Thursday, March 31, 2005
Women Leading Prayer - Solve These Issues First
Personally, I wish my hand wringing progressive mates would get a grip and realise the extent of brutalisation that our women are facing. Solve issues like this first.
The Occupation Always Goes One Better Than Sadam - Malnutrition for Kids up to 8%
Its the onward promise of the Occupation to give the Iraqi people more. More tanks , more bombing ,more rape, more pillage, more insecurity and even more dependency on foreign agencies to survive.
Coming soon to a World Bank near you, fresh from the Iraq Achievers club - Paul Wolfowitz - I'm sure he'll achieve similar results at there.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
I'm feeling retrospectively accurate - somethings I said in '03
So I wrote a couple of things - especially on the nature of post war Iraq. Those guys kept putting it up on the Editors choice - which suprised me becuase of how viruntley anti-status quo I was.
So when you follow the link find DirectHex on the page.
Zos Infidels and zere democracy .....
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Date:
{read the article for context please) …Going on from that. You have to remember that the same thing probably will happen now.
The underlying dynamic is the total and abject paranoia about
Why do they have close ties to Iran - mainly because of the sheer number of Iraqi refugees that live in Iran - refugees created by the rebellion of the first US led Gulf War.
It also goes unreported that SICRI have been fighting a low level insurgency against Saddam and the Baath ever since. Its most notable success is allegedly the attempted assassination of Uday Hussien - Saddam's son - which left him crippled and possibly pushed him out of the line of succession. Outside the kurds these guys not only have the numbers of fighters (about 10,0000) but also ground level support.
It is markedly interesting that Al Hakim announced this week that getting rid of Saddam was good but there would be no truck with any occupation.
Failure to engage SICRI is due to Saudi and Israeli terror of
SICRI may be based in
There are signs that maybe the Bush Two crowd are working out that it may not be a good idea to hack of the Shia this time. I notice the repeated assurances by US Military that An-Najaf , Kufa and Kerbala - the centres of Shii religious life and theology- are places to avoid battle.
Its certain that to rebuild
Date:
The First thing to point out is that Shi'ism is very different in character from the Sunni Schools of Islam. Formed in the decades after the Death of Mohammed - the prophet of Islam - over the rights of succession, Shii'ism has its own crystallised form of theology which veers sharply in several important factors from main stream Sunnism.
One of the biggest differences is the concept of religious authority. Shi'sm has a clergy - something not officially present in mainstream sunnism where leaders emerge. Shii'sm ranks and trains Mushtahids (religious lawyers) much like the Inns Of Court in
Ayat. Khomeini's big contribution to all this was to change the clergy from a passive non-interventionist doctrine, to a politically active and politically aware group.
Before Shi'ism had been happy to practice Taqiya( quiescence ) in the matters of state - this meant that rulers were given relatively little trouble as long as the basic rights of Shi'ism were respected.
Khomieni, and Ali Shariati, used the fulcrum event in Shia theology - the martyrdom of Imam Hussien- to argue for active and revolutionary Shi'ism. The logic being that one could not be a muslim cleric without addressing the need to be politically active against forces opposed to Islam.
This is because the Shia believe that Ishtihad ( interpretation of Islamic law) is still possible by the clergy , whereas Sunnism beleives that the door of Ishtihad were closed in the 13th century
Add to this the fact that the Shia Clerics are extremely well organised with structured levels of authority akin to the levels in the judicial structure of any Western state ie. A supreme court judges ruling outweighs a district court.
Therefore it is no surprise that when the organized and brutal force of the ba'ath was broken, the only other organized Iraqi force is able to step in - the Clerics. As the article quoted also makes the important point that most clerics if not all in
The
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Ohh Where did all the progressives go
I haven't been able to access for a while , although I visited briefly, it is a good site. Hope you guys are doing ok.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Sometimes My Modern Brothers drive me up the wall
The reason is that MLK came from a strong baptist tradition of Pastors who were vocally against the opression forced upon them but wedded to the core spiritual beliefs that guided them.
Thier justification for emancipation was the belief that God created all equally and Jesus was the saviour to all ( thier viewpoint not mine). There wasn't clinically anything wrong with Christianity just its application by those around them.
You won't get that with Islam because too many of our intellectuals are busy condemning Islam and saying there is something wrong with the religion itself. You yourself go on about the "dirty little secret" - which is a depressing thing to read to be honest and I could respond with a barrage of White people's writings on Monotheisn in the Arabian peninsular before the advent of Islam - but I can't be bothered to be honest.
You identify the problem yourself. The Progressive school seems to lack the atomic level commitment to core Islamic principles that the Fundis seem to do blind. I'm not saying it isn't there and Progrsseive muslims are not prepared to be tough and follow through on that belief - Dr Wadud is a good example as are many others out there - but it just doesn't seem apparent.
Yep, the cave dwelling monkeys with beards outside need to get out more and learn to read but the real damage is that the "learned" people sit on their backsides
Let me ask you this? Someone like Pym Furtyn , Pat Buchanan , heck even Bernard "I hate muslims" Lewis comes up to you to start a fight. He takes every single aspect of Islam as starts taking it apart. He calls you religion the vestige of a bunch drunk towel heads who happened upon the great civilisations of Byzantium and Selucid Iran and raped them of everything.
What about people like Patricia Crone, and Gerald Hawting (my Islamic History Professor) who says there never was a Mohammed? What about Ignacius Goldzhier who says that the Quran was made up about 300 years after "Mohammed".
What do you do? Start appologising or put him down with your faith and knowledge?
That's the divide. I'm not going to let some half arsed "professor" of some western univerisity event think he's going to have an easy time of dissing my religion.
We bear witness to Madinatul Ilm, and Rehmatul lil Alemeen. We were given perfection - we may have corrupted it - but we were given it. From the dawn of creation itself -and if Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton et al can't hack it - let 'em burn.
Poems In Progress - Choices
I was in the dream state
Caught between tides
Told that I wasn’t to wait
Told to pick sides
They called me to revolution
Said that all I need do was sign
Called it evolution
Told me it was benign
And so shall be blessed those on the right
Blessed are those on the right
Somewhere between passport control
Somewhere between strip and search
Between each duck and roll
And each armoured lurch
I stepped back and away
Left the curios and the mystics
Towers falling spike me when I pray
And knives, and headless kicks
Woe to those on those on the left
Cursed shall be those on the left
Thursday, March 17, 2005
In Memoriam Rachel Corrie
She was protesting against the collective punishment of Palestinian by doing the most giving thing possible - putting her body forward to stop an armoured Israeli bulldozer destroying a family's home. The Israeli bulldozer didn't stop and crushed her. No one has been brought to book for that crime.
Its something worth considering and applying to the wider conflicts that we face. I hope I can remmember her every year , and hope you can too.
What was it Tony said about not being there to pillage Iraq?
"Iraq could soon become "the biggest corruption scandal in history" if its newly elected government does not implement efficient measures to combat institutionalised bribery and fraud, a report warns. The US-led former coalition provisional authority comes under fire in this year's Transparency International study for mishandling the post-war reconstruction process and encouraging corruption to become rife in the management of Iraqi oil revenues and awarding of construction contracts. "The US has been a poor role model in how to keep corrupt practices at bay," the report says."
Well nice to know that invasion did some uplifting for some people
Changes To The Blog
Yes, I like to think there are many of you out there - then again I talk to myself too.
You might see some strange things happening with the blog soon because of my attempts to modify it in a format that I find interesting.
When I win my battle with blogspot using the mighty sword of Dreamweaver and the axe of Notepad - it might improve
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Erm... Are u sure u meant to say that....
Choose sides! The great progressive / Fundi debate
Muslims, of course, never to miss any new trends in modern political thought decided to adopt this in internalising the dabte. To be fair this kind of thought pattern has been going on for a couple of centuries. Ever since then people like Jallaludin Afghani decide that it was time to stop herding the goats and read the Goethe (yes appaling I know - but you cant have gold level sarcasm all the time).
Of course Mr Afghani laboured under the delusion that civilisation somehow had become the sole property of heavy set german men with a liking for convuluted philosophising. In itself a great ommision considering that he lived in Iran for alot of his life and was surrounded by one of the most cutured and civilised people I have ever had the pleasure to meet.
The women are quite hot too ( to keep other readers interested) [No I'm not going to go on about the nature of civilisation and the correlation to hot women].
Ever since then our intellectuals have suffered under the general delusion :
OLD RELIGION BAD \ WESTERN SECULAR MODERNISM GOOD
Today we seem to continue this debate by painting ourselves as progressive and fundementalists.
Fundis - want to go back to a cave in Mecca and grow really really long beards (I'm paraphrasing)
Progressives - want to party like its 1954 , write beat poetry and claim their inner sufi. (see paraphrasing bit)
Personally I think anyone that far into each extreme is a muppet.
We have to work at creating a balance between those to extremes. We must recognise that be a Muslim there are certain fundementals you have to accept as being the tennet of religion. You can't pick and choose because John Templewick-Nosh has invited you to a dinner party and you don't want to appear as one of the ghastly towel heads.
But within those fundamentals of belief there is enough scope for discusion and debate. So lets not rule out other interpretations of what we have in our laws. We need some learned people to start being serious about how we are going to talk about living and being modern.
When we end up colonising space - in which direction are we going to pray? How would a muslim burial take place on IO? What is classed as halal on Andromeda?
How would you come up with answers to that in a cave?
Muslims AWAKE!
Quite good, full of the usual archytypes, be warned - it based in the US. British humour may not work.
Enjoy
Check this out. In response to a learned bro, who decided to whip out his Hadith book and lay into the idea of a woman leading Friday prayers this person put this in (you can check out the original thread by following the link):
Thanks so much for your post, amismiles. Unlike so many of the conservatives who oppose women leading prayers, you are honest and forthright about your reasons, which we can summarize as follows:
* Women are innately tempting to men--their voices, their movements in prayer, even their walking through mosque doorways, even though they are fully covered (!).
* Women are responsible for men's erections.
* Women don't really belong in the mosque anyway. They should pray in the darkest and most cramped closets in their homes.
* If women do come to the mosque, they must be behind the men, as far back as possible, in fact.
* This treatment honours women. Even though no Muslim man would stand to be treated in this way at the mosque or anywhere else, when Muslim women are objectified in this way and shoved to the back, it shows the utmost respect to them, and they should be grateful.
Obviously, we need more female-led prayers, if only to root out such woman-hating attitudes from our communities.
Posted by raisealittlehell at March 14, 2005 08:07 AM on http://www.muslimwakeup.com/movabletype3/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=2713Ermm ... oooohkay:
Now I read the original argument and it was long winded but he wheeled out the old line about wimin being responsible for X,Y and Z.
However, the argument against is just as silly.
Erm.. as a muslim shouldn't you be glad that a woman gives you erection and not pictures of Brad Pitt?
Fair point , about the allure of women, I mean if you find a full Burka alluring then dude, you need to see a shrink or invest in some S&M gear.
The objectification of women isn't a Muslim thing. It's a society thing. Men get objectified too. how its all done and hows its carried out it different according to the society.
Lemme ask everyone this - is Angelina Jolie being objectified in Tomb Raider or not. I bet male readers are objectifying away right now.....