Boreal
Comments Islam
November 1 - December 31, 2016
Jan 1 - Apr 30 | May 1 - Aug 31 | Sep 1 - Oct 31
Death of a Prophet | An American Muhammad
Dec 31 - An Inescapable Truth
Nigeria's most senior Muslim cleric has rejected a new gender equality bill, which proposes that women and men inherit an equal share.
The Sultan of Sokoto, Mohamed Sa'ad Abubakar, said Muslims would not accept the violation of Islamic law guaranteeing men a greater share.Speaking at a Koranic recitation ceremony in northern Zamfara state, the sultan said: "Our religion is our total way of life. Therefore, we will not accept any move to change what Allah permitted us to do."
BBC, Dec 28, 2016
Dec 26 - Mary and the Dome of the Rock
Dec 25 - The Xmas Question Since 2006
Mary is the only woman whom Allan mentions by name in His Koran. This begs the question: Who Venerates Her More: Muslims or Christians?
Dec 24 - Accusations of Treachery on Christmas Eve
Following is my response to a reader who sent me a hate filledl diatribe by Anne Bayefsky the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust accusing the United Nations and Obama of treachery for allowing the vote condemning Israeli settlements.
Dear …
The betrayer here is Israel.
It's a betrayal of the victims of the Holocaust by a land grab which has squandered the biggest reservoir of empathy a country could hope for; a betrayal which today threatens its very existence.
By now linking its fate to a feckless, depraved opportunistic believer instead of reflecting on what its real friends, like President Obama are trying to do, it risks its imminent destruction,– what will this be, the third or the fourth – and possibly the last.
Extremism comes in many forms, and what Israel is doing here is Deuteronomy-like extremism minus the actual call to genocide. It must be condemned by all if it will bring the country to its senses before it is too late; just like Islamic extremism must be condemned by both believers and unbelievers if we are to have any hope.
I am sorry I can't agree with you on the eve of the greatest Christian celebration of the year, but Merry Christmas to you and your family. We always love to hear from you, no matter what.
Bernard
Dec 23 - Of Trees & the Meaning of Christmas
Until Allah set him straight on the true meaning of Christmas (see previous entry), Muhammad, who was familiar with Christianity, might have celebrated the birth of Jesus much the same way Christians do today, except perhaps for the Christmas tree.
The Koran actually contains a reference to conifers ,the most common type of tree illuminated at Christmas time.
36:80 It is He Who produces fire from green trees for you; and behold you are kindling flames from it.
Dec 22 - The Christmas Story in the Koran
Dec 21 - Why Jesus Had To Be Diminished
Allah does a credible job in His Book in reducing Jesus' status and elevating Muhammad as the apple of His eye and not the man whom Christians claim is His son and who made a complete mess of His Message.
The entire concept of the Koran is based on a simple premise: God had gotten fed up with sending his messages on how we should live and how He should be worshipped via prophets who did not communicate His message accurately or were misunderstood by a less than receptive audience.
God’s patience had run out. He would send one last messenger, his greatest messenger, with his final instructions for mankind: the Koran. Anyone who did not heed the instructions of this ultimate and unsurpassed messenger was doomed to an eternity in Hell.
There was only one problem with this latest divine plan for getting humanity to behave: Jesus. If God had already come down to earth to deliver his message personally in the person of Jesus, then sending another messenger with a final message from God made no sense.
If Muhammad’s claim to be the last and greatest messenger of God was to have any credibility, the Christian claim that Jesus was the Son of God had to be discredited.
Dec 20 - It's Christmas Time, Be Wary
The US State Department alerted US citizens in November to the heightened risk of terrorist attacks throughout Europe, especially during the holiday season. The alert, which encouraged citizens to be cautious at the holiday festivals, expires on February 20.
CNN Dec 19, 2016
So-called Islamic State (IS) has said it was behind Monday's lorry attack on a Berlin Christmas market, which left 12 people dead and 49 injured.
BBC, Dec. 20, 2016
9:30 The Jews say: “Ezra is the son of Allah”*, and the Christians say: “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” That is their statement, by their mouths; they emulate the statement of the unbelievers of yore. May Allah damn them; how they are perverted!
Allah's antipathy towards those He considers perverts for saying Jesus is His Son and the West's careless unquestioning acceptance of those who agree means that we all must now be vigilant so as to avoid a time of joy becoming a time of sorrow.
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* The Jews used to "confer the title of 'son of God' to a person whose piety has placed him in a very near relationship to God." Encyclopedia of Judaism
6:1 Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Ezra is such a figure having brought the Torah back to Jerusalem from Babylon. It does not in any way imply that the person is a direct descendent of the Almighty.
Either Allah confused the meaning of sons of God in Genesis or heard the Jews referring to one of their own as a son of God and assumed the worse.
Dec 19 - Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem
Trump moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would not be as upsetting to the Palestinians if the city was as welcoming to the Muslims as the Muslims were to the Jews when they were in control of the city they consider their common heritage.
Numerous signs point to the existence of a primitive, inter-confessional "community of Believers" that welcomed Jews and apparently even Christians to full membership, so long as they subscribed to a simple profession of faith in "God and the Last Day."
Muhammad does not appear to have been understood at this stage as a prophet of unique stature but was viewed instead as an eschatological (end of the world) herald who have been sent to warn the descendents of Abraham before the final judgment of the Hour.
Unsurprisingly, the eschatological hopes of these early Believers looked to Jerusalem and Palestine, the Promised Land of their common inheritance, as the sacred landscape within which God would soon realize the climax of history.
Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet - The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012
Seventh century Muslims even considered Mary, the mother of Jesus, a Messenger of Allah. Her demotion is the subject of our Boxing Day posting.
Dec 18 - A Sad Reminder in the Deplorable Murder of Two Sisters
On Friday, two Somali-Canadian sisters were murdered in Ottawa. About one of the sisters, the Ottawa Citizen reported:
Nasiba Noor was remembered as a devoted teacher of the Qur’an by those who worked with her at a west-end alternative Islamic school.
According to her online biography, Nasiba Noor taught Islamic Studies to girls in grades 5 through 8 at the Tarbiyah Learning Centre on Moodie Drive.
“She taught the Qur’an to many, including my daughter as well … Amazing individual,” wrote the school’s co-founder, Ghazala Choudhary on her Facebook profile.
“Nasiba believes that it is the right of every Muslim to have easy access to reciting and understanding the Qur’an."
A sad reminder that it is women as mothers and teachers who are responsible for beginning the indoctrination of children in the most violent hateful theology known to humankind.
Violence: The Koran v. the Bible
Dec 17 - Flat Out Smarter
Jean Soler, author of Dieu et moi ("God and Me", my translation) regretted in an interview in Le Point published December 12 that atheists, who he says tend to be smarter than believers, are ignored by the media.
Ignored by the media, absolutely. As to being smarter than the believers? Concerning those who still believe the earth is flat because their god says so, he may have a point.
Dec 16 - Saving Lives One Gamer at a Time
A Radical Deradicalization Program
Dec 15 - The Villain of Aleppo
Blame game starts as Aleppo's rebels fall
And there are those who do not want to stop. Here's a sample comment from the top JFS [Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as the al-Nusra Front]-aligned cleric, Abu Yaqzan Al-Masri, in Aleppo:
"We won't compromise over our religion. We'll leave Aleppo on our own terms."
BBC News Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14 - If holy warriors had any decency…
Nigeria Maiduguri: Two 'young girls' used as human bombs
Two girls said to be aged seven or eight have been used to bomb a market in north-east Nigeria, killing at least one other person and wounding 18.
BBC December 12, 2016
In the last year of the war, Hitler sent teenagers, the Hitler Youth, to do a man's job. Boko Haram, Islamic State's subsidiary in West Africa is sending children, little girls.
Holy warriors everywhere should be appalled. Even Hitler did not sink this low.
The fact that children often fail to deliver on the promised slaughter of unbelievers, as happened here, makes the waste of their young lives in the cause of a cruel pitiless god even more inexcusable.
Dec 13 - Turning Down the Volume on the Adhan
Israel wants mosques to turn the volume down on the call to prayers with bill banning loudspeakers
Washington Post, Dec 12, 2016
Could it happen in Canada?
A number of options were considered to announce to the believers that it was again time to pray, before settling on the Adhan i.e. the call to prayer.
Narrated Ibn Umar:
When the Muslims arrived at Medina, they used to assemble for the prayer, and used to guess the time for it. During those days, the practice of Adhan for the prayers had not been introduced yet. Once they discussed this problem regarding the call for prayer. Some people suggested the use of a bell like the Christians, others proposed a trumpet like the horn used by the Jews, but Umar was the first to suggest that a man should call (the people) for the prayer; so Allah's Apostle ordered Bilal to get up and pronounce the Adhan for prayers.
Bukhari 11.578
You can do your own Adhan, if necessary; the LOUDER, the better!
Narrated Abdul Rahman:
Abu Sa'id Al-Khudri told my father, "I see you liking sheep and the wilderness. So whenever you are with your sheep or in the wilderness and you want to pronounce Adhan for the prayer raise your voice in doing so, for whoever hears the Adhan, whether a human being, a jinn or any other creature, will be a witness for you on the Day of Resurrection."
Abu Said added, "I heard it (this narration) from Allah's Apostle."
Bukhari 11.583
Dec 12 - Fear those who have not witnessed blood shed in Allah's Cause
The horrific violence experienced by many returning jihadists has done what deradicalization programs, which author David Thomson calls "a joke", could not do: transform holy warriors into pacifists.
Thomson is a former reporter with Radio France International (RFI) and author of "Les Revenants" (The Returners, my translation) a recently published book, which is reportedly flying off the shelves in France, about French citizens who joined Islamic State and who have, or are making their way back to civilization.
Dec 11 - Friends When In Need
Blast inside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral kills at least 25 ... most of them women and children, and injured 49, Egypt’s state television said.
Reuters Sunday, Dec. 11, 2016
The Coptic Church and Islam go way back. If it wasn't for the Coptic patriarch Muqawqis, also known as Cyrus of Alexandria a contemporary and admirer of the Prophet, the Muslim conquest of North Africa and Andalusia might have been stymied at the Nile.
Islamists should be beholden to the Copts, not killing them, their small number and their friendship do not pose a threat to the virtuous, Allah's Revelations notwithstanding.
Dec 10 -Could too many dead holy warriors cause Paradise to experience a shortage of virgins?
"As many as 50,000 ISIS fighters have been killed since the war against the terror group began", a senior US military official told CNN.
CNN, Dec 9, 2016
A cartoon showing a line of suicide bombers making their way up among the clouds to Paradise only to be told by a representation of the Prophet Muhammad to " "Stop, stop. We have run out of virgins" was part of the package of mostly innocent sketches of God's Messenger that got all those poor people at Charlie Hebdo massacred.
Ever since, some have wondered if Paradise could run out of virgins to satisfy a promise of 72 per holy warrior who die in Allah's Cause.
It is highly unlikely that a holy warrior dying while committing mass murder in Allah's Cause would be left to pleasure himself in Paradise because of a shortage of young agreeable single females with their hymens intact.
The promised virgins i.e. the so-called houris are made to measure by Allah in the blink of an eye, as required; and unlike your natural-born variety, Allah's facsimile is a perpetual virgin whose hymen regenerates faster than any man can recover and be ready to start over.
They are also not, as you might expect, recycled after every sustained penetration and ejaculation which could cause a delay in production, but can be used and abused over and over again for an eternity and not be the worse for wear.
Dec 9 - Interpersonal Communication 101
We do not want any parallel societies and where they exist we have to tackle them.
Our laws have priority over honor codes, tribal and family rules, and over the Sharia. That has to be expressed very clearly.
That also means that with interpersonal communication, which plays a fundamental role here, we show our face.
This is why the full facial veil is inappropriate, and should be banded wherever it is legally possible. It does not belong in our country.
Angela Merkel
Dec 7 - Son of a Drop Dead Handsome Man
Narrated Abu Huraira:
I heard Allah's Apostle saying, "I am the nearest of all the people to the son of Mary, and all the prophets are paternal brothers, and there has been no prophet between me and him (i.e. Jesus)."
Bukhari 55.651
Dec 6 - Breaking the Bond
2017 promises to be a banner year for wanton death and destruction thanks, in large part, to the godsend that is Trump for those who want to end the war started about 1,400 years ago and those who want to win it once and for all.
With that grim prognosis in mind, I thought it appropriate to end 2016 with an introduction to the latest writings on the death of the acclaimed Prophet and the key events that shaped his legacy during the 100 years that followed his passing and which may have betrayed his ecumenical message. A message which at the time embraced all People of the Book, the Koran being simply the latest edition..
For example, did you know that the Muslim conquest of much of the Middle East was, except for Persia whose people were initially not considered a Book people, a relatively bloodless victory.
The non-Arab locals e.g. Jews and Christians of Palestine and Jerusalem in particular felt a kinship with the Muslims who believed in the same god they did, and offered little resistance.
This core belief of the three faiths was at the heart of the Muslim declaration of faith, the Shahadah, which in its beautiful simplicity said it all, for all of them: "There is no god but God."
It was only decades later that a caliph who, in an attempt to bring stability to an always fractious expanding empire and to increase revenues from the Jizya broke the bond between the three so-called great monotheistic faiths by making the Prophet the focus of the Faith along with Allah by adding the phrase "Muhammad is the Messenger of God"."
Yes, this is a controversial statement. But, perhaps, by more fully investigating how the first believers lived their faith and got along with the Jews and Christians, we can all learn how to live together again in at least a semblance of peace and harmony.
But before we get to those posting, which are bound to be interrupted by breaking developments where Islam is the newsmaker, the last in the series Son of a Drop Dead Handsome Man.
Dec 5 - Should Defeating the Islamists Be Like Defeating the NAZIs?
In the days following 9/11, John Stewart, on the Daily Show, speculated as to whether the attack called for a commitment of the type America made during the Second World War.
Fifteen years later, Trump, in picking retired Marine Gen. James Mattis for Secretary of Defense – a man he referred to as his "George Patton" – has obviously come around to that conclusion.
Mattis writes that the US is at a disadvantage because America's enemies are fighting "total war" while the United States is fighting "only limited wars."
CNN Dec 3, 2016
Dec 4 - Ohio State Attacker Diagnosed with DDS by Administrator
Sympathy for Ohio campus attacker's 'pain' triggers fury
Stephanie Clemons Thompson (Ohio State University) reportedly wrote on Facebook that students should "find compassion" for the "pain" of business student Abdul Razak Ali Artan.
Nearly 1,500 people had signed a petition by Friday morning calling for Ms Thompson to be fired.
Eleven people were injured in Monday's car and knife attack in Columbus.
"Think of the pain he must have been in to feel that his actions were the only solution," the assistant director of residence life wrote in the now-deleted Facebook post.
BBC Dec 4, 2016
The police, while praising Johnny MacDonald's aggressor for relieving his distress without actually killing Mr. MacDonald, would like to remind viewers that the law now provides for harsh penalties for those who would deliberately or even inadvertently cause a believer to experience a traumatic religious episode.
If it’s not too much trouble, if you are experiencing dogmatic distress because of something somebody said or wrote about your religion, please call the police and let the law deal with the cause of so much pain and discomfort.
From Remembering Uzza
It may be only of matter of time before the condition I refer to as Dogmatic Distress Syndrome (DDS for short) in the long delayed sequel to The Fractured Nation Interviews becomes a defence for the most horrendous crimes done in the name of religion.
Dec 1 - Bring on Armageddon
The Coming War with Iran and the End of Israel
Nov 30 - Cartoons to Shame
There are women, who given a second chance in the West, of their own free, will chose to serve as living billboards for a religion that hates them. The latest, parading in the obscenity that is the burkini.
And then, there are the western feminists who pay it homage (see How Islamists are Smarter Than Andrea Horwath, Nov. 28) in support of the former.
And then, there are those who have no illusions.
This is the case for North-African female cartoonists who were invited by the BBC as part of its 100 Women Series to illustrate, through their art, some of the stuff that believing women here and their apologists would rather ignore.
Award-winning Egyptian cartoonist Doaa el-Adl uses a supermarket setting for her lambasting of the practice of wealthy Gulf men buying young Egyptian girls from impoverished families in rural areas to use and abuse and discard, an unwitting legacy perhaps of the perfect human being.
A cartoon from Tunisia, where lovable cats make a pathetic statement that has nothing to do with love is my favourite.
Nov 29 - Baby Names
Naming Children After Terrorists
Nov 27 - Counter-Productive Terror in Mosul
Slaughter of innocents continues in battle for Mosul
Omar Ali stands outside his home in eastern Mosul weeping. The young father's sense of relief after being liberated from ISIS has been replaced by a feeling of unbearable loss.
Only a day earlier his 18-month-old daughter Amira was there on the pavement in the Zahraa neighborhood playing with relatives when a mortar round landed nearby. Shrapnel tore through the air and the child's skull. Amira was killed instantly. Her two cousins were seriously injured…
"ISIS now has no course of action but to target children and civilians, because they are the easiest to attack," says Lt. Khaleel Amer, head of the triage center. "The mortar rounds have left so many civilians wounded or dead."
CNN Nov 25, 2016
The Prophet, as I have mentioned on more than one occasion, believed in the strategic and tactical application of terror in Allah's Cause.
The indiscriminate lobbing of shells where children play may terrorise their parents, and offsprings who are old enough to appreciate the danger, but not in the good way God's Messenger intended.
Islamic State's holy warriors would be well advised to stop targeting children with explosives if they do not want to lose the modicum of support they may still enjoy among the trapped population of Mosul.
Nov 23 - Turkey Reconsiders Abandoning Children to the Sharia
The government of President Erdogan has withdrawn a bill that "critics said would legitimise statutory rape and encourage the practice of taking child brides."
The government still insist that what it proposed "would not pardon rapists or sexual abusers and was simply intended to exonerate men who marry underage girls apparently with consent." This is not over.
That Erdogan thought this was a good thing is another indication that he is one with the thinking of the Prophet on these matters. This is bound to bolster his support among Islamists.
Nov 22 - Mary at the Ka'ba and Mar Behnam
Historic Iraqi Christian monastery found ransacked by Islamic State
The history pages of Iraq’s Christian community lie in charred fragments on the floor of a fourth-century monastery near Mosul which Islamic State militants ransacked during a two-year occupation that ended over the weekend.
The jihadists at the Mar Behnam monastery burned a collection of books about Christian theology, scraped off inscriptions written in Syriac – the language used by Jesus – and demolished sculptures of the Virgin Mary and the monastery’s patron saint.
Reuters, Nov. 21, 2016
A picture of Mary could be found in the Ka'ba before Mecca surrendered to the Prophet.
Narrated Ibn Abbas:
The Prophet entered the Ka'ba and found in it the pictures of (Prophet) Abraham and Mary.
On that he said' "What is the matter with them (i.e. Quraish)? They have already heard that angels do not enter a house in which there are pictures; yet this is the picture of Abraham. And why is he depicted as practicing divination by arrows?"
Bukhari 55.570
The destruction of her image and an estimated three hundred or more other representations of revered figures found there has served as an example for holy warriors ever since as to what to do when they come across what Allah and His Messenger consider blasphemies.
Nov 21 - Islamophobia
Trump's choice for national security adviser, retired US Army three-star lieutenant-general Michael Flynn, tweeted in February that the "fear of Muslims is rational".
Nov 20 - Turkey Abandons Children to the Sharia
A bill which would allow men accused of raping underage girls to be cleared if they marry the girl has been preliminarily backed by Turkish MPs.
The bill would pardon men only if they had sex without "force or threat" and if they married the victim. Critics say it legitimises rape and child marriage, and lets off men who are aware of their crime.
BBC Nov 18, 2016
Sharia law assumes a child knows what it is to have intercourse and that her silence when asked if she would like to "do it" may be considered her consent to having sex with you as part of a marriage proposal.
Turkey would go one step further and allow the marriage proposal after the damage has been done. This may not have been what the Prophet intended, and makes the whole child rape travesty more indecent than it needs to be.
The bill is further confirmation of Erdogan's commitment to make God's Law (one meaning of Sharia) the law of the land, in spite of its nefarious impact on the most vulnerable.
Nov 19 - Listen to Ahmadinejad
While we await the ruling in the slander lawsuit brought against writer Djemila Benhabib by Muslim school of Montréal, a timeless argument for freedom of speech.
Nov 18 - Selling It!
As a confident of God it is not inconceivable that the Prophet related to His Mentor his experience as a borrower and this is what prompted the Almighty to ban the charging of interest. We will never know.
What we do know is that the merchant in the Messenger could not resist his urge to control every aspect of a believer's existence to include buying and selling stuff.
Nov 16 - Holy Warriors and the Charity of Unbelievers
Some 75,000 children in north-eastern Nigeria risk dying of hunger in "the few months ahead", the UN says.
Boko Haram jihadists laid waste to the region before being pushed back by Nigerian forces in recent months.
UN humanitarian co-ordinator Peter Lundberg said that overall 14 million people needed humanitarian assistance in a region that was the former stronghold of Boko Haram militants.
BBC Nov 15, 2016
Expect the remnants of Boko Haram to interfere with any donations of food from non-Muslim countries, as Al-Shabaab did in Somalia, even if it means the death of thousands of children.
Allah, or perhaps His Messenger, instinctively appreciated the strategic value of helping people in need in recruiting for His Cause. The reverse is also true, which is why holy warriors must guard against charity from unbelievers reaching the believers.
Nov 15 - NAZIs v. Holy Warriors: A Comparison
Two-year-old girl killed in church attack
A two-year-old girl has died from injuries she sustained in an attack at a church on the island of Borneo in Indonesia.
Intan Olivia Marbun was severely burned after an attacker threw petrol bombs at a group of small children playing outside the church on Sunday. Three other children were injured.
Police arrested a suspect after he was captured by local people following the attack.
The attacker has been identified as a militant linked to local extremists supporting the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.
Police say the attacker was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word "jihad".
BBC, Nov 14, 2016
It is unfair to compare the NAZI genocidal slaughter of those they considered racially deficient and the mass killing of those Allah considers inferior believers by holy warriors except in one respect, and that is in the murder of children.
The Jewish victims of the NAZIs could not stop being Jews and escape death, but an adult non-believer put to death by a believer, under normal circumstances, need not have died. All they had to do if they were of the Book i.e. Christians and Jews, and literally keep their heads, was to humbly pay the right-to-live-as-an-inferior-tax.
As to the polytheists, they could simply convert and keep on breathing.
You could say that non-believing adults freely chose death and its instrument, the superior believer. But that is not the case for children.
It is unfortunate holy warriors do not consider children too young to understand what is being asked of them ineligible for slaughter in Allah's Cause.
Islamic State brutality comes to light after military advance ...
At one point, he said, the fighters [holy warriors] had donned army fatigues and managed to trick a few families into believing they were arriving Iraqi forces. When the civilians went out to greet them, Tariq said, they were executed. “Even a one-year-old baby, they put a bullet in his head.”
Iraq — Reuters, Nov. 08, 2016
In killing children, holy warriors are no better than the NAZIs who sent children to the gas chamber.
Ref: Lebensraum
Rel: Why Dead Children Don't Matter - Jul 25
Nov 14 - Remembering the Paris Massacre and More Proof that Terrorism Works
Yesterday was the first anniversary of the Paris terrorists attacks that left 130, mostly young people attending a concert, dead.
Since that massacre, France has closed 20 of 2,500 mosques for allegedly preaching a radical interpretation of Islam.
In July, 86 people, including 10 children, were crushed to death in Nice. The following month, France's Minister of the Interior, Bernard Cazeneuve, announced that his government would be working with the French Muslim Council to launch a foundation to help finance mosques within France.
The shuttered mosques are expected to quickly be replaced, if they have not already, by mosques financed by French citizens with a little help from their government.
The slaughter in Paris caused a halt to what the Nice massacre reversed.
The murder of children in such a horrible manner was perhaps enough to convince the French government that what the county needed was more mosques, not less, in spite of an obvious disinterest in more prayer houses by the rank-and-file.
Terrorism as a Force for Change if you are willing to be brutal enough.
Build a mosque in the here-and-now, and Allah will build you one in the Hereafter.
Nov 13 - Brutality Inspires Brutality
Islamic State sends message in Mosul with crucifixions … Five crucified bodies were put on display at a road junction on Tuesday, a clear message to the city’s remaining 1.5 million residents that Islamic State is still in charge, despite losing territory to the east of the city.
BAGHDAD — Reuters, Nov 9, 2016
The Reuter's account does not mention if they were crucifixions in the Islamic style as demanded by Allah for those who would oppose Him and His Messenger, after witnessing how His Prophet punished eight alleged murderers.
Narrated Anas bin Malik:
A group of eight men from the tribe of 'Ukil came to the Prophet and then they found the climate of Medina unsuitable for them. So, they said, "O Allah's Apostle! Provide us with some milk."
Allah's Apostle said, "I recommend that you should join the herd of camels."
So they went and drank the urine and the milk of the camels (as a medicine) till they became healthy and fat. Then they killed the shepherd and drove away the camels, and they became unbelievers after they were Muslims.
When the Prophet was informed by a shouter for help, he sent some men in their pursuit, and before the sun rose high, they were brought, and he had their hands and feet cut off.
Then he ordered for nails which were heated and passed over their eyes, and they were left in the Harra (i.e. rocky land in Medina).
They asked for water, and nobody provided them with water till they died.
Abu Qilaba, a sub-narrator said, "They committed murder and theft and fought against Allah and His Apostle, and spread evil in the land."
Bukhari 52.261
5:33 Indeed, the punishment of those who fight Allah and His Messenger and go around corrupting the land is to be killed, crucified, have their hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or to be banished from the land. That is a disgrace for them in this life, and in the life to come theirs will be a terrible punishment.
Allah would later extend to apostates this agonizing brutal way to die.
Nov 12 - Extreme Vetting's Achilles' Heel
Trump's plan for extreme vetting of immigrants can only work if the country with which the United States shares the longest undefended border does the same.
Setting historically high targets for immigrants, as Canada is doing, which can only be met through lax vetting is inviting an overreaction by a Trump government to a terrorist attack on U. S. soil if Canada is the gateway for even one perpetrator.
How extreme vetting might work.
Nov 11 - President Trump: A Holy Warrior's Dream Come True
Attacks on women in Islamic head scarves, racist graffiti and stories about bullying of immigrant children indicated a backlash against U.S. minorities from Donald Trump supporters after his presidential win.
Reuters, Nov. 10, 2016
Much of the violence which does not discriminate between men, women and children perpetrated by Islamists is aimed at provoking a violent counter-reaction which will not discriminate between moderates and extremists thereby driving the moderates into the arms of the extremists.
A Trump presidency, with the likelihood of a violent kneejerk shotgun counter-reaction, for holy warriors is a godsend and guarantees a significant increase in terrorist activity on U. S. soil during the lecher's tenure.
Facilitating the work of extremists in Allah's Cause are the so-called moderates who insist on wearing the paraphernalia of orthodoxy thereby increasing the likelihood that they will be the targets of revenge attacks.
Nov 10 - When Telling a White Lie Can Get You Killed
On November 4, a crowd which the police estimated at 200,000 marched through Jakarta, some demanding that Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama be jailed, others that he be put to death for claiming what we in the West, who do not know any better, take for granted.
It all started with an opponent citing a verse from the Koran which he said warned Muslims against voting for a Christian. What verse is not mentioned in the CNN report.
It does not matter, verses warning Muslims against associating with Christians are "so numerous", to quote Abu Yusuf Riyadh-ul-Haq, an Islamic scholar based in the United Kingdom, "I can’t recite every one of them".
The man, commonly known as Ahok, said that was not the case; and now they want to put him away, some permanently for telling a lie, even if the accused may not have known it was a lie at the time he told it.
Saying a god did not really mean it will usually not get you killed if it is meant to soften some of the more hateful things gods may have inadvertently let slip; but not if that god is Allah. That is blasphemy! And of the worst kind, for it is adding insult to injury, accusing the most omnipotent of omnipotent gods of not being clear in His instructions, when in vaunting His skills as a lawgiver, He decrees that He is.
11:1 [This is] a Book with Verses which are elaborately formulated and clearly expounded from the Wise, the All-Aware.
It is also ridiculously easy for Muslims to fall into the blasphemy trap, as did a fifteen year old Pakistani boy who misunderstand a question about whether he believed in the teachings of the Prophet (see Feb 4 - A Celebration of Self-Mutilation).
Blasphemy laws should be outlawed. They are not only the anti-matter of freedom of speech and expression but a reflection of the worse we can be.
Limits to a Kinder, Gentler Islam
Nov 4 - A Proliferation of Muhammads
Naming Children of Rapists After the Prophet
Nov 3 - A No-Lose Situation in Mosul
The shadowy leader of the Islamic State group has released a new message urging his followers to keep up the fight for Mosul as they defend the city against a major offensive aimed at routing the militants from their last urban stronghold in Iraq.
IRBIL, Iraq — The Associated Press Nov. 03, 2016
Holy warriors like those trapped in Mosul are in a no-lose situation. It's either home with their booty or Paradise.
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah's Apostle said, "Allah guarantees to the person who carries out Jihad for His Cause and nothing compelled him to go out but the Jihad in His Cause, and belief in His Words, that He will either admit him into Paradise or return him with his reward or the booty he has earned to his residence from where he went out."
Bukhari 93.549
Booty in the Koran, Booty and the Hadiths
Then again, they could call for peace, even if it's under false pretense under the doctrine of Taqiya, and remain in Allah's good books and live to fight another day.
47:35 So do not weaken and call for peace, while you have the upper hand and Allah is with you. He will not stint you your actions.
Taqiya, "literally 'fear, caution') is a form of Islamic dissimulation or a legal dispensation whereby a believing individual can deny their faith or commit otherwise illegal or blasphemous acts while they are in fear or at risk of significant persecution."
Nov 2 - Of Human Shields, Trump and Clinton
Putin ally [V.Zhirinovsky] says US electing Clinton would means war
CNN October 13
Much is made of Islamic State using human shields in Mosul but little about Al-Nusra Front doing the same thing in Aleppo, and which is largely responsible for the civilian casualties, because they are part of the anti-Assad coalition supported by the United States.
The repulsive Trump understands this, which is why he made the same argument, that was made in Le Point today, that the United States must find common ground with Russia to defeating the extremists in Syria and Irak and elsewhere and that includes defeating the Al-Nusra salafists, and end their obsession with defeating Assad militarily.
This disconnect of the Clinton campaign with what most Americans see as the clear and present danger will cost her the election, for Trump, for all his faults has said he will not risk a nuclear war over Syria which Clinton seems prepared to do.
Innovations in Terror and the Religion of Peace
Of Gods, Adolescents and an Orphan