This post is a reply to a guest post over at Pommygranate’s blog, by Kizzie, a Sudanese Muslim woman, who currently resides in Cairo. In her post Kizzie tries to show that Female Genital Mutilation is not an Islamic practice, but rather a cultural one, partly basing her argument on the premise that the two are mutually exclusive. However, although FGM is a certainly a cultural practice that predates Islam, it is also an Islamic practice, which is what I am going to show below.

The reason that a Sudanese Muslim woman came to be guest-blogging on Pommygranate’s site, by the way, is the debate that has raged this week across the Australian blogosphere in the wake of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s visit here last week. Ironically Ali barely mentioned FGM when she spoke on Sunday night.
The first bone in the debate was thrown by Kim at Larvatus Prodeo. Tim Blair then pulled her up on her smug insensitivity , while in the meantime the fireworks really started flying in the comments to Kim’s post. Blair followed up and Kim attempted to fire back, only to get blasted to pieces by Blair (see the Update in last TB link). Far back along the way FGM became the focus of the debate, as it rippled out through the blogosphere and finally here we are. Phew.

Now to answering Kizzie’s post. She starts off explaining where FGM is practiced (many African countries and some Arab countries in the Middle East, like, you may be surprised to learn, in Kurdistan, where most women are “circumcised”) and describes the four classifications of FGM, which disfigure the female genitalia to various degrees. No argument so far. Except the part where she uses the term Female Genital Circumcision, but than refers to it as FGM thereafter, which actually stands for Female Genital Mutilation. A telling manifestation of double-think right there, I’d say.

Kizzie’s argument is divided into two parts and in the first she attempts to argue that FGM is not an Islamic practice, giving three arguments to support her view. Looking at them one by one:

1. FGM predates both Christianity and Islam since it is believed to date back to time of the Pharaohs.

Well, noone is going to argue with that. A lot of Islamic practices predate Islam, and some predate Christianity also. Thats hardly an argument that all those practices are not Islamic. The Islamic practice of not eating pork was a Judaic one before Islam, the Islamic practice of five prayers a day was practices by Zoroastrians before Islam, the Islamic symbol of star and crescent was a symbol of a number of Moon-Gods before Islam, and so on and so forth. The covering of the female body, polygamy, the washing of extremities before prayer and meals, fasting, all these have been cultural practices somewhere before becoming Islamic ones.
Here’s how Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar from Al-Azhar University put it (full quote and source further down):

”Female circumcision is no less valid just because it was practiced in Pharaonic times and in the Jahiliya. Islam accepted some customs, which were harmonious with human nature, and rejected others, which contradicted human nature.”

Anyway, what is important is how a person justifies their actions - is it because “thats just how we do things round here” (ie. a cultural practice, like shaking hands in the West or rubbing noses amongst the Eskimos), or is it because the practice is made compulsory or recommended by their religious belief system? I’ll get to the Islamic justifications (and recommendations) for FGM shortly.

2. FGM is found in non-Muslim societies example: Christians in Ghana and other non-Muslim societies in India and South America.

See my answer to one. If every Islamic practice was disowned because it was practiced by adherents of other religions there wouldn’t be much left thats Islamic. The question is does Islam give justification for the practice? When I get to the scriptural and scholarly references below it should be clear that it does. The distinction of Islam being a “complete way of life”, rather than merely a religion, as Muslims like to point out, gives extra weight to this argument, as virtually any act can be determined to be allowed, disallowed, recommended etc from the Sunnah (the tradition and example of the Prophet and his companions as recorded in the Hadiths). For the Islamic Ummah the lines between culture and religion are virtually non-existent, with an overriding Islamic culture superseding any local one. Anyhow, are there any Christian priests in Ghana giving religious justification for FGM or does it exist despite the opposition of the Church? Because there most certainly are plenty of Muslim Sheikhs giving religious justification for FGM.

3. If FGM was obligatory in Islam then Muslim scholars from all over the world wouldn’t be working together to ban its practice.

Here Kizzie tries to confuse the issue by using the word “obligatory”. FGM is certainly “obligatory” in most schools of Islam. In most schools it is seen as “noble”, “honorable” and “recommended”, but not obligatory. The distinction is much the same as that between the wearing of the hijab and the wearing of the niqab (which covers the face) in most Islamic schools. The niqab is deemed obligatory only in the more severe Islamic schools (the Wahhabi, Deobandi etc), by others it is viewed as kind “going the extra mile” to please Allah, a noble act of piety. Is wearing the niqab not an Islamic practice because most schools do not deem it “obligatory”?

Anyhow, Kizzie sites three example here, two of conferences and one of a “meeting” of Muslim scholars where FGM was denounced. Note that all three events are from the last 2 years. One conference was organized by a German human rights group and held in Cairo and involved scholars from Al-Azhar. The “meeting” was also held in Cairo’s Al Azhar university. The other conference was held in Nigeria and news reports again feature quotes from scholars from Al Azhar, which is the foremost Sunni institution in the world, so certainly has authority. It does appear that the issue has been seriously debated at Al-Azhar (links below). I do wonder though whether these denouncement draw a distinction between “female circumcision” and FGM, by which some Muslims only refer to infibulation.

I also wonder why it took 14 centuries for these denouncements to come out. Where are the Fatwas banning the practice, other than those against Infibulation, the most severe of the four forms, prior to the the 21st century? Why did the scholars not try to rid of the Islamic world of this barbaric practice before Western influence shamed them into doing so? Why was a German human rights group needed to start the conference in the first place?

As for “Muslim scholars from all over the world [..] working together to ban its practice” (I am only seeing scholars from Al-Azhar), well, what about all the Muslim scholars all over the world encouraging it and using the Sunnah to justify it? They certainly seem to have the superior numbers.

Before I start quoting some of these scholars, here are some quotations from the Hadiths that are commonly used to justify the practice:

Although there is no mention of it in the Quran itself, there are several hadiths, where Female Genital Mutilation is encouraged by Mohammad.

The first hadith is from Abu Dawud (Book 41, Number 5251): Um ‘Atiyyah is reported as an exciser of female slaves who had immigrated with Mohammad.
On one occasion Mohammad allegedly asked her if she kept practicing her profession, to which she responded in the affirmative. Then she added: “unless it is forbidden and you order me to stop doing it.” Mohammad replied: “yes, it is allowed.”
Mohammad then gave Um ‘Atiyyah specific instructions on the methodology for female circumcision (Aldeeb, 1994, p. 6), explaining to her that his method of “female circumcision” would bring radiance to the face of the woman.
This hadith is also quoted by al-Hakim and al-Baihaqi on the authority of al-Dhaahhak ibn Qais (al-Sabbagh, 1998, p. 17).

Another well-known hadith is that of Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He relates in his Musnad (5:75) from Abu al-Malih ibn, Usama’s father, that Mohammad said:
“Circumcision is sunna (tradition) for men and an honorable quality for women”

A third hadith states: “If the two circumcision organs (khitanan) meet, ritual ablution (gusl), becomes obligatory.” This is cited in Malik, Muslim, al-Tirmithi and Ibn Majah in their respective hadith collections and can also be found in other collections (al-Sabbagh, 1998, p. 38).

There are many documented justifications by Islamic scholars through the ages, based on these Hadiths. And many of them, coincidentally, are from the same aforementioned Al-Azhar university. Possibly because Egypt is pretty much FGM-central, with 97% of women there having been subjected to it. You’d think if the practice contradicted Sharia it would have become less prevalent, if not stamped out by now. Islamic countries don’t seem to have much trouble minimising alcohol consumption, for example. Anyway, lets hear from the Sheikhs:

In Reliance of the Traveler, a classical manual of Islamic law, endorsed by Al-Azhar in 1991 as conforming ‘to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,’ we find the following, with notes from several scholars and the translator:

e4.3   Circumcision is obligatory (commentary of Sheikh ‘Umar Barakat: “for both men and women”). For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Arabic: Bazr) of the clitoris (remark by the translator: “not the clitoris itself, as some mistakenly assert”). (comment by Sheikh ‘Abd al-Wakil Durubi: Hanbalis hold that circumcision of women is not obligatory but sunna, while Hanafis consider it a mere courtesy to the husband.)”

A look at the original Arabic show the text to actually say:

Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female)
by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male,
but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris
(this is called HufaaD).

Further commentary (from a non-Muslim):

The deceptive translation by Nuh Hah Mim Keller, made for Western consumption, obscures the Shafi’i law, given by ‘Umdat al-Salik, that circumcision of girls by excision of the clitoris is mandatory. This particular form of female circumcision is widely practiced in Egypt, where the Shafi’i school of Sunni law is followed.

Some years ago Pamela Bone asked Sheik Fehmi al-Imam of the Preston Mosque about FGM and his reply was “You probably don’t need it but women in hot countries do”. (The Age, 21/7/01 p7) (same link)

In 1981 the Great Sheikh of the same aforementioned Al-Azhar University “stated that parents must follow the lessons of Mohammed and not listen to medical authorities because the latter often change their minds. Parents must do their duty and have their daughters circumcised.”. (same link)

How things have changed after 20 years of Western influence!

Again from the same link:

   Sheikh Yussef Al-Qaradhawi, one of Sunni Islam’s most influential clerics and a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood favors partial circumcision for women as a moderate, just, and reasonable solution best suited to reality. In a Fatwa on this issue, he wrote, “Anyone who thinks that circumcision is the best way to protect his daughters should do it. I support this, particularly in the period in which we live.”

And still more the learned men of Al-Azhar:

   On 12/2/2007 Al-Arabiya TV aired ‘Al-Azhar University Scholars Argue over the Legitimacy of Female Circumcision Practiced in Egypt.’ The debate was between Egyptian Al-Azhar University scholars Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mussayar and Sheikh Mahmoud Ashur.

Muhammad Al-Mussayar: notes “All the jurisprudents, since the advent of Islam and for 14 centuries or more, are in consensus that female circumcision is permitted by Islam. But they were divided with regard to its status in shari’a. Some said that female circumcision is required by shari’a, just like male circumcision. Some said this is the mainstream practice, while others said it is a noble act. But throughout the history of Islam, nobody has ever said that performing female circumcision is a crime. There has been a religious ruling on this for 14 centuries.”  “First of all, there are reliable hadiths in Al-Bukhari and Al-Muslim which support female circumcision. The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘If a circumcised woman and man have intercourse, they must undergo ablution.’ Unreliable hadiths do not cancel out the reliable ones. We have unreliable hadiths regarding prayer, fasting, charity, and pilgrimage. Should we abolish prayer and charity just because some hadiths are unreliable?..”Female circumcision is no less valid just because it was practiced in Pharaonic times and in the Jahiliya. Islam accepted some customs, which were harmonious with human nature, and rejected others, which contradicted human nature.” (reported by MEMRI.org 27/2/2007 and http://fgmnetwork.org) (same link)

So for 1400 years the scholars have been divided on whether it is an obligation (the Shafi’i school), sunna (the Hanbali school) or a “noble act”, an “honorable quality”, while in the Hanafi school it is apparently “a mere courtesy to the husband”. All a sudden in the last 3 years the final word comes out declaring the the practice neither obligatory or sunna, but suddenly Unislamic? Give me a break.

For more evidence still, see also this fascinating and shocking recent debate (and it is at least good to see they have plenty of those) involving a male lecturer from, once again, Al-Azhar university, debating a female lecturer (not sure from which institution) on the subject of FGM. The male sheikh again argues that milder forms of FGM are sunna, while total removal of the clitoris is forbidden, while the female lecturer argues against all forms of FGM. Dr. Muhammad Wahdan concludes:

In Egypt we have four and a half million spinsters. The definition of a spinster is a woman who has reached 30, without ever receiving a marriage proposal. We have a spinster problem in the Arab world, and the last thing we want is for them to be sexually aroused. Circumcision of the girls who need it makes them chaste, dignified, and pure.

But back to Kizzie’s post, and in part two of her essay, having apparently show FGM is not an Islamic practice, she tries to show that FGM is actually a social/cultural practice. Firstly Kizzie states that the less severe forms are practiced in Indonesia. I would have thought that only goes to prove my point? Then she goes on to point out some age-old cultural justifications for the ancient FGM tradition in Africa, which only serves to moot the waters, as ancient cultural reasoning does not trump modern Islamic reasoning, so I’ll simply leave that part alone. But as Indonesia has been brought up, I will follow up with that example. It is true that the type of FGM practiced in Indonesia is almost always not as severe as that of North Africa. And here I can agree that we are seeing “cultural differences”. FGM is a part of Islamic culture, it is an Islamic practice, which came to Indonesia with Islam and did not exist there prior. However the differences between how it is done there as opposed to say Egypt, can be put down to “cultural practice”. Lets not be confused by that distinction, however.

Here are some extracts from an article that appeared in The Age, in 2004 about FGM in Indonesia:

The practice of female circumcision in Indonesia has moved into hospitals. Greater genital mutilation is the likely result. Matthew Moore and Karuni Rompies report.

Hospitals across Indonesia are offering new parents a one-price surgical package for their just-born girls — as well as piercing their ears, they’ll circumcise them.

At Jakarta’s Hermina Hospital the price for the two procedures is 95,000 rupiah (about $A16), at IDI hospital in Surabaya in East Java it’s only 15,000 rupiah, while in Makassar’s Khadijah Hospital in Sulawesi, hospital staff quote 25,000 to 30,000 rupiah.

[..] While hospitals might be more hygienic, health care experts are worried by strong evidence that the move has led to more of the child’s genital tissue being cut because medical practitioners use different implements and techniques.

Village-based midwives and traditional healers have been circumcising girls in Indonesia for centuries, although the extent and details of the practice are only now emerging.

[..]

In an attempt to find out more about female circumcision, the US AID-funded study by the Population Council surveyed 1694 households in eight separate regions and found all the boys and 97.5 per cent of girls had been circumcised.

[..]

The concern now relates to changes due to circumcisions in hospitals, where health care professionals use scissors in more than 75 per cent of cases, which invariably means cutting flesh.

[..]
It’s not only babies who are circumcised, with one-third of those surveyed circumcised between the ages of five and nine, and some even older.

Several hours out of Jakarta in Bandung, the Assalaam Foundation has been holding free mass circumcisions for males and females for almost 50 years, with as many as 400 people turning up at a time. Syarief Hamid, treasurer with the foundation, which runs several schools, said the circumcisions were timed to honor the Prophet’s birthday, and were growing in popularity each year.

While religion is the main reason for circumcising girls, he says there are also health reasons. “I understand that a girl who is not circumcised would not have clean genitals after she urinates and sometimes that can cause cervical cancer,” he says. “The religious view is, if you are not circumcised you won’t have clean genitals after urinating. If then you pray, your prayer won’t be legal.”

[..]

Religion was the reason cited by 55 per cent of mothers surveyed for circumcising their daughters, although none could identify parts of the Koran or the Prophet Muhammad’s guidance, called Hadith, where it is stipulated. While 32 per cent nominated health and hygiene as the perceived benefit, 9 per cent said they did not know what benefit it would bring.

Masitoh Chusnan, from the women’s wing of Muhammadiyah, one of Indonesia’s two biggest Muslim organizations, says circumcision of girls is regarded in Islam as an honorable practice.

“The Hadith did not say it’s obligatory, but it is recommended to have it done,” she says. “There is the Prophet’s words saying girls must be circumcised, but you should not cut too much.”

[..] current practice shows no signs of a decline in popularity, with more than 90 per cent of mothers questioned supporting the practice continuing.

And one in five mothers even suggested social sanctions should be imposed on girls who were uncircumcised.

The above dove-tails perfectly with what the religious arguments above - it is not an obligation, but an “honourable practice”. But far disturbing still are stories about the hundreds, if not thousands of Christian women from Indonesia’s Molucca Islands who were forcibly converted to Islam and in the process forcibly circumcised:

Christian woman recalls horror of forced conversion to Islam

Posted on May 1, 2001 | by Brittany Jarvis

AMBON, Indonesia (BP)–”My scar healed quite fast, but the sad, humiliated feeling stayed. I feel like I’m no longer complete, both as a person and a woman.”

That is the testimony of Christina Sagat, a 32-year-old Christian from Kasiui, Indonesia, who was forcibly circumcised by her Muslim neighbors. Unfortunately, as traumatic as her story sounds, hundreds of women have endured similar oppression.

“My niece, Cecilia, who at that time was eight months pregnant, was also circumcised,” Sagat said. “My mother, who was in her 70s, was also circumcised. Teenagers, and even infants, were circumcised. I don’t understand these people.”

[..]

More details on whats been happening on Ambon Island and other Molucca Islands, where thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands displaced here. Hundreds of Christian families have been given the choice - convert or die. The women and children are then separated from the men and “converted”. Men and children are circumcised using the same dirty razor blade and then told to go and wash in the sea to disinfect the heavily bleeding wounds. Many of the ‘holy warriors’ perpetrating these crimes are members of Laskar Jihad, a Salafi-Jihadist group whose leader studied in Pakistan and considers himself more “fundamentalist” than Osama bin Laden, who he says is ignorant of true Islam. That doesn’t seem to stop his followers from wearing Osama t-shirts though. Laskar Jihad has between 3000 and 10000 fighters, who have been receiving training and assistance from the Indonesian Army. Strange that having studying in some madrassah in Pakistan this douche-bag has decided that circumcising women should go hand-in-hand with their conversion to Islam. This may be a somewhat extreme example, but it goes to show that there is at least a significant number of Muslims, even in Pakistan and Indonesia, who believe in the religious justification for FGM as a very Islamic practice indeed.

Kizzie says resents that when a Muslim kills a Christian man, in a post-9/11 world, his religion is invariably mentioned, whereas when, say, a Christian kills a Christian religion is not mentioned. Well, Kizzie, in a post-9/11 world Westerners have begun to take greater note of the fact that many Muslims use religion as justification for murder. Perhaps if the common occurence was that a Muslim and a Christian fought to the death over a donkey in the marketplace there would be no need to mention religion. However when the Muslim shouts ‘God is Great!’ in the act of murder and kills in the process of waging Jihad on the Kuffar, there most certainly is reason to mention his religion, because clearly religion was at least in part a motivating factor. Likewise when a child’s sexual organs are disfigured because it is supposed to be a “noble” act in the eyes of Allah, you bet we are going to take notice of the religious motivation behind the act. Because take away the religious justification, without a doubt the incidence of the practice would decrease and be easier to eradicate, when only the cultural motivations are left, no longer multiplied by the powerful force of religiosity.

Kizzie concludes by voicing her resentment that FGM has begun to be viewed in a religious rather than a cultural context and continues to assert the mutual exclusivity between the description of the practice of FGM as either cultural or religious. But clearly, as shown above, it is a cultural practice, that many Muslims view as religious and observe for religious reasons, thus it is a religious Islamic practice also. There is clear justification for that viewpoint in Islamic scripture, with there merely being a disagreement between various schools and scholars on whether the practice is obligatory or merely a “noble” or “honorable” act. And only in recent years certain Islamic scholars, mainly from Egypt, have began voicing an opinion that all forms of FGM are haram, ie forbidden, but this view goes against 1400 years of Islamic jurisprudence.

Ultimately, according to some Islamic schools FGM is obligatory (a minority position), and according to most others it is “noble”/”honourable” or sunna (tradition), which clearly serves as a powerful motivator based on religion. In both cases it can thus be described as an Islamic practice and will continue to be so until Muslims stop practicing it, Skeikhs stop using the Sunnah to justify it and its practitioners stop citing the Islamic religion as a motivating factor.

UPDATE (10/6): Kizzie has posted a reply. Not much there I disagree with, really, and don’t have time to comment further just now. Perhaps on Tuesday. Thank you for the debate, Kizzie.

What on Earth am I on about? The “Green Nuns” is the name given to the 500-strong all female personal guard of Lybia’s megalomaniacal strongman Muammar Gadhafi, the “gift” upon the world that just keeps on giving. They are also known as “the Amazonian guard” and are an elite unit of Lybia’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Here are a few happy snaps:

They are supposedly all virgins, well at least until they enter into Gadhafi’s service, and are ever ready to die for their leader. More photos here.

A bit more trivia about everyone’s favourite cross-dressing ubermensch:

During a 1990 Arab summit in Cairo, soon after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Col. Gadhafi showed up escorted by a phalanx of sexy female bodyguards. He wore a single white glove on his right hand, which he said was to prevent him from “soiling his hands when forced to shake the hand of anyone who had exchanged a handshake with an Israeli.” It was a thinly covered insult directed at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and any other Arab leaders who might have had diplomatic exchanges or meetings with Israel.

One of my personal favorite Gaddafisms was his recent declaration that North Africa is Shi’ite and that he is going to restore the 13th century (Ishmaili Shi’ite) Fatimid Empire there. You and what army? Oh.. that army.

That page of course only has room for one… But thats later.

The geopolitical gurus at Stratfor make the following analysis of the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran (subscription only):

Iran handed over a proposal to [U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan] Crocker during a brief encounter at the May 5-6 Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt, but also chose to unofficially publicize its terms for Iraq through the Saudi-owned, British-based daily Al Hayat. The Iranian Foreign Ministry likely chose Al Hayat, a major Arab news outlet, to make a back-channel broadcast of what concessions it is prepared to make to allay Sunni concerns in the region.

In sum, this Iranian proposal called for a non-rushed withdrawal and relocation of U.S. troops to bases inside Iraq, a rejection of all attempts to partition Iraq, a commitment by the Sunni bloc to root out the jihadists and acknowledgement by Washington that the Iranian nuclear file cannot be uncoupled from the Iraq negotiations. In return, Iran would rein in the armed Shiite militias, revise the de-Baathification law and Iraqi Constitution to double Sunni political representation, create a policy to allow for the fair distribution of oil revenues (particularly to the Sunnis) and use its regional influence to quell crises in areas such as Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

The terms put forth by the Iranians are so close to the U.S. position on Iraq that, with little exception, they could have been printed on State Department stationary and no one would have noticed the difference. If these are the terms Washington and Tehran are in fact discussing, then we are witnessing an extraordinary turn in the Iraq war in which the U.S. and Iranian blueprints for Iraq are finally aligning. It does not surprise us, then, that Crocker said after his meeting in Baghdad that the Iranian position “was very close to our own” at the level of policy and principle.

Extraordinary indeed. So is this finally a light at the end of tunnel? Maybe, except for a few small problems. Stratfor lists the problems as follows:

• The transnational Sunni Jihadists with their dreams of an Islamic State of Iraq
• the severely and perhaps irreconcilably split Iraqi Shia who are likely to a little rough on each other sooner rather than later
• the much less splintered Iraqi Sunnis, who, although by and large online with these negotiations must be satisfied of their future safety and a slice of the pie in the Shia dominated Iraq (these guarantees are already part of the deal)
• the Iraqi Kurds, who are the Iraqi faction that stands to lose most out of the above settlement and are not about to give up what they’ve worked so hard to finally achieve in Kurdistan
• Ultraconservatives in Washington and Tehran who “can’t negotiate with those people”
• Sunni Regional Powers with that whole Shia Crescent thing on their mind
• Syria, who is feeling pretty important, if not immune right now while the Great Satan is all tied up elsewhere and they are useful to Iran
• Russia, which has really been making the best of the US and Iranian preoccupation in Iraq and would be quite unhappy to have to start caring what the Americans (and even the much closer Iranians) think again

How is that light looking now?

Thus ended a commentary by Ahmad Ragab, who is apparently “one of the most widely read columnists in Egypt”, in Al-Akhbar, “a mass circulation Egyptian daily”, in response to the endless, ceaseless, senseless, Palestinian infighting.

Hmm, what did they expect, when for a generations their children have been tought that violence is a solution to their problems, violence is a noble cause, violence is in itself a means to a glorious eternal end?

You know. This kind of thing.

Now, if comedy is more your thing, check out this “soap opera” here, called Sands of Passion, by the online comedy network (?) National Banana. Here are episodes 1 and 2:

Episode three is on youtube and four was also posted up today. Love it!

Solid, clear points put simply and reasonably and with plenty of visual evidence. Not bad.

No, this one is not about Iran.

Vanity Fair has an edited excerpt from Ronald Reagan’s diary, which is going to be published this month, containing this entry:

Tues. Dec. 7, 1982 • The weather turned out fine for the official greeting ceremony for Pres. Zia of Pakistan. We got along fine. He’s a good man (cavalry). Gave me his word they were not building an atomic or nuclear bomb. He’s dedicated to helping the Afghans & stopping the Soviets.

(via Judith Klinghoffer, who draws attention to the potentially catastrophic trouble brewing in Pakistan)

Speaking of broken promises, here’s another entry from the diary:

Fri. July 22, 1983 • Today was Pres. Gemayal (Lebanon) day. We had a good meeting & lunch. I think he is reassured that we are not going to abandon them. While we were meeting word came that Beirut was under rocket attacks by the Syrians. We are going to send them the latest in Radar art which can zero in on exactly where the rockets are coming from.

If you’re wondering what “Islamic Revolutionary state” in the title has to do with Pakistan, here’s one more entry for you:

Thurs. June 16, 1988 • Zia has declared Islamic Law is law of Pakistan. That puts them into the Fundamentalist Revolution with the Ayatolah & Qaddafi.

And onward round the circle we go.

I haven’t had much time to post this week, as I’ve been very busy with work, but did finally got around to bashing out some quick posts yesterday (by doubling the caffeine quota). This one is a bit of a collage of what remains, that was originally going to be broken up into several posts. Some good reading in there, enjoy, I am pretty much offline again ’til next week, when hopefully things should clear up a little. Have a great weekend!

First up, a brilliant presentation by Melanie Phillips on the worldwide struggle between modernity and medievalism (via LGF):

First of all, let me define my terms and say what I mean by Islamism and liberalism. Islamism is the politicised version of Islam which mandates jihad, or holy war against the infidel and conquest of the non-Islamic world for Islam. I’m well aware of the argument that there’s no difference between Islamism and Islam: that’s a theological argument for others to have.

By liberalism I mean the commitment to a free society, founded above all on the separation of secular government from religious worship — from which follow the concepts of equal respect for all people, freedom of conscience, tolerance and the rule of law.

These two concepts, Islamism and liberalism, are currently engaged in a fight to the death. My argument is that liberalism is in danger of losing this fight because it has so badly undermined itself and departed from its own core concepts that it is now paralysed by moral and intellectual muddle.

[..]

The Islamist goal is to destroy the virus of freedom and modernity before it infects the Islamic world, and to replace it with Islam. That is the core of the profound threat it poses to the west, a threat mounted through the pincer movement of both terrorism and cultural takeover.

This cultural takeover, or the aim to Islamise the west, was explicitly laid out in a programme of subversion for Europe by the Wahabbi Muslim Brotherhood almost 30 years ago. In 1978, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference sponsored a seminar in London which said Muslim communities in western countries must establish autonomous institutions with help from Muslim states, and lobby the host country to grant Muslims recognition as a separate religious community as a step towards eventual political domination.

In Britain in 1980, a book called ‘The Islamic Movement in the West’ by Khuram Murad advocated an ‘organised struggle to change the existing society into an Islamic society…and make Islam…supreme and dominant especially in the socio-political spheres…’ A Muslim Brotherhood document seized in Switzerland in 2001, known as ‘The Project’, outlined a twelve-point strategy to ‘establish an Islamic government on earth’. And the Brotherhood has now set up an intricate network of bodies across Europe to put all this into action.

Many Muslims in Britain and around the world are deeply opposed to this; indeed Muslims are the most numerous victims of the jihad. That’s why I use the term Islamism, to distinguish those who believe in Islamic conquest from those who merely draw upon Islam for spiritual sustenance. But at the same time, it is false to deny that Islamism is the dominant force in the Muslim and Arab world, false to deny that it is radicalising millions of Muslims in the west, and false to deny the huge inroads it has made into western society through this pincer movement of terrorism and cultural pressure.

But many in the west do deny it. They ignore the clear evidence of the goal of Islamising the west.

Read the whole thing, its excellent.

At the core of Melanie’s presentation is the following dire indictment of Western civilization:

Our corrupted liberal culture has torn up the key precepts of liberalism so that it no longer knows what they are, let alone stands ready to defend them to the death. Authentic liberalism was a doctrine of social progress based on maximising the good in people’s behaviour and minimising the bad. It thus depended upon making moral distinctions between good and bad.

But these distinctions have been destroyed by a combination of hyper-individualism —which grew out of liberalism — and a form of cultural Marxism whose agenda is to destroy liberal values. Between them, these trends tore up the concepts of objectivity, authority and the Judeo-Christian moral codes underpinning western values and substituted emotion, subjectivity, and moral and cultural relativism. [..]

Under the banner of liberal values, this actually destroyed the core precept of liberalism — the distinction between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and lies. Instead, feelings and emotion became most important. The particulars of a culture were deemed hurtful and thus illegitimate because by definition they divided one culture from another. The nation, rooted as it is in the particulars of history, religion, law, language and tradition, became seen as the cause of all the ills of the world from prejudice to war. And the culture of a nation had to be replaced by multiculturalism.

In this interview in “Reset - Dialogues on Civilizations” Ayaan Hirsi Ali raises similar points and suggest how to proceed in the battle against the Islamists, citing confronting people like Tariq Ramadan in open debate as an example:

I am a liberal in the classical liberal sense, so I do not like what Tariq Ramadan says. In fact, I think his message is the worst kind of message against liberalism, but in a free society, we have to give even those who have ideas that we do not like the freedom to debate them with us. I think this is a characteristic of this civilization. The European and Western civilization relies on that idea. So for him and me to debate, and for him to come to Rome, the US or France is fine. But what he is saying and campaigning for is against liberal and liberalism. Let Ramadan speak, and let us refute what he says, because the message that he wants to convey is more embarrassing than his presence. I have been in debate with him, and seen that he gets very angry when I touched on the core issue of what he says. He wants to take away fundamental freedoms from you and from me, and put them in the hands of God. And when I told him “If you do that for yourself it is fine, but why are you propagating it?”, then he got very angry.

[..]

When fathers remove girls from schools, when they force them into marriage, when genital mutilation is taking place and when the Socialist or the Social-democratic party says “this is their culture, this is multiculturalism, let us protect it and rule like this”, then I think they are not being left-wing. If left-wing were about individual rights as in classical 19th-century liberalism, I would define myself as leftwing. But left-wing these days is all about groups: workers, men and women, poor and rich, and that sort of thing. It is not about just human individuals.

On Pyjamas Media the Pastor of Comunidad de Gracia A.C. in Mexico City, Bruce Moon gets a little carried away with words expressing his frustration of the West’s insanity in the face of the Islamist threat:

Even a population hopelessly blinkered from national obsession with food and sex, with entertainment and health, with self-esteem and self-promoting ‘spirituality,’ cannot begin to explain why, as it adores its excesses, it seems not to give a flip for its own very survival. Lack of oxygen to the brain because of frequent overdoses of “Sex and the City”, Dr. Dre, or Krispy Kremes can only go so far to explain the massive synaptic misfires we are increasingly seeing. Something deeper and more sinister must be at work.

Some viral idea has crept into our collective national consciousness, offering us a false wisdom and a feigned hope, while it meanwhile shuts down vital parts of our mental operational systems designed to initiate self-survival programs. We are fast approaching the point where either we must reject the pterodactyl-like hallucinations of irrational humanistic constructs that only produce mind-boggling complacent stupor, political correctness contrivances, and cowardice, or we will become a pitiful specter of our former selves through our utter stupidity.

Laura Mansfield gets to the point with a frightening example of political correctness that may have had tragic conquences:

“Dude, I just saw some really weird s-. I don’t know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?”

Anton Efendi at Across the Bay slams American academic apologists and appeasers of Middle Eastern thugs (I recommend visiting his blog for excellent insights into the developing situation in Lebanon):

But I should make another comment here, just to clarify things. I mean, we shouldn’t really be shocked at the Syrian regime’s behavior. Here, let Bashar Assad’s apologist in American academia explain things to us simpletons: “America, I think, is going to be forced to bend to [Syria’s extortionist demands]. If it continues to resist [giving Lebanon back to Damascus], we’re going to see more violence.”

It’s quite simple really. I mean, Washington is refusing to “abandon the Seniora government.” So what do you expect!? I mean, come on! After all, the problem is simple. You see, Syria “makes American allies pay a high price!” And as long as we pursue a tribunal to stop Assad from killing people, he will continue to kill people until we say he can continue killing people unmolested! I mean, as that academic recently said, “This Hariri court stands in the way”! I know, what a drag…

And finally Judith Apter Klinghoffer notes something that those academics can’t seem to understand, quoting Barry Rubin, the author of “The Truth About Syria”:

   The lessons about these regimes’ extremist behavior should be clear by now. When someone extends its hand in offered friendship, they interpret this as hands raised in surrender.

I do wonder what Nancy Pelosi is thinking just about now in regards to what Syria is orchestrating in Lebanon. Although I am assure I’d be disappointed if I found out. I see someone has gone and created a reading list just for her. And there’s Barry Rubin again.

Andrew Bolt has a selection of insanity from a thread on the Australian Muslim Village Forum, discussing Hamas’ warmongering Mickey Mouse. Some of the gems included are “Why cant Muslim kids be taught to arm themselves up with AK-47’s and strive for world domination under Islamic leadership” and “Islam is based on TOTAL SUBMISSION, not on logic and destructive reasoning”, along with numerous permutations thereof.

Muslim Village is a fascinating microcosm of “soft” Islamo-Fascism that I recommend visiting to get a bit of insight into Islamic views on all and sundry. Beware though, about 90% of non-Muslims that join end up getting banned (no difference of opinion, uncomfortable questions or criticism will be tolerated), as well as probably about 20% of Muslims. The latter because they are keen to present a nice image and do their bit of Dawah, so anyone (and particularly the more rabid Salafists) showing too much psychosis, “secularization” or keenness for violence is removed. Plenty of Caliphate-striving, Hizb ut-Tahrir and Victims-R-Us types though. Just keep in mind you’re getting a highly filtered and severely moderated cross section of views. You don’t need to join to view. I wonder what form “banning” would take if these people actually had political power over a population.

LGF has this astounding video of some “expert” maggot in a suit, on Iranian television saying that “Hitler was falsely accused of committing genocide against the Jews.” Unbelievable. He continues: “This is a lie, and we know full well that Hitler never did such a thing. It was a premeditated lie by the Zionist regime.”

Over in the comments here a visitor with a Dutch IP, calling him/herself “Domination” had the following to say:

Fuck serbs. fuck HellASS
Long live 2 USAlbania

USAlbania? Sounds like a fun place. Don’t leave the Macedonians out now.

Aussie Dave has been doing a great job live-blogging the current conflict in Israel, check it out.