Are We Looking for the "Root Cause?"
From this morning's
Detroit Free Press:
There are at least two versions of how Shafik Shoaib was beaten Monday evening in front of his home in the Warrendale neighborhood on Detroit's west side. One of them, if true, could constitute a federal crime.
At a news conference Tuesday, area Muslim leaders called the beating a hate crime. They allege that a group of 10 white men repeatedly swore at Shoaib and told him "go back to where you came from."
But the neighbor involved in the incident, Kelly DuVall, 40, tells a different story. She said Shoaib started the argument when he admonished her about smoking on her front lawn near his children.
Both DuVall and Shoaib, 51, said this isn't the first clash between them since DuVall moved to the neighborhood in February.
Was it ten, or was it one? I don't know. The hysterical rants coming from local Muslim leaders though, make it sound like someone had just blown up an embassy, or a bus, or a pizza parlor, or a - wait a minute - Muslim leaders always either ignore or excuse those crimes because they are traditionally commited by . . . well . . . you know.
We infidels however, are expected to label any crime against a Muslim as a hate crime. On the
Free Press website, though, it's now reported that,
A Detroit man suspected of beating a 51-year-old neighbor while hurling ethnic insults at him was charged Wednesday with home invasion in the first degree and assault with intent to do great bodily harm.
Combined, the two charges carry a potential sentence of up to 30 years in prison.
Ernest Domenech, 19 of Detroit, is expected to be arraigned in the case later this afternoon, according to a news release from the office of Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.
And they are looking for one other man. The other eight alleged attackers aren't mentioned.
If circumstances were different I probably wouldn't make light of this situation. After all, it is wrong to beat up someone in their own home, and I condemn any and all home beaters, no matter what their race, religion, or ethnicity. Due to the pandemonium that the local CAIR spokesman is trying to create though, I have to ask:
Have the root causes for this beating been examined? Was Mr. Domenech being oppressed by his neighbor? Were his actions merely the legitimate resistance to this oppression? Did a crippling poverty lead him to strike out against a colonial oppressor? Will this lead to an anti-infidel backlash?
I have the utmost sympathy for Mr. Shafik Shoaib, but these questions need to be answered. And they only came up because local Muslim spokesmen tried to make much more of this crime than they should have.
Labels: crime, islam
Biased or Not?
Read
this post by Alan Dershowitz on Jimmy Carter's new book.
I like Jimmy Carter. I have known him since he began his run for president in early 1976. I worked hard for his election, and I have admired the work of the Carter Center throughout the world. That's why it troubles me so much that this decent man has written such an indecent book about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
His bias against Israel shows by his selection of the book's title: "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid." The suggestion that without peace Israel is an apartheid state analogous to South Africa is simply wrong. The basic evil of South African apartheid, against which I and so many other Jews fought, was the absolute control over a majority of blacks by a small minority of whites. It was the opposite of democracy. In Israel majority rules; it is a vibrant secular democracy, which just today recognized gay marriages performed abroad. Arabs serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court and get to vote for their representatives, many of whom strongly oppose Israeli policies. Israel has repeatedly offered to end its occupation of areas it captured in a defensive war in exchange for peace and full recognition. The reality is that other Arab and Muslim nations do in fact practice apartheid. In Jordan, no Jew can be a citizen or own land. The same is true in Saudi Arabia, which has separate roads for Muslims and non-Muslims. Even in the Palestinian authority, the increasing influence of Hamas threatens to create Islamic hegemony over non-Muslims. Arab Christians are leaving in droves.
Why then would Jimmy Carter invoke the concept of apartheid in his attack on Israel? Even he acknowledges--though he buries this toward the end of his book--that what is going on in Israel today "is unlike that in South Africa--not racism, but the acquisition of land." But Israel's motive for holding on to this land is the prevention of terrorism. It has repeatedly offered to exchange land for peace and did so in Gaza and southern Lebanon only to have the returned land used for terrorism, kidnappings and rocket launchings.
Read the whole thing. It is a reasonable argument against an unreasonable book. He points out Carter's factual errors and ignorance of things that Carter should know and acknowledge if he's going to write a book about the Middle East. The only quible I have with Dershowitz is when he says:
Carter emphasizes that "Christian and Muslim Arabs had continued to live in this same land since Roman times," but he ignores the fact that Jews have lived in Hebron, Tzfat, Jerusalem, and other cities for even longer. Nor does he discuss the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries since 1948.
Dershowitz should have pointed out that Islam didn't exist in Roman times. Muslims conquered the Holy Land from the Christian residents a few hundred years after the fall of Rome. Unless he is referring to the Byzantines as Roman.
The thing that struck me the most though are the comments. I admit that I have a strong, unapologetic pro-Israel bias. Many of the commentators have a strong anti-Israel bias, but wouldn't admit it in a hundred years. They accuse Dershowitz of being biased. He is also accused of being a shill for Israel. In typical "progressive" fashion, there is no tolerance for deviation of thought on Huffington Post. A morally superior posture is taken and any dissenting opinion, whether from Dershowitz or the rare commentator supporting Dershowitz is accused of bias or being in the pay of Israel. They refuse to see their own twisted totalitarian, terror supporting bias. They are as blind and deluded as they accuse their critics of being.
Labels: books, Israel, Jimmy Carter
Shut Up and Sit Down
On page 180 of Mark Steyn's
America Alone he writes that standing while peeing is frowned upon in Germany. There is an alarm you can buy for your toilet that gives off a scolding if the toilet seat is raised. Now I understand that many in Europe are giving up and letting their lives be run by nanny-state governments as they let their countries be overrun by Muslims who will force their children and grandchildren (if any) to adopt Islam or suffer for not submitting, but this seemed like a bit of Mark Steyn-brand humor.
Sadly,
it isn't. According to the Telegraph,
German men are being shamed into urinating while sitting down by a gadget which is saving millions of women from cleaning up in the bathroom after them.
The WC ghost, a £6 voice-alarm, reprimands men for standing at the lavatory pan. It is triggered when the seat is lifted. The battery-operated devices are attached to the seats and deliver stern warnings to those who attempt to stand and urinate (known as "Stehpinkeln").
"Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don't want any trouble, you'd best sit down," one of the devices orders in a voice impersonating the German leader, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Another has a voice similar to that of his predecessor, Helmut Kohl.
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The manufacturers of the WC ghost, Patentwert, say they are ready to direct their gadgets at the British market.
Their prototype English-speaking WC ghost says in an American drawl: "Don't you go wetting this floor cowboy, you never know who's behind you. So sit down, get your water pistol in the bowl where it belongs. Ha, ha, ha."
They also plan to copy the voices of Tony Blair and the Queen.
So far 1.8 million WC ghosts have been sold in German supermarkets.
But Klaus Schwerma, author of Standing Urinators: The Last Bastion of Masculinity? doubts whether it will ever be possible to convert all men.
"Many insist on standing, even though it leads to much marital strife," he said.
In German, the phrase for someone who sits and urinates, a "Sitzpinkler", is equivalent to "wimp".
Just how much control will Europeans allow their government to have over them? If they can get men to become wimps who allow themselves to be shamed into sitting to pee, there really is no hope for Europe.
I was in Germany in 1979. Public transportation was insanely cheap, probably subsidised heavily by the government. People still balked at paying, and many times didn't. It reminds me, as others have pointed out, of the spoiled child who gets what he wants, but is never satisfied with what he's got. I assume they still have cheap public transportation, but just as there is a cost to children for their treats, now the German adult children's cost (for men) is to become increasingly whimpy. Unfortunately, what they need is strength.
And as Norman Mailer once said,
There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
Labels: books, Europe
Revealed at Last - the Reason for so Many Jewish and so Few Muslim Nobel Prize Winners
According to an
Iraqi "Researcher" there is an insidious reason so many Jews and so few Muslims have been awarded Nobel prizes.
Samir 'Ubeid: I don’t call it the Nobel prize – I call it the "Hubal" [idol] prize.
Interviewer: Hubal?
Samir 'Ubeid: Yes, because it often encourages heresy. It encourages attacks against the heritage, and encourages those who scorn their people and their culture. The proof is that it was awarded recently to Pamuk, who had encouraged civil strife, which might preoccupy Turkey and the Muslims in general. He held Turkey responsible for what the Ottoman state did, when he referred to the massacre of the Armenians.
[...]
Interviewer: In other words, if you are a traitor to your country, you deserve this prize.
Samir 'Ubeid: If you are a traitor to your country, and a heretic, who curses his Prophet, you deserve a Nobel Prize.
[...]
Why has the prize been awarded to 167 Jews, and to only four Arabs out of 380 million Arabs – and all four are considered traitors? For example, Al-Sadat got the prize during the normalization process, and as a price for Camp David, together with Begin, who carried out the Deir Yassin massacre, and who was in the "Hagana" gangs. Later, the prize was awarded to [Ahmad] Al-Zewail, in order to buy his invention, and Al-Zewail has disappeared since.
Interviewer: You mean the Egyptian Ahmad Al-Zewail?
Samir 'Ubeid: Yes, the Egyptian chemist. The prize was also awarded to Mohamed ElBaradei, and in this case, it is soaked in the blood of the Iraqi children and people.
[...]
Mother Teresa was brought, along with a group of people like her…
Interviewer: Some say the prize was awarded to her for her missionary activity in Africa, India, and so on...
Samir 'Ubeid: Let’s assume she was righteous, according to the logic of the media, which is now controlled by the Jews and Hollywood. When they awarded the prize to Teresa, they were trying to award an "artificial hymen" or "artificial honor" to this prize. My colleague said that there is democracy. What democracy is there, if out of 1.5 billion Chinese, only two or three were awarded the Nobel? If you examine the Russian scientists and writers, who shook the world with their literature and their knowledge... What about Sakharov, what about Tolstoy? In addition...
Interviewer: But Sakharov was awarded the Nobel prize.
Samir 'Ubeid: I meant Chekhov. Chekhov! Chekhov!
[...]
Are we Arabs not included in the transfer of the scientific genetic code? We, the descendants of Al-Khawarizmi, Al-Jahez, Al-Razi, Avicenna, and Ibn Al-Haytham – are we all born idiots? Is there not a single scientist among us? Are we not included in the genetic code? Is intelligence not transferred down among us Arabs?
Interviewer: Scientific creativity occurs in freedom and democracy, brother.
Samir 'Ubeid: Democracy does not explain how it was awarded to 167 Jews, from among those 15 million scattered around the world, while abandoning 1.5 billion Chinese, a billion Indians, and 380 million Arabs. This is racism.
[...]
The [Grameen] bank for the poor won the prize because some of its shareholders are giants like Haliburton and others.
[...]
They infiltrated this bank, which became in the pocket of the Freemasons. This prize stems from the core of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The video of this idiot can be seen
here. Scroll down to number 1313.
The frightening aspect of all of this is that no matter what kind of obvious anti-semitic idiocy sprouts from these Islamic "researchers" and "scholars"
(all scare quotes are mine, H.) there is still a large segment of the population who puts the onus on the Jews to defend themselves from these libels rather than dismissing it all as the Jew-hatred that it is.
Labels: islam, Jews, Nobel Prize
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
I don't smoke. I never have. My wife used to smoke. She quit. I'm glad she did. I would prefer that my children don't take up smoking. Beyond that I don't think it's any of my business whether or not anyone else smokes. Some of my friends and extended family smoke and I still associate with them. Some people however don't want to be reminded that
others do smoke and still have that right, even though it's bad for them.
For a week at Bon Secours Hospital, my husband languished with pneumonia in a room with a sickly view.
His big window looked out over the parking lot in the distance. But closer in, out of sight of arriving visitors, stood an overloaded Dumpster and, beside it, a dismal little building labeled "Smoking Hut."
The building resembles one of those small greenhouses you can buy for your backyard. But its glass is black.
I watched people enter that grim hut as if they were strolling into a favorite tavern. I imagined it as a tight dark space where cigarette smoke would penetrate not only their lungs but their shoes and their hair and their underwear and their pores.
Then I watched them stroll out to return to work inside the no-smoking hospital.
One woman who pushed my husband's wheelchair to a chest X-ray stunk so badly of cigarettes that he decided to skip his return ride. Instead, he shuffled back to his room.
Clouded in smoke
Janette Treuter, a spokeswoman for Bon Secours in Grosse Pointe, sighed over all this. It's complicated and unpleasant.
The point, she said, is to protect visitors and neighbors from views of hospital employees huddled in clouds of smoke.
Have we become so wimpy and so focused on what everyone else is doing that we can't stand the sight of someone doing something we don't like?
With that in mind, Eric Hoffer says,
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own menaingless affairs by minding other people's business.
Dennis Prager, on the other hand makes no apologies for smoking and enjoying cigars.
There are few personal confessions more likely to alienate many Americans than to admit to smoking. Singles ads are filled with people who will never even go on a first date with someone who smokes. I strongly suspect that more women would date a millionaire who earned his money disreputably than a millionaire who smoked.
Drinkers are far more highly regarded than smokers, as are playboys, gamblers, lawyers, politicians and almost anyone else except child molesters.
So I have no doubt that some readers who until now have held me in esteem will lose respect for me when they learn that not only do I smoke cigars and a pipe, but I love doing so, have no interest in stopping and have been happy to pass this pleasure on to my older son. In fact, we regularly have some of our best talks while we enjoy our cigars.
My brother-in-law enjoys a good cigar after dinner and has offered them to me. I'm not really interested, but to piss off the busybodies, one day I might accept his offer.
Labels: busybodies, smoking
Just Remember, It's for Your Own Good
Michelle Malkin links to this
very disturbing report from Great Britain.
Parents could be forced to go to special classes to learn to sing their children nursery rhymes, a minister said.
Those who fail to read stories or sing to their youngsters threaten their children's future and the state must put them right, Children's Minister Beverley Hughes said.
Their children's well-being is at risk 'unless we act', she declared.
And Mrs Hughes said the state would train a new 'parenting workforce' to ensure parents who fail to do their duty with nursery rhymes are found and 'supported'.
The call for state intervention in the minute details of family life followed a series of Labour efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour and improve educational standards by imposing rigorous controls on the lives of the youngest children.
Mrs Hughes has established a national curriculum to set down how babies are taught to speak in childcare from the age of three months.
Her efforts have gone alongside a push by other ministers to determine exactly how parents treat their children down to how they should brush their teeth.
How long ago was it that the Sun never set on the British Empire? Now Brits can't even be trusted to raise their own children without the government looking over their shoulder to supervise. Talk about a once great society ending with a whimper.
Labels: busybodies, Europe
Reaching Out to the Muslim Community
I read Robert Sklar's editorial in the
Detroit Jewish News with fascination last week. We are constantly being told that the way to a radical Muslim's heart is through dialogue. We Jews and Christians have been repeatedly encouraged to reach out to the Muslim community. But what happens when Jews and Christians do reach out? Well, for one thing, the true colors of Muslim leaders become vivid and crystal clear.
After reading the editorial, I read Rabbi Klein's Yom Kippur
sermon where he tells of his experience in reaching out to local Muslims.
If you recall, the convergence of our calendars found Rosh Hashana and the first day of Ramadan on the same Monday night new moon, preceded by the Lutheran’s Church’s “World Peace Sunday”. On the Friday night immediately before Rosh Hashana we welcomed Christian and Muslim lay and clergy to our Shabbat worship, which was followed by a Saturday night program at the new Dearborn mosque, which was followed by a Sunday afternoon service and discussion in a Detroit church. The tone and tenor of all three experiences spoke of common goals and values, of shared hopes for continuing interfaith dialogue and increasing cooperation. From those Holidays to these, much has changed, and on this Yom Kippur, I ask your forgiveness for my naïve belief that we share core values with our American Muslim neighbors.
The Muslim cleric with whom I sat on a panel discussion at the church was Imam Hassan Qazwini. I was heartened to hear him speak Saturday night and again on Sunday afternoon of that interfaith weekend, about the evil of terrorism, and the terrible, tragic loss of innocent, civilian lives at the hands of suicide bombers. It was just a few weeks after that weekend, during the final week of Ramadan, that Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made international headlines with his message to university students in Teheran that Israel should be wiped off the map of the earth. Ahmadinejad declared war against the “World of Arrogance”. He called Israel the “primary front of the World of Arrogance in the heart of the Islamic world,” and he declared that the struggle against Israel was only the beginning of a war between Islam and the international non-Muslim world, a war that Islam would certainly win. “Is it possible,” he asked rhetorically, “to witness a world without America and Zionism? You had best know that this slogan and this goal is attainable, and surely can be attained.”
I immediately called Imam Qazwini at the Islamic Center of America, but for two days, could only reach the mosque’s answering machine. So I emailed him, expressing my hope that he would publicly distance himself from the President of Iran, especially in light of that month’s interfaith weekend. I said that as religious leaders, we must quickly and publicly denounce this kind of hateful rhetoric, lest it become even more difficult for our faith-communities to build bridges of friendship and cooperation. I never heard from him. Al chet sh’chatani, for the sin I committed in dismissing the history of our local Muslim leadership, for the hope that a moderate Islam was growing in Dearborn.
This summer, during Israel’s war with Hezbollah, the Dearborn community rallied beneath Hezbollah flags, shouting “Death to the Zionists”. The Arab American Political Action Committee, and the Congress of Arab American Organizations condemned Israel and America’s support of Israel, equating the Jewish nation with Nazi Germany, calling the Jewish state “occupied Palestine” and praising the dedication of Hamas and Hezbollah “freedom fighters.” Reported in the press was a gathering at the Bint Jabeil Cultural Center, held the last week of July, at the height of the Lebanese war. The report described a blistering call for the destruction of Israel and death to its Zionist lackeys in the west. Imam Qazwini was there, as were other Muslim clerics.
Read the whole thing. And then remember what Robert Sklar says in his editorial:
There are rules for dialogue, and one clear rule is that one side should not be advocating the destruction of the other.
Apparently, Rabbi Klein's sermon has been speeding around the Internet. This led to an
article in today's Detroit Free Press.
On the holiest day of the Jewish year, Rabbi Joseph Klein rose before his congregation in Oak Park last month to deliver a stunning sermon in which he apologized for working with local Muslim leaders and vowed to boycott interfaith events.
He accused Muslim leaders of complicity in "hate-filled and violence-promoting rallies" against Israel in Dearborn this summer, referring to protests in which Muslims carried signs equating the Star of David with a Nazi swastika.
The sermon was a thunderclap marking the edge of a storm that has been building for more than a year as local Jewish and Muslim communities pulled apart. Now, the tensions are open and obvious. Rabbis are avoiding events attended by imams and, when they do show up, conversation often becomes strained.
As a result, after years of pioneering efforts in southeast Michigan to create a haven for dialogue among Jews, Christians and Muslims, metro Detroit's world-famous interfaith tapestry is unraveling.
A month after they were spoken, Klein's words still are echoing across the Internet, cut and pasted into e-mails circulating among Christians, Muslims and Jews and leaving a trail of shock and sadness.
It should be made clear however that the fault of this "unraveling tapestry" is not the fault of Rabbi Klein, but the fault of local Imams who pretend that they are really interested in working with the Jewish community. This is no time to shoot the messenger. Rabbi Klein merely pointed out that the actions of these Imams speak louder than their words. This past summer, instead of speaking out against Hezbollah as they provoked a war with Israel, Qazwini and others from the local Islamic community
went to Washington D.C. to condemn Israel and the United States for supporting the only democracy in the Middle East. This was inbetween a busy schedule of
hate-filled rallies in Dearborn supporting Hezbollah.
As usual the local press pays no attention to the two-faced actions of local imams. They have to present an "even handed" report and avoid all traces of racism or "islamophobia." In other words, they whitewash the situation, absolving Muslims of all rightly deserved blame for the hatred they spew.
In the Free Press article, Qazwini claims,
. . . Klein is unrealistic if he thinks Muslim leaders based in Michigan can cool the world's religious hot spots.
Nobody's asking him to do that. What he can do though, is be honest and stop pretending he's working for peace rather than Islamic supremecy in the United States.
Labels: interfaith relations, islam
It's Just Good Clean Fun
Wow, they sure know how to party at the University of Pennsylvania. By way of
LGF, I linked to
this post at Democracy Project. Check out this photo taken at a campus Halloween party:
University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann threw her annual Halloween costume party at her home Tuesday night. Among the guests was Saad Saadi, who came dressed as a suicide bomber, complete with plastic dynamite strapped to his chest and a toy automatic rifle. Worse, Gutmann posed with Saadi!
They do make a lovely couple, though, don't they? Check out the other pictures. They are equally as mirthful.
Yep, Halloween suicide bombers, just good, clean, wholesome fun for the whole family.
Labels: Amy Gutman, idiotarians
It's OK, it's Multiculturalism
Near the end of
the article we are informed:
The practice crosses ethnic and cultural lines and is not tied to a particular religion.
And yet, my inner "islamophobe" has to ask, which other cultures besides some Islamic cultures practice this hidious rite?
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - An Ethiopian immigrant was convicted Wednesday of the genital mutilation of his 2-year-old daughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what was believed to be the first such criminal case in the United States.
Khalid Adem, 30, was found guilty of aggravated battery and cruelty to children. Prosecutors said he used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in his family's Atlanta-area apartment in 2001. The child's mother, Fortunate Adem, said she did not discover it until more than a year later.
The father, of course, maintains his innocence and blames his ex-wife's family. Who cares?
The important point here, is that female genital mutilation has been imported to the United States. We aren't told the religion of the family, but just the fact that there is a prominent disclaimer in the article, tells us that they are Muslim, the most coddled religion in the West.
Will women's rights groups protest this practice before it gets a chance to spread here? Or has it already taken root but kept quiet? Or does multiculturalism trump women's rights? What other Islamic dysfuntions will we be asked to ignore in the future? Will Muslims be allowed to
practice slavery in the U.S.? After all, (disclaimer) slavery has been practiced throughout history and around the world, including in parts of the United States. We will have to ignore the fact that slavery is still practiced in parts of the Muslim world. We are only allowed to focus on past sins of the West.
This episode should serve to remind us that Islamic supremecists do want to inflict their beliefs on the rest of the world. Usually they institute a small challange against Western sensibilities. It could be something as simple as demanding to be able to
wear a veil in court or on a
driver's license photo. It could be Muslim cab drivers
refusing service to people carrying alcohol or a
blind person with a leader dog. Or it could be tacit acceptance of female genital mutilation and slavery because feminist leaders who demand that women have equal access to college sports ignore those little girls being forced to undergo ritual genital mutilation. It could also be cowardly newspapers whitewashing the problem to avoid having to face the truth that Islamic supremecists are out to recreate our society into their own totalitarian dream culture.
Labels: female genital mutilation, islam, multiculturalism
War's legitimate object is more perfect peace. Flavius Vegitius Renatus
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CHALLAH AKBAR
