scaramouche

...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

The dawa's the thing: An Islam Online reader seeking guidance asks whether it’s okay for her daughter to take part in a school play. The reply: By all means let her participate, as long as she realizes she's not just play-acting, she's a girl with a mission:

…In the case you are discussing, a drama class monologue can be directed either way. A young woman can choose between acting a decent monologue that would be of use to herself and to her audience, or between staging for an act that would spread lust and convey corruption.

 

On a personal basis, and I am not giving a scholarly fatwa here, I am of the opinion that the young girl should go for it. But, what she would need to fix here is her intentions.

 

She would be of great benefit to herself and to her audience if she intents her act as a service of God. In this case, she does not necessarily need to preach or speak of religious matters. Just have her deliver a positive reforming message. She can dedicate her monologue to convey a social message, a moral message, a global message, and so on.

 

She would be greatly rewarded by Allah if she was able to touch hearts and change paths through a monologue about equality, brotherhood or Palestinians' rights to maintain their lands and dignity.

 

Maybe she can present the Palestinian cause from A to Z through her act. The same would be if she devotes it to the criticism of Western chaotic family system, out-of-marriage sex (depends on her age), or the disadvantages of drinking alcohol. Everything is possible…

 

Says someone who has obviously never sat through a kafir school play. It’s awfully hard to insert a discussion of Palestinian land rights and criticism of the Western family into, say, High School Musical or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And we wouldn't have it any other way.

posted by: scaramouche at 19:42 | link | comments |

“Healer” on hold: Has-been crooner Chris de Burgh, who claims to be able to heal the afflicted with a mere touch of his hands, has been trying to bring his healing powers to one mighty afflicted area, the Middle East. Too bad for him he’s been rebuffed by the mullahs, who have some very different ideas about how to “heal” the region (i.e. by excising the “cancer” of Israel). From the timesonline:

Chris de Burgh’s ongoing campaign to take his brand of schmaltzy love songs to the people of the Middle East hit a hurdle today.

His much-touted plan to play a live concert in Tehran has come unstuck with Iranian officials claiming they have yet to be consulted.

The Irish crooner, best known for his middle-of–the road classic Lady in Red, sparked amused headlines last year when he announced he had permission to become the first major Western artist to perform in the country since the 1979 revolution.

Pity he forgot to tell the Iranians.

According to a report from Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, the country’s ministry of culture is still waiting for De Burgh to request a performance permit. As a result, it said, he does not have permission to perform there.

The Iran concert, planned for a 12,000-seater stadium in the capital, would have been the latest episode in De Burgh’s recent love affair with the Middle East.

In May he released a Farsi reworking of his song The Words ‘I love you’ with Iranian band Arian. He has also now recorded a duet with a young Lebanese singer, Tina Yamout, who he discovered last year.

A spokeswoman for De Burgh was today looking on the bright side, pointing out that although permission has not yet been granted, it has also not yet been denied.

Hamas, Hezbollah, ayatollahs and the lugubrious song stylings of Chris de Burgh—that’s far too much for any one region to have to handle.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:34 | link | comments |

Why Israel is doomed: There’s no way you can survive when you reject your own narrative (and the truth) and embrace the narrative (and lies) of your enemy. From the Jerusalem Post:

The government took Ze'ev Jabotinsky out of the schoolbooks and inserted the [Palestinian] Nakba instead," Opposition leader and Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday in a special Knesset session during the summer recess.

Netanyahu was referring to Education Minister Yuli Tamir's decision to remove the writings of Jabotinsky from the curriculum.

Jabotinsky was the founder of the revisionist movement in Zionism before the establishment of the Jewish State, which advocated a greater Israel and in recent years has come to be seen as an overly 'hawkish' version of Zionism.

The Nakba, meaning 'catastrophe' in Arabic, is the term used by Palestinians to describe the defeat Arab armies suffered at the hands of Jewish paramilitary organizations during Israel's War of Independence…

Leftist Jews and their delusions are paving the way for Israel’s demise—a true “Nakba” for Jewry and all mankind.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:14 | link | comments |

Useless UN: A New York Sun editorial comments on the UN’s haplessness re the Russia-Georgia conflict:

…Mr. Ban, according to his spokesmen, has been working the phones, although he could only talk to actors with cameo roles in the drama, such as President Halonen. It took Mr. Ban a week to get Mr. Saakashvili on the blower, by which time the Georgian had accommodated any American television anchor that would have him on. United Nations spokesmen say that Mr. Ban has yet to receive an audience with any Kremlin decision maker, though he did merit a meeting with the Kremlin's ambassador in Turtle Bay, Vitaly Churkin.

Marginalization at a time of war is nothing new for Turtle Bay, its champions say. The organization is mostly needed when it is time to reach and preserve peace. As Russia has demonstrated so far, it is planning to allow that time to come only once its military and diplomatic objectives are achieved, and even then it is sure to veto any resolution that would include even a comma that may indicate there is anything wrong with those objectives.

As Mr. Sarkozy's chances of sealing a deal that Russia would implement — rather than merely saying it accepts — dimmed, Europeans yesterday circulated to Security Council members a short resolution proposal. It demanded an immediate compliance with Mr. Sarkozy's ceasefire agreement, and specifically a Russian withdrawal to the lines it held prior to the onset of the hostilities. It also called to affirm Georgia's "independence and territorial integrity."

Our Turtle Bay sources say that early on European diplomats were prepared to water down such wording to accommodate Moscow, while their American counterparts quietly proposed a tough resolution containing red lines that would force a Russian veto. Such a veto would help Washington to present the Kremlin as intransigent and uncooperative. It now seems that the Europeans, who are clearly frustrated by Moscow's unfulfilled promises, are ready for a Security Council confrontation, in lieu of a real one on the ground. At best, the council will now become a public relations instrument — a small achievement for a body aspiring for a real role in world affairs.

* * *

What it all adds up to is a lesson in world government: It's a chimera. Anyone who hopes that the United Nations would carry the day is either too complacent to chart an American policy or simply willing to let the Russians off the hook for a war. Let it be an instructive moment in respect of Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Burma, to name but a few crises that are not going to be solved on the shore of the East River. Anyone assigning the job of confronting Iran's nuclear ambitions to diplomats who would negotiate for years and then produce an unreadable and ineffective Security Council resolution is simply allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb. No wonder Mr. Obama has, at least for now, dropped the council from his list of tools to handle Georgia.

I disagree that world government is a chimera. What’s chimerical (also comical) is the idea that the UN can be a force for good in this world. The prospect of a world government governed by Islamic law—as the UN is governed by the OIC, its largest voting block—is, alas, all too real.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:00 | link | comments |

Fatah’s blinkers: Tarek Fatah is undoubtedly a brave man, a Muslim who speaks out against the imposition of sharia, and who has been denounced and threatened with death on numerous occasions because of it. And yet, despite his bravery, this most moderate of Muslims has several blind spots, as David Solway points out in his review of Fatah’s book for FrontPage:

…Fatah’s well-intentioned but problematic distinction between Muslims and Islamists, between a “state of Islam” (good) and an “Islamic state” (bad) and his belief that “Islamists…have ridden roughshod over Quranic principles and the Prophet’s message of equality” are not persuasive. All one has to do is read the Koran to put paid to his claim. His notion that “Equity and social justice run through every fibre and gene of the Muslim psyche” is a piece of untenable hyperbole that is deflated by Fatah himself when he later writes that “So deeply ingrained is the idea of replicating the so-called Golden Age of the Rightly Guided Caliphs that few are willing to consider the implications of what they are asking for,” or when he bemoans “the permanent gash in the Muslim psyche, a festering wound” brought on by the struggle for power. Which is it, deeply ingrained error or enlightenment?

One is puzzled by the contradiction inherent in his admonition that Muslims “stop chasing an Islamic State” on the one hand and his evident approval of the “Palestinian struggle for an independent and sovereign state,” which would be nothing if not Islamic, on the other. Also troubling is his appreciative quotation from a Pakistani historian who speaks of “the solemn averment that Islam spread peacefully in India” when the carnage visited upon the subcontinent by the invading Islamic armies is an order of magnitude higher than the Holocaust itself.

Fatah’s animus against the United States also seems rather facile and not altogether thought through. When he writes that “The invasion of Iraq was manna from heaven for Al-Qaeda,” it is clear that he has not been following the course of events or the evening News—nothing has weakened al-Qaeda more than the Iraqi conflict and it is now, as the Press has it, “on the run.”

For Fatah, the US is no different from the Mongol hordes led by the savage Hulagu who in 1257 invaded Baghdad and “pitt[ed] the Shia population against the Sunni caliph.” The fact that the “Sunni caliph” of 2003 was Saddam Hussein, himself a contemporary Hulagu, is a matter of no consequence. Nor am I sure what he is getting at when he denounces American fundamentalism equally with bin Laden’s species of fundamentalism; I cannot see even the faintest semblance of an equivalence between the two nor can I understand how American fundamentalism, whatever that may be, “poses a threat to Western civilization.”…

Moderates like Fatah are in a real bind. In order to retain their faith, they have to twist themselves into pretzels trying to account for its obvious internal contradictions, which entails an outright refusal to recognize the truth about Islam and its founder (as, for example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali has done—the reason she is no longer Muslim). Fatah is in a double bind, since, unlike that other notable moderate, Salim Mansur, he wants to retain his “street cred” with Leftists and Muslims, and thus refuses to see the pivotal role the U.S. and Israel are playing in foiling the jihad and the advancement of sharia. So, yes, kudos to Fatah for standing up to the seethers and for “getting it," sort of, about sharia; would that he “got” the rest of it, too.

posted by: scaramouche at 12:23 | link | comments |

Soldiering on: The lawyer for alleged terrorist Momin Khawaja, the Ottawa lad currently on trial in London, has come up with an interesting defence. He says his client hoped to be an old-fangled holy warrior in a battlefield setting, not an urban one. From the Globe and Mail:

OTTAWA -- Momin Khawaja was interested only in waging jihad against Western soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan, not attacking civilian targets in London, his defence lawyer argued yesterday in a long-shot effort to have terrorism charges against the Ottawa software engineer dismissed.

Lawrence Greenspon said he concedes that a remote detonation device - dubbed the Hi-Fi Digimonster - was found in Mr. Khawaja's home, and did not dispute what the device can do. However, he added that Mr. Khawaja's intention was to use it as a remote detonator in Afghanistan. Mr. Greenspon attempted to explain his client's actions as those of a would-be soldier, not a terrorist.

"It's not okay," Mr. Greenspon said of his client's desire to fight in Afghanistan, "but it's not terrorism."

The final phase of Mr. Khawaja's trial kicked off yesterday. He faces seven charges under Canada's Anti-Terrorism Act - he is also the first Canadian ever charged under the act. The 29-year-old is accused of trying to build a remote-controlled detonation device for a British terrorist cell.

However, his lawyer is trying to persuade the judge in the case, Mr. Justice Douglas Rutherford, to dismiss the charges on the basis that there isn't enough evidence to uphold them.

It was in that context that Mr. Greenspon claimed yesterday that his client was focusing his energies on Afghanistan, and had no knowledge that his alleged co-conspirators were planning an attack in London.

Last year, five people were convicted in England of plotting to bomb targets including a shopping complex and a nightclub.

Mr. Khawaja has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Judge Rutherford is hearing the case without a jury. If the judge accepts Mr. Greenspon's argument, he could conceivably drop all the charges and set Mr. Khawaja free.

In arguing that Mr. Khawaja was only interested in fighting Western troops in Afghanistan, Mr. Greenspon said his client should be dealt with in the same way as any soldier in a war.

Mr. Greenspon has repeatedly said that the conversations among Mr. Khawaja's alleged co-conspirators were significantly different when Mr. Khawaja was around. He said that while a London bomb plot - of which he claims his client was unaware - is sufficient to base terrorism charges on, "wanting to be a soldier in Afghanistan is not."

Coincidentally, Mr. Greenspon's claim that his client's only interest was fighting Western soldiers in Afghanistan came immediately after one of the bloodiest days in that country's ongoing conflict. Insurgents ambushed and killed 10 French troops outside the capital of Kabul in an attack that caused the largest combat loss for international forces in Afghanistan in three years…

I’m sure we can all rest easier knowing that the likes of Momin restrict their warfare to far-away battlefields. (And if you buy that, I have a razed site formerly occupied by two giant towers to sell you.)

posted by: scaramouche at 11:47 | link | comments (1) |

Shaggy beast story: The news that the hairy remains of a creature reputed to be Bigfoot is really a hoax—and a rather maladroit one at that—should come as no great surprise. Except, of course, to those folks (you know the type) who refuse to let a little thing like truth get in the way of their firmly-held convictions. From the Ceeb (my bolds):

The website that promoted the finding of the supposed remains of the legendary Bigfoot has confirmed what most people suspected: the body was nothing more than a rubber sasquatch costume.

An investigator with Searching for Bigfoot, Inc., the group that promoted the discovery, reported the confirmation on Tuesday, just four days after a circus-like news conference in which two Georgia men claimed they had bagged the dead body of the mythical man-ape.

Georgia residents Matthew Whitton and Ricky Dyer claimed at the news conference Friday in Palo Alto, Calif., that they had stumbled across the corpse in the woods of northern Georgia.

But Steve Kulls, a self-described sasquatch hunter, wrote on the company's website that once the body arrived for examination, it became obvious that it wasn't real.

"As the team and I began examining this area near the feet, I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot," he said.

Kulls wrote that sasquatch promoter Tom Biscardi, who runs the Searching for Bigfoot, Inc. website and appeared onstage with Dyer and Whitton to defend their find, "informed us that both Matthew Whitton and Ricky Dyer admitted it was a costume."

Even before the admission, skeptics had already noted that one photograph released — that of a hairy corpse stuffed in a freezer — looked suspiciously like a Halloween costume available at retailers.

And the evidence presented at the news conference — including a blurry photo of teeth and inconclusive DNA samples — had done little to sway public opinion…

Today’s essay question: The psychology/psychopathology of those who believe in Bigfoot is akin to the psychology/psychopathology of those who believe in blood libels and that 9/11 was an inside job. Discuss.

posted by: scaramouche at 18:01 | link | comments |

Where are the 'roos?: The summer is winding down and there's still no sign of the B.C. 'roos. The marsupials retired apres the June show trial to consider the case of the CIC vs. Maclean's--a mere blink of the eye, it's true, compared to the 900 days it took the Alberta commissars to deal with the Levant complaint. And since the process is as much a part of the punishment as the actual punishment, and since at the end of the day they may dismiss the whole thing (because it's too high profile and too much of a hot potato) and not get to mete out any actual punishment, I can understand why they would want to drag it out. Nevertheless, I'm hoping that this novelty tune from a summer long past will encourage them to move things along:

They were afraid to come back from vacation.

They were as nervous as all get out.

They were afraid to come back from vacation.

They were afraid that somebody would shout.

 

Four, three, two, where, oh where are B.C.’s ‘roos?

 

They’ll make an itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling

Based on words of some “experts” in “court”.

An itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling,

That’s the verdict they long to report.

 

Two, three, four, stick around for what’s in store…

 

They were afraid to come out in the open.

So a blanket of silence they wore.

They were afraid to come out in the open.

So they dragged the thing out a bit more.

 

Six, seven, eight, kangaroos deliberate…

 

They’ll make an itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling

Based on words of some “experts” in “court”.

An itsy-bitsy-there’s-no-foolin’-Steyn’s-Islamophobic ruling,

That’s the verdict they long to report…

 

From the puppets to Elmasry,

From Elmasry to the ‘roos.

Freedom’s hanging in the balance

Thanks to lawyers, Libs, and Jews.

posted by: scaramouche at 15:09 | link | comments |

“Sexy” skater: The latest singing harlot to offend “moderate” Malaysia’s sense of decorum—Canada’s very own skater girl, Avril Lavigne. From AP via CTV News:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia -- Malaysia's Islamic opposition party has urged the government to cancel a concert by Avril Lavigne, saying the Canadian singer's on-stage moves are "too sexy," an official said Monday.

Lavigne, a Grammy-nominated rock singer who burst to fame with her 2002 debut album "Let's Go," plans to start her monthlong Asia tour with a performance in Kuala Lumpur on Aug. 29.

The youth wing of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party said Lavigne's concert would promote wrong values ahead of Malaysia's Aug. 31 independence day.

"It is considered too sexy for us. ... It's not good for viewers in Malaysia," said Kamarulzaman Mohamed, a party official. "We don't want our people, our teenagers, influenced by their performance. We want clean artists, artists that are good role models."

Kamarulzaman said he sent a protest letter to the Culture, Arts and Heritage Ministry and the Kuala Lumpur mayor last week, calling for the concert to be canceled.

An official from the Culture Ministry's department that vets all foreign artists said the government has not given permission for the concert yet. The department is to meet Tuesday to decide on the organizer's application, which was received last week.

The official declined to be named because she is not authorized to make public statements.

A spokesman for the concert's organizer, Galaxy Group, denied that Lavigne's show had any "negative elements."

The spokesman, who declined to be named citing protocol, said his company was confident of receiving the permit as feedback from authorities so far had been "very positive."

Malaysia requires all performers to wear clothes without obscene or drug-related images and be covered from chest to knees. They must also refrain from jumping, shouting, hugging and kissing on stage…

Standing stock still dressed head-to-toe in a black sack, though, is bound to earn you the Malaysian "opposition" seal of approval. My poem for Avril:

The way you pronounce it’s “Levine”

(Which sounds Jewish, if you know what I mean).

But their stated abhorrence

Is re her performance

Which they claim isn’t wholesome or clean.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:54 | link | comments |

The UN’s moral bankruptcy: Once again demonstrating its true colours  (green, green and more green, with a wide streak of cowardly yellow), the UN ululates in collective grief at the passing of Mahmoud Darwish, the Yasser Arafat of poetry. By Joseph Klein in FrontPage Magazine:

The Palestinian ‘national poet’ Mahmoud Darwish passed away on August 9, 2008.  Regarded by the Palestinians as the “poet of the Palestinian wound,” he was given the equivalent of a state funeral in the West Bank.  Only the terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, with whom Darwish served in the PLO, had ever received such an honor. 

As Aljazeera reported, Darwish’s “grave faces the outskirts of Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to create the capital of a future state which Darwish had yearned for in poems imbued with the agony of exile and loss.”

In life, Darwish spent his considerable writing talents as an apologist for the Palestinians’ self-inflicted wounds.  He wrote the veiled threat that Arafat spoke at the United Nations in 1974: "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

In death, senior United Nations officials joined a chorus of admirers in raising Darwish to the iconic level of a “universal” voice of “justice,” “dislocation” and “alienation” for all the suffering people of the world – except, of course, for the Jewish people whose more than 2000 years of exile and persecution Darwish and his UN admirers have conveniently ignored.

In sending her condolences last week to the Palestinian people following Darwish’s death, for example, the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Karen AbuZayd, issued a statement, saying that Darwish was “the poet of exile, the refugees’ poet” whose “universal language of dislocation and alienation will be heard for many years to come.”  These encomiums should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with AbuZayd and her agency.  She has sided with the Palestinians against Israel time and again, no matter what atrocities were committed by the Palestinian terrorists against innocent Israeli civilians.  UNRWA itself has been complicit in such terrorist acts.

King Solomon wrote long ago in Proverbs that "death and life are in the power of the tongue."  The Talmud teaches us that words can kill.  Darwish used his poetry to give voice to those who reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in its ancient homeland.  He called himself a “weapon” and wrote that “my words were stones.”  Truth had no place in his poetry.

Darwish helped to popularize the blood libel in the Arab world that referred to the creation of the state of Israel as al-Nakba or “Catastrophe.”  UNRWA’s Chief of Public Information quoted Darwish in commemorating the 60th anniversary of the “Catastrophe.”

Even before Israel ever occupied the West Bank and Gaza in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, Darwish was busy spinning his militant poetry into language of anti-Israel propaganda.  He wrote the following in 1964:      

            I am an Arab
You have stolen the orchards of my ancestors
And the land which I cultivated
Along with my children
And you left nothing for us
Except for these rocks.
So will the State take them
As it has been said?!

Therefore!
Record on the top of the first page:
I do not hate people
Nor do I encroach
But if I become hungry
The usurper's flesh will be my food
Beware..
Beware..
Of my hunger
And my anger!
<!--[endif]-->

This was supposed to be a protest against the ‘forced’ exile of Palestinians from their families’ lands into a semi-permanent refugee status.  The sad truth that Darwish could never acknowledge was that the Palestinians themselves and their Arab neighbors - not Israel - were largely responsible for the decades in which Palestinians have lived as stateless refugees…

Yeah, it’s a bitch when your people have sovereignty over a scant 99.99 per cent of a region's land. Lucky for Darwish and the other “exiles” they’ve had the UN around to try rectify the grievous wrong done them all those decades ago—and in the years intervening—because the Jews won't lie down and die.

posted by: scaramouche at 13:16 | link | comments (1) |