Oppression of Women

One has to wonder about someone, Robert Spencer, who is so relentless in his pursuit to "expose" the abuse of women in Islamic nations, when the women in his own nation are continuously abused right under his own nose. Sure, it fits in well with his whole "Jihad" theme, but more to the point, it strengthens the suspicion that he only cares about this issue because it makes Islam and Muslims look bad.

Why do I say this? Because the evidence of abuse of women in the United States is ample and clear. Now, if you live in a particular country, then shouldn't you be working towards the eradication of such abuse in your particular country? But Spencer does not pay even the slightest attention to such abuse, despite the evidence that such abuse in the U.S. is prevalent.

In 2003, a survey of female veterans found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving. And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, found that 90 percent had been sexually harassed.

That's just in the U.S. military. It's just as bad domestically.

But Spencer, Horowitz, and other right wing pundits could care less. Why? Probably because it doesn't fit in well with their agenda to smear Islam and Muslims. Hypocrisy wreaks when such gentlemen open their mouths.

Greenwald on anti-American sentiment and the suppression of evidence of torture

The man is, in my estimation, the next generation Noam Chomsky. He is articulate, speaks with the support of facts and evidence, and is plain and simple in his evaluations of American domestic and foreign policy. Here, he discusses how Obama's decision not to release incriminating photographs of detainee abuse will do nothing to suppress anti-American sentiment worldwide, but will only inflame the world's opinion and demonstrate the continued lawlessness of our government officials.

We're currently occupying two Muslim countries. We're killing civilians regularly (as usual) -- with airplanes and unmanned sky robots. We're imprisoning tens of thousands of Muslims with no trial, for years. Our government continues to insist that it has the power to abduct people -- virtually all Muslim -- ship them to Bagram, put them in cages, and keep them there indefinitely with no charges of any kind. We're denying our torture victims any ability to obtain justice for what was done to them by insisting that the way we tortured them is a "state secret" and that we need to "look to the future." We provide Israel with the arms and money used to do things like devastate Gaza. Independent of whether any or all of these policies are justifiable, the extent to which those actions "inflame anti-American sentiment" is impossible to overstate.

And now, the very same people who are doing all of that are claiming that they must suppress evidence of our government's abuse of detainees because to allow the evidence to be seen would "inflame anti-American sentiment." It's not hard to believe that releasing the photos would do so to some extent -- people generally consider it a bad thing to torture and brutally abuse helpless detainees -- but compared to everything else we're doing, the notion that releasing or concealing these photos would make an appreciable difference in terms of how we're perceived in the Muslim world is laughable on its face.

Moreover, isn't it rather obvious that Obama's decision to hide this evidence -- certain to be a prominent news story in the Muslim world, and justifiably so -- will itself inflame anti-American sentiment? It's not exactly a compelling advertisement for the virtues of transparency, honesty and open government. What do you think the impact is when we announce to the world: "What we did is so heinous that we're going to suppress the evidence?" Some Americans might be grateful to Obama for hiding evidence of what we did to detainees, but that is unlikely to be the reaction of people around the world.

If we're actually worried about inflaming anti-American sentiment and endangering our troops, we might want to re-consider whether we should keep doing the things that actually spawn "anti-American sentiment" and put American soldiers in danger. We might, for instance, want to stop invading, bombing and occupying Muslim countries and imprisoning their citizens with no charges by the thousands. But exploiting concerns over "anti-American sentiment" to vest our own government leaders with the power to cover-up evidence of wrongdoing is as incoherent as it is dangerous. Who actually thinks that the solution to anti-American sentiment is to hide evidence of our wrongdoing rather than ceasing the conduct that causes that sentiment in the first place?

Muslim men against domestic abuse!

A great new web site dedicated to fighting domestic violence: mmada.org. Here is their mission statement:

Established February 2009.

Muslim Men Against Domestic Abuse (MMADA) is an organization dedicated to domestic tranquility. By joining our group, you make a commitment never to engage in, support, or remain silent about the physical, psychological, and emotional abuse of Muslim and non-Muslim women and children.

We aim to provide educational resources and serve as a tool for advocacy and counseling. Recognizing that domestic abuse is merely a symptom of much larger social, institutional, and individual pathologies, we seek to identify and eradicate its root causes. We do so with the belief that our religion calls us to stand for justice and reject all forms of oppression.

Check it out and sign the pledge!

Islam and Suicide Bombings

Does Islamic law justify suicide bombings? It's a difficult question to answer. But the folks at Jihad Watch, specifically Raymond Ibrahim, have made a sweeping statement that modern Muslim jurists have agreed that suicide bombings are legitimate under Islamic law.

Wow.

Here is what Ibrahim said:

Says Mullah Omar's spokesman: “They sacrificed some people, friends of Muhammad, for the sake of Islam. This is part of the jihad and part of the fighting." Indeed, many Muslim jurists have decreed that, based on the fact that the hadith and sira record any number of 7th century jihadis placing themselves in "suicidal" situations solely that Islam may triumph, that "suicide-operations" are in fact legitimate in Islam. When the first caliph was busy subjugating the Arabian Peninsula, for example, one fighter, in the battle of Yamama, though he knew he would most likely die, allowed himself to be catapulted into the city so he could open the gates for the rest of the jihadis -- which he did, dying as expected. Based on such accounts, and the Muslim technique of qiyas -- i.e., analogizing or finding precedent -- modern day jurists are agreed that today's suicide operations are legitimate, indeed, the height of praiseworthiness.

Maybe Ibrahim made a mistake because first he says that "many" Muslim jurists have permitted suicide bombings, but then he goes on to say that modern jurists are agreed that suicide bombings today are allowed.

That's a lot to swallow. The problem with suicide bombings as I see it is that the discussion surrounding them are clouded by politics. In the Middle East they are seen as the weapon of the weak. Obviously in the West they are viewed as despicable and cowardly acts of terrorism (although Randy Quaid blowing himself up against the aliens in the movie Independence Day didn't seem to offend anyone).

We have to remove ourselves from the political excuses and arguments surrounding the issue of suicide bombings to discover if the act is allowed under Islamic law. Firstly, the jihadis, no matter how they may want to portray themselves and no matter how others may want them to be viewed as legitimate Islamic actors, are not jurists or state authorities. This is essential to understanding this issue.

To get to the point, there is a growing consensus against suicide bombings in the Muslim world by its scholars. The twisting of Islamic history and law to justify these attacks is and has been used by the politically desperate, not by the scholars of Islam. Even the hard line Wahhabi scholars of Saudi Arabia have condemned these attacks. That may not say much since they usually just tow the line the royal family wants them to, but it does show that while there may not be a consensus on this issue, there is major opposition within the Sunni Muslim community to such tactics.

The best scholarly argument against suicide attacks both generally and specifically regarding Israelis is the fatwa written by Shaikh Muhammad Afifi al-Akiti. While Ibrahim claims there is agreement or consensus amongst such actions, this fatwa by al-Akiti demonstrates that this is not true and even more that the arguments by the jihadis and their supporters are very weak legally. Al-Akiti is not some schmo either, he is a traditionally trained scholar in the Shafi'i legal school.

Instead, whether he realizes it or not, by doing so he would be hijacking rules from our Law which are meant for the conventional (or authorized) army of a Muslim state and addressed to those with authority over it (such as the executive leaders, the military commanders and so forth), but not to individuals who are not connected to the military or those without the political authority of the state [dawla].

The result in Islamic jurisprudence is: if a Muslim carries out such an attack voluntarily, he becomes a murderer and not a martyr or a hero, and he will be punished for that in the Next World.

While this may not make Robert Spencer sleep well at night since the Muslim state authority still has the power to declare war or jihad against non-Muslims (doesn't the leader of any nation have the authority to declare war on whomever and whatever he wants?), it at the very least shows that the basis for suicide bombings has no merit under classical Islamic law. This is important because it weakens the arguments of the jihadis who have no other recourse but to analogize actions of the Companions under completely different circumstances to justify their actions. This is not a strong scholarly basis for arguing your case under Islamic law.

A quick aside, Spencer can sleep in peace if he only realized that a Muslim ruler is not obligated to attack non-Muslim nations, despite the comments of jurists in their books. As I have noted before, Muslim rulers have done what they wanted to do in the past and could do the same in the future.

To conclude, suicide bombings are prohibited under Islamic law for any number of reasons. The arguments of the jihadis are weak and do not fall in line with the principles of Islamic law. Just reading al-Akiti's fatwa illuminates the discussion and demonstrates that the jihadis and their supporters are grasping at straws. Plus their continued escalation of violence has garnered them the hatred of both Muslims and non-Muslims to the point that sympathy for their cause has dwindled considerably. This is a blessing of God and I, at least, am grateful for it.

Obama to Israel: Time to accept two states

At least that is what it is sounding like. Vice President Joe Biden was at the AIPAC conference yesterday and pretty much told the hawkish crowd that it's time to stop mulling around and time to start getting on the peace train. Well, more or less.

Here's a good take from Jim Lobe's Blog on what's occurring on the insides of AIPAC:

The hardliners have clearly decided that directly criticizing Obama when he is so popular is a losing battle, so the conference was full of perfunctory expressions of support for the president’s diplomatic outreach to Iran (quickly followed by warnings that this outreach must have a short and hard end date) and similarly perfunctory calls for a two-state solution. AIPAC itself now officially supports a two-state solution — although this support tends to be so muted and buried so deep in organizational documents that is it unlikely that the average conference-goer was aware of the group’s position — which would seem to put them at odds with Netanyahu. However, AIPAC officials were eager to assure me that Netanyahu is also a two-state supporter, and is simply waiting for the right moment to go public with his position.

The AIPAC rank-and-file, on the other hand, appeared considerably less enthusiastic about ending the occupation than the group’s leadership professes to be. Joe Biden’s and John Kerry’s calls for a two-state solution and for halting settlement expansion were met primarily with stony silence from the crowd; the smattering of applause for these remarks sounded like it came almost entirely from the student sections.

Of course, it is quite possible that Netanyahu will accept the idea of a two-state solution in the near future, and there are good reasons not to attach too much significance to these verbal formulations. Whether Netanyahu claims to want to end the occupation is less important than whether he is willing to take any concrete steps toward this goal. Similarly, AIPAC’s nominal support for two states is, to my mind, less important than the fact that its concrete proposals and priorities look very much like Netanyahu’s.

Nevertheless, the fact that the hardliners feel the need to go through these contortions is revealing of the current political mood. It suggests, as Dan Fleshler wrote today, that the Israel lobby is feeling very nervous about being out of step with the Obama administration.

I guess Obama isn't as big a pushover as I thought he was regarding Israel-Palestine. It looks like he has some courage after all. That doesn't mean the Israel lobby won't try to undermine any efforts on his part. My prediction: things will get uglier before they get better.

Blog title

I'm trying to think up a new blog name. Something that captures what I do on my blog on a daily basis. A new blog name will come up sooner or later.

More craziness from the Taliban: Doctors must not wear western clothing

When did Islam require a uniform for people? Maybe someone can ask the Taliban how they derive their legal ideas. More to the point: this is lunacy.

PESHAWAR: Hospitals in Peshawar have received threatening letters from local militants warning their doctors against wearing western clothing to work, DawnNews reported.

Doctors from two of Peshawar’s major hospitals, Hayatabad Medical Complex and Khyber Teaching Hospital have confirmed receiving these threats.

The hospital administrations have circulated the information to all wards, and have asked their staff to take precautionary measures.

Meanwhile, the hospital administrations have not ruled out the possibility that the letters could be fake and may have been issued to create panic.

According to sources, the letter has also been forwarded to the NWFP Inspector General of Police.

The move comes against a background of heightened Taliban activity, with militants targeting barber-shops, music stores and shrines in their bid for moral policing.

Break the mold of the Supreme Court

Maybe Obama should pick someone who is not the typical candidate. A good article from CNN.com by Sherrilyn Ifill:

I sometimes marvel that I probably couldn't get hired at my law school today.

Fifteen years ago I was a young civil rights lawyer with a strong litigation record and a few good ideas about the relationship between racial diversity on courts and principled decision-making who wanted to enter law teaching.

My colleagues at the University of Maryland Law School took a chance in hiring me -- a chance that I would write well and consistently, and that my litigator's communication skills would translate well in the classroom.

Today, they'd never hire me. Standards have shifted, my law school has moved up in the rankings, and now our faculty rarely even interview candidates who haven't already published a well-placed article. In just a little over a decade, the formula for hiring law professors, especially at the most competitive schools, has shifted irrevocably.

It is much the same on the Supreme Court. It's been nearly two decades since anyone who has not served as a federal appellate judge -- for at least a little while -- has been confirmed to sit on the court. What this means is that justices on the court have come to be representative of a very narrow slice of the profession.

Federal appellate judges, former federal prosecutors and high-powered federal appellate practitioners stand a very good chance of getting nominated. State court judges, full-time law professors, former criminal defense attorneys, even civil practice trial lawyers -- not so much.

Read the rest.

Spencer defends Wilders

Here is what the Jihad Watch Director says about Geert Wilders:

I've already explained, in this post, that Wilders's call to ban the Qur'an is simply a call for consistency: his native Netherlands bans Mein Kampf as hate speech, and yet pays no attention to the manifest power of the Qur'an to incite to violence. The Netherlands should either stop banning books altogether or be consistent about it.

Spencer is seriously suggesting that Mein Kampf and the Qur'an be put on the same playing field. While Hitler was clear in his agenda to exterminate Jews in his autobiography, the Qur'an itself does not incite to violence. It is extremist Muslims who use the Qur'an to incite to violence. I used to teach at my local Islamic school here in South Florida for six years. I used the Qur'an to show my students how our religion teaches peace with people of other beliefs and that verses, such as 9:5 or 9:29, that seemed to suggest violence against non-Muslims were actually specific in time to the Prophet, peace and prayers be upon him, and were not to be understood as general. The two books are not the same. Spencer is being unfair here.

I disagree with Wilders's statement that Islam is not a religion. Islam is certainly a religion -- a belief-system that, like other religions, purports to relate human beings to the divine. But at the same time, I understand why he says that Islam is not a religion -- because the strictly religious aspects of Islam are actually of no concern to unbelievers at all. It makes no difference to me if a Muslim wants to pray five times a day, or read the Qur'an, or believes that Muhammad is a prophet -- except insofar as it impinges me as a political program that demands my conversion, subjugation, or death.

Spencer eludes to this often: the triple choice, as he calls it. In fact, in many instances in Islamic history have Muslim rulers allowed non-Muslims to live freely without having to pay any poll-tax or subduing them in the process. In fact, there were instances in early Islamic history where non-Arab Muslims were made to pay the jizya. Only later on was the jizya made to be aplicable to non-Muslims only. Basically, it's up to the Muslim ruler how and who he wants to tax, and not up to the jurists. He owns a copy of Majid Khadduri's The Islamic Law of Nations. He should flip it open and read it more carefully. The Treaty of 1535 between Sultan Sulayman and Francis I, the King of France gave the French living in Islamic lands "exemption from the poll tax, the right to practice their religion, and the right of trial in their own consulates by their own law." (Khadduri, The Islamic Law of Nations, p. 63). There, this is an example of how non-Muslims can live without subjugation under Muslims. Of course, there have been times in Islamic history where non-Muslims were treated horribly. But there have been plenty of times where they were treated fairly and justly.

Also, Muslim jurists can write all they want about what they think the law should be, but no one but the caliph has the authority to make the law under traditional Islamic political theory. There are plenty of instances, such as under the rule of the second caliph, Umar, where he exempted certain tribes from the jizya. Some non-Muslim tribes requested to pay the zakat instead and he allowed them to do so. (Asma Afsaruddin, The First Muslims, p. 181).

Classical Islamic law settled on certain issues making it seem like Islamic law was clearly defined and delineated on most points. But early scholars during the time of the Salaf were far from agreement on issues like the jizya and jihad (the early Hanafis and Malikis were in opposition to Shafi'i's political theory of warring against non-Muslims simply because of their faith, see Khadduri). Changing political and global realities make some of the ideas of classical jurists obsolete. Musim scholars and historians like Hamza Yusuf, Sherman Jackson, Timothy Winter, Shaykh Abdullah Bin Baya, and others have discussed such issues and have suggested as much. But I digress. It's nice to know Spencer thinks Islam is a religion.

The religious aspects of Islam obscure the fact that Islamic jihadists are pursuing a political program that seeks, no less unmistakeably than did the Communists, to replace the U.S. Constitution with a system that would deny many basic rights guaranteed by that Constitution.

The political program of Islam is generally not recognized in the U.S. today, but nonetheless there are many groups dedicated to carrying it out. They should not be allowed the protection of a religious cover to obscure their criminal and seditious activity. Section 2385 of the federal criminal code states that “whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.”

I don't believe that is a fascist law. And this already existing law -- revised as of January 2, 2006 -- could and should be applied to Islamic groups that call for implementation of Sharia in the U.S., and work toward that implementation. In short, just as freedom of religion was not deemed to be a sufficient justification for Mormon polygamy in the late nineteenth century, so now freedom of religion should not be deemed to be sufficient justification for agitation on behalf of a system of laws that would deny freedom of speech and the equality of rights of all people before the law.

And there is nothing fascist about saying so.

Whether it is fascist or not, I don't know. But Islamic groups that call for the implementation of Shariah in the United States are no different than Christian groups that want laws in the U.S. to reflect their belief systems (don't some Christians want gays and lesbians to not have equal rights? Isn't that a form of subjugation?). If they advocate their cause without inciting to actual overthrow of the government then they are not in violation of the Smith Act. It is obvious that Christians in the U.S. who want their beliefs reflected in the laws of this country are no different than Muslims who want their beliefs reflected in the laws of this country. The specifics are different, certainly, but the method is the same.

If Ibrahim Hooper says he wants the United States to be more Islamic, then he has every right to say that and work for that goal, as long as he does not advocate the overthrow the government in the process (disclaimer: I, myself, do not advocate for such a thing). Just like if some Christian leader said the exact same thing, minus the Islam part. It would be up to people in this country to follow what they think is right. I speak generally here, but I assume you get my point.

Many groups throughout US history have advocated for different laws based on different perspectives. Islamic people in the US are no different. There are Muslims, like myself, who are happy with how this country functions. Others may want the laws to be more conservative, such as laws against abortion, gays, etc. But Spencer is right, if they do it in a manner that is violent or forceful then they are in violation of the law. If the majority of Americans woke up one day and decided to elect congressmen who were all Hindu, and then wanted the law in the US to reflect Hinduism, would there be anything to stop them from doing this? I leave that to you all to decide.

... And let's look at what Wilders actually said. Did he say close all the mosques and deport all the Muslims? No, he did not. His ninth point makes three recommendations. First is "stop the building of new mosques. As long as no churches or synagogues are allowed to be build in countries like Saudi-Arabia we will not allow one more new mosque in our western countries."

This is a call for reciprocity that many others have made. Even Russia, ordinarily a friend of the jihad, asked the Saudis to allow the building of a church in Saudi Arabia in exchange for a mosque in Moscow. The Roman Catholic bishop of Mainz, Germany, asked to celebrate Mass in Saudi Arabia, in light of the presence of so many mosques in Europe. Is asking that non-Muslims be accorded the same respect and consideration in Muslim countries that Muslims are accorded in the West essentially a fascist request? I don't see why.

I thought Spencer was smarter than this. I was born and raised in the United States. This is my home. I happen to be Muslim. Why should I be punished for what the Saudis do? If I was Dutch, why should I be punished for what the Saudis do? I thought our nation was better than that. It may not be fascist, but such a request is certainly not in harmony with our country's principles of freedom and the idea of equal protection under the law.

Second, Wilders says: "Close all mosques where incitement to violence is taking place." Is Rusty seriously objecting to this? Incitement to violence should just continue in these places, because they are religious? It is "fascist" to want to close down places that preach violence against innocents? I don't buy it. Wilders is not saying to close all the mosques. Why not make the distinction be that those that do not teach hatred of the Infidel and the need to subjugate him, by violence if necessary, are free to stay open? That's fascist? Come on.

Why does anyone need to shut down anything? Why can't the guilty parties simply be put in jail for their wrong doing and allow the mosque to stay open? If a Catholic priest was molesting children within a church, you wouldn't shut the church down. You would jail the priest. So if some Muslim school teacher is inciting his students to violence, jail the school teacher.

And finally, Wilders says: "Close all Islamic schools, for they are fascist institutions and young children should not be educated an ideology of hate and violence." Here again, it is true that in many Islamic schools children are educated in an ideology of hate and violence. Iranian textbooks teach children to fight against Allah's enemies by learning combat techniques; an Islamic school in Ottawa was teaching hatred of Jews; Islamic schools in West Africa have been hubs of human trafficking; Pakistani Islamic schools are jihad factories; an Islamic school in the U.K. was shut down for ties to terrorism and for preaching hatred of Christians and Jews; and an Islamic school in Virginia taught that adulterers and apostates should be killed.

If, in light of all this and more, Islamic schools are not to be shut down, what assurances can Muslim leaders give us that none of this will go on within them? Will they throw open their doors to inspections? In reality, the current is moving in just the opposite direction. I have not called for all Islamic schools to be shut down, and think there is a great deal that authorities can do and have not so far done in order to call them to account short of shutting them down, but here again, I don't see that it is "fascist" or denying Muslims their freedom of religion to want to protect oneself from what have been hotbeds of violence and subversion all over the world. I propose that Islamic schools in the West remain open if they institute transparent, inspectable programs teaching against jihad violence and Islamic supremacism, and teaching the necessity to live with Infidels as equals in a secular society on an indefinite basis, without attempting to impose Sharia over them.

That's great Spencer. You don't want to shut down all Islamic schools. But that is clearly what Geert Wilders says.

Sure, there are plenty of Islamic schools around the world that teach that non-Muslims are terrible, etc. But the majority probably do not teach this. And again, there is this horrible problem about equal protection under the law. Spencer fails to acknowledge this in his discussion. You couldn't implement such a law in the United States. It would be unconstitutional on its face.

As for Wilders, Spencer does his best to defend his friend, but in the end he really can't. It's painfully obvious that Wilders is in complete contradiction in his demand for free speech for himself, while advocating for the banning of the Qur'an. There are other contradictions Spencer's friend Rusty describes in Wilders' speech, some of which I have shown in posts below. It is redundant now, but there is no getting around the fact that Wilders is a hypocrite. And that those who support him are equally guilty of hypocrisy.