually loose women are “nice girls”, or tell you that they are, men WILL expect ALL nice women to be sexually loose.

The 60’s revolution ended this bigtime and some are still paying the price but there is one thing about this way of thinking that needs to be pointed out.

The entire idea of the shotgun wedding or the threat of the shotgun wedding is to protect the women and restrain the man. The idea being the man might think twice before trying to be a player if he know that it means he will have to follow through.

In this age of contraception and abortion those restraints are gone and the feminists of the left cheer this abandonment of the traditional Judeao-Christian meme as a triumph for women no matter the result.

There is however another side of the coin that the feminist left isn’t too loud in condemning.

Afshan Azad, 21, who played Padma Patil, a classmate of the teenage wizard, in the blockbuster Hollywood films based on JK Rowling’s children’s books, feared for her life during the three-hour ordeal, Manchester Crown Court heard.

She was punched, dragged around by her hair and strangled by her brother Ashraf Azad, 28, who threatened to kill her after he caught her talking on the phone to her Hindu boyfriend on May 21 last year, the court was told.

During the row at the family home in Longsight, Manchester, which also involved her mother and father, she was branded a ”slag” and a ”prostitute” and told: ”Marry a Muslim or you die!”

Note the cultural difference here. The threats are not against the man, they are against the woman. The threat of violence is not against the man for the advances, it is against the woman. Either way the Judge hearing the case decided to make a statement about violence against women:

Judge Thomas added: ”This is a sentence that is designed to punish you for what you did and also to send out a clear message to others that domestic violence involving circumstances such as have arisen here cannot be tolerated.”

And so he sentenced the guy to….for six months after he pleaded guilty to the assault.

As Cubachi points out:

This is attempted murder, and he’s only getting six months? Azad’s case is well known throughout the world due to her celebrity status, however, this is occurring to young Muslim girls throughout the world who are deemed too “Westernized” or a betrayer to Islam.

Some on the right have highlighted this kind of thing, the left…not so much. Why the difference in reaction to the Judeao-Christian cultural norm and not the Islamic one? Why is one a sign of repressive patriarchy and the other just a cultural difference and any objection Islamaphobia?

It’s a good question and I’d love to hear the answer.

Sudan and Tunisa two changes in government

Posted: January 17, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
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The referendum in Sudan is over and the vote is independence:

International observers gave south Sudan’s independence referendum their seal of approval on Monday and said a vote for secession was now “virtually certain” in their first official judgment on the poll.

Early results from last week’s plebiscite suggest people from Sudan’s oil-producing south overwhelming voted to split away from the north after decades of civil war.

Might be a tad premature to say independence but this is now the best shot for the Christians in Southern Sudan to enjoy a modicum of peace.

If they manage to pull it off I would not be surprised to see Christians who are being slain elsewhere on the continent to head in that direction.

Meanwhile in Tunisia although there is violence Michael Totten thinks there is a real shot for shot for Democracy:

Unlike in war-torn Afghanistan or fanatical Saudi Arabia, Tunisian democracy is a real possibility. It’s a bit unlikely as it’s only one possible option of many, but it could happen. Mebazaa himself is now promising, perhaps even sincerely, “a better political life which will include democracy, plurality and active participation for all the children of Tunis.”

I’ve spent time in more than a dozen Muslim countries, eight of them Arab, and Tunisia is — or at least was before this month when things fell apart — one of the most advanced and stable. The majority of its citizens belong to a well-educated middle class, the infrastructure seems no worse than Europe’s, and a high percentage of women in the cities have discarded the veil and the headscarf and dress like Europeans. The latter may sound like a small thing, but in a Muslim country, it visually indicates how much women’s rights have advanced. The overwhelming majority live near the coast in cosmopolitan cities that have traded and been in cultural contact with Europeans for millennia. It’s not a Western country, but it fully belongs to the Mediterranean region and is oriented more toward the West than most Arab countries.

Beirut was once a cosmopolitanism place too. This will be a real test, can an Islamic country when removing a dictator create a state that has freedoms that other Islamic states avoid, or will it become a place where Sharia is either officially or unofficially enforced?

These two stories are going to tell us an awful lot. Let’s make sure we pay attention.

Sad to say they sound alike

Posted: January 10, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news
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I took an unexpectedly long nap and ended up awake at midnight, looking around the net I saw this via Lisa Graas:

Is it just me, or is there an incredible lack of reason on the Left?

Incidentally, the way I found out about the shooting was through an avalanche of tweets calling Sarah Palin a ‘murderer’. I was even called a murderer for asking people not to point fingers of blame. There is certainly ‘vitriol’…..but it’s not coming from the direction the Left claims.

For two days I’ve been seeing people hurling the vilest accusations at the Tea party in general and Sarah Palin in particular without any factual basis. And if that isn’t enough everyone’s favorite Democratic Pastor Fred Phelps plans on jumping into the fray..

Phelps praises Loughner’s violent acts in this video, where he announces he will be taking his sick protest to the funerals of the victims of the Arizona shooting spree. He also refers to Loughner as an Afghanistan war veteran, even though initial reports of Loughner being a veteran turned out to be false.

It’s pretty bad, almost as bad as this reaction to the murder of another poll half a world away:

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Pakistan’s largest city on Sunday to oppose any change to national blasphemy laws and to praise a man charged with murdering a provincial governor who had campaigned against the divisive legislation.

The rally of up to 50,000 people in downtown Karachi was one of the largest demonstrations of support for the laws, which make insulting Islam a capital offense. It was organized before the governor of Punjab province, Salman Taseer, was shot dead on Tuesday in Islamabad by a bodyguard who told a court he considered Taseer a blasphemer.

Muslim groups have praised the bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, and have used Taseer’s death to warn others not to speak out against the much-derided laws.

Now what does a group of religions fanatics Pious Muslims marching have to do with the left?

Simply this. The Governor of Punjab by challenging his fellow Muslim’s belief was a threat to their mind-set. It’s much easier to eliminate people who challenge your religious beliefs than to defend those beliefs, much less thinking involved.

When I look at the left willing to blame Sarah Palin, Andrew Breitbart, the Tea Party and even Lisa Graas for inciting violence while both using violent rhetoric and ignoring their own violent rhetoric in the past the pieces fit together.

The left secular political beliefs have essentially morphed into a religion. The right feelings and opinions are the sacraments (much easier than having to follow actual commandments like traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs) if you have them you are considered righteous.

Conversely if you don’t share those beliefs you are outside, you are the devil and evil, and since you are evil any level of vitriolic rhetoric or action is permissible. Rather than praying for your enemies as Christianity commands one can hate them openly and feel good about it.

This is why above all Sarah Palin is their Anti-Christ. She symbolizes all that they hate, she is a person of action who lives her beliefs and does so publicly and unabashedly. She is a reminder of a reality that their religion needs to suppress. Screwtape 13 had it pegged:

The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method—by making him a kind of Childe Harold or Werther submerged in self-pity for imaginary distresses—you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem.
But you were trying to damn your patient by the World, that is by palming off vanity, bustle, irony, and expensive tedium as pleasures. How can you have
failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? Didn’t you foresee that it would just kill by contrast all the trumpery which you have been so laboriously teaching him to value?

This is why the right in general and Sarah Palin in particular must be attacked here. Every moment that she is not brings the possibility that realization might strike, that the superficial might be replaced by a foundation in reality and that reality is anathema to all that has come before.

Today Elizabeth Scalia asks the question what is wrong with the world. Chesterton’s spectacular Catholic Answer was “I am” and thus stove to change and improve himself. A great example to all Christians in general and Catholics in particular but self-realization is a tough and painful process and many don’t want to face it. Much easier to carry on confident in one perfection.

Until those on the left can come to Chesterton’s answer and work to correct it we will see more of the same. Remember screwtapes final warning:

The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilizing the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel,

Now THAT’S peacful Islam

Posted: January 8, 2011 by datechguy in middle east, opinion/news
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As you know we go long on the dangers of radical Islam on this blog. It’s a serious threat that we ignore at our peril.

That being said it is just as important to note positive signs and this certainly qualifies

After a New Year’s Eve attack against Coptic Christian Churches in Egypt, there was some concern that this week’s celebration of Christmas by Egypt’s oldest Christian community (which follows the same calender as the Orthodox Church) would lead to more attacks. Which is why many Egyptian Muslims decided to show up at Coptic Churches last night

And why did they show up? To keep their word and to show unity:

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

And unlike the “shields” of the left who show up when there is little danger (such as those trying to protect Saddam) these people actually put their lives on the line since Al Qaeda has shown no compunction when it comes to killing their fellow Muslims in the past. This is true courage and should be applauded.

The importance of this can’t be overestimated as Jawa reports explains:

Remember the Coptic Christians suffer, but the group who suffers the most from al-Qaeda’s murderous acts are Muslims. So the Copts and the Muslims both risk death by disagreeing with al-Qaeda.

Exactly right. It seems to me that a lot of people are being played by Al-Qaeda in the same way. When you see story after story like this it is a wonderful thing to see signs of hope. May there be more.

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