Some very good news for a change, sorely needed around these parts. From CNN:
0 CommentsMANAMA, Bahrain – U.S. Navy snipers fatally shot three pirates holding an American cargo-ship captain hostage after seeing that one of the pirates “had an AK-47 leveled at the captain’s back,” a military official said Sunday.
The captain, who’d been held in a lifeboat in the Indian Ocean since Wednesday, was rescued uninjured, Navy Vice Adm. Bill Gortney told reporters.
Yes, the testosterone filled pirates of Somalia are full-blooded Muslim males hungry for battle and booty. Here’s a page from the CIA World Fact Book to fill you in: Somalia.
Now, I seem to recall a little thing with Barbary Pirates from 1801-1815 wherein the Marines got put to the test. Now where are the Marines when modern day African-Muslim pirates are at it again? The Middle East soaking up the desert heat?
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Teddy bear woes? Thoughts from Economist.com with a couple of my own interjected for better measure:
FOR anyone who is labouring to improve Christian-Muslim relations, or stop civilisations clashing, it is a painful setback: a well-intentioned Western woman who has volunteered her services as a teacher in a land stricken by conflict and poverty, only to find herself denounced by a local colleague and incarcerated in horrible conditions.
Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old teacher from Liverpool, was sentenced on Thursday November 29th to 15 days in prison for “insulting religion”, after allowing her pupils at a school in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, to name a teddy bear Muhammad. She had invited a seven-year-old girl to bring in her teddy and then encouraged the class to vote on a name for the toy.
When the story broke in the British press this week, it was widely reported that she might face up to 40 lashes, or six months in jail, if she were found guilty on all three of the charges laid against her. British diplomats are now trying to secure Ms Gibbons’ early release. The incident happened in September and caused no protest among parents at the time. At one point the affair seemed to be spinning out of control as groups of angry men gathered outside the police station where she was held.
For Muslims in Britain and other democracies, the story was a deeply depressing one: so many of its features, including the fact that it happened in the run-up to Christmas, seemed almost calculated to resonate with British tabloid readers, who may not know much about Sudan or Islam (or any other faith) but have strong feelings about teddies, tiny tots and motherly teachers.
In more elevated western circles, it is becoming commoner to hear the view that Islam itself (rather than any extremist interpretations of the faith) is posing a challenge to western values that must be resisted. And if that view becomes more respectable, so too does a defensive Muslim reaction, which is often tinged with geopolitical grievance.
And are we to allow fear of this “defensive reaction” to the fact that persons like myself, shouting from the rooftops, are now being take more and more seriously — are we to allow this fear to control us? I think not.
It’s time to stand up and point the finger at Islam, ladies and gentlemen. The new Nazis have arrived on the scene and they mean to destroy the future for your children. Wake up! Freedom came at a high cost and we had better be prepared to continue to pay the ‘toll’ every so often, or we will no longer possess such freedom.
6 CommentsTo observers who know Sudan, the whole affair seems to have become entangled with the broader stand-off between the government in Khartoum and the Western countries, including Britain, that have pushed for the United Nations to intervene in the appalling humanitarian crisis in Darfur. All diplomatic exchanges between the Sudanese government and Western ones, whether they concern refugees or teddy bears, take place against that background.
It’s Monday. It’s cold out. The Muslims are angry. An innocent infidel is in danger. Just another day in the world neighborhood.
From the BBC:
23 CommentsColleagues of Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, said she made an “innocent mistake” by letting the six and seven-year-olds choose the name.
Ms Gibbons was arrested after several parents made complaints.
A spokesman from the British Embassy in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, said it was unclear whether she had been charged.
Embassy officials are expected to visit Ms Gibbons in custody later.
In light of some very heated arguments here at the Anvil, I got to thinking about the fundamentals again. I believe this is as good a time as any to put together a new poll to put into rotation. Think about this one carefully and then select your response, because very often a simple question brings us closer to the most difficult of answers.
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From allAfrica.com with some spelling edits by me for good measure and better English:
7 CommentsAs Muslims all over the world celebrate Eid-ul-fitr, commonly known as Koriteh, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan, President Yahya Jammeh, has called on the Islamic Ummah to be steadfast, bold and united in the spirit of Islam to condemn any form of attack on the Islamic religion.
From the ever-vigilant Daniel Pipes, a thread worth bookmarking (thanks to Sheila for pointing it out), that deals with the rise of accepted polygamy in the West, and the grave implications this all has for the future of our nations and our national identities. In fact, this is such a serious issue that this post marks the creation of a new category on the Anvil dedicated to Polygamy as just one more link in the chain of Islamist incursions into our societies:
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On what’s shaping up to be a ‘history lesson’ rich Friday the 13th, here’s a repost of an informative article on The Role of Islam in African Slavery. Some parts of it have been soft-balled, in my opinion, but this is standard when sourcing scholar Bernard Lewis, who though very well-researched, does have a tendency to romanticize the Islamic world more than I ever would.
I had this article on the back-burner to repost for several days, but it is even more topical now considering some recent comments made here at the Anvil by a reader. I think you will learn a few important things about Islam in this one:
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It’s been awhile since I added a video to the Anvil, and today I’ve got a great one. If you haven’t yet seen ‘30 Days as a Muslim’, get ready for an uneasy jaunt into the heart of Muslim America: Dearborn, Michigan.
Oscar-nominated documentary film maker Morgan Spurlock (’Super-Size Me’) presents ‘30 days as a Muslim’.
A Conservative Christian man spends 30 days living as a Muslim with a Muslim family.
While narrating parts of the show, director/producer Morgan Spurlock says something that really caught my ear:
“Even though Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States, there’s a lot Americans don’t know.”
I’m sorry, but I’m simply not buying that statement, and I’ll chalk it up to Spurlock erroneously taking at face-value the propaganda of CAIR representatives that appear in the documentary itself and probably planted some information in his ear. Ah, yes, a CAIR lawyer appears in parts of the video, and most importantly, he shows classic self-righteous indignation near the end of the documentary that is not to be missed.
The case for ‘fastest growing’ religion in the USA simply can not be made, in any way, by any religion, because if you look around for such information you will find numerous religions making the same claim or some so-called expert making it for them. If you want to grow even more confused, then click here. According to the statistics in that link, pagan Wicca, not Christianity, Judaism or Islam, is the fastest growing religion.
A somewhat disturbing statistic that I do tend to believe, however, is that there are now more Muslims in the United States than Jews. This would be an amazing fact, if true, when you consider how much longer Jews have resided in this country. But if the statistics from 2001 are correct (1.5% of US was Jewish and 0.5% Muslim), then by the typical birthrate of Muslims across the globe, I see no reason not to believe that Muslims in the U.S. have closed the gap and even passed Jews in population.
Here is a link that lists a collection of articles and surveys from 2001 to 2005 that all ask the same question — “How many Muslims are in the U.S.A?” The best-guess as of today would put the number at somewhere between 6 and 7 million. In one article linked above the following statement is eye-opening:
The American Jewish Committee and other groups estimate the number of Jews in this country is about 6 million.
“Six million has a special resonance,” Harris wrote in a May 21 article in Jerusalem Report magazine. “It would mean that Muslims outnumber Jews in the U.S. and it would buttress calls for a redefinition of America’s heritage as ‘Judeo-Christian-Muslim,’ a stated goal of some Muslim leaders.”
And that’s from May 21, 2001. Judeo-Christian-Muslim? No comment.
As for the rest of the documentary, here are some points of interest:
‘30 Days as a Muslim’ ends with the to-be-expected touchy-feely closing, but don’t worry — the ‘hero’ isn’t turned into a Muslim ‘revert’. Nothing of the sort and by watching this video, you won’t be either. However, by the end I also want you to consider what you’ve seen and then think about this thought that sprung into my mind while watching it for the first time myself:
Have you ever wondered at the extreme hate that fills Muslims when they protest? Could it be because it is the one facet of Islamic life that is constantly esteemed and encouraged by calls to wage the ’struggle’ (jihad), while many of the ordinary things that we as Westerners and non-Muslims find fun are contained, diminished, demonized or cut-out entirely (i.e. dance, music, access to the opposite sex, alcohol). I believe this is exactly the case. When so many emotional, human outlets are repressed but the one outlet that is applauded is the ’struggle’ against the Unbelievers, then how can any outcome other than conflict arise?
Via Jihad Watch, I simply have no choice but to reprint this story. It makes me sick to my stomach:
0 CommentsWASHINGTON, Mar. 29 /Christian Newswire/ — The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) has just learned that an Ethiopian evangelist named Tedase was beaten to death by militant Muslims on Monday, March 26th, as he and two young women were on a street evangelism assignment in Jimma, Ethiopia. This marks the second time in six months that Christians residing in Southeast Ethiopia have been attacked and killed by extremist (Wahabbi) Muslims.
From the flood of emails I’m getting today, I can tell already that this is going to be one damn busy year for the pen & paper warriors, as much as for the real ones in the camos.
Here we go again with Afro-centrism being utilized, by the foolish and the proud and self-indulgent, to undermine the Constitution and the future of the United States. Read on, from the AP (with thanks to Chris):
6 CommentsMACON, Georgia (AP) – Mayor Jack Ellis has converted to Islam and is working to change his legal name to Hakim Mansour Ellis.
The title strikes you as a contradiction, I’m sure. This is no joke though.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission is an actual organization, founded in the UK in 1997 (as if it could ever have been founded in Iran), and proposing “to campaign for justice for all peoples regardless of their racial, confessional or political background.”
From the ‘About Us’ section of the IHRC:
The Islamic Human Rights Commission was set up in 1997. We are an independent, not-for-profit, campaign, research and advocacy organization based in London, UK. We foster links and work in partnership with different organizations from Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds, to campaign for justice for all peoples regardless of their racial, confessional or political background.
Our aims are manifold, and our inspiration derives from the Qur’anic injunctions that command believers to rise up in defence of the oppressed. IHRC volunteers and campaigners come from many different parts of the world and many different backgrounds to share in the common struggle against injustice and oppression.
Rise up in defense of oppressed Muslims, not infidels.
Our work includes submitting reports to governments and international organizations, writing articles, monitoring the media, cataloguing war crimes, producing research papers, organizing vigils, taking on discrimination cases and so on.
Aside from our countries index we have a number of country specific projects and research areas e.g. Chechnya, Mauritius, Turkey, Palestine and Nigeria. Our issue related work includes researching war crimes, campaigning for prisoners of faith and other prisoners held for their beliefs, campaigning against religious discrimination and persecution, as well as many other issues in and across areas as far a field as the UK to China, Bosnia to Papua New Guinea , Europe to the United States of America and South Africa.
Um..ok. Let’s look at that statement through the words of their own website for a moment. How about this report I found by doing a quick, simple site search:
WE ARE VICTIMS TOO, SAY DARFUR’S ARAB REFUGEES
13 August 2004
A few miles from a camp at Opash is another at Mossei. One is packed with African refugees, the other Arabs, the dispossessed from the opposing sides of Darfur’s internecine conflict. The perceived view is that the African civilians have been the victims of the murderous Janjaweed militia in a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Sudanese government.
But the Arabs say they have been so demonised their own suffering is being ignored. They say they too have been attacked, driven from their homes,and abandoned to face pending epidemics of cholera, malaria and hepatitis. They say their persecutors are African tribes in league with the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, with their own campaigns of driving out another community, Ten thousand people are in the three camps at Mossei, near Nyala, the capital of south Darfur. Some are from Arab tribes who supply recruits to the Janjaweed, and are viewed with deep suspicion by the African villagers.
The rumour in the souks is that these people are not refugees, but a fifth column awaiting orders to act. The suspicious say a large number of young men are among the refugees. Some say other men visit the camps at night. The charities which predominate here are from Arab countries, often with strong Sunni links. The same groups have tried to persuade African refugees to return to their homes, and the waiting Janjaweed, with money.
Abdullah Hassan Suleiman, the omdar or chief sheikh at Mossei, vehemently denied links with the Janjaweed, and said this was the kind of false accusation which was putting them in danger. “If we were with the Janjaweed, do you think we’d be sitting here in this misery? We had to flee our village because the Zarghawa and the Daju [tribes] attacked us. They killed 18 of our men and kidnapped three women and two men.
“We have never had any problems with our African neighbours. It was outsiders who came and did this to us. The excuse always is what the Janjaweed are doing, and that seems to make it all right to do bad
things to us.”The three abducted women had returned. They say they were captured returning to retrieve belongings from their village, 22 miles from Nyala, with two male relatives. Noura Abdullah Usman, 45, said: “We were almost home when they caught us. Four men started dragging us from my brother Abdullah and my uncle, Abdul Hamid, when their leader came and took charge of us women. We were put in a car and taken to Hijer, a village where the Africans used to live before they were driven away by bandits. We feared that we would be attacked.
“One of the women started to cry and pleaded with the men not to hurt us. They took us to Lobado [a town to the south] where we were tied up and accused of being the women of the Janjaweed. A man came in and beat us with a belt, and said they’ll do to us what the Arabs did to their women.”
Another woman, Ayasha Abdullah Abu, 20, said: “We saw our men being brought into the building. They looked scared and one of them shouted they were going to be killed. That was the last we saw of them. We were threatened with beatings, but the commander sent three men to guard us and nothing more happened.”
The next morning the three women were driven to Nyala and freed at the camp. The African commander also gave them a note for the police explaining why they were held.
The only Middle East charity at Mossei is the Haiat Al-Amal, from the United Arab Emirates. Dr Mirgani Mohammed Isa, who is Sudanese, said: “All we are doing is providing medical help. I have heard about Sunni Arabs who are said to be trying to convert Africans who are Sufis, but we do not do that. We work closely with Unicef.”
Feelings of bitterness run deep among many refugees. Asif Omar Sayeed, a 23-year-old from the Arab Targim tribe, said: “The foreigners blame us for everything. But I realise what is going on. The Americans and the British want to use this as an excuse to occupy our country, just as they have done in Iraq. Like Iraq, we have oil. What has happened made me realise that as a true Muslim I must fight for my country when the foreigners come.”
By Kim Sengupta in Mossei, Darfur- the Independent
Excuse me, I have to go get a tissue.
The Arabs (99.9% chance they are Muslims) in Africa are calling themselves victims at the hands of the Africans, so Islamic Human Rights Commission picks up the story and the torch? I see. Truth or lies? Hard to tell when dealing with that part of the world, I have to admit. But, considering that the majority of violence in the Sudan has been caused by Arab Muslims raping, murdering and enslaving blacks of both Christian and Muslim backgrounds, I’d hardly jump at the chance to help Arabs in that region without having many suspicions.
Armies do not run on air and water alone. They require support systems and that requires civilians. How do the armies of the United States and Britain maintain themselves? Taxes. Family support. Donations and charities.
Repeatedly the Arabs in the above article cry foul and blame “outsiders” and “foreigners” and (!) “the United States”. The Arab Muslims claim they are being “demonised”, not by the actions of their own, but by everything else but.
I’ll call that a lie.
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