Swapping Justice For Political Correctness

We don't want to give off the wrong signals, you know?

You may remember Faleh Almaleki, an Arizona Muslim who last year ran over his own daughter in an honour killing for becoming "too Westernised". In a just world, Almaleki would have his own life taken for what he has done.

However, the County Attorney's Office has given assurance that Almaleki will not be executed. The reason? You're going to want to read this sitting down. You see, they wanted to ensure "that there is no appearance that a Christian is seeking to execute a Muslim for racial, political, religious or cultural beliefs."

This is not a just world, for today, political correctness is more important than justice. Welcome to the United States of Amerabia.

Truth To Power At CPAC

Every year, conservative activists in the US hold a political conference called CPAC - the Conservative Political Action Conference. This year's CPAC was made particularly special by the presence of a panel discussion on the second day entitled "Jihad: The Political Third Rail", which was organised by Pamela Geller of the blog Atlas Shrugs, and Robert Spencer of the excellent Jihad Watch blog.

The event featured a number of speakers whose courage and moral clarity is so urgently needed in greater numbers across the Western world today. You can read a summary of the event here.

As well as Geller and Spencer, both courageous champions of anti-jihadism, there was also Wafa Sultan, the brave former Muslim who is best known for a heated debate she had with a Muslim cleric on al-Jazeera TV a few years ago. She is also the author of A God Who Hates, a stunningly powerful testimony of her apostasy from Islam, and an indictment for her former religion:

“September 11th was tragic, but infiltration of Islam is a subject of equal concern” she said. ”We must fight it.”

Then there was Stephen Coughlin, formerly the Pentagon's only expert on Islamic law, who was fired following pressure from Islamic infiltrator Hesham Islam:

“The 9-11 commission has been completely undermined. You cannot defeat an enemy you are not allowed to define. By definition, this administration has no strategy to defeat this enemy since they refuse to define it.”

And then where was Col. Allen West, a Congressional candidate whose clear-thinking I discussed at this blog recently:

“Is that our leaders MUST be held accountable for national security. War on Terror? NO. A nation does not go to war against a tactic. A nation goes to war against an ideology. Islam is a totalitarian, theocratic political ideology that seeks to control the globe and which must be stopped.” West continued: “We must regain the initiative against this enemy. Current rules of engagement are crippling and killing our soldiers. We are paralyzing ourselves with political correctness. Identifying the enemy is NOT profiling, it is trend analysis and common sense. When tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide. As Ronald Reagan once responded when asked to define victory, ‘WE WIN – THEY LOSE.’

True heroes, all.

Another Islamic Age Disparity

Child-rape? Boring.

This story is actually a month old, but I hadn't seen it until today, so I'm posting it belatedly, and felt the urgent need to do so given its horrific nature.

Saudi women’s rights advocates are outraged after a 12-year-old girl was sold by her father into marriage with an 80-year-old man.

A Saudi father, whose name has not been released, sold his 12-year-old daughter to his 80-year old cousin for the equivalent of $22,600 (around £14,600). The elderly man, who lives in the city of Buraidah, stands accused of raping the girl after the wedding, causing her to have to be taken to the hospital due to the injuries she sustained. He has previously married three other young girls.

Also, check out the background information provided in the article:

Child marriages in Saudi Arabia have made international news a number of times over the past year. In April there was international outcry when a Saudi judge refused to grant a divorce to an eight-year-old girl who had been married off by her father to a 47-year-old man as part of a loan repayment agreement, and in August a 10-year-old bride ran away from her 80-year-old husband and sought refuge at her aunt’s house. After ten days in hiding, the girl was returned to her husband by her father.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Saudi Arabia has signed and ratified, defines a child as any person under the age of 18 and Article 16.2 of The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, states that “The marriage of a child shall have no legal effect, and all necessary action, including legislation, shall be taken to specify a minimum age for marriage and to make the registration of marriages in an official registry compulsory.”

Saudi Arabia, which ratified the convention in September 2000, did so with the stated reservation that “In case of contradiction between any term of the Convention and the norms of Islamic law, the Kingdom is not under obligation to observe the contradictory terms of the Convention.”

But hey, who cares? I mean, after all, only "Islamophobes" find this kind of thing despicable, don't they? And only Islamophobes would dream of pointing out the Islamic teachings - which are alluded to in the linked article, and then flimsily dismissed - that serve as justification for such acts of inhuman vileness?

Of course, only Islamophobes would do such a thing. Leftists tell us so, and they are such enlightened folk. Back to sleep.

*Yawn*

Allen West For Congress!

Exactly one month ago, at a Hudson Institute forum on national security in New York, Lt. Col. Allen West was asked by a former marine what he would say to those who claim that Islamic jihadists are fighting us because they have "perverted Islam", or because they want to retaliate against something that we have done wrong to them - both common Leftist talking points.

Given the state of current military and political leadership in the United States, and in the Western world in general, one might have expected general agreement on West's part. However, in a remarkable display of moral clarity and courage, West answered that we are "fighting a theo-political belief system that has been doing this since 622 A.D."

Displaying an understanding of history that is simply unheard of in the policymaking department, West added:

“You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at Lepanto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571: You want to ask…the Germanic and Austrian knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened at Constantinople and why today it is called Istanbul because they lost that fight in 1453?

You need to get into the Qur'an…and understand their precepts. This is not a perversion. They are doing exactly what this book says.”

West ended his brilliant statement with the following warning:

“Until you get principled leadership in the United States of America that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is, and then understand their goals and objectives - which are on any jihadist website - and then come up with the right and proper objectives to not only secure our Republic but secure Western civilization.”

What a refreshing breath of fresh air it is to hear such a thing! And what makes it even better is that this man is running for Congress. I sincerely hope he succeeds.

The Jihad Against Love

It happens every year, and this year is no exception: Saudi Arabia's religious police have begun their preparations for stamping out any celebration of Valentine's Day. Meanwhile, Muslim leaders in Russia have urged Muslims to boycott the day of love.

In United in Hate: The Left's Romance With Tyranny and Terror, Jamie Glazov explains that the furious Islamic opposition to Valentine's Day "exemplifies its hatred of personal love." He demonstrates that this opposition is actually perfectly in line with that of the hard Left, whose ideology he accurately describes as a kind of "totalitarian puritanism". He notes that "Islam hates the idea of a day marked to celebrate personal love:...such a day distracts citizens from the priority of submission to the higher authority [i.e. Allah]....Valentine's Day is a 'shameful day' for these Muslims because female sexuality and the female herself are considered shameful." (pp.121-22)

And of course, it must be added that this opposition is further intensified by the fact that Valentine's Day is celebrated in honour of a Christian saint, and the Islamic supremacist mindset strictly forbids believers from indulging in it for this reason.

The Wrong Priorities

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security improperly conducted a threat assessment of Wisconsin pro- and anti-abortion rights groups before an expected rally last year. The department said in a memo released last year that it destroyed or deleted all of the copies of the assessment after an internal review found it violated intelligence gathering guidelines about "protest groups which posed no threat to homeland security."

In stark contrast, it was revealed recently that the U.S. Army was explicitly warned that Islamic jihadists posed a major domestic threat over two years ago. Their lack of interest and failure to act on this clear warning may have led to the Fort Hood jihad shooting by Nadil Malik Hasan this past November.

I am not a pro-lifer (my position on abortion is ambiguous, to say the least), but I have always felt that the moral equivalence often made between the almost literal handful of abortion clinic terrorists and the literal thousands (the current tally in the top-right corner of your screen at the time of writing is 14,813) of terror attacks committed by Islamic jihadists since 9/11 alone is...well, kinda silly. Now we can see the consequences of this faulty outlook: the hopelessly politically correct authorities spend so much time focused on imaginary threats posed by anti-abortionists (and in fact, all conservatives) that they miss out on real threats - namely, jihad.

And people die. Always they die.

British school-kids: "We want to be Islamic bombers when we grow up"

A Christian teacher yesterday claimed he was forced out of his job after complaining that Muslim pupils as young as eight hailed the September 11th hijackers as heroes.

Nicholas Kafouris, 52, is suing his former school for racial discrimination. He told a tribunal that he had to leave his £30,000-a-year post because he would not tolerate the 'racist' and 'anti-Semitic' behaviour of Year 4 pupils.

The "predominantly Muslim youngsters" (says the Daily Mail - how many of them were NOT Muslims, precisely?) openly praised Islamic extremists in class and described the September 11th terrorists as 'heroes and martyrs'.

One pupil said: 'Don't touch me, you're a Christian' when the teacher brushed against him. Others said: 'We want to be Islamic bombers when we grow up', and 'The Christians and Jews are our enemies - you too because you're a Christian'.

Mr Kafouris, a Greek Cypriot, taught for 12 years at Bigland Green Primary School in Tower Hamlets, East London.

What seems especially alarming is the headmistress' apparent repeated justification of these jihadists-in-training. Her argument was essentially that these were just mischievous kids, and she even claimed, staggeringly, that "It's because of your lack of discipline that they're saying these things".'

That's right: anti-infidel, jihadist sentiments in Muslim school-children are now caused by "bad classroom discipline". Islam is a Religion of Peace. Grow up.

The Pope Vs. Islam (And The Gays)

Pope Benedict: Backwards but non-violent

Recently, much has been made of the Pope's controversial statements that Britain's equality laws forbidding discrimination against homosexuals (on the basis that, you know, they are human beings, too) "violate natural law" and must be opposed by the Catholic Church.

As an atheist myself, I abhor this kind of medieval mentality that sees what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes as even worth thinking about, let alone as grounds for differing treatment. However, it is useful to compare the pope's recent comments with attitudes towards homosexuals in the Islamic world.

Reliance of the Traveler is a classic Islamic legal manual, which has been endorsed as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Cairo's Al Azhar University, the highest institution of Islamic learning in the world - and the closest equivalent in Islam to the Vatican. In its discussion of what to do with one who commits "sodomy or fornication", the manual states explicitly that "If the offender is someone with the capacity to remain chaste, then he or she is stoned to death." It quotes the Prophet Muhammad as saying: "Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him."

Recently, a Muslim leader was very critical of the gay lifestyle, just as the pope has been. However, taking it much further than Pope Benedict, Mustafa Muhammad, President of the Islamic Council of Jamaica, says he agrees with sharia law's prescription of death for homosexuals. Muhammad said: "It is illegal and in the Sharia law the punishment is death. If you follow Christianity it is a crime in the sight of God. He destroyed a whole city because of this thing. It is an ungodly practice and I apologise to no one for this."

Last year, an Iraqi Muslim group were responsible for the deaths of at least 130 gays who were tracked down via the Internet. Such murders would surely have been supported by Iraq's "moderate" Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who issues the following ruling on the Arabic part of his website:

Q: What is the judgment on sodomy and lesbianism?

A: Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.

An article in Spiegel Online this past September noted that "In most Islamic countries, gay men and women are ostracized, persecuted and in some cases even murdered." It adds: "More than 30 Islamic countries have laws on the books that prohibit homosexuality and make it a criminal offense. In most cases punishment ranges from floggings to life imprisonment. In Mauritania, Bangladesh, Yemen, parts of Nigeria and Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Iran convicted homosexuals can also be sentenced to death." The reason for this is that "Islamists are now a dominant cultural force in many of these countries."

Finally, Islam Q & A, a mainstream Muslim website that issues rulings in response to curious Muslim questioners, and claims to do so via "only authentic, scholarly sources based on the Quran and sunnah, and other reliable contemporary scholarly opinions", also teaches openly that homosexuals should be executed:

The Sahaabah [the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad] were unanimously agreed on the executing of homosexuals, but they differed as to how they were to be executed.

Some of them, such as Abu Bakr al-Siddeeq and ‘Ali ibn Abi Taalib (may Allaah be pleased with them) thought that they should be burned to death. Some of them, such as Ibn ‘Abbaas (may Allaah be pleased with him) thought that they should be thrown from a tall building followed by stoning. Some of them thought that they should be stoned to death, which was narrated from both ‘Ali and Ibn ‘Abbaas (may Allaah be pleased with them).

In summary, there is a world of difference between the pope's backwards but completely non-violent opposition to homosexuality, and the atmosphere of fear and death which is experienced by gays living under Islam. Even many gay human rights activists (with the noble exception of Bruce Bawer) remain completely silent about Islamic persecution of gays while they chastise the Pope for every anti-gay statement he makes.

A change of mentalities is needed. Political correctness must be cast aside. No one, whether Christian, Muslim or atheist, should allow homosexuals to continue to suffer as they currently suffer under the yoke of Islam. Regardless of theological differences, let all those who find the murder of anyone for their sexual orientation abhorrent unite in the name of universal human rights.