powered by performancing firefox

At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized – New York Times

This fills in some of the details of how the publication of a set of cartoons in September lead to riots [...]]]> If you’re quick (posted for a week or so), the NYTimes has some important history of the how the demonstrations against the Danish cartoon publication built:

At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized – New York Times

This fills in some of the details of how the publication of a set of cartoons in September lead to riots in February. A big part of the picture is the refusal of Danish goverment officials to meet with concerned Moslem representatives. This is added to the general feeling on the “arab street” that West is out to get Islam (keyed by the Iraq invasion) leading to electoral victories in many countries by Islamist and by Hamas in Palestine which in turn put pressure on moderate politicians.

Daily Kos: Islam as a Modern Political Movement

The Shehada

La ilaha ill’Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah, = [...]]]> An extremely useful post on Daily Kos provides a lot of background on the development and current state of political Islam. It’s a good antidate to the monolithic vision of Islam that prevails in most of the coverage in American media

Daily Kos: Islam as a Modern Political Movement

The Shehada

La ilaha ill’Allah, Muhammad rasul Allah, = there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.

He who says it becomes a Muslim. There is nothing more: that utterance is taken as definitive proof of conversion by every sect of Islam. All else is the deen, the Islamic way of life, and there are as many different ways to be a Muslim as there are Muslims. Two Muslims who argue particulars of Islam both utter the Shehada before and after any dispute of this sort.

I am not a Muslim. I discriminate between Church and State. I am a pro-choice, anti-Intelligent Design, professing Christian. Should an observant Muslim find fault in my analysis of Islam, I beg pardon. I speak fair Arabic, I lived in Islamic countries for many years, and have discussed Islam civilly with several scholars and many imams, without giving offense. Al muslimu man salima ‘l muslimina.

Anyone may utter the shehada. When modern Muslims talk of an Islamic society, everyone has a different definition.

The diarist also references an article in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly going into more depth on the seminal Muslim Brotherhood that is rewarding in itself:

The rise of “political Islam” is intrinsically associated with the birth of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is why it is so crucial to study the history of this organisation. Founded in 1928 by Hassan El-Banna, its first supreme guide, the Muslim Brotherhood’s calling spread so rapidly that within a matter of years it evolved from a locally based group of proselytisers to a tightly structured socio-political movement whose influence in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East would grow exponentially over the next 75 years. However, if, as some have put it, the “brain” of political Islam is Egyptian, its “muscle” is Asian, in view of the profound impact Wahabi thought and practice had upon its development.

Independent Online Edition > Middle East Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the [...]]]> White phosphorus burns at the touch, clinging to the surfaces it touches, melting flesh.

Independent Online Edition > Middle East
Powerful new evidence emerged yesterday that the United States dropped massive quantities of white phosphorus on the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the attack on the city in November 2004, killing insurgents and civilians with the appalling burns that are the signature of this weapon

…

Photographs on the website of RaiTG24, the broadcaster’s 24-hours news channel, www.rainews24.it, show exactly what the former soldier means. Provided by the Studies Centre of Human Rights in Fallujah, dozens of high-quality, colour close-ups show bodies of Fallujah residents, some still in their beds, whose clothes remain largely intact but whose skin has been dissolved or caramelised or turned the consistency of leather by the shells.

A biologist in Fallujah, Mohamad Tareq, interviewed for the film, says: “A rain of fire fell on the city, the people struck by this multi-coloured substance started to burn, we found people dead with strange wounds, the bodies burned but the clothes intact.”

The video report from Italian RAI network with graphic evidence is here

The use of napalm has already been documented and admitted:

Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. “The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you,” he told Mr Cohen. “I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position.”

Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets “away from civilian targets”, he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.

Britain, which has no stockpiles of the weapons, ratified the convention, but the US did not.

This is just one reason (in addition to the torture “problem”) that this administration fears the world criminal court.

Hey everyone, There is so much emphasis on the gender binary system in America and in Unitarian Universalist Communities. The gender binary system is so strong in America, even if it is growing weaker. Below is information on definitions relating to sexuality and gender identity, gender-neutral or epicene pronouns, [...]]]> Kat Manker-Seale put together a nice list of gender resources:

Hey everyone,
There is so much emphasis on the gender binary system in America and
in Unitarian Universalist Communities. The gender binary system is so strong in America, even
if it is growing weaker. Below is information on definitions
relating to sexuality and gender identity, gender-neutral or epicene
pronouns, how schools can be more accepting of transgendered
students, and intersex. I encourage y’all to learn more about this.
-Kat
****Youth Council members: please forward this to your constituencies.****

Different definitions of transgendered terms as well as others:
http://www.firelily.com/gender/resources/defs.html
http://students.berkeley.edu/sas/geneq/lgdefs.htm
http://www.gentlespirit.org/youth/Youth_Definitions.htm

Information on gender-neutral or epicene pronouns:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/S/Sp/Spivak_pronoun.htm
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Gender-neutral_pronouns
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Sie_and_hir
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Xe_%28pronoun%29
http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/It_%28pronoun%29

To the Editor:

So the new pope thinks that the Western world is afflicted by relativism. When conservatives object to certain moral views, the fashion these days is to call those views relativist. But that is a misnomer.

Moral relativism is the idea that the truth of [...]]]> Maureen Dowd pointed out this gem from the NYT letter pages:

To the Editor:

So the new pope thinks that the Western world is afflicted by relativism. When conservatives object to certain moral views, the fashion these days is to call those views relativist. But that is a misnomer.

Moral relativism is the idea that the truth of moral views is relative to what a particular person or group thinks is right. If one group thinks that something is right and another thinks it is wrong, it is right for the first group and wrong for the second.

Those who hold “liberal” views are not relativists. They simply disagree with the conservatives about what is right and wrong.

There is nothing new about moral disagreement. It is part of moral thought and can lead to progress. Nothing is gained by obscuring the disagreement with rhetorical labels.

Bruce M. Landesman
Salt Lake City, April 19, 2005
The writer is a philosophy professor at the University of Utah.

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Rail Gun of Quiet Reflection.

Get yours.