Don't Call It Rape

Maulana Abu Sayeed (second from right) and chums discuss "major" and "minor" sins - guess which category rape falls into

A senior Muslim cleric who runs the country's largest network of sharia courts has sparked controversy by claiming that there is no such thing as rape within marriage.

Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, president of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain, said that men who rape their wives should not be prosecuted because "sex is part of marriage". And he claimed that many married women who alleged rape were lying.

That's what the Independent is reporting today. For more background on Sayeed's horrible views, see here, where we learn that he believes "non-consensual sex is the minor aggression, and calling it rape is the major aggression". He also states, flat out, that to prosecute marital rapists would be "compromising Islamic religion with secular non-Islamic values,” and this should not be done, because "We don’t deviate from Quran, deviate from sunnah.”

And what could possibly go wrong with that? It's not as if the Qur'an describes the woman as a field that a man may "plough" as he wishes: “Your women are a tilth for you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will.” (2:223)

And it's not as if the Sunnah (i.e. the teachings and example of Muhammad) condones marital rape, either: "If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning" (Sahih Bukhari v.4, b.54, no.460).

Furthermore, the website of Sheikh Sayeed's Islamic Sharia Council says that any Muslim who dares to suggest that some sharia rulings, such as those above, are barbaric or out-of-date in the modern world is an unbeliever and will burn in Hell for all eternity.

Sharia courts in Britain - not such a good idea, eh?

What Happens When The Facts Come Out

Fascinating results from a recent debate in New York can be found here.

The debate, which took place at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, featured two sides arguing the motion "Islam Is A Religion of Peace". Arguing for the motion were:

Maajid Nawaz is director of the Quilliam Foundation. Formerly, Nawaz served in the U.K. national leadership for the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir and was involved in HT for almost 14 years. He was a founding member of HT in Denmark and Pakistan. He eventually served four years in an Egyptian prison and was adopted by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience." In prison, Maajid gradually began changing his views until he finally renounced the Islamist ideology for traditional Islam and inclusive politics. He now engages in counter-Islamist thought-generating, writing and debating.

Zeba Khan is a writer and advocate for Muslim-American civic engagement. Born and raised in Ohio by devout Muslim parents, she attended Hebrew school for nine years while actively participating in her local Muslim community. In 2008, she launched Muslim-Americans for Obama, an online network to mobilize Muslim-American voters in support of the Obama presidential campaign. Since then, she continues to work on issues of Muslim-American civic engagement and was recognized for her work by the American Society for Muslim Advancement as a 2009 Muslim Leader of Tomorrow.

Arguing against the motion were:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and raised a devout Muslim. She escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992 and served as a member of the Dutch parliament for three years. She has since become an active critic of fundamentalist Islam, an advocate for women's rights and a leader in the campaign to reform Islam. She has also become a target of death threats by Islamic extremists. Hirsi Ali is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Caged Virgin (2006), Infidel (2007) and Nomad (2010). She is the founder of the AHA Foundation, whose mission is to defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam and tribal custom.

Douglas Murray is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist. He is also founder and director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, a nonpartisan think-tank in Westminster, London, that focuses on radicalization and has published work on both Islamist and far-right extremism. Murray is a columnist for Standpoint magazine and writes for many other publications. In 2005, he published the critically acclaimed Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, which Christopher Hitchens praised as "a very cool but devastating analysis." He is a co-author of the NATO strategy report, "Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership."

Before the debate, the audience voted 41 percent in favour of the motion and 25 percent against. Thirty-four percent were undecided. After the debate, however, 55 percent disagreed that "Islam Is a Religion of Peace," 36 percent supported the motion and 9 percent were still unsure. A sure-fire indicator that once proper debate (as opposed to Stalinist show-trials) is allowed to take place, the nature of Islam really does unfold in front of people's eyes. And a reminder that it it is not impossible to make people see the truth before it is too late.

You can watch the debate, starting with the first part, here.

Bulgaria Reaps The Fruits of The Eurabia Project

Did you hear about this?

I certainly didn't. To my knowledge, not a single mainstream news outlet in the UK covered the news that raids by the Interior Ministry of Bulgaria have uncovered a huge amount of documentation revealing the activities of the Islamic "charity" Al-Waqf Al-Islam.

During the raid, conducted at homes and offices in three different regions of the country, a large amount of propaganda material preaching religious hatred and the overthrow of Bulgaria’s constitutional order (and its replacement with sharia law) was found, along with financial documents showing illegal financial transactions and violations of tax laws, according to the ministry. Gates of Vienna has the details, along with translated excerpts from the Bulgarian media.

One of the regional prosecutors explains: “This is a branch of a radical Islamic movement — Salafism, that indoctrinated Bulgarian Moslems to believe that all the world should be subdued by the power of Islam.”

And that would probably have involved exposing them to certain passages of the Qur'an, particularly this one: “Tell those who disbelieve that if they cease (from persecution of believers) that which is past will be forgiven them; but if they return (thereto) then the example of the men of old hath already gone (before them, for a warning). And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah.” (8:38-39)

They would probably also have pointed out that, according to Islam's most authoritative text outside of the Qur'an, Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah.” (Sahih Bukhari v.1, b.2, no.25, and others)

Also notable is that despite its clear connections to Saudi Wahhabis and terrorism, the organisation describes itself as a charity - continuing the long-running tradition, based on mainstream Islamic doctrines, of Muslim "charities" funding violent jihad.

Perhaps most distressing of all is the fact that, according to one of the translated reports:

Later in the day it was announced that a mob in the village of Laznica has surrounded the home of the local imam Mohamed Kamber. Inside the home are detectives from the police and the State Agency for National Security, who wanted to confiscate computer drives, CDs, and books in the Arabic language. The Imam stated that he and his relatives are insulted and suffer mental stress because of the police action. The mob will not allow the police agents to leave the house, unless they leave “the sacred books” inside.

What's this? Don't the vast majority of European Muslims reject the jihadists and practise the "true" peaceful version of Islam? Why would they form "mobs" that try to prevent police from investigating those of their co-religionists who may be involved in jihadist activity?

Don't ask our political elites. They got Europe into this mess. Now they are tasting the bitter fruit of their efforts to alter the demographics and cultural identity of this continent irrevocably.

As a result, no matter how hard they try, it will one day become impossible for our willfully blind media to ignore the cancer of Islam in Europe.

Jihad And Soup?

The Leftist blogosphere has been in a state of smarmy amusement in recent days as opposition has risen in some quarters to American food company Campbell's producing a line of halal soup. Leftists sneer at the "neocons" who they say are trying to claim that introducing halal soup is the latest step on the path to the Islamisation of the West.

The Economist, for example, describes a campaign to boycott Campbell's as "ludicrous and hateful", and refers to other opposition to the move as "bigotry", an "ugly wave of anti-Muslim hysteria", "shaming" and "infantile". And yet, this same piece even admits that the primary reason for the objections lies in the fact that "the body certifying the soups as halal has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood."

As you can see at the link to Campbell's above, the halal products "are certified by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest non-profit, religious, educational, and non-political Islamic organization in North America. ISNA's Halal Certification Program was established in conjunction with professionals in the field of Islamic foods and nutrition, and with Islamic scholars. The program includes the review of ingredients, formulas, manufacturing and sanitation processes."

This is not a case of bigoted hysteria over Muslims getting their own soup. No one can reasonably object to that (unless, of course, we end up getting it, too, without even realising). The issue is that Campbell's is getting halal certification from ISNA.

And, aside from the platitudes of Campbell's treacly advertisement, who are ISNA? Why, they are the "moderate" Islamic group that supports and funds Hamas terrorists. They are also named (see here, the final page) by the Muslim Brotherhood as one of its key allies in its mission: "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." (page 21)

Is it really bigotry to object to a major food company doing dealings with groups that support people who want to exterminate Jews and replace Western democracies with Islamic theocracies? Or are the Leftists just showing us whose side they're really on yet again?

When A Choice Is Not A Choice

The burkha: a choice - except when it's not

Advocates and apologists for the Islamic veil and headscarf often defend these misogynistic, oppressive garments by claiming that Muslim women "choose" to wear them. Two stories published today by the Daily Mail - both, troublingly, relating to British Muslim communities - give the lie to these claims.

First:

A Muslim woman has been awarded more than £13,500 after she was sacked for refusing to wear a headscarf at the estate agency where she worked.

Ghazala Khan - a 31-year-old non-practising Muslim - was fired less than two weeks into her job at a company run by traditional Muslim businessman Masood Ghafoor simply because she refused to cover her hair.

Mr Ghafoor told Miss Khan, who had nine years experience in the trade, that his wife and female relatives all wore full veils or burkas, telling her that her parents had given her 'far too much freedom'.

Second:

At least three Muslim faith schools are forcing girls as young as 11 to wear face-covering veils with the blessing of Ofsted inspectors, it emerged yesterday...

They insist that when girls are travelling to and from school they wear the niqab, a face veil leaving the eyes exposed, or the head-to-toe burka, which covers the eyes with a mesh screen.

School uniform rules listed on Madani's website have been removed but an earlier version, seen by the Sunday Telegraph, said: 'The present uniform conforms to the Islamic Code of dressing. Outside the school, this comprises of the black Burka and Niqab.'

The admission application form warns that girls will be 'appropriately punished' for failing to wear the correct uniform.

Those who would dismiss these incidents as private institutions simply enforcing their dress codes - no different, for example, to insisting that a tie be worn - must consider that Islam is supposed to be a religion (I say "supposed to be" because it is in fact a political ideology in the trappings of spirituality); any encroachment upon matters of politics is morally reprehensible because it leads to theocracy. No one has the right to force people to dress in a certain way in the name of religion.

As I have written before, even in cases where it appears to be a Muslim woman's choice to wear "Islamic dress", it's not really her choice. All Islamic societies cultivate an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Women who do not wear these garments fear that even if they are not physically harmed, they will face stigmatisation and social awkwardness as a result. Hence, their community makes their "choice" for them.

Triumphal Mosques And "Hindu Extremists"

"Hindu extremists"?

A court in India has said that a disputed holy site in Ayodhya should be split between Hindus and Muslims, but both sides plan to appeal. In a majority verdict, judges gave control of the main disputed section, where a mosque was torn down in 1992, to Hindus. Other parts of the site will be controlled by Muslims and a Hindu sect.

The BBC is in its usual fine form in its reporting of this story. Hindu activists are described as "extremists" and "right-wing", while Muslims are treated with kid gloves. And even worse, the article refers to the fact that "The destruction of the mosque by Hindu extremists led to widespread rioting in which some 2,000 people died", as if this was the sole source of the conflict, without ever mentioning the fact that the mosque was most likely originally built on the site of a destroyed Hindu temple that had already existed there.

But would we ever expect the BBC to provide its readership with honest information about the long, documented history - including in India - of Muslims building triumphal mosques on the holy sites of defeated infidels...as is happening in New York today? Would they provide their readers with the history of the Muslim ruler Aurangzeb, who "Razed temples, built mosques on their foundations"? What about all the other temples forcefully turned into mosques? Wouldn't a responsible media outlet report these things for the sake of context?

The OIC and the Modern Caliphate

At American Thinker today, Bat Ye'or, the pioneering scholar of the historical and modern Islamisation of non-Muslim societies by the forces of Islamic supremacism, discusses the ambition of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to effectively recreate the global caliphate, or Muslim empire, and re-establish sharia law as the primary system of governance everywhere.

As she describes it, "The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is a religious and political organization. Close to the Muslim World League of the Muslim Brotherhood, it shares the Brotherhood's strategic and cultural vision: that of a universal religious community, the Ummah, based upon the Koran, the Sunna, and the canonical orthodoxy of shari'a. The OIC represents 56 countries and the Palestinian Authority (considered a state), the whole constituting the universal Ummah with a community of more than one billion three to six hundred million Muslims." It also constitutes the largest voting bloc at the UN, and has already been instrumental in enacting resolutions which may lead to the suppression of speech about Islam that it does not like, as well as initiating the biased UN Goldstone report, whose lies and smear-mongering incited hatred against Israelis and Jews worldwide.

That the OIC represents a religious and political vision totally at variance with 21st-century Western conceptions of civilisation is encapsulated by Bat Ye'or's pertinent observation:

One can note that Sudanese President Omar al Bashir, accused (according to Western criteria of justice) of genocide committed in southern Sudan and Darfur, has not been troubled by the Islamic Court of Justice [the OIC's main legal body]. His colleagues at the OIC do not consider him in any way a criminal and receive him with great respect, as does Turkish PM Erdogan.

There is also this terrifying information:

The Islamic Court of Justice has an international mandate and could try foreigners, both Muslims and non-Muslims (blasphemers, apostates, resisters to jihad) who have broken the laws of shari'a anywhere. Moreover, the claim by the OIC to be the guardian and protector of Muslim immigrants living in all countries that are not members of the OIC implies an extension of its jurisdiction and political influence over all the Muslims of Europe, North and South America, and the other non-Member States. This situation exacerbates the danger incurred by non-religious European Muslims, whether atheists, apostates, or free thinkers.

This movement to create a totalitarian religio-political empire that would challenge the very core of Western soceities and values - which ensure freedom from tyranny - should trouble the heart of everyone who cares about freedom and democratic, secular values. But as the author notes:

Faced today with this political archaism, a divided and broken West seeks refuge in denial and grasps at the demise of tiny Israel as though at a lifebelt. Taking in water from every side, this West that abandons its own identity for multilateralism and multiculturalism and ruins its citizenry by buying security has little chance of survival.

I admire Bat Ye'or very much, both as a scholar and as a character, but never in my life have I more fervently wished for someone to be wrong. Time will tell, but Bat Ye'or's insights will always remain difficult to ignore.