• Tag Archives Islam

  • Those New Job Jitters

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                                               Full Honey Extraction Moon

    Mark has a new job in Ha’il, Saudi Arabia.  He will teach English as a foreign language, as he did so well at AUA in Bangkok for twelve years.  He worked hard over the last five months to recollect himself, to figure out next steps then find a job.  This last he’d focused on hard the last couple of weeks and it got results.

    Kate and I are both happy for him.  He’s “wired” right now, still shifting his mentality from unemployed to suddenly employed and about to undertake a journey from Minnesota, which has begun to slide toward fall and Saudi Arabia, where seasons are much different.

    His word and Mary’s, who’s worked with educational programing in Bahrain, for the culture there is austere, at least from a Western or Southeast Asian perspective.  By austere they mean at least the prohibition on alcohol, unveiled women, internet censorship and the overwhelming presence of Islam and not just any Islam, but an Islam markedly influence by the Wahabi sect, spawn of Islamic extremists like bin Laden.  Also no movies and sharia justice.

    Mark has a German friend who attended a public execution, held on Friday right after prayers.  He found himself shoved to the front of the crowd to experience the scimitar facilitated beheading.

    This will also mean a change for us, a move back into Kate’s retirement, leaning into that more as Mark’s saga here, at least for now, comes to an end.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • Build the Mosque

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa                                Waxing Artemis Moon

    On mosques and sites and sealing wax.

    Are we fighting with Islam or with terrorists who use Islam as a cover?  You know the answer.  What message do you give to the ummah, the worldwide Islamic community, if you deny a mosque near a site where the terrorists who use Islam as a cover delivered a powerful blow?  That you don’t know the difference.

    Or.  What message do you give if you allow the mosque?  That you know the difference.  Which strategy has better long term potential both within the US and outside it.  Again, you know the answer.

    When demagogues pander to the lowest common denominator on volatile matters like this, it corresponds to yelling fire in a crowded theatre.  This is intentional inflammation of an issue not because you believe the matter is substantive, but because you know it will rouse the sleeping dogs.

    There is, in fact, no issue here.  Let me say again.  No issue.  The first amendment, even earlier than the holy and blessed 2nd, protects freedom of religion and freedom of association and freedom of speech.  Which of these constitutional, black letter law freedoms do you wish to ignore?  Where’s a strict constructionist when we need one?

    Let them build.  Let them demonstrate that the United States can discriminate between friend and foe.  Let them demonstrate that the constitutional protections that make us a desirable place for immigrants from around the globe are still in place.

    Let us demonstrate that the coward and the bully will not, should not win this kind of rhetorical battle.

    Let them build.

    Here’s the contrary argument from the New York Daily News:

    “…But what about common sense and decency? If Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf had either, he and his group would reconsider the location out of respect for the hordes of Americans, many of them 9/11 family members themselves, who think that this idea just plain stinks. And if it weren’t for political correctness and our decidedly 21st century paranoia over offending Islam, our national leaders would proudly echo those sentiments.

    Enough is enough. The speechifying and pontificating on the mosque’s constitutionality are a distraction and a straw man. No one in serious circles who opposes the mosque at Ground Zero is suggesting it should be made illegal to build a Muslim house of worship near the site of the 9/11 attacks.

    What they’re trying to say, and largely to plugged ears on the left, is that having the right doesn’t make it right.”


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion Politics US History 📎and tagged

  • Fundamentals

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                   Waning Moon of Long Nights

    Thoughts on fundamentalists of the mosque, church and street

    excerpts from a BBC article forwarded by my brother, Mark:

    Three churches have been attacked in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur

    …some vocal groups, including the Muslim Youth Movement, Abim, have cast the use of the word Allah as a surreptitious effort on the part of Christians to try to seduce Muslims away from Islam.

    The government will take whatever steps it can to prevent such acts  Prime Minister Najib Razak.

    Church officials say that although the word Allah originated in Arabic, Malays have used it for centuries to refer generally to God, and Arabic-speaking Christians used it before Islam was founded, reports the BBC’s religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.

    —

    Mass nationwide demonstrations failed to materialise on Friday, but protesters at mosques in Kuala Lumpur carried placards reading “Allah is only for us” and “Heresy arises from words wrongly used”.

    “I hope the court will understand the feeling of the majority Muslims of Malaysia,” said Ahmad Johari, at the National Mosque.

    “We can fight to the death over this issue,” he told Associated Press news agency.

    ==========

    Comment:  Some Islamic  communities seem to react like street gangs in south L.A.  Disrespect comes from every angle and must be met, not just with resistance, but with deadly force.  This pattern is difficult to break because the thought world that underlies them both is a suspicion of inferiority covered over by a thin layer of superiority.  Even plain conversation about the issues involved can be read as condescending, insults delivered in a plain brown wrapper.  Without conversation, dialogue, there is little to no chance of defusing their  blasting cap sensitivity.

    This is the same phenomenon that fuels the Hindu nationalist parties reaction against Muslims in India.  It is the same phenomenon that fuels the gay-bashing and abortion clinic violence in the US.

    These are out groups who recognize their relative powerlessness and seize upon one or two issues as central, defining wedge matters.  They then focus their frustration and despair on any who violate the boundaries of Allah use, or sign throwing or color wearing, of being Muslim in India, of having same sex preferences or active participation in abortion in America.

    This is the kind of politics that created the Moral Majority and the Karl Rove wins in Texas and the US for GW.  At the level of its manipulation by a man like Rove or Richard Nixon it is naked demagoguery.  At the level of the street gang, the Islamist community, the gay bashers and the abortion clinic bombers it is inchoate rage, a form of speech uttered when no words will form.

    Both forms are dangerous and can, witness 9/11, upset civilizations, so they cannot be taken lightly.


    📂This entry was posted in Commentary on Religion 📎and tagged