To Give Birth To A Girl In Afghanistan…

Source: Associated Press:

In Afghanistan, a woman has been strangled to death, apparently by her husband, who was upset that she had given birth to a second daughter, rather than the son he wanted, police reported.

The woman’s husband, Sher Mohammad, fled the Khanabad district in Kunduz province last week, about the time a neighbor found his 22-year-old wife dead in their house, said District Police Chief Sufi Habibullah. Medical officers who examined the body, said she had been strangled. The woman, named Estorai, had warned family members that her husband had repeatedly abused her for giving birth to their first daughter, and had threatened to kill her if it happened again.  Estorai gave birth to her second daughter between two and three months ago.

Imagine if you will, the fear that must have gripped that young mother; not only did she suffer the life-threatening process of childbirth in such a backward country, but also the knowledge that giving birth to a daughter, could end her life.  And the thought that if she was killed by her husband, her daughters’ lives would also be at risk.  My heart goes out to those two little motherless girls. What future do they have in such a misogynist country?

Police took the man’s mother into custody because she appears to have collaborated in a plot to kill her daughter-in-law.  She swears that Estorai committed suicide by hanging, although Police said they found no rope and no evidence of hanging.

It was the latest in a series of grisly examples of subjugation of women which have made headlines in Afghanistan in the past few months.  We will never know how many infant girls are murdered at birth, but you can be sure it’s happening. Nothing changes, and hasn’t for thousands of years.

Really, what has ten years of war achieved for women and girls in Afghanistan? I can’t see how anything will change for the better until women have the same freedoms as men and until girls can go to school. But that could take many more decades. In the meantime, America has protected it’s access to oil, thousands of people have died, and women are still being oppressed!

These events beg the question: What will happen to the push for women’s rights in Afghanistan as the international presence there shrinks along with the military drawdown. NATO forces are scheduled to pull out by the end of 2014?

During 10 years of war, since Taliban rulers have been ousted, it’s true that some progress has been made for women’s rights in Afghanistan, with many attending school, working in offices and even sometimes marching in protests. But the abuse and repression of women is still common, particularly in rural areas where women are forbidden to set foot outside of the house without a burqa robe that covers them from head to toe.

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Invisible Women

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To Be A Woman In Afghanistan Is Perilous

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MORE:   Shariah Law Not Wanted Here

Carnita Matthews and the Unfortunate Policeman

The footage that saved a policeman’s career

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Australian News Headline: The Muslim woman accused of lying about police trying to tear her burqa off has avoided jail – because her identity could not be proven.

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The 47 year-old woman from Woodbine Sydney, Carnita Matthews, had previously been sentenced to six months in jail for making a deliberately false statement:  A policeman had tried to forcibly remove her burqa at a police roadblock, because he was a racist.  After hearing her Appeal, Judge Clive Jeffreys told the Court he could not  be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was Mrs Matthews who made the racism accusation, because the person who complained to police was wearing a burqa at the time.  The absurdity of the law is, that to reach the level of proof of identity to make the case, Mrs Matthews would have been required to identify herself by lifting her burqa at the police station.  The very idea that set the whole saga in motion initially!

As much as Mrs Matthews’ Muslim supporters might summon their god in thanksgiving after the hearing, she is nothing less than a liar and what’s worse, she falsely accused a policeman of trying to rip off her burqa.  This very serious  offence of assault could have ended his career, when he was only doing his job.  Even though this has been proven to be untrue, she then accused him of racism, also a serious offence in Australia. If there had been no video running at the time, her word would probably have been taken over his.  I find it ludicrous that Mrs Matthews could even accuse someone of racism when she was covered from head to foot anyway.  How could anyone ascertain what was under all that cloth?

I have absolutely no problem with Islam itself or any other religion.  What I don’t appreciate is when religious beliefs are used as an excuse to behave with criminal intent.  Mrs Matthews  obviously knew Australian law well, she used it to satiate her hatred of the police, behaviour which common criminals are regularly guilty of.

I believe that the Australian government will eventually have to follow the example of France and other modern Western countries and ban the burqa, if for no other reason than to prevent this type of blatant disregard for Australian law which the rest of us have to abide by.  I can see in the future that criminals will use the disguise of the burqa to carry out crime.

Other animals and birds use recognition of their own species and others,  to prepare them for action in whatever way is beneficial to their socialisation, and survival.  We need to be able to recognise other humans; that is also part of our socialisation process. As far as I can see, women who insist on wearing the burqa are interrupting that process.  This is the very thing that causes rifts in societies; you only have to read world histories to see how suspicion and mistrust can grow out of different social rules and laws for different groups.  All Australians have to stop for police drug and alcohol screening; we may protest but we do abide by this law, and often have to show our driving licences and other ID.

I have read many biographies about what it means to be a woman living under Islamic Law, and it seems to me that the wearing of the burqa was a male construct to ensure that women were oppressed, would become invisible, and that no other male would recognise them.  Is that the culture  that women who flee from Muslim countries, really want to inflict on themselves, their daughters, and grand daughters?

Antidiscrimination lawyers warn against discussing banning the burqa, but we have to talk about our grievances.  Believe me, plenty of talk about this issue goes on privately and in pubs.  Most people I speak to have no objection to muslim women wearing the headscarf, because you can see their eyes and faces clearly.  Someone needs to listen to those voices as well!  In some well publicised cases, I think we sometimes forget who the real ‘victim’ is; in the case of Carnita Matthews, it certainly wasn’t her.

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More… Burqa or Crash Helmet-it’s all the same...

Separatist Muslim Women…Highlight the Differences!

Shariah Law Not Wanted Here

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff – Fighter for free speech

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Beware! “Islam is a political ideology disguised as a religion.”

The United West is an umbrella organisation for opponents of shariah law in America, Europe, and elsewhere. Its motto is: “Uniting Western Civilization Against Shariah Islam”    Elisabeth tells us “Violence is deeply embedded in Islamic theology, and especially in Islamic law, or shariah. Violence is endemic in Islam because its scriptures and law require Muslims to be violent in order to protect Islam and extend shariah throughout the world. Shariah has already come to my country (Vienna), and to most of the rest of Western Europe.”

“So now it seems we must all learn to shut up and keep our heads down while shariah descends on our countries.” As Geert Wilders said: ‘The lights are going out all over Europe.”  But it’s not just Europe. Shariah is coming to America, too.  “It begins with little things, like prayer rooms and footbaths and special prayer breaks for Muslim employees. Then comes ‘Shariah-compliant finance’, which sounds so innocuous.  Then come the restrictions on speech that offends Muslims.”

Such restrictions are already here in the United States. Yes, you have the First Amendment to protect your God-given right to free speech, but that has not been enough to prevent ordinary American citizens from being silenced.

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In Vienna the free-speech activist Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was recently sentenced to paying a fine for insulting a religion by calling Muhammad a paedophile. However, that is the truth. Numerous hadiths contain testimonies by Muhammad’s favourite wife, the child bride Aisha. Aisha literally says: “The prophet married me when I was six years old, and had intercourse with me when I was nine.”

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Source for the article below is Geert Wilders:

Ali Sina is an Iranian ex-Muslim who established the organisation for apostates of Islam Faith Freedom International. In his latest book he posits that Muhammad was a paedophile, as well as a narcissist, a mass murderer, a terrorist, a misogynist, a lecher, a cult leader, a madman, a rapist, a torturer, an assassin and a looter. Sina has offered 50,000 dollars for the one who can prove otherwise. Nobody has claimed the reward as yet. And no wonder, as the description is based on the Islamic texts themselves, such as the hadiths, the descriptions of Muhammad’s life from testimonies of contemporaries.

In his book ‘Psychology of Mohammed: Inside the Brain of a Prophet‘ Dr. Masud Ansari calls Muhammad “the perfect personification of a psychopath in power.”  Muhammad had an unhinged paranoid personality with an inferiority complex and megalomaniac tendencies. In his forties he starts having visions that lead him to believe he has a cosmic mission, and there is no stopping him.  (Sounds like certain other Arab leaders!)

The historical Muhammad was the savage leader of a gang of robbers from Medina  who looted, raped and murdered. The sources describe orgies of savagery where hundreds of people’s throats were cut, hands and feet chopped off, eyes cut out, entire tribes massacred. An example is the extinction of the Jewish Kurayza tribe in Medina in 627. One of those who chopped off their heads was Muhammad. The women and children were sold as slaves. Confronted with the lunacy of Islamic terrorists today, it is not hard to find out where the lunacy comes from.  According to the historian Theophanes (752-817) Muhammad was an epileptic. Epileptic crises are sometimes accompanied by hallucinations, perspiration from the forehead and foaming at the mouth, the very symptoms which Muhammad displayed during his visions.

A Dutch court ruled Wednesday that it will proceed with the trial of Dutch Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders on charges of inciting hate and discrimination against Muslims when he compared the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and called it a “fascist book.”  However, the prosecution has no intention of convicting him.   Public support for Mr Wilders  is huge.  The comparison of books is a good one.

See posts  Hina & Alicia - Victims of muslim fanaticism &    Go Back to the Hellhole…

Hina & Alicia – Victims of Muslim Fanaticism

Hina – A Beautiful Young Woman With Her Life in Front of Her.

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Hina was a beautiful 20-year-old who emigrated with her Pakistani family to Italy.  She lived with her Italian boyfriend, smoked, was happy and free. In other words, she became westernised; Hina came to Italy an Asian girl and grew into a western woman.   And, she had refused an arranged marriage.   Therefore, her father killed her, slitting her throat 28 times because his honour had been sullied.

He then garnered support from members of  his extended family to help him bury Hina’s body in the back garden of his home.  Did he think none of her friends would miss her?  No, because Hina was once again his possession.  He has been sentenced to 30 years imprisonment;  plenty of time to pray to Allah.

The United Nations Population Fund believes that, globally, as many as 5,000 women and girls are killed each year by members of their own family in the name of ‘honour’.  This figure, many believe, is the tip of the iceberg.

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Alicia Gali – A Brave Young Woman From Queensland

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Alicia Gali made the mistake of working in UAE, a muslim country.  She spent eight months in a United Arab Emirates jail for adultery after complaining to police about being drugged and raped by co-workers. Alicia, 29, detailed her harrowing ordeal after filing a Queensland lawsuit against the five-star international resort where the attack allegedly took place in 2008.

Warning other women against going to the UAE, Alicia said she endured eight months in a crowded prison room with up to 30 other women after she complained to authorities about the assault. Apart from her family, no one in Australia knew Alicia had been jailed for adultery and illegal drinking, because Australian embassy staff advised her and her family not to go to the media.

“It was just traumatising,” she said. “Everything that happened was the worst thing that somebody could go through.”

“You’re just totally alone in a foreign country, with no assistance from your employer or the embassy.”  Alicia, a salon manager at the resort, said she had been in the staff bar, where she was told she could legally drink, when another employee put the drug, ice, in her drink.

It was the last thing Alicia remembered before waking the next day in her room with painful injuries. “I didn’t know what had happened. I was traumatised, I felt ill. I didn’t even remember getting there or what had happened”.  It was only when she took herself to hospital did she realise she had been sexually assaulted.

Later she learned she had been heard screaming in the hotel and security guards had found men hiding in her room, where she was naked and unconscious.  When she was discharged from hospital she was asked to go to a police station to make a statement and then speak in front of a judge.   “I realised when I was put in a police car that I was being taken to jail.”

Alicia said she was never warned by her UAE employers that she could be charged with adultery and face prison if she complained of being raped, without having four adult male Muslims as witnesses.   “I didn’t even know what the charges were until five months into my sentence”.

Three of the men Alicia claimed sexually abused her were jailed, but for adultery and not rape.   After serving eight months of a 12-month sentence, Alicia was pardoned, released, and flew home in March 2009.  Since then she has been treated for post traumatic stress disorder, suffered claustrophobia and flashbacks.  “I felt depressed, angry and confused”.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn on Thursday filed a damages claim in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, alleging Ms Gali’s employer failed to warn her of the risk of being drugged, raped, charged with adultery and jailed if she complained.   Solicitor Melissa Payne said it was a complex legal case and they would consult experts in UAE law.

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These two cases represent the clash between dark age religious beliefs and western freedoms.  Islam means ‘submission’ therefore  muslims must submit to the power of Allah and  women must submit to the power of men.

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See post Carla Bruni – The Problem Being Female

Koran or Bible, Pastor Terry Jones?

The American Pastor Terry Jones, said that the burning of the Koran was a success and ‘a once-in-a-lifetime experience’. One wonders what he meant by ‘a success’.  Pastor  Jones, a fundamentalist Christian,  oversaw the torching of a copy of the Muslim holy book on Sunday, after staging a mock ‘trial’ in which it was found guilty of what he described as ‘crimes against humanity’.  The ‘jury’ in the case had heard arguments from a ‘prosecutor’ and a ‘defender’ of the Koran before sentencing it to ‘death by execution’.   Is he using human terms for the Koran because he is too afraid to ‘try’ the author?

I have never read the Koran, but a muslim acquaintance told me that it is all about interpretation, and unfortunately fundamentalist muslims  interpret verses in the Koran as catalysts for acts of brutality to infidels, ie anyone who is a non-muslim.  The majority of muslims don’t read such senseless violence into what is written in their holy book.  The same can be said of the Christian bible,  both books written hundreds of years ago. Most decent Christians and muslims only want the best for their families; for their children and grandchildren to grow up in a safe and nurturing environment.

How can the pastor’s stance be anything other than an attention-grabbing one?  Or perhaps the man is mentally ill.  It just doesn’t make sense, that an intelligent man could verbalise such rubbish as:  ‘After listening to ‘evidence’ and arguments from both sides, the jury pronounced the Koran ‘guilty’ of five ‘crimes against humanity’ including the promotion of terrorist acts and ‘the death, rape and torture of people worldwide whose only crime is not being of the Islamic faith’.  The Koran’s ‘punishment’ was determined by the results of an online poll. Besides burning, the options had included shredding, drowning and facing a firing squad. Voters had chosen to set fire to the book, according to a video of the proceedings.  Hasn’t this church leader and his small congregation got better things to do, such as helping the sick and the poor?

“It is not that we burn the Koran with some type of vindictive motive,” Mr. Jones said. “We do not even burn it with great pleasure or any pleasure at all. We burn it because we feel a deep obligation to stay with the court system of America. The court system of America does not allow convicted criminals to go free. And that is why we feel obligated to do this.”   Mahatma Gandhi was reputed to have said something along the lines of: “There is nothing wrong with Christianity.  Christians are the problem”.   One could say the same about Islam and muslims.

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All this mindless stupidity on both sides achieved nothing but senseless  killings – News Item:

Stirred up by a trio of angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said. The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — four Nepalese guards and three Europeans from Romania, Sweden and Norway — according to United Nations officials in New York. One was a woman.  Five Afghans were also killed.

See  Burning  Books Leads to More…

&  Burning the Koran; English Al Jazeera

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Mad American Christian Pastor, Terry Jones

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Terry Jones has published a guide called Ten Reasons to Burn a Koran; railed against the rights of women to have abortions; and describes homosexuality as ‘a sin’. When Pastor Jones was in Germany, his daughter Emma, one of his three children, described the church, run by Dove World Outreach, as a cult and accused them of financial and workplace abuse.

Dove World Outreach is funded by the pastor’s furniture firm, TS & Company, which buys vintage items from Europe and sells them in the US. The employees are members of the church, who are understood to work for no wages and live rent-free in run-down properties owned by the pastor and his wife.

Perhaps this pastor should heed an old warning: When you point the finger of accusation at someone, be careful what you say, because there are three fingers pointing back at you.

Karima Wants To Leave France

Karima will leave France if she can’t wear her veil

For Muslim women who cover their faces with veils, it is time for liberation.  Starting April 11, a new law in France banning garments that hide the face takes effect. Women or men who disobey it risk a fine, special classes and a police record.  The fines are greater if a minor is forced to wear the veil against her will.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant put it bluntly Monday:   “This growth in the number of (Muslims) and a certain number of behaviors cause problems,” he commented on French radio. “There is no reason why the nation should accord to one particular religion more rights than religions that were formerly anchored in our country.”   Debate is needed to address evolutions in French society,  such as a growing demand for mosque building and Islamic butchers  since the country’s 1905 law formally separated the state from the Catholic Church.

This is another one of those cases that most of us just don’t get.  Why did Karima (wont give her surname)  go to France if she didn’t want to live as the French do?  I mean, there are many Muslim countries around the world she could have emigrated to, where she could cover her whole body in black sheets, where she would be just another faceless, nameless, woman, with no rights.

Apparently, women are supporting their men in the current riots in Arab countries; riots for more freedoms and less oppression for women and men.  And yet, here we have some 2,000 women in France who wish to cover themselves from head to foot, despite the new law.   The increasing focus on France’s Muslims, who number at least 5 million, comes with presidential elections a year away and support for a far-right party growing. A recent palpable rise in tensions has also been boosted by fears of a mass migration of Muslims due to disarray in the Arab world.

In unusual terms for a secular leader, Sarkozy extolled the virtues of his country’s “Christian heritage” during a recent visit to Puy-en-Velay, the starting point of a famed medieval Christian pilgrimage route.  “Without identity there is no diversity,” the president said. “The (French) republic is secular. It belongs to each citizen without any distinction.”

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Perhaps it is not the fact of wearing a burqa, per se, that is disconcerting to some people.  It just may be about muslims wanting to be superior, to stand out from the rest,  to have their own butchers, mosques,  schools, etc, making European countries seem more like Muslim countries.  We in the West are called ‘infidels’ after all.  I believe that most tolerant people don’t mind headscarfs, at least you can see facial expressions.  The burqa can be very intimidating, especially in black.  And all those mosques popping up everywhere!  It would be just as bad if there were huge Catholic cathedrals and royal palaces everywhere.  History teaches us that to be too different, can be very dangerous, especially in times of food and job shortages.

More …

Burqa or Crash Helmet

Go Back to the Hell Hole…

“Go Back To the Hell Hole Country You Came From”

Hell holes. Man Made by Religion or Politics?

I often contemplate whether there would still be wars if religion didn’t exist.  I guess there would be; the fight for power over people, land, and resources, human nature being what it is. Perhaps these days religion is just an excuse to fight.  But I too dislike the hypocrisy of religious beliefs and the divisions these beliefs cause. Most of all I resent those people who leave their own countries  to live a better life in ours, and then reject the way we live. They seem to believe that they are somehow superior beings, and history has shown us that this is a very dangerous mind-set.  Australia  is not the only country experiencing these problems.

A courageous man, a Muslim himself – Mahfooz Kanwar, Professor Emeritus of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary, commented angrily on the complaints made by Muslim families  to the school board  that music is un-Islamic and that physical education (coed) classes should be segregated by gender even in primary schools.  About a dozen immigrant Muslim families were demanding that the Louis Riel School Division in Winnipeg should not teach their children music for religious reasons.   Professor Kanwar stated “I’d tell them, this is Canada, and in Canada, we teach music and physical education in our schools. If you don’t like it, leave. If you want to live under sharia law, go back to the hell hole country you came from or go to another hell hole country that lives under sharia law.”  The Professor went on to say that as always,  the school authorities were trying to figure out a way to fit the demands of the Muslims into the curriculum rather than the other way around.  Is this just another form of segregation?

Perhaps religion is too narrow a focus, and Western Powers and their media are a large part of the problem.  A good place to try to understand the world dilemma is to read a recent history, that of Bosnia.  Bosnia – A Short History by Noel Malcolm “rigorously clarifies the various myths of racial, religious and political history which have so clouded the modern understanding of Bosnia’s past”.   Many recent wars in actual fact, may not have causes as simple as  the inevitable consequences of ancient ethnic and religious hatreds.  Much food for thought.

See post Burning Books Leads To More…

Joan of Arc & Pope Benedict

Mercy: St Bartholomew’s Day, Paris, 1572. ’Ill-fated love affair between a Catholic & a Protestant’. John Everett Millais 1829-96. This is the day thousands of Protestants were slaughtered by Catholics.

Has Pope Benedict gone completely mad? He recently stated via a Catholic publication that politicians should behave like Joan Of Arc!   “With her deep prayer life and total devotion to serving God and the good of her fellow citizens, St. Joan of Arc is a wonderful model for Christian politicians”, Pope Benedict XVI said. “Hers is a beautiful example of holiness for lay people involved in politics, especially in difficult situations. Faith is the light that guided all her choices,” the pope said Jan. 26 during his weekly general audience.  What a load of b…….  This is just another Church smokescreen to hide its vast problems.

Joan of Arc’s real name Jeanne d’Arc, The Maid of  Orléans, France. Clad in a white suit of armour, and carrying her own standard, Jeanne was leading an array of loyal French fighters to battle against the English, who were trying to take possession of her beloved Orléans.  Jeanne and her followers won that battle but on the way to relieve Compiégne, she was captured and sold to the English by John of Luxembourg, and they handed her over to The Catholic Holy Inquisition.  It seems to me,  Jeanne was burnt at the stake because she was leading a French army against the British. It was politics not religion, but a smokescreen was desperately needed.  Easier to torture and murder a young woman if she was found guilty of heresy and sorcery; less public sympathy.  The British didn’t want the blood of a  heroine on their historical hands.

But, and here’s the rub: Recent historical evidence has challenged the traditional account of Jeanne d’Arc. The contention is that Jeanne d’Arc has been confused with Jehanne, the illegitimate daughter of Queen Isabeau of France and Louis, duc d’Orléans, brother of the King. Now, how is Pope Benedict going to fix this problem given the Church’s teachings on the grave ‘sin’ of sex outside marriage, not to mention illegitimate births and the spectre of purgatory?

The Catholic Church ‘forgave’ Jeanne and made her a saint in 1920.  Perhaps the Church has canonised the wrong woman?  Now wouldn’t that cause ructions at the Holy See?

But let’s get back to what the Pope is actually saying in the 21st Century: “Christian politicians should not worry about doing the best for their country, but rather spend their time praying and fighting for their religion,  ie  Catholicism”.  There have been enough religious wars over millennia, and they’re still going on!

Shouldn’t the Pope and the Vatican be spending their time bringing paedophile priests to justice and helping their abused victims instead of pontificating about a brutal and savage murder committed by the Catholic hierarchy in the 15th Century?  I believe that the reason priests have been brutalising children for centuries is that they have never been brought to justice for their crimes.  Instead the Church has “forgiven them their sins” and allowed them to continue to prey on innocents.   These evil priests have been “indulged” by the Catholic Church.

Quote from The Ethical Nag’s Blog:

John Swales was only 10 years old back in 1969 when he and later his two younger brothers as well were first assaulted by

Father Barry Glendinning at a summer camp for low-income kids in Ontario. He told Maclean’s magazine in its December 7, 2009 issue:

“The real failing here is the institutional response to these deviants. Every culture, every occupation, has these issues of sexual abuse. But few have the ability to conceal sexual abuse of children like the Catholic church does.”

In Catholic theology, an indulgence is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven. The indulgence is granted by the Catholic Church after the sinner has confessed and received absolution. The belief is that indulgences draw “House of Merit” accumulated by Christ’s  superabundantly meritorious sacrifice on the cross (what?!) and the virtues and penance of the saints. They are granted for specific good works, prayers,  and what the Church will not openly admit, money.  Lots of it.  We all know many priests come from wealthy Catholic families.  No wonder deviant priests re-offend time and again!

Indulgences replaced the severe penances of the early Church. More exactly, they replaced the shortening of those penances that was allowed at the intercession of those imprisoned and those awaiting martyrdom for the faith.

Abuses in selling and granting indulgenceswere a major point of contention when Martin Luther  initiated the Protestant Reformation. (1517).

Change in the Arab World?

This is the word that inspires SeifAndBeirut

There are all sorts of suggestions flying around the world presently.  “Empower and educate women in the Middle East and other islamic regions, and they will influence their men to embrace  peace.”   This could be true. Some people believe change will encourage the war mongers and the religious fanatics to desist in killing  innocent women and children. But it will take many more thousands of years for any drastic changes to take place; change has always been painfully slow in Arab countries.  For one, religion might have to take second place in schools, and I can’t see that happening any time soon.  (It was the best thing that ever happened in western countries.)  Look what has just taken place in Pakistan, for instance.  A politician speaks out against blasphemy laws: a woman can be stoned to death for using the name Mohammed in the wrong context.  This is blasphemy?  Then this liberal politician was shot at close range by his body-guard and it seems the whole of Pakistan is rejoicing.  Hundreds of thousands of uneducated, brain washed (or brain-dead) rabble waving placards and praising the bodyguard as a hero.  How frightening this must be for minority Christians and the women awaiting death in brutal prison cells.  It is obvious the Pakistani Judiciary will not be able to punish the guard because that will just inspire more killings.  Where were the thousands of protestors when women accused of murdering their brutal husbands, were stoned to death by men in the street?   None of it makes any sense.  But that’s religion for you.

See previous posts: The Problem Being Female &  Dichotomy of  Women.

I agree with Seif;  there is no doubt that the Arab World needs to CHANGE.   But when?

Christian Targets in Iraq

Muslims firebomb Christian Church in Egypt

Some Muslims are nothing more than thugs consumed by hate, disguised as religious fanatics. The problem is that there are thousands of them swarming across the Middle East and Christians are soft targets. At least Christianity has moved forward with the times, but Islam is still fomenting in the dark ages. No wonder the uneducated masses are following a religious belief system that is just plain stupid.

Muslims have been targeting Christians for hundreds of years.  Muslims were the reason my Lebanese ancestors fled from Iraq to the hills of Lebanon in the 14th Century. It is one of the reasons my Grandparents  left Lebanon for New Zealand in the late 19th Century.  More in  my book ‘Whatever Happened To Ishtar?’ .  Nothing has changed.  My heart goes out to the minority Christian communities in Iraq and other muslim countries.  Christmas, the focal point of Christian beliefs, is a time of fear for Christians in Muslim countries instead of a time for celebration and joy.  See world news item below:

BAGHDAD – Militants attacked at least four Christian homes Thursday night with a combination of grenades and bombs, killing two people and sending fear into the already terrified tiny Christian community.  It was the first attack against the country’s Christian community since al-Qaida-linked militants last week threatened a wave of violence against them. Christians went so far as to tone down their Christmas celebrations in what was a peaceful holiday, but the attacks Thursday night demonstrated the intent of militants to keep up their deadly pressure on the Christian community.

In the deadliest attack, assailants in southwestern Baghdad threw two grenades inside the home of a Christian family, killing two people and injuring five more, police said. In a different neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, militants planted a bomb near a Christian home. Two people were injured in that attack. Then another bomb planted near a Christian house in western Baghdad exploded, injuring one member of the family as well as a civilian who was driving by, police said.

Iraqi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi confirmed that two people were killed Thursday evening; he said a bomb planted near the fence of a Christian home in southern Baghdad also exploded but he had no information about casualties in that incident.  “The aim of these attacks is to prevent Christians from celebrating the New Year’s holiday,” al-Moussawi said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but such attacks have generally been the work of Sunni militants linked to al-Qaida.  The casualties were confirmed by hospital officials. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to reporters.  The attacks are sure to ratchet up tension in the tiny Christian community still living in Baghdad. At least 68 people were killed in October when militants stormed a Baghdad church during Mass and took the congregation hostage.

Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled to northern Iraq, fearing further attacks.  Father Mukhlis, a priest at the Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad where the Oct. 31 hostage incident occurred, called the Thursday attacks “direct oppression” against Iraqi Christians.

He said one Christian family already was staying at the church because they were worried about militants targeting their home. The family was planning to travel Friday to the Ninevah Plains area of northern Iraq which is home to a large Christian community and much safer than the rest of Iraq.  Last week, al-Qaida warned of further violence against Christians, leading many in the community to tone down their Christmas celebrations and cancel many events such as evening Mass and appearances by Santa Claus.

The Christmas holidays also coincide this year with the Shiite holy month of Muharam, an important holiday for the country’s Shiite Muslim majority.

Some Christians said they were also playing down the Christmas holiday this year out of respect for their Shiite neighbors, but other Christians reported intimidation by members of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia backed by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who pressured them not to celebrate the holiday publicly.   Christian leaders estimate 400,000 to 600,000 Christians still live in Iraq, according to a recent State Department report. At one time before the war, that number was as high as 1.4 million by some estimates.   – Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.

Another interesting post from: seifandbeirut.com

Lebanon has alway been home for minorities in the Middle East. A haven for those persecuted, chased out of their homes, and face destruction in their original homes. The Armenians, Palestinians, Assyrians, and even many Syrians have taken refuge inside of Lebanon over the years… their treatment, whether good or bad, has always seemed irrelevant. We simply focus on the fact that “hey, we take in all the refugees of the Middle East”.

I think its time, finally, to tackle the treatment of refugees inside the country. We have almost 250 000 – 300 000 Palestinians inside Lebanon, almost 150,000 Armenians (who are now Lebanese citizens, and not considered refugees anymore), and now 50, 000 Iraqi refugees in Lebanon. This post, for specific reasons,  is going to focus specifically on the latter group as it is the most recent group of refugees in the country. Most, almost 79%, of Lebanon’s Iraqi refugees are Iraqi Christians who fled Iraq for their safety after sectarian groups threatened their safety. Now for the sake of making things clear, sectarian groups in Iraq represent very small portions of the population, keeping in mind Iraqi Christians and Muslims have lived along side each other for hundreds and hundreds of years prior to this time, with very little tensions and fighting.