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May 10, 2007

Pakistan: Apostate execution bill under consideration.

Further down the rabbit hole they go:

Islamabad (AsiaNews) – A draft bill adopted in first reading by Pakistan’s National Assembly is now before a standing committee. Tabled by a six-party politico-religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal or MMA, the Apostasy Act 2006 which the government sent to the committee would impose the death penalty on Muslim men and life in prison on Muslim women in case they leave Islam. It would also force them to forfeit their property and lose legal custody of children.

As Musharraf’s position grows weaker by the day the Islamists grow bolder still. And there are few sings of any possibility of a reversal on the horizon.

The situation is particularly affecting women who refuse to adhere to the stricter Islamic codes demanded by the medievalists (via 3 Quarks Daily):

Just the other day Tahera Abdullah was driving down the spiffy Margalla Road in Islamabad, the windows rolled down to enjoy the evening breeze. A development worker, her silvery hair could tell anyone she’s 50 plus. Tahera stopped at the traffic signal; an eight-year-old boy accosted her: didn’t she know Islam required her to cover her head? Tahera immediately rolled up the window. “How do you argue with an eight-year-old?” she asks. But the encounter with Pakistan’s religious extremism, at once frightening and puerile, has prompted Tahera to choose sweating inside the car over letting in the breeze. “We women are feeling more threatened today,” she says.

The streets of Islamabad are menacing women, compelling them to be what they are not, what they have never been. Consultant Sara Javeed realised this when she lit a cigarette in her car recently. “I quickly stubbed it. I don’t want strangers asking me why I’m smoking. This is the new me,” she says dolefully. Sara feels the emerging extremism could Talibanise Pakistan. “I don’t want to live in such a state,” she declares.

You can hear the winds of extremism whistle eerily even in Parliament. This week, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Sherry Rehman, as progressive as she’s glamorous, wrote to the speaker of the lower house asking him to stop her monthly stipend as she wasn’t anyway being allowed to speak on vital issues. “I’d never want to wait for anything to happen to me personally before I stood up to speak for women who are today in a far more dangerous situation than even during Zia-ul Haq’s times,” she says.

Sherry should know, she has experienced the destructive passion of the country’s religiosity. Two months ago, she was in a truck leading a PPP procession. An assailant stabbed her in the neck with a sharp object, to express his anger against women in politics. “The person who attacked me hasn’t been apprehended yet,” she said. “We are in a state of anarchy today. It’s a dangerous retreat of the state. There’s simply no check on the vice and virtue vigilantes.”

Comments from other women in the same article:

Sherry Rehman,  politician
“Women today have more to fear than even in Zia’s time.”

Sara Javeed, Consultant
“When I drive, I don’t smoke now. I don’t want people accosting me.”

Rehana Hakim, Editor, Newsline
“It’s open season on the women of Pakistan.”

Moneezae Jehangir, TV journalist
“There’s a feeling of discomfort…Pakistani women are vulnerable.”

Rabab, Model
“Earlier, we had lots of shows in Oct-Dec. There’s less work now.”

More on Pakistan’s “virtue vigilantes” in this recent post.

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May 7, 2007

Beard liberation on the march in Pakistan.

I didn’t even realize mobile phones were Unislamic. I would have just said its a peace-spreading revolutionary device and pointed at the IED in the back.

Extremists harass villagers in Pakistan

KHAR, Pakistan, May 6 (UPI) — About 250 armed Islamist extremists went on a rampage of censorship in the Bajaur area of Pakistan, it was reported Sunday.

Wearing masks and carrying guns, the extremists set up checkpoints and prohibited men without beards from riding in public vehicles, the news agency Dawn reported Sunday.

The armed extremists also removed and destroyed mobile telephones, tape recorders, audio cassettes, CDs and CD players from cars stopped at the checkpoints in Baddi Saya, Kamar Ser, Umari and Tani areas of Mamond tehsil, Dawn reported.

In Inayat Kali, a group of men carrying automatic assault rifles shut down music stores and warned the stores’ owners not to reopen, the report said.

Earlier in the week, five more audacious attacks on the aural imperialists:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 4 (Reuters) - Suspected pro-Taliban militants in northwestern Pakistan attacked music shops with explosive devices early on Friday, destroying at least five outlets but causing no casualties, police said.

Thats so backward. Couldn’t they just settle for a “Warning: May contain music. Not suitable for people.” sticker on the front?

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April 3, 2007

Pizza Politics.

Turkmenistan’s new President, Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov, has finally opened his country to Internet access to the outside world. What took them so long? In a word - ‘pizza’:

[The previous President] Niyazov’s government earlier had an unhappy experience with the Internet, when in 1998 London-based NetNames persuaded him to sell top-level “.tm” Internet domain names for a percentage of the profits. NetNames argued that companies would rush to embrace the domain, as “tm” represents “trademark” in the West. After selling more than 4,000 domain names Niyazov pulled the plug on the project, as he was offended by certain registrations, such as “pizza,” which he found uncomfortably close to the Russian word for female genitalia.

That word is pizda, if you’re wondering. When I checked pizda.tm was still up for grabs, so get in there.

Undettered by the possibility of obscene connotations is North Korea’s top guy Kim Jong-Il, who had an Italian chef interrogated until the chef broke the ice by saying he spoke Russian and delivered to North Korea to make pizza for Kim. Word on the NK street is Kim was also at first confused by the p-word, having his foreign guest initially delivered into his harem, before the confused Italian was told to get back in the kitchen where he belongs. “So sorry, Great Leader, I said I’ve got some great PIZZA for you!”

No signs of confusion about the meaning of the word ‘pizza’ from NK’s nukilar-wannabe pals Iran. The Iranians know exactly what it means and where it comes from. That is why it is banned there. The blaphemous infidel word ‘pizza’ that is, not the dish. “Elastic loaves” however remain ever popular. Can someone tell these clowns what Shiite means, while I go and register shiite.tm?

Presumably following a similar logic Pakistani Shiites like to burn Pizza Huts (Elastic Loaf Huts?) because they identify them with the “American administration”. Which leads me assume Pakistani Shiites also identify KFC and gas stations with Pakistani Sunni extremists. Pakistani Sunni mobs on the other hand prefer churches, the Holiday Inn, McDonald’s, trains and Christian schools and convents. Oh, and “blasphemers”, but that goes without saying.

Not to be outdone across the border in India earlier this month mobs destroyed the residence a of poorly performing cricket star:

“An AFP reporter at the site reported that the protesters were shouting “Dhoni die, die”, burning effigies of the long-haired player, who has scored 1,958 runs in 68 one-day international matches and is counted among India’s most aggressive batsmen.”

But back to the pizza.

Under the cover of pizza: In November 2004 Dutch police arrested Morrocan Islamist who was doing reconnaissance for a terrorist operation while delivering pizza. He was described in the the Dutch paper De Telegraaf as a “radical Moroccan pizza courier”. No moderate Moroccan pizza couriers were available for comment, but rumours has it they were quite incessed about the hijacking of their scooters by the radicals.

But back to the mob attacks.

tehran mob

On Sunday the British embassy in Tehran was under siege from a rock and firecraker pelting mob chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Britain”. “Pizza, pizza!” came the defiant reply from inside the high security compound.

Parallels have being drawn with the 1979 seige of the US embassy in Tehran, when the Islamists adorned the building with slogans such as “This is not a struggle between the US and Iran, it is a struggle between Islam and blasphemy” and “The more we die, the stronger we become”, but there is an earlier and bloodier precedent:

When in 1979 a horde of students invaded the American embassy in Tehran and took the entire staff hostage, it was not the first time such a thing had happened in the city. In 1829, a mob had broken into the Russian legation and killed all but one of its diplomats. The unfortunate head of the Russian mission was Alexander Griboyedov, who died in the carnage.

[….]

Griboyedov’s arrival in Tehran coincided with Ashura, a festival which involved great numbers of flagellants parading in the streets to re-enact the deaths of Hassan and Hussein, the sons of the Imam Ali. The atmosphere was highly charged with religious emotion and the crowds were putty in the hands of the mullahs. Griboyedov tactlessly chose to ride a black stallion, the same colour as the stallion ridden in the plays by the murderer Yazid. Doubtless still under Yermolov’s influence, he displayed a signal lack of courtesy to the Shah, and the members of his mission, with their public drunkenness and insulting behaviour, did not endear themselves to the people of Tehran.

The atmosphere became more charged when one Mirza Yaqub sought refuge at the Russian mission. An Armenian Christian, he had been captured during the siege of Erivan, castrated, converted to Islam and eventually promoted to become the Shah’s personal treasurer.

The situation was now extremely delicate, and became more so when the palace claimed that Mirza Yaqub had absconded with a hefty part of the royal treasure. To make matters worse, Griboyedov was persuaded to take in two young Armenian girls, the property of the Shah’s son-in-law. After some days in the Russian mission, the girls began to smell and were taken to the bathhouse. The Persians assumed they were being given a ritual bath prior to a forced marriage to a Russian, and word got out that two Muslim girls were about to be violated. The next morning a huge mob gathered at the mosque. Fired by the mullahs, the mob attacked the Russian mission. All those inside, bar one, were slaughtered and everything movable was looted, including a substantial amount of bullion.

The Persian authorities were powerless to prevent it, and the rioting lasted for four days. Griboyedov’s body was sent on an ox cart back to his wife at Tiflis. Today, in the Kremlin, is displayed an 89-carat diamond, sent by the Shah to the Tsar by way of an apology.

On that occassion when the rabid mob stormed the building the Persian guards fled and soon the fanatical rioters, chanting “Allahu Akbah” were tearing through the roof of the compound and then tearing through its inhabitants, literally tearing them apart. Griboyedov’s body was recovered from the mob three days later and only recognised by a duelling scar on his hand. Another unfortunate victim had his head proudly displayed on a skewer at a nearby kebab stand. Only one person survived the attack. Griboyedov was also an outstanding playwright and his famous work “Woe from Wit” is still studied in Russian schools.

Back to modern times, and only days after the the 1979 attack on the US embassy in Tehran, the British embassy in Islamabad suffered a similar fate:

In November 1979, false rumors that the United States had participated in the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca provoked a mob attack on the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. The government’s delayed response enabled the mob to burn the embassy. Four people died, two of them U.S. nationals.

Its currently looking like another wave of pizza politics is on the creep in Pakistan.

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December 1, 2006

The Hajj story you won’t hear; Islam as a religion that lost sight of its inner meaning.

Below are some extracts from the Sufi teacher Abdullah Dougan’s book, “40 Days: An Account of a Discipline” that give considerable insight on the nature of the Islamic religion today, as well as the culture of its epicentre and birthplace, Arabia. These observations were made in 1974, as Abdullah travelled to Arabia on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that is one of the Five Pillars of Islam that every practicing Muslim must complete. Abdullah travelled to Saudi Arabia from Afghanistan with his student Abdul. Before being allowed entry into Arabia the two men had to swear before an Afgani High Court that they were Muslims, following which the judge told them “with a straight face” that now they were Muslims, by Koranic law they could be killed if they decided to return to being Christians. On entry into Saudi Arabia the customs inspector confiscated a book Abdullah had by the Hindu guru Ramdas, because it was “against their religion”. Abdullah observed: “This action on the part of the customs was typical of the bigotry of many Muslims, who observe only the outside part of their religion.”

I am posting this because you’d be hard pressed to find such honest and direct descriptions of a Hajj experience anywhere else, for reason that will soon become apparent, as well as a continuation from my last two posts. The Hajj is also presently a somewhat more orderly experience (or not?), perhaps because the Saudis have been embarassed into action by foreign visitors and governments, so it is important to capture this instructive bit of recent history.

Anyhow, I found reading the stories below to be a fascinating insight.

Abdullah on the meaning of the Hajj:

There are many explanations of the Hajj, by Muslim theologians, most of which follow a very literal line, as is customary in the Muslim world. Anything in the Hadith or Koran is held to be true, no matter how far-fetched to objective reasoning. The Koran, like the bible, has inaccuracies caused by the ego of writers intruding into universal truths.

On his experience at Masjid El Noor ( Mosque of Light), where he and Abdul stayed in Medina:

[..]The people who ran the school where part of the Tablig school, traditionalists trying to keep the clock back in the days of the Holy Prophet, who would slavishly follow many of the injunctions given in the Hadith or traditions of the Prophet.

    Muslims maintain there are no monks in Islam, but this type of situation belied the assertion. The borthers lived the life of a monk at MAsjid El Noor, grting up at 4:30am for prayers, doing their ablutions at a cold tap which was the merest trickle and on a few occassions not even that so they would have to store water to use out of one of the spouted pots. Prayers were going on constantly as well as the five communal prayers. In between, someone was always lecturing others. There was a continual stream of visitors from among the pilgrims, for the Tablig school are the missionaries of Islam. They call themselves the Jumat (brothers) and go to other mosques to waylay people and harangue them constantly, trying to influence them back to their religion. They also attempt to convert any infidel they find interested in Islam. They are all most sincere, trying to live life to the Koran, and most are very feaful and superstitious. [..]

    The Holy Prophets ideas on cleanliness wre a thousand years ahead of his time, for when the people of Europe were having baths only once a year, if at all, the Prophet had his peolpe bathing once a week. However the Law of Seven [TOD: an esoteric concept governing the atrophy of processes devoid of conscious guidance] has cought up with this, and now the Muslim people must contend for first place among the dirtiest races in the world. At El Noor there was never any hot water for a bath, and most people used no soap; this applied for wuzu, the ceremonial washing of hands and feet before prayers. Often there was no water at all because the town was so overcrowded the system could not cope. There were no flush toilets, but pans let into the floors with an adjacent tap, and even when there was water about half the users would not wash away their stool. To add to the lack of hygiene the cookhouse was adjacent to the toilets.

    Most of the people there very pleasant and friendly. Many came to talk to me, some to learn, others to teach me the right way as they saw it through the Koran and Hadith. I formed the opinion that most were [overly] identified with sex and [the] devil, for these usually came up in conversation. As has been said elsewhere, Muslims are obsessed with reward and punishment, and much of their attitude towards sex is very archaic. The penalty for adultery is stoning to death, and in recent years a Christian at Jeddah killed a Muslim he caught in bed with his wife, so the Muslim’s friends and relatives killed the Christian by running him over with a truck. Most who spoke to me had not the slightest idea of sex psychology, still believing women to be the instrument of the devil. One young South African Indian who came each night for a chat summed up his primitive conception of sex when he observed that “women are the trouble”. Much latent homosexual behaviour noticed among Muslim friends stemmed from sexual frustrations. The South African Indian friend told me with a very straight face that the devil was in the toilet and you should always cough before going in left foot first, being careful to wear your hat. Whoever told him about the devil must have been referring to masturbation - it wasn’t clear why he had to keep his hat on.

    [..] Having lived for 16 days with these brothers, I had become more aware just how hard it was for anyone to wake up to the inaccuracies of the exoteric teachings of Islam. The branwashing was, and is, constant.

Abdul, whom the brothers earnestly lectured about subjects of utmost importance such as in which hand one should hold a teacup in and where the right foot should be placed in prayer noted that Tabliah Jumat’s “appointed task seemed to be the emphasis of the irrelevant”.

Abdullah on Haram Sharrief, which houses the Prophets tomb:

    Muslims do not believe in idols, and wherever they have conquered have destroyed priceless works of art by breaking off the faces; but unfortunately they have made idols of their shrines, with people fighting to touch a sacred place. A great deal of the pushing and shoving at Haram Sharief is attributable to this idolisation. Objectively watching people around the Prophet’s grave, one could only come to the conclusion that they have created an idol here. Nearby are some of the Prophet’s wives’ graves, and the crying and touching of the walls is no different from what goes on in Catholic countries.

     In Saudi Arabia the classic Muslims law prescribes the cuitting off of the right hand as the penalty for stealing, but Abdul had his white gown cut at the pocket and the money he was carrying taken. Other people told of similar experiences. During the Hajj season the prices for everything where exhorbitant, as the shopkeepers had no conscience about profiteering.

On the other Haram Sharrief, which contains the Kabah in Mecca:

On the Friday before the Hajj started, we went to the Haram Sharrief with over a million others to do the mid-day prayers, or Jumuh. We saw armed guards tossing people off the main entrance to the mosque to make room for the VIPs who arrived hours later than the waiting pilgrims. I couldn’t get into the mosque proper, but remained in the street with thousands of others. The conditions outside were chaotic. Nearby was a truck with a machinegun mounted on its back direcred towards the main door and I wondered what would happen to the congregation if the gunner had to fire it. These precautions were taken to give protection to King Faisal and his ministers.

Mina, 5 miles from Mecca, first day of the Hajj:

[..] Many people died, and at one time the Egyptians [friends of Abdullah] counted ten dead stacked in an ambulance [TOD: they were staying opposite a hospital] Conditions were archaic, and very little water and only one hundred public toilets for one and a half million people. A great deal of time these toilets were closed through lack of water, and under guard. The streets became a quagmire of extreta and urine, especially behind the parked vehicles.

Day 2, going to Arafat and staying at a mosque called Masjid-I-Namdaram.

[..] All the passageways soon became occupied, causing complete chaos, with real fights all over the place.

As the hour of prayer drew near, peopel appeared to to become quite mad in their endevours to gain a place in which to pray. [Abdul and I] made room for two old Turks by squeezing together, but this didn’t stop two others pushing in, thus making it almost impossible for the Turks to find a place to put their heads in prayer. The hysteria of these people had to be seen to be believed. I observed to Abdul that one could easily see the mis-use of sexual energy in all these irrational actions.The Saudi government had no organisation to cope with the vast horde of people, so there was no crowd control in the mosque at all, unless they wanted to make way for some personage. The whole Saudi nation appeared to be concerned only with making money from the pilgrims, whom they exploited to the fullest limits. Every commodity was at least double the usual price, according to the friends who lived in Medina.

The pelting of stones at idols at Mina:

    It was impossible to get near the idols unless you were unconcerned about getting hit by the flying pebbles, and there was such a crush within a hundred feet of the idol that you couldn’t get your hands above your head. Before attacking the situation [our friends] the Egyptians tied Ehram sheets tightly around their money and possessions, because they knew that thieves operated in the vicinity of this idol, taking advantage of the fact that if a person had his hands above