Improving US-Arab Ties

Posted in Humor, Politics on June 12th, 2009

On Jun 4, 2009, President Obama went to Cairo, Egypt and gave a speech to the Islamic World. It was entitled, A New Beginning, a seemed to promise a less overtly hostile attitude from US government toward the Muslim World.  Given the apologetic and conciliatory tone of the address, I was quick to disparage it. Given the antipodal natures of America and Islam, I found it’s entire premise to be fatally flawed.

I had overlooked the fact that, while President Obama was careful to formally address the Islamic World as a whole, he was actually speaking to the Arabs and the Persians. He was speaking to the controlling partners in OPEC. Given that fact and the fact that he is in the processes of semi-nationalizing the US auto industry,  President Obama may well be ushering a new era of improved US-Arab relations.

Rob Rogers - The Pittsburgh Gazette - Obama, President of General Motors
Barack Hussein Obama, President of GM

Yes, President Obama’s administration having ownership of majority shares of the remains of both GM and Chrysler will definitely have the Arabs rethinking their bargaining positions with the United States. ;)

Related Reading:

Autobiography of a Yogi
Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography
Politics: A Treatise on Government
The Iran Primer: Power, Politics, and U.S. Policy
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Dover Thrift Editions)
[Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter]

Did A’isha Weep?

Posted in Ethics & Morality, Religion, Society on April 12th, 2009

 
Muhammad and Aisha Did the young Arab girl A’isha weep when Muhammad mounted her and tore though her virginity and any semblance of innocence she might have retained at that point? Did she cry bitter tears when, at the age of nine (some apologists say 12 – 14) the middle-aged founder of Islam first used her?

Humanity will never know; it’s never been a safe question ask.  The mere allusion to Muhammad’s debased pedophilia is enough to get one savagely murdered in some noisome quarters of the world. Soon it may be risky across the globe if mankind falters and the Islamists get their way.

I think it safe to say that at least one of the young girls going though this same rape and torment in this supposedly enlightened age will be weeping, screaming, and pleading for her “husband” to stop when he gets the urge to rut in her. Sadly, her cries will be unheeded by the vermin on top of her, the rest of the nest of them around her, and seemingly most of mankind as well, who will shake their heads but take no action beyond that.

A Saudi mother is expected to appeal a judge’s ruling after he once again refused to let her 8-year-old daughter divorce a 47-year-old man, a relative said.

Sheikh Habib Al-Habib made the ruling Saturday in the Saudi city of Onaiza. Late last year, he rejected a petition to annul the marriage.

The case, which has drawn criticism from local and international rights groups, came to light in December when Al-Habib declined to annul the marriage on a legal technicality. His dismissal of the mother’s petition sparked outrage and made headlines around the world.

The judge said the mother, who is separated from the girl’s father, was not the legal guardian and therefore could not represent her daughter, the mother’s lawyer, Abdullah al-Jutaili, said at the time.

The girl’s husband pledged not to consummate the marriage until the girl reaches puberty, according to al-Jutaili, who added that the girl’s father arranged the marriage to settle his debts with the man, who is considered “a close friend.”

In March, an appeals court in the Saudi capital of Riyadh declined to certify the original ruling, in essence rejecting al-Habib’s verdict, and sent the case back to al-Habib for reconsideration.

Under the Saudi legal process, the appeals court ruling meant that the marriage was still in effect, but that a challenge to the marriage was still ongoing.

The relative, who said the girl’s mother will continue to pursue a divorce, told CNN the judge “stuck by his earlier verdict and insisted that the girl could petition the court for a divorce once she reached puberty.”

The appeals court in Riyadh will take up the case again and a hearing is scheduled for next month, according to the relative.

Child marriages have made news in Saudi Arabia in the past year.

In a statement issued shortly after the original verdict, the Society of Defending Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia said the judge’s decision went against children’s “basic rights.”

Marrying children makes them “lose their sense of security and safety,” the group said. “Also, it destroys their feeling of being loved and nurtured. It causes them a lifetime of psychological problems and severe depression.”

Zuhair al-Harithi, a spokesman for the Saudi Human Rights Commission, a government-run group, told CNN that his organization was fighting child marriages.

“Child marriages violate international agreements that have been signed by Saudi Arabia and should not be allowed,” al-Harithi said.

Child marriage is not unusual, said Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi Arabian researcher for the international group Human Rights Watch, after the initial verdict.

“We’ve been hearing about these types of cases once every four or five months because the Saudi public is now able to express this kind of anger, especially so when girls are traded off to older men,” Wilcke told CNN.

Mohammed Jamjoom
Reporting for  CNN, April 12, 2009

This is the sort of thing that humans find sickening. Some misborn mockery of a man can’t pay his debts, so he sells off his daughter to another subhuman piece of filth for the purpose of slaking its perverted lusts.

When the girl pleads for protection from the upcoming serial rape, what passes for a court system in Saudi Arabia declares that she’s too young to understand divorce and so must remain “married” to the vermin until she reaches puberty.

That’s Arabs for you. The girl’s too young to understand divorce, but not too young to be bred by some sweating, filthy, creature who mocks mankind by his piss poor aping of them.

And, of course, when the girl’s mother tries to get the Saudi courts to see something akin to reason, Sheikh Habib Al-Habib declares that she has no standing with the court and that the state-sanctioned rape and enslavement of her daughter will proceed.

Of course, under Shari’a – the law as laid down by Muhammad – such villainy is fully condoned, so one must expect any mouthings issued from the maws of al-Qummal like Sheikh Habib Al-Habib to fully support pedophilia and the selling of young girls into bondage.

While this is something that everyone has come to expect from what the Arabs try to pass off as their “civilization,” one has to – if one is human and possessed of reason and morality – wonder why it must be, albeit tacitly, condoned by mankind.

Would it not be better if mankind rid itself of this infestation and the diseases of both flesh and spirit that it carries?

Related Reading:

In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom
The History of Saudi Arabia
Muhammad: A Story of God's Messenger and the Revelation That Changed the World
Muslims, Christians, and Jesus: Gaining Understanding and Building Relationships
Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About American Law
[Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter]

FUBAR Al-Islam

Posted in Society on March 17th, 2009

Sometimes the shear bizarreness and perversity of cultures astounds me. Currently the “shock and awe” over gross stupidity and derailed logic trains that I’m experiencing stems from the incomprehensible behavior of Saudi Arabia, whose laws are modeled on the Wahhabists’ strict interpretation of Shari’a.

These supposedly civilized and cultured people will do the damnedest and hopefully most damnable things

They’ll gleefully sentence a 75 year-old woman to 40 lashes, 4 months imprisonment, and exile from Saudi Arabia for having two unrelated men – who were bringing her food – in her house for some short period of time.

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house, according to local media reports.

According to the Saudi daily newspaper Al-Watan, troubles for the woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, began last year when a member of the religious police entered her house in the city of Al-Chamli and found her with two unrelated men, “Fahd” and “Hadian.”

Fahd told the policeman he had the right to be there, because Sawadi had breast-fed him as a baby and was therefore considered to be a son to her in Islam, according to Al-Watan. Fahd, 24, added that his friend Hadian was escorting him as he delivered bread for the elderly woman. The policeman then arrested both men.

And yet the Saudis require that women buy their lingerie from men, since by law all sales clerks in Saudi Arabia are men.

From Global Post:

RIYADH — Reem Asaad finds it annoying to buy her bras and panties from a man. But she doesn’t have much choice in the matter.

Although Saudi Arabia has the strictest gender segregation in the world, only men are hired as sales staff in most retail stores.

“We have men selling g-strings in stores to women which doesn’t happen anywhere in the world,” said Asaad.

But the 37-year-old professor of finance and banking is even more frustrated that a three-year-old regulation permitting female sales clerks has not been implemented.

For now, that regulation is languishing in the proverbial bureaucratic bottom drawer, a vivid example of the barriers to women in the workplace put in place by an ultraconservative religious establishment opposed to women working outside the home.

Whatever logic there is behind this sort of combination of behaviors is so unhinged as to be beyond understanding by civilized people possessed of even a modicum of intelligence and education. The “mingling” of the genders, if unrelated, is a serious crime and yet Saudi Arabia enforces laws that force women to buy “intimate apparel” from men.

One has to wonder if the initiation ritual or training regimen of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice involves a protracted bare-headed stay under the desert sun. Severe heat stroke and having one’s brains cooked is close to being the only organic pathology that could explain such asinine and contradictory behaviors and rulings.

Truly, Wahabism would be better named FUBAR Al-Islam. ;)

On the other – much more sarcastic and prurient - hand, I’m sure that the store clerks are happy with things the way they are now.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’d love to have the chance to know what these women chose to wear under their abayas. I’m sure the lingerie clerks feel the same way. ;-)

Related Reading:

A  Comparative View of Religions
Paramedic to the Prince: An American Paramedic's Account of Life Inside the Mysterious World of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
Muslims, Christians, and Jesus Participant's Guide: Gaining Understanding and Building Relationships
The Kindle Qur'an | Kindle Koran | Kindle Quran | Kindle Al-Qur'an (Definitive English Edition) Complete and Unabridged With Full Color Reproductions of ... Moslem | Qur'an | Koran | Quran | Al-Qur'an)
[Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon] [Twitter]