timeimmortal

As predicted*, Pickering, Ontario nuclear power plant worker Shaukat Khawja has responded to my post from yesterday by calling me a Zionist. Dude’s gotta get some new material…

…anyhow, since it seems that Shaukat is the only one who ever really comments on his blog (there was a Jewish guy who posted a few comments here and there, but I haven’t seen any new material from him and can only assume that he’s packed up and moved on rather than attempting to sort through the lies and stupidity — Shaukat’s death threat against him also stands out as a possible reason for the departure), his follow-on commentary concerning what I said yesterday appeared in a comment on his site. Dude must feel lonely and unloved or something…is there any other reason to be your own sole commentator?

Anyhow, this post is certified non-halal, as it is accompanied by a byline picture of pork chops. With that in mind, let’s see what Shaukat has to say, shall we?

The other day I received another comment from Kenneth, the Zionist scum at Time Immortal — whining about my post pointing toward the real thugs behind 9/11 — and his great ignorance about Hizb’Allah — the fool doesn’t know that Israel, the US and Canada are the only three countries in the entire world, which have labeled Hizb’Allah a terrorist organization under Jewish Lobby’s pressure.

Now, the Reader may recall that my comment was specifically that Hezbollah is considered to be a terrorist organization in…Canada. I wasn’t commenting on anywhere else in the world because, well, I wasn’t talking about anywhere else in the world. And to be perfectly frank, I don’t care what any other government in the world thinks at the moment — I live in Canada, and Canada is a country which considers Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization. End of story.

Also, Shaukat really needs to learn a thing or three about the Wordpress blogging platform. As it is, I didn’t leave a comment on his site, but by linking to Rehmatpedia I probably did generate either a trackback or pingback, which is what Shaukat would have seen arrive. These look like comments from an administrative perspective, but are quite different animals indeed.

However, I was surprised Ken did not attach his usual porn link.

Immature playground mentalities aside, does it sound to anyone else as though Shaukat is disappointed by the absence of porn in correspondence directed to him?

Here is a news item for the fool – in which 500 Canadian has questioned the US ‘official story’ of 9/11.

And here, in turn, is news for Shaukat: 500 Canadians is approximately 0.0015% of the country’s population. Quite frankly, I don’t care one iota what 500 Canadians think — I’m sure one can easily find 500 Canadians who believe that they have personally been anal-probed by aliens. I’m sure one can easily find 500 Canadians who believe that Winston Churchill was a myth. I’m even sure that one can easily find 500 Canadians who think that honour killing is a legitimate form of discipline for errant daughters.

The point is, the consensus of a few — or even a few hundred — people does not a truth make; there are many people in the world who will gladly, for one deluded reason or another, buy into even the most absurd of conspiracy theories.

Some of them, as Shaukat points out, are even in government:

New Democratic Party Deputy House Leader Libby Davies delivers a Parliamentary Petition signed by over 500 Canadians demanding a new 9/11 investigation, in Canada’s House of Commons during Routine Proceedings at 1:10 pm on June 10, 2008.

“We, the undersigned citizens of Canada draw the attention of the House to the following:

THAT, scientific and eyewitness evidence shows that the 9/11 Commission Report is a fraudulent document and that those behind the report are consciously or unconsciously guilty of covering up what happened on 9/11/2001. This evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 were brought down by demolition explosives and that the official theory of the towers collapsing from the airplanes and the ensuing fires is irrefutably false.

We further believe that elements within the US government were complicit in the murder of thousands of people on 9/11/2001. This event brought Canada into the so-called “War on Terror,” it changed our domestic and foreign policies for the worse, and it will continue to have negative consequences for us all if we refuse to look at the facts.

THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon Parliament to:

(1) Immediately launch its own investigation into the events of 9/11/2001 on behalf of the 24 Canadian citizens murdered in New York City.

(2) Act lawfully on the findings of its own investigation by helping to pursue the guilty parties in the international courts.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9625

So what does this prove, exactly, apart from the fact that a few people in Canada’s opposition parties might just be conspiracy nutters and “Troofers”? Well…it proves nothing, really. The various 9/11 conspiracies, especially those surrounding the WTC 7 tower, have been debunked — only madmen — or those who will embrace any convenient lie in pursuit of a strictly pacifist agenda — need cling to them.

And Shaukat — being a fan of Hezbollah — doesn’t strike me as a pacifist.

Sleep tight, Pickering. Your nuclear power plant is in good hands.

Interestingly, I notice that Shaukat goes after me on the basis of my comments about Hezbollah and September 11th conspiracy nonsence. But there was a third component to my posting, which was to call out as bunk his comments that Islam was somehow fair to women, that women under Islam somehow enjoyed higher standards of equality than in the West. Strangely, Shaukat has let this point stand uncontested.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

* My prediction was more of a question, to be fair — I wondered how long it would be before Shaukat called me a Zionist again (implication: he was going to call me a Zionist again). The answer, as it turns out, is “about fourteen hours” (assuming that Shaukat’s blog’s timestamps reflect the time-zone difference between Pickering and Edmonton)

Count Roland writes in with a comment about this article, concerning one Chaudhry Rashid, who stands accused of the honour killing of his own daughter, Sandeela Kanwal.

Rashid demanded to be served a halal meal in prison, to which I remarked that some of the cooks I know, upon hearing of the man and his request, would go out of their way to fry his every meal in bacon grease.

Writer, from our legal heritage one is innocent until proven guilty. This man is only, as of yet, accused of the murder. Now, it may be very clear he did it, but he is not guilty, legally, until a judge or jury says so. As such, as a legally inocent man, he ought to get the same rights any other legally innocent but accused man gets. That may not include control over dietary options, but we ought to defend the presumption of innocence if we are to defend our classical liberties. Is not the abandonment of the legal presumption of innocence one of the bugaboos we rail against as it respects our kangaroo court HRCs?

The good Count has a point, but I would suggest that any (ahem) “guest of the state” — whether merely accused or formally convicted of a crime — is in no place to demand control over his or her dietary options. Presumption of innocence is paramount, but that by no means implies that the kitchens at the institutions at which such men as Rashid are incarcerated should necessarily cater to every obscure culinary demand that comes their way.

I’m a fan of being tough on crime, and I believe that the experience of incarceration — before, during, and (if it comes to that) after the trial — should be humane, but not pleasant. The government is obliged to feed each person in its charge, but that in no way implies that the cooks at the jailhouse are obligated to take requests.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Following on the heels of the news that Muhammed Parvez will be charged with first degree murder for the honour killing of his daughter, Aqsa, after she refused to wear the Islamic hijab, comes more good news.

A Mississauga man is now facing a first-degree murder charge in the 2007 death of his teenage sister.

Waqas Parvez, 27, was originally charged with obstructing police after his 16-year-old sister, Aqsa Parvez, was strangled in early December at her Mississauga home.

Another bit of justice for a girl whose life was cut short all too soon. Here’s hoping the Canadian justice system doesn’t fail us now.

Sadly, in Canada, we don’t usually imprison people “for life” or deport them when they get out again. But this is still the right thing — it’s the heaviest charge that can be leveled against Muhammed Parvez for his crime: the honour killing of his daughter after she refused his wishes that she wear the Islamic hijab.

…this time in Hamburg, Germany.

And looky here: the perpetrator’s name has a vaguely Arabic ring to it - Ahmad.

Three guesses as to said perpetrator’s religion?

Dinesh D’Souza talks about his debate with atheist Peter Singer, who is an advocate for what could be called “post-term abortion” and, bizarrely, animal rights. Singer’s arguments in favour of abortion and the legalization of infanticide are infused with comparisons between the unborn (or the newborn) human and different animals at similar stages of development. Working from the conclusion that, “at any stage of pregnancy,” the “calf, the pig, and the much-derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus,” Singer demonstrates what D’Souza terms an exploration of “the consequences of living in a truly secular society, devoid not only of the Christian God but also of Christian Morality.”

And indeed, I would argue that Singer’s various assertions are certainly, shall we say, logical outcomes of atheist thought, especially as applied to morality. If, after all, the human being is just another animal driven primarily by instinct, then things like abortion and infanticide aren’t rights, nor should they be illegal — they’re just facts of being, about as strange in humans as they are in other species that are sometimes known to eat or kill their young in certain circumstances.

And indeed, as both D’Souza and Singer point out, some human societies — certain African animist tribes, for example — practice that reality, occasionally killing unwanted children.

One could go into a lengthy discussion of how Singer’s reasoning is also self-destructive, since it bestows on the religious majority the “right” to remove, by any means necessary, the irreligious element within its midst free from legal or moral consequence. It is fortunate for Singer, then, that he is ultimately incorrect.

But I’m not going to elaborate on that point, because something else struck me today which I would prefer to remark upon. As noted, Singer and D’Souza mention that certain African tribes — who adhere to primitive, animistic religions — engage in child-murder and infanticide on occasion. One is led to believe that the ancient (pagan) Spartans also engaged in such practice.

And indeed, in modern times, while most atheists do not slaughter their own children when some perceived “need” for it arises (save in cases of abortion, of course), the same cannot be said, it seems, for many who follow the Islamic faith. And yes, I know that honour killings are supposed to be a cultural thing, not a religious thing. Heck, a day after this story was printed, the same newspaper (the Guardian) ran a story denying the link between Islam and honour killing.

And yet:

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said.

Rand, who was studying English at Basra University, was deemed to have brought shame on her family after becoming infatuated with a British soldier, 22, known only as Paul.

…

‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his Religion,’ he said.

Now let’s do a little compare-and-contrast, shall we?

Here’s Peter Singer:

“My colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a period of twenty-eight days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as having the same right to life as others.”

Here’s Abdel-Qader Ali, father of the murdered girl:

‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her.’

Do I perceive an agreement between the ideals of these two men, at least in passing?

I know that Christianity has its share of example of followers of the religion who have done horrible things. But equally, I observe that nowhere in mainstream Christian thought is the topic of when child-murder is and is not permissible ever brought up; murder, in all its forms, is as immoral now as it was in Jesus‘ time, and for good reason.

And I can’t help but think that the further one gets from Christ, the more tolerable the idea of allowing murder, even the murder of one’s own child, becomes. For all his barbarity, Abdel-Qader Ali murdered his daughter in response to a perceived transgression. For Peter Singer, no motivation would need to be stated, and no transgression required, to justify the act.

Predictably, this happened in a Muslim nation…Saudi Arabia, to be specific.

Equally predictably, the specific offense that the woman committed was that she was having an online chat with a man via the social networking site. For this terrible crime, she was beaten first, and then shot. The killer? Her father.

He shot her twice in the head and then kicked her all over, for the “crime” of “befriending other men.” The Arab man from northern Israel then boasted to police and paramedics about his deed, claiming that he did it to restore “family honour.”

Here’s the kicker though — he shot her for befriending men after her divorce. She is only 19 years old.

Now, I realize that even in North America, people sometimes get married fairly young — a couple of people I knew in high school got married at 18, even. And perhaps that’s what happened here, although given the tradition of child brides in Islam one tends to want suspect that the girl was married to her now ex-husband some time ago. And here she is, not even 20 and already divorced.

But then, divorce is easy in Islam, and carries no ramifications for the man — he can “befriend” other women, and even remarry. Evidently, the women of Islam are expected to sequester themselves indoors following a marital breakup. But then, that doesn’t really come as much of a surprise to realize anymore — equal rights for men and women would, after all, be against Sharia law. And we wouldn’t want that, would we?

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

I’m sure it’s just the work of a few isolated radicals, as opposed to being a growing trend in Islamic communities.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Ace)

Interesting observations:

Health promoter Pallavi Kashyap echoes this observation. The Kashyaps migrated from India to Canada 18 years ago and have a teenaged daughter. “We have to accept that our children, who are either born or raised here, will be influenced by the society they are living in. The key is to be totally clued into what is happening in their lives. We have to know them, their friends, what their interests are and talk to them about everything under the sun. It has to be an open relationship,” she says.

While there is a consensus on the need for open communication, there is no formula on how to bridge the gap between the culture that parents have grown up in and the one in which they are raising their children. “The main problem,” says Anumita Sharma, 18, who studies at York University, “is that our parents continue to live mentally in the country of their origin, whether it is India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. They expect us to behave and dress like our cousins back home. But they do not understand that things have changed there, too, and our cousins are not as traditional as our parents think.”

She also highlights the contradiction that marks the behaviour of many first-generation immigrants. Most want their children to excel in academics and integrate/assimilate into the society but are not willing to accept the western influences.

ANGER AND DISAPPOINTMENT

Ashima Kaul, 22, recalls the anger and disappointment she felt at being unable to attend birthday parties or go for sleepovers. She fumes at the preferential treatment accorded to boys over girls, citing various examples of gender-based division of labour at home and also a stricter conduct code for girls.

“I think our parents carry their fears from back home and that is what dictates their behaviour, especially towards girls,” says Ashima.

Example:

The task of balancing the East and West is understandably an onerous one. Krishnan Swaminathan, IT professional and a father of two girls, says his challenge is to ensure that “our (Indian) culture is retained at least to some extent without conflicting with our life here”.

His comment is representative of many first-generation immigrants: “As an Indian living in Canada, I still have my values and need to fulfil my duty and bring up my daughters, get them married to an Indian boy within our culture. I don’t want my daughters to deviate and go out of our culture.” He wants his daughters to integrate well into the Canadian society and “behave like them” when they are in Canadian spaces - but within “Indian cultural limits”. He believes that is possible because the country offers an opportunity for people to occupy different spaces.

“It all boils down to what kind of person you are and I believe that children can be moulded. But communication channels have to be open. Even if it is something against my own beliefs I should be willing to listen and reason with them.” This position may be fraught with contradictions but is the predominant one.

Unfortunately, this is one of those “you can’t have it both ways” situations. Either the daughters of parents of Arab and Indian immigrants will not deviate from the culture of their parents’ homeland, or they will integrate well into Canadian society. Oh, I’ll grant that there is plenty of room for crossover…but there are also plenty of mutually exclusive ideals that exist in one, and not in the other, as well. The issue of whom to marry is a particularly good one — above, Mr. Swaminathan is quite open about the fact that he insists that his daughters not marry outside their culture, that they settle down with “an Indian boy.” You can’t impress that belief upon someone and still expect them to “behave like” Canadians, because that’s just not how Canadians look at the issue of marriage.

(It’s probably true that a majority of people marry someone who is culturally and racially similar to them, but as a general rule the “Canadian way” is that you marry the person you fall in love with and feel called to be wedded to, regardless of what country they or their parents came from, and regardless of what particular shade their skin might have.)

The issue of how to dress is similar, with approximately the same considerations and ramifications. But the really important consideration in all of this is what happens when, in keeping with the values of Canadian society, a child — especially a daughter — decides to “go Canuck” and start dressing in jeans and t-shirts (and not in dresses and hijab), exercising her free right to attire herself. What is the reaction of the parents then? If the parents are still living “mentally in the country of their origin,” to what extent will they object when one of their kids does just that? To what extent will they respect Canadian values? To what extent will they attempt to impose the values of the “old country?” Will violence or murder be the result of that? Which culture takes precedence — the one left behind, or the one now all around? If the former, why was that culture left behind in the first place?

We should be asking these sorts of pointed questions of potential immigrants.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)

Erf writes in with a concern over this article and the way I approached it.

Why do you keep assuming Islam fundies have some sort of monopoly on insanity? If there’s any reason to believe the murder was some kind of honour killing, it’s not in the linked news reports. There are a lot of reasons why people kill other people, even men killing their own daughters. Some of them even have nothing to do with religion.

It seems like you immediately jump to the conclusion that insane Muslims are behind every act of violence that bears even superficial resemblance to the actual insane Muslim violence (of which there is sadly no shortage). This is not reasonable. Not all crazy people are Muslim, dude. In fact, most aren’t.

There are approximately three types of murderous crimes that I gravitate toward for blogging material. One is murders perpetrated by persons of a nihilistic/militantly atheistic bent (which I typically analyze from the perspective of conformity between the act and Darwinistic philosophy), one is murders perpetrated by Christians (which I denounce and criticize harshly, especially if they are attempting to use Christian theology to justify the act), and one is murders perpetrated by Muslims. This latter category is a fairly common theme around here for two reasons.

Firstly, I don’t assume that Islamic fundamentalists have any monopoly on insanity, although to be fair I do think that Islamic fundamentalists perpetrate way more acts of violence and murder than to Christian fundamentalists. About the worst most Christian fundies will do is…you know…demand that we teach young earth creationism or intelligent design in science classes. Or bake cookies. Once in a blue moon, some idiot with a Bible will get it in his head that he should off an abortionist or something, and when that happens I think the only proper response is to denounce the act as being antithetical to the Christian message in the clearest and most distinct terms possible.

On the Islamic side of the equation, it’s harder to take the text of the Koran, or Sharia law (which is basically an exegesis of the Koran), and use those to condemn acts of murder committed by Muslims or in the name of Islam in the same way that one can use the Bible and the Catechism to condemn murders committed by Christians or in the name of Christianity. Depending on how strictly one interprets the Sharia, things like honour killings are easily justified, as is discrimination against — or persecution of — apostates and infidels.

Secondly, while I am sometimes wrong (the recent bombing of a real estate agent in France is a decent example) in “jumping to the conclusion” that some Islamonutter was the perpetrator of a violent act that bears some or all of the usual hallmarks of violent acts that have, in the past and in other places, been attributable to Islamic terrorists and thugs, I find that I’m right more often than not.

Yes, there are indeed any number of different reasons why a person might choose to kill another person, and even why a man might choose to kill his own daughter. And yes, non-Muslims sometimes do that as well. But let’s look at the evidence that we have here, eh?

Firstly, the murder happened in an “immigrant” community within the city of Malmö (the Fosie district, which which has many residents who have self-segregated on the basis of language and culture, and for whom an inability to speak the local language is often a barrier to gainful employment). While none of the sources explicitly mention Islam as a relevant factor in the immigrant community in Sweden, it does serve to note that many of the top nations supplying immigrants to Sweden are predominantly Muslim nations, with the top two being Iraq and Iran. So while its certainly a possibility that neither the murdered girl nor her murderers were Muslim, there is also a reasonable probability that they were.

Secondly, the victim was a teenaged girl, and the arrested perpetrators were her stepfather and brother. That certainly fits the classical model of an honour killing, whereby a younger girl (often a teenager) is murdered by male relatives for having impugned the family honour somehow (perhaps by chatting with a Swedish boy, something a teenager would be wont to do?).

Thirdly, there is an established pattern of these balcony-related murders — seven distinctly identifiable cases. This suggests either the work of a prolific serial killer, or else a common modus operandi among several families within communities that have higher populations of immigrants and which are culturally segregated from the rest of Sweden all around them.

So while it’s technically correct to say that there is nothing in the news reports which has explicitly said “this was an honour killing perpetrated by a Muslim family”, there are also a lot of markers and indicators that one can find upon doing some further digging. Now, admittedly, I only did that digging just now — what I said in my previous article was just off-the-cuff speculation. But based on the above, it doesn’t seem an unreasonable speculation at all.

Which doesn’t surprise, by the way, because this sort of thing has become depressingly commonplace in Europe, and may even have recently taken place in Canada. It’s completely right to note that there is plenty of “hard” Muslim violence to go around (over 10,000 terrorist acts committed by Islamist radicals just since September 11th, 2001, in fact)…but there is also an emerging undercurrent of “soft” violence in the immigrant communities of many Western nations, which follows almost in lockstep behind the rising prevalence of Islam in those communities.

And quite frankly, it has escalated to the point already that when one hears of a teenaged girl being murdered by an older male relation, one can do very little but speculate as to the probable religious creed of the victim and her murderer.

Apparently, it has become a rather commonplace thing for young women to inexplicably fall from apartment balconies in Malmö, Sweden.

A teenage girl in Malmö fell from the balcony of her apartment sometime during the night of January 23rd. Her parents told the police that they found her on the ground below the following morning.

However, two male “relatives” have since been charged with pushing her off the balcony.

There is no mention in any of the news stories of the girl’s ethnicity, or why her relatives might have pushed her off the balcony.

I don’t think it’s that difficult to guess what the probable ethnicity of the men who’ve been charged with this is. Nor, I would wager, would it be difficult to guess the religion they probably follow.

One tends to find so many examples on a daily basis that it is becoming prudent to just lump them all together in one glorious catch-all posting. Or, at least, it saves me some time, which I like.

First, from Britain: “Asian youths” throw rocks at Holocaust Memorial participants. This is the British press, so we need to translate: “Asian youths” overwhelmingly means teenaged-to-twentysomething young men of Arabic or Indian sub-continental extract. Oh, I’ll grant that it could mean, you know, what we usually tend to think the term “Asian” means. But the anti-Jewish angle is significant: how many incidences of violence against Jews have been recorded where persons of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean extract are the perpetrators?

Here’s the money quote from the article, though:

The tour was organised by leading local historian Clive Bettington, who was later asked by police if he wanted officers to accompany him in future, but declined.

“That would be admitting there are ‘no go’ areas,” he said.

(…)

“I looked over the fence and saw four Asian youths throwing stones. They were laughing, then ran away.”

Just some aspiring young jihadists out having a laugh and throwing some rocks at the Jooooooos. Another typical day in London(istan). Interestingly, the issue of “no-go areas” (i.e. areas where Muslims have effectively taken over and rendered it unsafe for non-Muslims to travel through or past) rears its head again, although in typical Brit PC fashion, the man who organized the tour to the Holocaust memorial is too afraid of being labeled a racist* to acknowledge the existence of a very real problem.

Which brings us to item #2.

Apparently, it is also becoming increasingly common in Britain for teachers, police, and others in positions of authority to refuse to report honour killings as crimes, for fear of being branded as racist by Muslim spokesmen or hauled in front of a human rights tribunal (yes, England has them too).

The authors said families withdraw teenage daughters from school because they fear men will be unwilling to marry them if they are educated.

Many men brought up here want “freshies” - women “uncontaminated” by ideas of independence.

Rahni Binjie of the Roshni Asian Women’s Aid, a refuge in Nottingham, said: “We’ve had women who have disappeared from the education system. We don’t know if they’ve been taken abroad or killed or anything.”

Activists say there are particular problems with taxi firms who return women fleeing from abuse.

It’s those damnable cab drivers again!

I wonder if there wouldn’t be a noticeable drop in the number of honour killings in Western nations if a comprehensive ban prohibiting persons of Middle Eastern, African, or Indian sub-continental extract from driving cabs?

More seriously, though, the above is illustrative of just why more and more people are making noise about the human rights commissions (HRCs). We are fighting for true freedom of expression in Canada, a right that we, as Canadian citizens, are supposedly ensured by the anyhow, but which increasingly seems to be under threat from our self-styled “betters”, Richard Warman in particular.

And a part of that freedom of expression is the freedom to call a spade a spade. If we let the HRCs’ powers take us to the point where police can be hauled before them for the “crime” of being “anti-Muslim” simply because they made the attempt to investigate a possible honour killing, and if we let the HRCs’ powers take us to the point where teachers can be hauled before them for the “crime” of being “anti-Muslim” simply because they made the attempt to intervene in a case of obvious abuse of a female Muslim child by her male relatives in accordance with Sharia law, then we — all of us: every Canadian citizen who values his or her rights and freedoms, and who kind of likes what Canada is — have lost. We will, at that point, have turned over the keys to the country to the barbarians and the savages.

Item #3 is yet another suicide bombing, this time in the Israeli town of Dimona. One person was killed, and another ten injured. One suicide bomber managed to self-detonate, while the other was shot dead by an Israeli policeman.

The terrorist organization Islamic Jihad is claiming responsibility, but Kateland wonders how this smaller group came up with the resources to carry out the attack. She wonders if perhaps Hamas is employing the use of fronts.

Item #4 is another page from our “if you can’t obey the rules, don’t work there” file: Muslim women workers in Britain’s health system are committing hygeine violations in order to conform with Sharia law’s unreasonable standards of modesty.

female workers are ignoring Britain’s Department of Health rules requiring medics to be “bare below the elbow” because they consider showing any skin — outside the hands and face — immodest.

The guidelines were put into place to stave off the spread of infectious killer bugs like MRSA and Clostridium difficile, which have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of hospital patients, according to the paper.

Hygiene experts said the standard should hold for all workers — even if it goes against their Religion.

“I don’t think it would be right to make an exemption for people on any grounds. The policy of bare below the elbows has to be applied universally,” Dr. Mark Enright, professor of microbiology at Imperial College London told the Telegraph.

Some fear the enforcing the rules will open the door to lawsuits charging discrimination against female Muslims working within the medical professions.

The Islamic Medical Association, for one, has issued a statement that “no practicing Muslim woman — doctor, medical student, nurse or patient — should be forced to bare her arms below the elbow,” according to paper.

I’ve worked in kitchens before, and the hygeine standards at those restaurants were pretty strict. I wasn’t married at the time, but had I been, not even the fact that it was my wedding ring would have prevented my managed from objecting to the gold band on my left ring finger. Rings are actually very unsafe things to wear in a kitchen, because they trap all sorts of bacteria. And the danger isn’t just to the customers, but to the cook himself even after he goes home; nothing says “bad Tuesday” like accidentally contaminating one’s breakfast with bacteria from the five chicken pizzas one made during the course of Monday evening.

I love what my ring stands for, and wear it to signify the highest devotion possible to my wife. If I felt that it would be improper of me to take the ring off in order to work in a kitchen, I would turn in my apron and find a different job. Either that, or I would put the ring on a chain and keep it safely tucked inside my shirt while I worked.

The point is, I’d either meet the requirements of my employer, or I’d leave the job behind.

This is not me being hard on modesty; I’m a huge fan of modesty. But this is me being hard on unreasonable standards of modesty that know no flexibility even when the lives of others are potentially at stake. Showing the forearms is not unreasonable by any measure — they’re just forearms, after all — and if the choice has to be made between rolling up one’s sleeves and potentially giving a patient a septic infection, then the choice should be obvious: roll up your damn sleeves. If for some reason you feel you are unable to do this, you are welcome to seek employment in a career that does not require your sleeves to be rolled up.

Just don’t expect that the entire British medical system should roll over for you, and don’t expect that you’ll be given the “right” to potentially endanger the health and lives of patients by becoming a transmission vector for superbugs simply because it is more important, in your mind, that Britain adapt to your barbaric code of law.

Item #5: Husbands in the U.K. with multiple wives will be allowed to claim additional welfare benefits for said additional brides. Even though bigamy is illegal in Britain, as long as the wedding took place in a nation that treats polygamy as legal the additional benefits can and will be granted.

Item #6: speaking of suicide bombers, did you hear the one about the Islamic terrorists who strapped bombs to women with and then remote-detonated them when people stopped to render aid?

Yes, O Reader, that is the sort of vermin that the West is up against. Just in case there wasn’t enough evidence already pointing out what flavour of evil these people are.

And proving that both stupidity and slavish devotion to Darwinism are alive and well among the progressive left:

For the record, assuming it’s true, I think it’s just horrible that whoever was behind this latest disaster used Down’s women to perpetrate the bombings but I don’t see it as a sign of desperation. I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that.

The above sort of thinking is another example of why I continue to hammer on atheism as being the gravest threat to human liberty that humanity has ever concocted for itself. Not only is it just disgustingly wrong, but it actually serves to justify, in a weird sort of way, the actions of the jihadists. Oh, I know that he “think[s] it’s just horrible” that these women were used in this way, but all that pretending at disgust fades by the last sentence, which openly praises the ingenuity and adaptation that the terrorists displayed in employing this latest murder tactic. How brilliant of them!

Item #7: that British bishop who warned about “no-go areas” (see link, above) is now under police protection, in fear of his life. How did Britain’s Muslims respond to the claim that Muslim immigrants had created several communities into which it was unsafe for non-Muslims to wander?

Death threats.

Gee, thanks, guys…don’t try and do anything now to dispel the public’s already negative image of you!

As I’ve said before, and will say again now, I really want to have a higher opinion of Islam and of the people who practice that religion. The problem, for me at any rate, is that there are too many examples — from too many different places around the world! — that make it so very difficult to look at Islam, and at the Islamic world, with anything but disgust.

* are we still caught up in this idiocy? It is not, by definition, racist to criticize Islam, because Islam is not a race!

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Kathy Shaidle)

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

Previously, this site ran an article that quoted heavily from a blog post by , in which he mused over the possibility that the murders of two young Muslim girls — Amina Said and Sarah Said — by their father (an orthodox Muslim and cab driver) were, in fact, honour killings.

He has gotten some interesting mail over the subject, including this one:

Hi, i think you are a Jewish extremist sick person. Who is saying nothing but lies. I’ve been reading you’re news paper for the last 24 years. I have never heard a Jewish or Christian man committed a crime. The man you are taking about, is one of the best people you can ever meet in your life. You have convicted the man before we even know if he was a killer or a victim. Just because he is a Muslim. Stop beating around the bushes. The Aunt that you are taking about, has never visited that man and her sister that you are talking about is a [slanderous accusation deleted -- RD.] and you’re not alone hating Muslims. Its you Lesbians, Homosexual, child molesters, and to add to all of that the Jews, that no one can mention in any news paper owned bye them. The child molesting case that you were talking about was created by the wife’s mother, To take the kids from him and the case was dropped because the mother confessed to the truth. Instead of spreading hate and inciting violence teach your kids to stay away from Muslim girls. Educate them. Instead of teaching them how to [deleted] each other like animals. I know you’re only waiting fro any Muslim man with a traffic ticket to make a big deal out of it. You have 40,000 cases in a month in the United states and none of them were mentioned as Jew or Christian.

So in addition to the improper grammar, lack of ability to spell properly, and lack of formal grasp of sentence structure, Dreher’s correspondent also seems to believe that it’s all the fault of the Jews.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but every day, my ability to find things to like about people who self-identify as Islamic dies just a little bit.

The really interesting thing in the above, though, is the line that reads thusly: “The Aunt that you are taking about, has never visited that man and her sister that you are talking about is a [slanderous accusation deleted -- RD.] and you’re not alone hating Muslims.” Is it just me, or is there the implication beneath this sentence that, in the eyes of Dreher’s (probably Muslim) correspondent, the Said sisters got what they had coming to them?

Erf writes in, in response to this article:

I think the people who point out that honour killing comes from pre-Islam cultures are trying to keep this from tainting all Muslims everywhere. Moreover, they’re saying that it’s not Islam that causes this — we shouldn’t be blaming the religion for this insanity. I think there’s something to that, trying to separate correllation from causation.

That said, the people involved in these honour killings are from more than just Pakistan — there was the Egyption immigrant family you mentioned a while ago, for example. So it’s broad. Maybe some sort of insane pseudo-fundamentalist sub-religion who never grew out of “the old ways”? (The distinction between “Muslim” and “Fundamentalist Muslim” is a very important one, and shouldn’t be dropped; otherwise we encourage people to lump us in with the people trying to take science out of schools.)

On one hand, I agree.. I think there is a legitimate reason to point out that honour killings are a cultural practice which emerged prior to the promulgation of the Islamic faith, and which are practiced in other regions of the world besides those in which Islam is the majority demographic. Likewise, I agree — at least in principle — that where the association between honour killing and Islam exists (which is a very broad range of areas, unfortunately), one can generally look at the particular strain of Islam (because Islam, like Christianity, has many divisions within it) in that region and perceive that it is of a more radicalized bent.

But regarding the first point, I think of something I wrote a short while back: “In Christian tradition, the early church didn’t necessarily celebrate religious holidays in the way they are traditionally celebrated now. Christmas trees and Easter eggs are two easy examples of things that began outside of Christian tradition which were absorbed into, and in essence ’sanctified’ by, historical Christianity, and are now recognizable as symbolistic components of the Christian observance of these religious holidays. Within…Catholicism, vast amounts of philosophy were absorbed directly out of Greek tradition, and as a result the Church was able to formally articulate one of its most important teachings: transubstantiation and the Real Presence of Christ in the celebration of the Eucharist.

Religions are not static entities (or, at least, shouldn’t be), but are instead dynamic things which adopt and (hopefully!) sanctify certain practices from the cultures from which they emerge (or into which they extend). This has certainly been the case with Christianity. Should it come as any surprise that Islam — if not entirely, then at least certain local variants of it — has potentially done the same?” As unfortunate as it is to say, I think it is reasonably safe to assume that these more “radicalized” strains of Islam have, in fact, absorbed honour killing into their core theology, and promote the practice on that basis.

More interestingly, though, is the analogy to the fundamentalist Christians. While there is something of a parallel that can be drawn, it should be noted that mainstream Christians are, typically, very willing to speak out against the more ridiculous things that fundies do. What is more, mainstream Christians often do speak out in exactly that way. The “science in the classroom” issue is a good example of this, actually, and for every Christian who argues in print that evolution is the devil’s tool, there are other Christians who will step in — often with some serious academic firepower at their disposal — to call B.S.

(Of course, it serves to note that whereas fundamentalist Christians typically just make Christians look ignorant and anti-science, fundamentalist Muslims often have slightly more…ah…murderous aspirations — in this regard, the parallelism in the comparison mostly fails.)

The same is true, to a degree, on the Islamic side, but with a difference. Whereas in Christianity, the fundies are a (vocal) minority, in Islam it is beginning to look like the fundamentalist strains are becoming the mainstream strains, while more moderate theological schools are being pushed to the side.

Islam is divided into Shia and Sunni variants, each of which has a powerful, oil-rich nation that serves as a kind of driving force for the promulgation and expansion of radicalized strains of each. Sunni Islam is the religion of Saudi Arabia, and that nation’s oil money gets used to finance mosques and schools around the world…mosques and schools in which the Saudi interpretation of the Islamic faith (a very ‘fundamentalist’ interpretation, to be sure) is what is taught. Shia gets its drive and financing from Iran, but the net outcomes are the same. In either case, the strains of Islam that are becoming more and more common in the world, driven as they are by the absurd revenues that Iran and Saudi Arabia are making off of the sale of oil, are the fundamentalist ones.

And increasingly, we are seeing that more moderate voices are being either marginalized or, in a lot of cases, actively hounded out of their faith communities. That’s certainly the fate that befell Canada’s own Tarek Fatah, and his story is hardly an uncommon one.

It would be easy to suggest that this is just some insane little cultish interpretation of the religion that does not speak for the whole. But, as was noted, a lot of the problems that this fundamentalist Islam causes are found in many different places throughout the world. That suggests that the radicalism itself is as broad in scope as the range of places in which things like Islam-linked honour killings occur. Which makes sense — that , in Islam, is the school of thought behind which the big money can be found. It has drive, and it has ambition, and it is becoming (I think) the norm, rather than the bizarre little exception to the rule (unlike in Christianity).