From the thugs that fire-bombed churches, to educated students at college campuses, to supposedly learned fellows at Islamic institutions on up to those in high government positions.

They are an illogical and irrational lot because history, context and accuracy in translation from from one language to another do not matter.

They are a paranoid lot because when indigenous  Christians use the term “Allah” in their publications and worship they see secret attempts and a hidden agenda by Christians at proselytization of Muslims, a challenge to the sanctity of  Islam and  a de-Islamisation of the make-up of the country.

They are a bigoted lot because they want exclusive rights to the term “Allah”.   The fact that language which is a medium of communication and is accessible to all, means nothing to them.

No, in Malaysia, the Malay Muslims MUST have exclusive right to “Allah”!  Don’t the rest of you dare use it too!

News stories:
Malaysia Defends ‘Allah’ Ban As Ninth Church is Attacked
Allah debate: Church set on fire in Malaysia
Malaysia Court Nixes Gov’t Ban on Christian ‘Allah’ Usage
Church officials reject minister’s call to drop ‘Allah’ usage

Saudi court sentences 75-year-old woman to lashes
By MAGGIE MICHAEL,

CAIRO (AP) – The sentencing of a 75-year-old widow to 40 lashes and four months in prison for mingling with two young men who were reportedly bringing her bread has sparked new criticism of Saudi Arabia’s ultraconservative religious police and judiciary.

Khamisa Sawadi, who is Syrian but was married to a Saudi, was convicted and sentenced last week for meeting with men who were not her immediate relatives. The two men, including one who was Sawadi’s late husband’s nephew, were also found guilty and sentenced to prison terms and lashes.

The woman’s lawyer, Abdel Rahman al-Lahem, told The Associated Press on Monday that he plans to appeal the verdict, which also demands that Sawadi be deported after serving her prison term. He declined to provide more details and said his client, who is not serving her sentence yet, was not speaking with the media.

Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam prohibits men and women who are not immediate relatives from mingling and women from driving. The playing of music, dancing and many movies also are a concern for hard-liners who believe they violate religious and moral values.

A special police unit called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice enforces these laws, patrolling public places to make sure women are covered and not wearing make up, sexes don’t mix, shops close five times a day for Muslim prayers and men go to the mosque to worship.

But criticism of the religious police and judiciary has been growing in Saudi, where many say they exploit their broad mandate to interfere in people’s lives.

Last month, the Saudi king dismissed the chief of the religious police and a cleric who condoned killing of TV network owners that broadcast “immoral content” – as part of a shake-up signaling an effort to weaken the kingdom’s hard-line Sunni Muslim establishment.

In Sawadi’s case, the elderly woman met the two 24-year-old men last April after she asked them to bring her five loaves of bread, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported.

The men – identified by Al-Watan as the nephew, Fahd al-Anzi, and his friend and business partner Hadiyan bin Zein – went to Sawadi’s home in the city of al-Chamil, located north of the Saudi capital, Riyadh. After delivering the bread, the two men were arrested by a one of the religious police, Al-Watan reported.

The court said it based its March 3 ruling on “citizen information” and testimony from al-Anzi’s father, who accused Sawadi of corruption.

“Because she said she doesn’t have a husband and because she is not a Saudi, conviction of the defendants of illegal mingling has been confirmed,” the court verdict read.

Sawadi had told the court that she considered al-Anzi is her son, because she breast-fed him when he was a baby. But the court denied her claim, saying she didn’t provide evidence. In Islamic tradition, breast-feeding establishes a degree of maternal relation, even if a woman nurses a child who is not biologically hers.

Sawadi commonly asked her neighbors for help after her husband died, said Saudi journalist Bandar al-Ammar, who reported the story for Al-Watan. In a recent article, he wrote that he felt the need to report the case “so everybody knows to what degree we have reached.”

Others have also spoken out against the case against Sawadi, accusing the religious police of going too far.

“How can a verdict be issued based on suspicion?” Saudi doctor and columnist Laila Ahmed al-Ahdab wrote in Al-Watan on Monday. “A group of people are misusing religion to serve their own interests.”

What is so unseemly, so wrong about helping out an old woman that the woman deserves to be punished with forty lashes just because the young men who helped her were not her immediate relatives?

This is clearly a self-righteous hypocrisy on the part of the religious police and judiciary. It seems to these people keeping their religion’s legalistic requirements is more important that helping out an old woman who is hungry and needs bread to feed herself.

Misusing religion for their own interests? I think it is more than that. More than just self-righteousness. The religious police see themselves as enforcing God’s laws, and therefore do not see themselves as serving their own interests. How can you fight that?

Well, duh!  Of course there are no homosexuals in Iran!  When caught committing homosexual acts, they are executed!  And with that threat hanging over their heads, is it any wonder that no one will claim that he or she is a homosexual?

Did you read about the guy, who runs the TV station that is supposed to promote understanding and tolerance of Islam, who decapitated his wife because she threatened to file for divorce?  Why are such killlings acceptable in Islam?  What is so “honorable” about killing your daughters, your wives, or any female relative just so your family name is not “stained”?

Barbaric is the only word that comes to mind.

SAUDI ARABIA: Father Burns Christian Daughter to Death

A Saudi man cut the tongue of his daughter and burned her to death for converting to Christianity, according to a report by the United Arab Emirates based Gulf News. The victim frequently wrote on various website blogs about her conversion from Islam. It is believed that she turned to Christianity after being exposed to its teachings on the internet and through Christian media.

Writing under the nickname of “Rania” just a couple of days before her murder, the girl wrote that her family members grew suspicious after she had a religious discussion with them and her brother found some of her Christian articles and a cross sign on her computer screen. Her father is a member of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a powerful police unit commissioned to ensure the good moral behaviour of the citizens of Saudi Arabia.

“Many viewers in Saudi Arabia watch our Christian TV programs,” said Arab Vision’s international director. “We know this because a number of them contact us, and like ‘Rania’ want to know more about how they can follow Jesus Christ. It is very humbling to see how much they are willing to risk and sacrifice for the Lord.”

The Gulf News report explains that “Saudi religious scholars have frequently warned against the dangers of Christian internet websites and satellite TV channels which attract Muslim youngsters to change their religion. They decreed that watching these channels or browsing these websites which call for conversion to Christianity by various means is against the teachings of Islam.”

Sources close to the victim have said that the father is being investigated for “honour killing” rather than “murder”, because it is deemed that he had to “wash the shame of dishonour” on his family brought about by the unbecoming behaviour of the daughter.

A fine example of barbarity from the practitioners of Islam. In the words of Ali Sina:

Accept nothing short of the total eradication of Islam. This disease must be wiped out. There can’t be a moderate Islam just as there is no such thing as healthy disease or sensible insanity. Islam is extreme. To fight Islamic extremism you have to fight Islam. There is no middle ground. Either you eradicate Islam or Islam will eradicate you. The choice is yours.

Danes need look no further than their own newspapers to find the reason for the car bombing that severely damaged their embassy in Pakistan on Monday, according to Rohan Gunaranta, an international terrorism expert from Pakistan.

‘There is still a lot of dissatisfaction here about the cartoons, as well as the fact that the Danish government still has not condemned them or the people that were responsible for them. As long as that hasn’t happened, Denmark will be under the constant threat of militant muslims,’ Gunaranta said.

Fauzia Mufti Abbas, Pakistan’s ambassador to Denmark, agreed that the Mohammed cartoons, first published in Jyllands-Posten newspaper in October 2005, had incited Muslim anger and were possibly the motivation for the attack, which killed eight and wounded as many as 30.

‘It isn’t just the people of Pakistan that feel they have been harassed by what your newspaper has begun,’ she said. ‘I’d like to know if your newspaper is satisfied with what it has done and what it has unleashed?’

Abbas said, however, that it would be necessary to await the outcome of the enquiry before drawing any conclusions about who was responsible or their motives.

The matter of the cartoons, she said, was something Danes needed to reflect on.

‘Danes know that they have insulted people around the world by printing and reprinting the Mohammed cartoons, which were done in poor taste.’

More here.

Poor Pakistanis with their fragile sensibilities!

Yes, blame others for their own propensity for violence!

Following are excerpts from an interview with Saudi anthropologist Sa’d Al-Sowayan, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on April 25, 2008:

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: Our education institutions are very deficient in various respects. First of all, critical philosophical thought hardly exists, and is almost completely forbidden. You are not meant to think, but to memorize and repeat by rote…

Interviewer: To spread the prevalent views.

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: Exactly. Secondly, anthropology…

Interviewer: Scientifically, speaking, what’s wrong with spreading the prevalent views?

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: First, you are not being innovative, and second, the prevalent views may have been acceptable in the past, but as life changes, everything must change accordingly. It is inconceivable that everything around you changes, yet your ideology remains static. The universe is not static. Change is the law of the universe, the law of life. Since everything is subject to change, ideas must also change, in order to be compatible with the changes in life.

Interviewer: Does this include the basic principles [of religion]?

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: I believe that the basic principles remain as they are, but the way we interpret them changes. In fact, there is no such thing as basic principles. There is the understanding of people… Ultimately, everything happens in your mind, as a human being.

Interviewer: The Koran and the Sunna do not constitute basic principles?

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: The text is static, but the way people interpret it is not. You can interpret the text in a way that corresponds with the age in which you live.

Interviewer: So you have no problem with people interpreting the text differently in each age?

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: As long as it is compatible with the spirit of the text.

Interviewer: In other words, the spirit of the text remains, and in each age, there is an adaptation [of the text].

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: For example, I do not think – and I might be going off on a tangent here – that it is in the best interest of the Islamic religion that we insist on going on living as if we were in the historical age of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. Everything has changed, and I believe that we must inevitably understand this change and respond to it. Otherwise, the physical existence of Muslims as Muslims will ultimately be jeopardized. Isn’t it important for Muslims to continue to exist as a strong nation, which influences the world in which we live? How can this happen if we relate to things as if we were living 1,400 years ago?

[...]

Interviewer: You are openly calling for secularism?

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: Secularism is not as dangerous as people think. They [the clerics] have instilled… They reduce you to that single word, so that they can classify you more easily.

Interviewer: So you are saying that the term “secularism” has been distorted by a group of people.

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: The interpretation given to this term is incorrect. For example, the Messenger consulted with other people about worldly issues. In my view, this is secular behavior. In religious matters related to divine revelation, the Prophet was the ultimate authority. But with regard to worldly matters, he turned to the relevant experts.

[...]

Interviewer: Why do you want to remove the swords from the Saudi flag, while many countries – even Western countries – use symbols like a sickle or a lion? These symbols are used even though they have lost their original significance.

Sa’d Al-Sowayan: My problem is that the sword is combined with the sentence: “There is no god but Allah.” When I wrote this, there were certain circumstances – it was when Al-Zarqawi and his people were decapitating hostages with a sword. It was as if the sword had become one of the symbols of Islam. When you combine the sword with the sentence “There is no god but Allah,” some people might get confused, and think that you want to spread “there is no god but Allah” by means of the sword.

[...]

Since women used to ride donkeys, camels, or whatever means of transport existed at the time, what prevents them from using modern means of transport? [The donkey or camel] was a means of transport, and the car is just another means of transport.

******

The anthropologist is right. What innovation has come out of the Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia of late? Women are not even allowed to drive cars in Saudi Arabia! That’s not progress!

Can you imagine this kind of conversation taking place in Malaysia? Some Muslims in Malaysia will be lodging a police report against a person such as Sa’d Al-Sowayan, and the the A-G’s office will be sending several policemen to his house to bring him to the station for questioning!

In Malaysia, the fact that the national broadcasting station (RTM) is finally allowing their news reader to wear the “tudung” is a cause for great rejoicing. In fact to some, the fact that the TV station station had all along prohibited their female news readers from wearing the “tudung”, was a violation of human rights!

Haha, how silly! Is not the TV station government owned and run? Run by a majority Muslim cabinet? Why question the silence of the “secular” population for a policy instituted by a Muslim majority government on their Muslim female news readers? Now if the government had instituted a policy requiring the non-Muslim female news readers to wear the tudung, now that would most definitely be a violation of their human rights! And the non-Muslim population should be rightfully indignant!

So far in Malaysia, only the present Mufti of Perlis Dr. Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, who is publicly trying to push Islam to modernity. Like the anthropologist, Dr. Mohd Asri is proposing “reading of the Islamic sacred texts to create a modern and compassionate Islam. For example, Dr. Asri opposes the khalwat law. Khalwat means privacy, but do not jump to hasty conclusions.”

Regarding his role as Mufti, he said, “To me, my duty is to present Islam in its modern face and get it out of the clutches of ultra-conservatives, who have made the religion look obsolete.”

Am I an Islamophobe for agreeing with Dr. Mohd Asri?