Garbanzo Toons

To Insanity and Beyond!

We've come to expect scenes like this from the Religion of Peace. The insanity aspect is that so many self-proclaimed human rights advocates, and alleged fighters for equal rights have absolutely nothing to say about it.

Not long ago, when I watched British-Muslim actress Afshan Azad, 22 years old, glide into the Yule Ball at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as Padma Patil, a witch going to the ball with pasty, red-haired “Ron Weasley,” I thought to myself: Only in the world of fantasy could a Muslim proudly play a Hindu girl, learning magic and choosing a "non-believing" man from outside the faith so freely—and without censure.

Indeed, according to the BBC, Azad's father, Abdul Azad, 54, and his son Ashraf, 28, allegedly threatened to kill the actress this year, on May 21, in their Manchester, England, home, because she was heard talking on the phone to her Hindu boyfriend. At a hearing last Tuesday, the father and son were charged with the attack. Ashraf was also accused of assaulting his sister and charged with “assault occasioning actual bodily harm.”

Of course it's got nothing to do with Islam. Her parents were mentally ill. They've perverted the message of peace inherent in the Qu'ran. They're part of a tiny minority who are perverting a great religion. The whole episode was taken out of context. It could just as easily been a member of any religion. It's the fault of the Jews. It's because of the predicament of the Palestinians. Feel free to add any further ridiculous excuses that I may have forgotten.

Beyond insane is this - reprinted in it's entirety because you have to read it. And if you're like me, you still don't believe it. In fact, I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll have to retract this post because it was a silly prank.

NASA's new mission: Building ties to Muslim world
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
July 6, 2010

You'd be hard-pressed to find an American who doesn't know that the "S" in NASA stands for "Space." Since the race to the moon in the 1960s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been one of the most storied agencies in the U.S. government. Now, under President Obama, its mission is changing -- and space isn't part of the story.

"When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things," NASA head Charles Bolden said in a recent interview with the Middle Eastern news network al-Jazeera. "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."

From moon landings to promoting self-esteem: It would be difficult to imagine a more dramatic shift in focus for an agency famous for reaching the heavens. Bolden's words left supporters of space exploration astonished. "Everyone had the same impression: Is this what he is spending his time on?" says a Republican Hill aide who tracks the space program. "A lot of people are very upset about it."

NASA is not getting out of the space business, at least not entirely. But Bolden's words, together with the president's decision to scrap much of NASA's mission and include the agency in the "Cairo Initiative" -- that is, the White House outreach program outlined in Obama's June 4, 2009, Cairo speech to the Muslim world -- show that the NASA of the future will be little like the past.

Obama released his plan for NASA a few months ago, and to many it seemed a blueprint for disaster. The moon program will be scrapped, replaced by a hazy hope to visit Mars. The space shuttle will die, too, leaving America with no way to put a man in orbit.

Obama's proposal stunned U.S. space heroes Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan -- the first and last men to walk on the moon -- who, along with Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, made a rare public statement denouncing the plan as a "devastating" scheme that "destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature."

Even John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth who later became a Democratic senator and Obama supporter, was dismayed by the president's plan to rely on the Russians to ferry American astronauts to the international space station. "We're putting ourselves in line for a single-point failure ending the whole manned space program," Glenn said.

The Muslim outreach at NASA is the result of the White House's preparation for Obama's Cairo speech. Staffers found that many Muslims admire American achievements in science and technology, so Obama used the speech to announce the appointment of U.S. "science envoys" and a new fund "to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries."

Obama appointed Egyptian-American scientist Ahmed Zewail as the first science envoy to the Middle East. Just last week, Zewail argued that the U.S. can build better relations with the Muslim world by "harnessing the soft power of science in the service of diplomacy." The NASA initiative is part of that.

Last month, Bolden himself traveled to Cairo to mark the first anniversary of Obama's speech. In an address at the American University, Bolden cited Zewail's work and stressed NASA's role in improving relations with Islamic nations. Beginning with a hearty "Assalaamu alaykum," Bolden explained that in the past, NASA worked with countries that were capable of space exploration, but now Obama has "asked NASA to change ... by reaching out to 'nontraditional' partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations."

"NASA is not only a space exploration agency," Bolden concluded, "but also an Earth improvement agency."

At the same time, Bolden gave a bleak assessment of the space part of NASA's mission. More than 40 years after the first moon landing, he told al-Jazeera, the U.S. can no longer reach beyond Earth's orbit without assistance from abroad. "We're not going to go anywhere beyond low Earth orbit as a single entity," Bolden said. "The United States can't do it."

Its space initiatives junked, its administrator rhapsodizing about helping Muslims "feel good" about themselves: That is the new NASA.

What exactly have Muslims contributed to the world in the past 500 years? Even if we go back to the beginning of Islam, and factor in the "golden age" of Islam, when they were more advanced than Europe, they still haven't given the world much in the way of real progress, advances for humanity, boons to civilization. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Islamic scholars decided centuries ago that if it's not in the Qu'ran, they've got no use for it. They haven't been interested in advancing knowledge in the way the West has. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

When Obama was elected, many of his sycophants were upset because Rush Limbaugh hoped that he would fail. I wish they were as upset that Obama wants the United States to fail.

Labels: Harry Potter, islam, NASA, Obama

posted by Harry @ 9:43 PM