This Is Good News

CNS News reported on Thursday that Pennsylvania has passed a law making Female Genital Mutilation as a first-degree felony in that state.

The article reports:

Currently, 32 states have laws against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), but women and girls are unprotected in 18 states, including Pennsylvania.

Murt added, “My bill has been endorsed by the AHA Foundation, established by human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali in 2007 to promote freedom from FGM, honor violence and forced marriages.”

He continued, “According to the group, more than 500,000 women in the United States are at risk of this procedure—166,000 women under age 18. The organization ranks Pennsylvania 11th in the nation for this risk, with more than 19,000 women at risk for the procedure, 6,000 of them under the age of 18.”

This is not a benign procedure. The procedure is painful and often done without proper anesthesia. The healing period is long and painful. The procedure can also cause frequent urinary infections in women. It can also cause problems in labor and the delivery of children. This is not an acceptable practice–it is barbaric. It should be outlawed regardless of its acceptance in some cultures. It is not acceptable in America.

Fighting Back Against Misinformation

On Monday The Center for Security Policy posted an article about the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and their hate group map.

The article reports:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has reportedly removed the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists” from its website after being faced with a lawsuit.

 Attorneys for a leading British Muslim reformer, Maajid Nawaz, threatened legal action over his being included in the list, according to National Review.

 The list also included female genital mutilation victim Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer and Frank Gaffney.

The SPLC report, which still exists in PDF form, was first published in December 2016 and was intended to be a resource for journalists.  It reads, “A shocking number of these extremists are seen regularly on television news programs and quoted in the pages of our leading newspapers. There, they routinely espouse a wide range of utter falsehoods, all designed to make Muslims appear as bloodthirsty terrorists or people intent on undermining American constitutional freedoms. More often than not, these claims go uncontested.”

Maajid Nawaz, who founded the anti-extremist think tank Quilliam Foundation in London, said on a podcast with Joe Rogan that the report was taken down under legal threat in the past few days.

Nawaz said, “We have retained Clare Lock, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. I think they’ve got wind of it – the Southern Poverty Law Center – and as of yesterday, or the day before, they’ve removed the entire list that’s been up there for two years.”

The problem with the SPLC’s hate map is that anyone who disagreed with the liberal agenda is listed as a hate group and anything said against the liberal agenda as hate speech. The people who have spoken out honestly against Sharia Law and the attempts to bring it to America have been charged with hate speech. Telling the truth is characterized as hate speech according to the SPLC. This is reminiscent of the purging of the Department of Homeland Security of documents related to terrorism (article here):

In October 2011, elements of the American Muslim Brotherhood wrote the White House demanding an embargo or discontinuation of information and materials relating to Islamic-based terrorism. The letter was addressed to John Brennan, who at the time was Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.  Days later John Brennan agreed to create a task force to address the problem by removing personnel and products that the Muslim Brotherhood deemed “biased, false, and highly offensive.” This move in effect allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to control the information given to the people charged with stopping the terrorism initiated by groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. At this point, the 9/11 reports and other actual historic documents were altered to make them compliant with the new paradigm. (I thought only the Russians rewrote history.)

The Center for Security Policy article concludes:

Family Research Council Executive Vice President General Jerry Boykin denounced the SPLC as “probably one of the most evil groups in America. They’ve become a money-making machine and they’ve become an absolute Marxist, anarchist organization.”
The SPLC website says “The organizations on our hate group list vilify others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity – prejudices that strike at the heart of our democratic values and fracture society along its most fragile fault lines.”
The SPLC did not respond to a question why they have removed the “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists”.

America’s future security depends on an informed public. Organizations like the SPLC misinform the public about the dangers around them. Meanwhile some forces within our government work to prevent law enforcement from having the information they need to protect us. If Americans do not wake up, we will have to explain to our children and grandchildren how we lost their freedom.

Islam Has A Problem With Free Speech

I am currently reading the book Catastrophic Failure by Stephen Coughlin. In the book, the Mr. Coughlin explains the Islamic view of free speech and human rights. One of the things he makes clear in the book is that in Islam, human rights and free speech must be subject to Sharia Law. Simply stated, this means that apostasy or slander can be punishable by death. Under Sharia Law, slander is defined as anything that makes the person hearing it unhappy–truth is not relevant in the definition. A recent story posted at Dr. Rich Swier’s blog illustrates this. The headline of the story is, “UC Berkeley Student’s Article Pulled Over Fears For Her Safety.”

This is the article:

If someone had told me six years ago that I would leave Islam and end up an atheist, I would never have believed him.

I was born and raised as a Muslim. I grew up in a Muslim country — Pakistan — surrounded by other Muslims who were convinced that their religion was the one true religion. My family, in particular, followed moderate Sunni Islam, which is a more liberal approach based on the “Sunnah,” or Prophet’s teachings. That was the path I set out on. But now, as a Muslim apostate and atheist, my journey couldn’t have led me any further from what I once knew to be true.

Until I was 14, I simply accepted everything I’d been told about Islam. I was taught that being born into a Muslim family is a blessing and is the greatest gift that Allah can bestow upon someone. I initially thought the Sunni path I followed was the one true path, just like my Shia, Bori and Ismaili friends adhered to the teachings of the sects their families followed. I noticed how everyone around me claimed to have a monopoly on the truth, which made me question who was actually right. I started to view Islam — and religion in general — as something dogmatic, irrational, unscientific and, most of all, completely sexist.

A feminist since age 10, it’s always been hard for me to reconcile my feminism with my faith. Even though the Pakistani society in which I grew up was sexist, my family has always been very progressive. As a result, I never accepted the male superiority and traditional gender roles that were part of my society. For most of my teen years, I felt torn apart by my contradictory beliefs. On one hand, I was a radical feminist who supported gay rights. But on the other hand, I was a practicing Muslim whose religion was clearly homophobic and placed men above women.

At that point, I still believed in an all-knowing God, and I felt that if I learned more about Islam, I would be able to understand why it stated the things it did. I read the Quran with translation and countless books on Islamic jurisprudence. I started taking classes at Zaynab Academy and Al-Huda, two traditional Islamic organizations. The Islam they preached was not the liberal, fluid Islam of my parents: Instead, it followed the Quran very rigidly. While the moderate Muslims I knew never encouraged hijab or gender segregation, these institutions differed in their views. I started to follow a more ritualistic Islam, going as far as giving up listening to music and wearing the hijab.

Stifled by orthodox Islam, I decided to turn to a more liberal approach. I embraced Sufism, which is the mystical side of Islam, and began to see God as an entity of love. Feminist scholars, such as Amina Wadud and Leila Ahmed, gave me a glimmer of hope that Islam and feminism could be compatible, although I later found their arguments very selective. On the other extreme, I read writers such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, another ex-Muslim atheist, whose harsh criticism of Islam was not always justified.

After trying to understand Islam through a plurality of perspectives — orthodox, feminist, Sufi and liberal approaches — I decided to leave Islam, but by that point, I had realized that I didn’t need to look at things as black and white. I could leave Islam without dismissing it or labeling it as wrong.

Going through all of these versions of Islam has enabled me to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the religion. Islam is no monolith, and with more than 1.5 billion followers, it’s impossible to refer to Islam as a single entity. There are Muslim women who cover every inch of their bodies except for their eyes, and there are also Muslim women who wear short skirts. With so much variation amongst Muslims, it’s hard to determine who really gets to speak for Islam.

Despite being one of the fastest-growing religions in the world, Islam is still extremely misrepresented and shrouded with stereotypes. I want to address these stereotypes and portray Islam in all its diversity. I’ve experienced the religion firsthand and have also viewed it as an objective bystander. I probably spend more time thinking about God than most religious people; despite my skepticism, I’ve always yearned for a spiritual connection. I want to share what I’ve learned about Islam over the years. I plan to defend it and give credit where it’s due — Islam, after all, gave women the right to work and own property back in the seventh century — and I also plan to ruthlessly point out areas that need reform (yes, Islam does allow men to have four wives and sex slaves).

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Islam, it’s that my former religion, just like any other ideology, has its flaws. Religion should not be immune to criticism. It’s important to have an honest dialogue about religion and identify what can be improved — and that’s exactly what I plan to do.

The publishing of this article put the author’s life in danger.

The American First Amendment is at risk. According to the book Catastrophic Failure, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has been working with the United Nations since 2005 to subtly change the definition of free speech.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assured the world that America would not “criminalize speech unless there is an incitement to imminent violence.” (Page 309) Secretary Clinton supported the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. The resolution calls upon states to protect freedom of religion, to counter offensive expression through education,, interfaith dialogue, and public debate, and to prohibit discrimination, profiling, and hate crimes, but not to criminalize speech unless there is an incitement to imminent violence.

Since the Muslim community seems to be the community that reacts to free speech with violence, we can see what this resolution is actually about. It is a quiet imposition of Sharia Law on non-Muslim countries. If my speech causes violence, I do not have the right to free speech. If my speech does not cause violence, it is acceptable. Logically it follows that since Christians and Jews do not kill people in response to negative statements, criticizing them must be acceptable as free speech. Since Muslims often respond to negative statements with violence, criticizing them is no longer legal.

This is the enemy we need to be aware of in America–the enemy that attacks our Constitution and freedom. It is a subtle attack that needs to be countered with truth and education. Unfortunately, our government and our mainstream media are not familiar with either of those concepts.

 

Some Perspective From Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn posted an article at today’s National Review about a request he had received asking him to write the forward to Geert Wilder’s book Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me. Mr. Steyn’s first reaction to the request was to say no. He stated, “Mr. Wilders lives under 24/7 armed guard because significant numbers of motivated people wish to kill him, and it seemed to me, as someone who’s attracted more than enough homicidal attention over the years, that sharing space in these pages was likely to lead to an uptick in my own death threats. Who needs it? Why not just plead too crowded a schedule and suggest the author try elsewhere? I would imagine Geert Wilders gets quite a lot of this.”

He then rethought the issue. Later in the article he reminds us of the words of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who says:

…share the risk. So that the next time a novel or a cartoon provokes a fatwa, it will be republished worldwide and send the Islamic enforcers a message: Killing one of us won’t do it. You’d better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad because you’ll have to kill us all.

Mr. Steyn also comments on the basic culture of the Netherlands, home of Geert Wilders:

It is not easy to be Geert Wilders. He has spent almost a decade in a strange, claustrophobic, transient, and tenuous existence little different from kidnap victims or, in his words, a political prisoner. He is under round-the-clock guard because of explicit threats to murder him by Muslim extremists.

 Yet he’s the one who gets put on trial for incitement.

 In 21st-century Amsterdam, you’re free to smoke marijuana and pick out a half-naked sex partner from the front window of her shop. But you can be put on trial for holding the wrong opinion about a bloke who died in the seventh century.  

Please follow the link above and read the entire article. It is enlightening as well as humorous. As Americans we need to be aware of the negative impact embracing the concepts of Sharia Law can have on our society.

Enhanced by Zemanta