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POPSThe trouble with Islam A few words about the world's fastest growing religion. This video got him in a little bit of hot water. http://ummahnewslinks.com/2007/05/17/comic-in-us-hate-speech-row.aspx
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POPSPolitican Cartoons "The United States, some years back, found its new bogeyman "Islam" to replace its former imaginary enemy "Communism." And now the European press appears to have finally (?) found a replacement for the Jewish people that they used to malign and attack. Anti-Islam/Muslimism appears to now have officially replaced anti-Jewish sentiments in Europe. The roots of these attacks are the same: an inability to acknowledge and respect a diversity of people that might result in a Europe that is non-White and/or non-Christian. The anti-Muslim/Islam cartoons of today are little different than the anti-Jewish cartoons that were published by the Nazis during WW II."
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POPS The Execution Of A Teenage Girl CRUELTY OF SHARIA LAW PENALTIES imposed by Iran's religious mullahs include: THEFT: Amputation of hands or feet for persistent offenders. sion, death. ADULTERY: Death by stoning. UNMARRIED SEX: 100 lashes. CONVERSION TO RELIGION OTHER THAN ISLAM: Death. SODOMY: Death for adults, 74 lashes for consenting child. LESBIANISM: 100 lashes, or on the fourth occasion death. HOMOSEXUAL KISS: 60 lashes. RUBBING ANOTHER MAN'S THIGHS OR BUTTOCKS: 99 lashes - on 4th occasion, death.
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POPSPowell spills it about Bush / Iraq Al-Qaeda, Powell asserted, was only 10% of the problem in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, its prime minister, lacked the political will to establish an effective government. After a promising start to the surge at the beginning of the year, 453 unidentified corpses were found on the streets of Baghdad last month, 41% more than the 321 bodies found in January, according to unofficial Iraqi health ministry statistics.
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POPSThe Biggest Threat to the West Lies Within Itself, Not with Islam Simon Jenkins on threats to peace and democracy. This defeatism led the American Congress to allow its president to authorise torture and detention without trial in what Senator Robert Byrd called “the slow unravelling of the people’s liberties”. It enabled a British Home Office to curb free speech and habeas corpus. It arms police, fortifies buildings and impedes the free movement of citizens. It makes every Christian suspicious of every Muslim.
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POPSNo Moses, no Joshua, no (so-called) monotheism "In the text you have the story of the Israelites coming from outside, and then besieging the Canaanite cities, destroying them and then becoming a nation in the land of Canaan. Whereas archaeology tells us something which is the opposite. According to archaeology, the rise of early Israel is an outcome of the collapse of Canaanite society, not the reason for that collapse." * The principle of monotheism (the worship of a single deity), established first by the Jews and later to form the foundation for both Christianity and Islam, took much longer to take root than most people assume. In fact, the archaeological discovery of troves of household idols in ancient Canaanite towns and cities proves that the Israelites practiced polytheism long after they had been thought to have discarded the practice.
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POPSJihadist Video Shows 12 Year Old Boy Beheading Man 12! 12! 12! What the F@#$. The Boy was 12 and doing this crap. Now you tell me, Where will the outrage be say, from the CAIR organization, denouncing such a horrible act. The BOY was 12 for God sake. He did not need to be part of a beheading. If Islam and Muslims do not speak out then there is no hope for Islam.
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POPSState of the world as we end 2007 This is an incredibly powerful paragraph. I wonder if when George Bush looks at the cover of Time Magazine and stares into the eyes of Vladimir Putin, he still says, "ah, those trusting eyes of Vlad." The U.S. is getting completely outplayed at the chess table and its leaders don't have a clue.
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POPSDemystifying "modesty" I have seen most of these on women here in the UAE, I never really thought about there being any difference among them...
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POPSMath Behind Ancient Islamic Tile Patterns Decoded When Peter J. Lu traveled to Uzbekistan, he had no idea of the mathematical journey that he was about to embark on as well. See the full research article as published in Science . It's a wonderful example of original, multidisciplinary academic research bridging history and mathematics that happens to force us to re-think the sophistication of ancient geometrical knowledge. When Lu looked at photographs of Islamic buildings, he found that he could break the patterns on their surfaces up into the same shapes, even though the shapes often weren't immediately visible. "I couldn't sleep for days," he said. "I skipped Christmas break to work on it."
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POPSA Fallen American Soldier continued; his father, Feroze Khan, told the Gannett News Service in a story printed shortly after his death. "He looked at it that he's American and he has a job to do." Powell framed the entire "Obama is a Muslim" debate in striking terms with his reference to this fallen American soldier. "Is there something wrong with being Muslim in America? No, that's not America," he said. "He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could go serve his country, and he gave his life," Mr. Powell said. "Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourselves in this way." The highly charged rhetoric used by McCain and Palin to tie Obama to terrorism and Islam is once again an affront to all Muslim Americans. We saw this type of fear and backlash just after 9/11. We see it also in the McCarthy-like invocations of Michele Bachmann. I challenge Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to tell this grieving mother that her son is anti-American because of his faith.
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POPSOffended Muslim Syndrome In order to guard against OMS, health officials warn individuals who are at risk to make sure that the objective reality they are exposed to does not: * Make them aware of the outside world * Trigger curiosity about the Western notions of "logic" or "rationality" * Make life more enjoyable * Cause them to question the need for martyrdom * Have side effects such as independent thinking and longing to live as a productive individual * Create an illusion that communication with infidels is possible without hostage-taking
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POPSMuslims Are Good Folks The only real solution is education and broad experience. It seems to me that God creates individuals one at a time, and it is the human mind that insists on grouping and classifying them. We should resist that temptation.
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POPSWhy is pleasure so suspicious? "The best sort of life, says Epicurus, is one that is free from pain in the body and from disturbance in the mind. That sounds a rather negative credo for a 21st-century devotee of the good life. Were he writing self-help books today, Epicurus would probably acknowledge that you can aim a little higher than that. He might point out in his own defence that health and peace are essential preconditions of happiness, and are easy to belittle if you are lucky enough to have them. But perhaps his most useful observation for the discerning hedonists of today, when such an intoxicating variety of gratifications are dangled before them, is a reminder of caveat emptor: "No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves."
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POPS White Radical Evangelicals Get a Pass "Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people...By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers."
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POPSA fine but no lash for Sudan woman who wore pants “The flogging, yes, it causes pain,” Mrs. Hussein, who is Sudanese, said. “But more important, it is an insult. This is why I want to change the law.” The last time Sudan’s courts handled a case that attracted such international attention, they found a compromise solution. A British schoolteacher had faced up to 40 lashes and six months in prison for allowing her students to name a class teddy bear Muhammad, which was perceived as an insult to Islam. But after being sentenced to 15 days in jail, she was soon pardoned by the Sudanese president.