Lots of blog awards currently being nominated for here.
I have been nominated for Best Blog Post Of All Time for my 'Self-Hater's Guide To Science.
Click this link to go to the poll.
You can vote once a day if you really want to.
Thanks mainly to Tim Blair featuring the post on his website, and then 24 other bloggers linking to it, it generated over 10,000 page views.
Nice weekend!
Friday, June 08, 2007
BlogPower Awards
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Who's Gonna Pay For All This?
Standard & Poor's projected future national credit ratings on the basis of current policies and promises. So in 2023 French government bonds will be junk rated (that means very likely to default) and the same for the US in 2026.....ooooeerrr. Full report here.
S&P are predicting debt to spiral out of control unless current fiscal policies are radically reversed
In addition,
i) Gordon Brown could have entirely abolished income taxes had he kept spending constant.
ii) Tax Freedom Day is now only reached on June 3rd (compared to April 25th in Australia).
iii) 47% of UK voters work for the State.
Something's got to give....
via Scrivener and the Adam Smith Institute
FGM From An African, Muslim And Female Point Of View
This is a guest post by Kizzie, a Sudanese female Muslim blogger, currently living in Cairo. Her blog is here.
In Islam, if a woman is not sexually satisfied, she has the right to divorce her husband.
Female Genital Circumcision or simply Female circumcision is the excision of any part of the "female genitalia". FGM is common in African countries such as Burkina Faso ( 70%), Djibouti(90%), Egypt (97%), Guinea (98%), Somalia (90-98%), Sudan (90%) and some Arab countries in the Middle East or even the immigrant population in Europe and North America.
There are four types of FGM
1. Clitoridectomy: total or partial removal fo the clitoris.
2. Excision: removal of the clitoris and the partial or complete removal of the labia minora.
3. Infibulation: removal of the clitoris, the labia minora and the labia majora.
4. Other types: usually found among isolated ethnic groups and it involves "cutting". There is no removal of tissues.
Part 1
Why is FGM not Islamic?
Their are three main arguments against this widespread belief
1. FGM predates both Christianity and Islam since it is believed to date back to time of the Pharaohs.
Evidence 1- It is mentioned in an ancient Greek document that it was a common practice in Egypt (the document dates back to 163 B.C.)
Evidence 2- In Sudan, infibulation(type three) is referred to as the "pharonic circumcision".
2. FGM is found in non-Muslim societies example: Christians in Ghana and other non-Muslim societies in India and South America.
3. If FGM was obligatory in Islam then Muslim scholars from all over the world wouldn't be working together to ban its practice.
i) At a conference on female genital mutilation in Cairo, Muslim scholars from around the world called for female genital mutilation to be banned and for those who carry it out to face punishment carried out by the government.
ii) Last year, a meeting was held at azhar university( the top Islamic university in the Middle East and North Africa ) and they finally banned FGM from all Muslim societies and they classified it as a "Crime".
iii) In 2005, at an African Regional Conference on "Islam and the Family Well-Being" ,Dr Ahmend Talib, Dean of the Faculty of Sharia, Al Azhar University, Cairo, said: "All practices of female circumcision and mutilation are crimes and have no relationship with Islam. Whether it involves the removal of the skin or the cutting of the flesh of the female genital organs...it is not an obligation in Islam".
I would like to add this very important piece of information."Infibulation, or Pharaonic Circumcision is mutilation (Arabic: Muthla) and as such is chargeable as a crime in Islamic law. The practice, if perpetrated, would obligate that the defendant pay the full price of blood-money to the plaintiff for removal of the labia. If sexual stimulus is lost then another compensatory payment would be paid equal to the first, and if procreation is impossible then another of equal value. This view means that FGM in Islamic law is equal to wrongful death. The judge presiding over the case may opt for jail time as a deterrent, or public reprimand, or any other non-proscribed punishment that is seen as fitting to deter the rest of the public for the act "". (http://islamiclawetc.wordpress.com).
Part 2
Social custom...Yes..No...Maybe?
The evidence presented above leads us to to believe that FGM could be a "social custom" or a "cultural practice" and not a religious one. It is true that FGM is very prevalent in Africa but it is also found in parts of Asia such as Indonesia.
Type I (commonly referred to as clitoridectomy) and less invasive procedures (Type IV) are the forms of female genital mutilation (FGM) or female genital cutting (FGC) practiced in Indonesia. The practice is generally referred to as female circumcision in Indonesia. It occurs in parts of East, Central and West Java, North Sumatra, Aceh, South Sulawesi and on Madura Island, as well as in many other parts of the archipelago.
Virginity in Africa
It is very important to understand that a girls virginity is very important in almost all African societies. It is assumed that FGM controls a woman's sexuality. In other words, it makes sure a woman stays a virgin until marriage ( For example:- After infibulation, the labia majora are held together using stitching so when a girl gets married she must undergo reverse infibulation which involves her husband using a "knife") .
In some African societies, social conformity is always emphasized upon ( e.g:- my aunt told me a story about a girl who wanted to be circumcised because her friends and cousins were circumcised and she felt singled out).
Why is FGM a symbol of Islam's oppression?
In the last few decades, FGM started to be considered as another symbol of the "woman-hatting", "gender apartheid enforcing "and "oppressive" religion called "Islam". This is mainly due to the constant association of Islam with FGM perpetuated by "literature". Beyond the veil: Male-female dynamics in a modern Muslim society by Fatima Mernissi, Desert Flower by Waris Dirie, Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali are all books that portray FGM as a savage practice mandated for Muslim women.
Interestingly, old researches about FGM in Africa usually concentrated on FGM as a social costum or tradition but now it is usually discussed from a religious perspective. Living in a post-9/11 world we should expect things to be very religionized and not culturized . Let's say a Christian man is killed by a Christian man, it will be reported as " man killed man" but if a Muslim man killed a Christian or a Jewish man, it will be reported as "Muslim man killed Christian man". I don't see why we should blame religion for everything or even view religion as the only cause of things. We should look at other factors affecting a society such as "culture. I know that the cultures of both African and Arab societies are generally affected by "religion" but there are things that are banned by religion but accepted by culture (A common example is forced or arranged marriages. There is no evidence in Islam to justify "arranged marriages". In fact, a girl has the right to marry any man she believes is the right one for her even if her family disapproves.) In other words, arranged marriages are usually influenced by the society a personal lives in and the culture they have to conform to.
My favorite culture vs. religion example is "pre-martial sex". I believe that pre-martial sex is prohibited in Islam/Christianity and Judaism but one can't help but notice that most Muslim societies are very strict about this. This is not necessarily because of religious beliefs, it is also because of pre-martial sex being so culturally-unacceptable here.
This brings us back to the importance of virginity in the Muslim world.
Wholeheartedly Not Oppressed Sudaniya
Thanks to Rob, for pointing me in Kizzie's direction.
Update; Popovich has posted a response to this post over at his blog, Tao of Defiance. It is lengthy but well sourced.
And now Kizzie has responded to Popovich.
The BBC Will Always Be Biased
Rod Liddle, ex-Editor of the BBC's Today program, and now uber-curmudgeon columnist for the Spectator, is one of my favourite journalists. He is always sarcastic, rude, embittered, cynical and negative. Just as all good columnists should be.
His last two pieces for the Spectator have focused on the 'cultural pecking order' at the BBC. Here are his views on who is open for attack at the Beeb and who are 'off-limits'.
Category I - Groups the BBC feel its staff must roundly abuse or even physically chastise
The BNP
Non government-approved Islamic Groups
Any Imam who has hooks rather than hands
Category II - Groups towards whom the presenter should display contempt or quiet hostility
Conservative MPs
UKIP
All Israelis other than those 'who are activists within peace groups'
Evangelical Christians
Supporters of the Countryside Alliance
Roman Catholics
Paedophiles
Chairmen of Multinational Corporations
Scientologists
Category III - Groups to whom the presenter should affect an air of studied indifference or mild distain
Members of the Labour Government (unless they were against the Iraq War)
Category IV - requires the presenter to fawn in a sickening manner and, on occasion, even proffer sexual favours
Pop Stars wishing to write-off African debt
All disabled people
'Ordinary' members of ethnic minorities
'Moderate' Muslims
Charity Spokeswomen
Bearded scientists in spectacles who insist the Earth is going to turn into a cinder by the year 2012
Those wishing for a 'neutral' bias at the BBC are smoking something strong. No news organisation can be neutral. It's simply impossible. The best and only solution is to privatise the BBC and let their bearded charity workers compete agasint the other 'biased' stations such as CNN and Fox News.
The same applies to Australia's national broadcasters, SBS and the ABC. End the taxpayer subsidies ($80 per head solely for the ABC), release them to fight in the open market and allow their biases to flourish.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Anorexics Rule!
I have a confession to make.
In my spare time, i sometimes watch 'Australia's Next Top Model'. It's actually quite compulsive viewing.
Last night, the winner was announced. Her name is Alice Burdeu (right hand girl in the photo), a 19 year-old suicidal looking six-footer who hasn't eaten since Christmas.
It is a shame that the 'expert panel' decided to award the competition to a girl who looks as though she is the love-child of Morrissey and Kate Moss, because it will reinforce the view commonly held by all Australian teen- and tweenage girls that to succeed in modelling you need to skip such non-essential luxuries, such as eating.
However, despite that being the way of the world, it doesn't prevent the likes of fellow anorexics, Kate Moss and Keira Knightley, from praising the look of the, err, non-waif-like Beth Ditto (below and singer of US punk band The Gossip for those a little behind on their modern music).
Keira stated that she would rather look like Beth.
"The woman is just amazing. And she's so sexy. When she was performing she started taking all her clothes off. I stood there watching the strip, thinking,'Oh my God, that woman is so sexy. She has the most amazing body'"
Keira - did you know that two hundred years ago Hans Christian Andersen wrote a story about people like you. But do you really find her sexy, Keira? If so, then may i apply for the job of your manager. For a mere 20% cut of your earnings, i'll devise a daily workout of KFC for breakfast, The Golden Arches for lunch and the Aberdeen Steak House for dinner. Contract in the post.
Patronising? Blind? Stupid?
You be the judge.
Last Word on Ayaan
Asabagna at Afrospear sent this me wonderful quote from Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
It is from a speech she gave on January 15th, 2005 at the Congress of Racial Equality’s 23rd annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., where she received CORE’s International Brotherhood Award.
It's the last word from me on the issues of FGM, Islam and feminism, and cultural relativity.
“Human beings are equal; cultures are not.
A culture that celebrates femininity is not equal to a culture that trims the genitals of her girls.
A culture that holds the door open to her women is not equal to one that confines them behind walls and veils.
A culture that spends millions on saving a baby girl’s life is not equal to a one that uses its first encounter with natal technology to undertake mass abortion simply because baby girls are not welcome.
A culture with courts that punish a husband for forcing his wife to have sex with him is not equal to a culture with a tribunal that decrees a young woman be gang-raped for talking to a boy of an allegedly higher caste.
A culture that encourages dating between young men and young women is not equal to a culture that flogs or stones a girl for falling in love.
A culture where monogamy is an aspiration is not equal to a culture where a man can lawfully have four wives all at once.
A culture that protects women’s rights by law is not equal to a culture that denies women their alimony and half their inheritance.
A culture that insists on holding open a position for women in its Supreme Court is not equal to a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half of that of a man."
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Health & Safety Madness
When this happens....
.......this happens.
i) Midlothian Council is to leave the lights on in derelict buildings to prevent burglars and vandals from hurting themselves. Hit this link to prove that i'm not making this up.
ii) My solicitor advised me to fence in our swimming pool so that trespassers won't fall in, drown and then their families sue me. I dont have a link for this one, but again, i'm not making it up.
iii) The UK government has banned hobbies as they may encourage paedophiles.
iv) The UK H&S Executive has advised firefighters that they should not attempt to rescue people from drowning because it is too dangerous. Fireman Tam Brown is facing legal action after he saved the life of a woman who had fallen into a river.
v) The word 'accident' has been banned from the Highway Code. All accidents, err, collisions, are now someone's fault.
Graph; courtesy of some very happy law student over at the ALS.
A Bridge Too Far?
Leading leftwing UK blog, Harry's Place, reports on the utterly depressing results of the latest poll commissioned by Channel 4, examining the views of British Muslims on 7/7.
Key Findings
1. 59% believe that the government has not told the whole truth about the 7/7 bombings.
2. 24% believe the government was involved in some way in the bombings.
3. Just 40% believe that the four men identified as the 7/7 bombers were actually the ones responsible for the attacks.
4. Only 21% believe the British Muslim community bears any responsibility for the attacks, though 58% believe that their community is not doing enough to address extremism.
I can only assume that the majority of agnostic, apolitical England will wake up tomorrow morning and conclude that the gulf in trust and beliefs between the Muslim community and the rest of the country has become so large as to be totally unbridgeable.
Sadly, it's a great day for the BNP.
However, i refuse to end this post on a downbeat note. Read this inspiring article in the WSJ that i was directed to by Diogenes Lamp by ex-Jemaah Islamiya member, and now doctor and Muslim reformer, Tawfik Hamid.
If standing against the violent edicts of Shariah law is "Islamophobic," then I will treat her accusation as a badge of honor.
Memo to John Howard, Kevin Rudd, the Australian Muslim community and everyone else - please, please do all you can not to allow this gulf to open up in Australia.
Rachel from North London believes this survey reinforces the need for a full and independent inquiry. She is right.
Other blog comment here and here.
Monday, June 04, 2007
"It's Just Another Book"
"I am a Muslim because I understand why so many Muslims are silent when the Holy Book is invoked to behead captured aid workers, journalists and other Western wanderers.
I am a Muslim because i understand why a woman ululates when her son dies in a suicide bombing. She rejoices for her son's closeness to God."
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Not words that you might expect from one of the world's supposedly most anti-Islamic apostate writers.
Last night, i joined 1,200 others at the Sydney Recital Hall to worship at the temple of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She had been invited to close the Sydney Writer's Festival - a brave choice on the part of Artistic Director, Wendy Were.
The audience were hardly your typical neocon warmonger crowd. Women outnumbered men 2:1 and the luvvy quota was high. Ms. Were opened her introductory speech by offering thanks to the local Aboriginal tribe for lending their land to host the Festival. She was cheered to the rafters.
The arrival of Ayaan Hirsi Ali was quite dramatic. Because so much attention is focused on her words and her actions, little time is spent discussing her look. She is, quite simply, beautiful. Very tall, slender and dressed all in black leather save for an African shawl draped across her tiny shoulders, she looked more at home with Naomi Campbell than Naomi Wolf.
However you are quickly reminded that she is no catwalk super-model when she opens her mouth. Rather than a blurred trans-Atlantic drawl, she speaks her English with the soft, almost giggly voice of an African schoolgirl. It is just not what you expect from such a towering political figure. It is a reminder of who she is rather than who people have turned her into.
That she is a polarising figure is indisputable. Blog chatter in advance of her talk had produced some of the most vitriolic dialogue that i have seen since arriving here last year. She is a Muslim apostate, a cheerleader for GWB's War on Terror, scream the Left. Nonsense, retort the Right, she is a victim, an oppressed spokesperson for the downtrodden. Conversations amongst us non-Muslims focused almost entirely on the subject of female genital mutilation, or the sanitised 'FGM'.
I accept the arguments made by some of the more enlightened bloggers at LP and by Kizzie, a Sudanese blogger, that her traumatic experiences have so affected her experiences of Islam that she confuses culture and religion, but i would answer that for her to remain impartial is akin to asking an Auschwitz survivor not to let his experiences of the concentration camps colour his views on Nazi-ism.
However Ayaan ignored us all. FGM warranted barely a mention. Her speech was about a Book.
"a bestseller among the wealthy and distributed free of charge to the poor. It is a book that should not be put on the ground. A book that should not be touched by a menstruating woman. It is a book that inspires one man to put his forehead on the ground in piety, and can rouse another to war. It is a book that contends that the greatest act of worship an individual can aspire to is committing suicide, while taking the life of a sinner.
It's author has 99 names but not one of them appears on the cover. This book demands total submission by its readers. And has captured the imagination of more than a billion people. This book impressed me even before I could read. To touch the book I first had to wash my hands, then my face, mouth, and my arms, all the way up to the elbows, run some water over my hair and ears and wash my feet. Everything about it was sacred."
and one particular aspect of this book,
"The Day of Judgement, the day God will judge us, the day my father warned us would be severe for us if we failed to live by The Book"
Her speech was about her upbringing, her fear and her love of the Book, and of her close bond with her sister. She regaled her audience with charming tales of how they would hide pages of romantic novels in betwen pages of the Koran, anything to wile away the hours of boredom, brought on by their father's refusal to allow them out of the house - a house that was kept locked by "three padlocks". She did not talk about her sister's later suicide. Or of their mutilation at age five.
She talked of how she, like most Western teenagers, rebelled against her parents' wishes and ultimately fled an arranged marriage to a distant cousin,
"The hell at the end of life for me seemed abstract, whereas the hell of being forced to submit to a stranger, was immediate, and final. This would be the hell of never feeling love, the hell of never choosing my mate, the hell of spending my life with a man to whom I would have to ask permission before being allowed to exercise my everyday freedom. A man who could take my body without permission. This stranger had the Holy Book on his side."
She talked of how she demanded the beheading of Salman Rushdie as a schoolgirl following the publication of the Satanic Verses, of how she learned to despise Israel without knowing a thing about it.
And then she spoke of September 11th, 2001.
"On a bright Tuesday morning in New York and Washington, planes full of people flew into buildings full of people. I prayed this was not the work of Muslims. I picked up the Holy Book and there I found Osama bin Laden's words of justification. Did the attacks stem from true belief in true Islam? I had to make the leap to believing the Holy Book was relative - not absolute, not the literal syllables pronounced by God, but a historical record, written by men 150 years after the Prophet Muhammad's death. In other words, it was just another book."
She dismissed those critics who claim she is anti-Islamic with the words I started this article with. But she also added that she is not a Muslim because
"I have lost the fear of the Holy Book. I have lost the terror of being burned alive after I die. I am not a Muslim because I lost respect for the book and its author and his messenger. I lost respect for them because of their bloodthirsty demands to kill and hate. I now feel the common humanity with those I once shunned: the Jews, Christians, atheists, gays, sinners of all stripes and colours. I lost respect not for Muslims but for what they fear."
She finished with a plea to Australians not to ignore the Saudi-funded Muslim schools on our doorstep that "preach a closed mind, that preach hatred of the Jew, that preach the terror of the Day, that preach total submission."
This largely female writer/luvvy/theatre crowd cheered her enthusiastically at the end of her speech. Though not all stood for her, all had been touched by her magic.
Note - i made notes in a dimly lit theatre. Hence the quotes may not be entirely verbatim accurate. However, the message is true. I make no apology if i sound a little like a star-struck schoolgirl meeting Justin Timberlake for the first time.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Tax Freedom Day - At Last!
Congratulations to my fellow Brits!
From Sunday, you will be working solely for yourselves and will no longer have to pay for Gordon's value-for-money bureaucracy.
Don't mean to rub it in, but for Australians Tax Freedom Day fell on April 25th, five days earlier, even, than in the US.
Oh well, at least you don't live in Sweden. They will not be free until August 8th!
Some perspective - in 1910, the Tax Freedom Day in the US was reached on January 19th.
My, hasn't the government grown over the years.
via Adam Smith Institute
Subscribe to:
Comment Feed (RSS)
