STICKS AND STONES

One version of the words to that little nursery rhyme:

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But words will never hurt me.

Apparently, even the mere mention of the word "ham" during a geography lesson can offend Moslems.

You can't make this stuff up.

From "Spain: Muslims sue teacher for speaking about ham in class" at Tea And Politics:

According to the account of the facts, the teacher was explaining the different climates in a geography class and cited the village of Trevelez due to its cold and dry climate. According to the newspaper account, "as a story, the teacher told his students that such a climate was conducive to making hams (this refers to the procedure that it's necessary between the pig is killed and the ham is actually ready to be eaten). Then the student asked the teacher not to speak of hams since it offended him, because he was a Muslim. "

[...]

According to "El Diario de Cádiz", the teacher "is accused of being the author of an alleged crime of abuse of workers, also alleging racist and xenophobic motives. " His school colleagues can't believe what has happened and speak about the impeccable record of teaching reported.

Cádiz is, of course, in Andalusia, Spain. Read about the history of Cádiz HERE. Excerpt:

Cádiz is the most ancient city still standing in Western Europe. Traditionally, its founding is dated to 1104 BC...

Later, the Greeks knew the city as Gadira or Gadeira. According to Greek legend, Gadir was founded by Hercules after performing his fabled tenth labor...

[...]

Under Moorish rule between 711 and 1262, the city was called Qādis (Arabic قادس), from which the modern Spanish name, Cádiz, was derived. The Moors were finally ousted by Alphonso X of Castile in 1262....

Can the West ever get the followers of Islam to understand the sentiment of that nursery rhyme about sticks and stones? Apparently not, especially if Moslems are recolonizing Andalusia and if such frivolous law suits are filed.

(crossposted from Always On Watch)

AL-JAZEERA REPORTS ON THE ISLAMIC SAUDI ACADEMY IN FAIRFAX COUNTY, VIRGINIA

I have previously posted about the Islamic Saudi Academy here at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS.

Go HERE to see the MEMRI clip of Al-Jazeera's report on the Islamic Saudi Academy. At marker 2:28 on the clip, you will hear the word "madrassah," defined as follows by the American Heritage Dictionary:

A building or group of buildings used for teaching Islamic theology and religious law, typically including a mosque.

Those who have read this web page by Daniel Pipes, also know about other connotations for the word "madrassah."

The Islamic Saudi Academy (a madrassah) is coming under long-needed scrutiny. At this point, a Google search of the school yields over 9000 hits, and the number of hits increases every day.

Predictably, Moslems are complaining about the scrutiny of the school, never mind ISA's broken promises about revising the offending textbooks as well as various other problems at the school. From the MEMRI transcript for the above-linked video:

[T]his is a nightmare for the families of the students enrolled in the academy. This pressure is exerted by several Congressmen, known for their great hostility towards Arabs and Muslims.

[...]

What should be said about a commission that some say is unconstitutional and contradicts the very meaning of its name? This commission [which recently issured the report on the textbooks] calls upon all countries of the world to respect freedom of religion there, while the commission itself violates this freedom on its own land.

Um, ISA supporters, remove the beam from your own eye before trying to remove the speck from another's eye.

THE ACLU ADVISES MOSLEMS

Not a surprise, of course.

Excerpt from this article in the LA Times:

May 29, 2008

A report that mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego are under federal surveillance has resurrected fears in the Muslim community about government monitoring and led two civil rights groups Wednesday to call for congressional hearings.

[...]

Corey Saylor, Washington spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the article in the San Diego Union-Tribune "has again raised concerns that our community is being watched."

[...]

ACLU lawyers regularly go to mosques to advise worshipers that they do not have to answer questions from FBI agents about how long they have been in the United States, how often they attend services and what they get out of the sermons...

How many jihadomaniacs are hiding behind the ACLU's lawyers?

THE MUSLIM OBSESSION WITH CARTOONS

From this source in Canada:

Police in Halifax are investigating a complaint about a political cartoon that some members of a local Islamic group claim is a hate crime.

The cartoon, published April 18 in the Chronicle Herald newspaper, depicts a woman in a burka holding a sign that reads, "I want millions," and she says, "I can put it towards my husband's next training camp."

The cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon is a reference to Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, a woman from Nova Scotia whose husband was arrested in 2006 in an anti-terrorism raid. Qayyum Abdul Jamal was released from jail after charges against him were stayed on April 15.

Zia Khan, director of the Centre for Islamic Development in Halifax, said the cartoon goes beyond what can be considered free speech.

[...]

Dan Leger, the Herald's director of news content, said the cartoon does not take aim at all Muslims.

"The whole purpose of that cartoon was to comment on the outrageous demands of this individual for compensation long before any hearing into her case had ever been held," he said.

In an interview with the Herald before the cartoon ran, Jamal said she wanted to sue the federal government for what her family has gone through and told the reporter, "I want millions," Leger noted.

"[MacKinnon] depicted her exactly the way she looks and used her own words, and that's the genius of cartooning that you're able to do that," he said.

Leger said he first heard of the Islamic group's concerns when the newspaper was contacted by police.

What would Muslims have thought of Thomas Nast?

His engravings chronicled the American scene from the Civil War period to the turn of the century. They highlighted every major national event and issue, the political process, elections, and scandal in the government. The American scene was ripe in subject matter for Nast. The country was fast becoming an industrial nation; railroads were spreading, factories were being built, and cities were fast becoming crowded with immigrants that supplied cheap labor. Scandal was everywhere. Elections were being rigged. One of his most famous political cartoon attacks was aimed at Boss Tweed.

If Nast had turned his attention to caricaturizing and satirizing Muslims, they'd have started another cartoonifada.

Muslim Groups Object To McCain's Terminology

From this article in the April 21, 2008 edition of the Washington Times:

A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.

Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.

"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."

An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.

[...]

Michael Ledeen, a terrorism analyst at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, backed Mr. McCain's definition of the enemy.

[...]

Of ISNA's criticism, Mr. Ledeen said, "They're just silly. What a silly thing to say. I talk of Marxist extremists and nationalist extremists. They just don't want people to say there are Islamic terrorists, which there are. Too bad."

The WaPo article also contains this surreal information:

The publication Jewish Week, in an April 2 article, quoted a rabbi as praising ISNA for reaching out to the Jewish community in the United States. "They feel strongly it is time to move forward," the rabbi said.

Information about ISNA, from Discover The Networks.org, clearly explains what ISNA is all about:

...ISNA focuses heavily on providing Wahhabi theological indoctrination materials to a large percentage of the mosques in North America. Many of these mosques were recently built with Saudi money and are required, by their Saudi benefactors, to strictly follow the dictates of Wahhabi imams -- an edict that affects the tone and content of the sermons given in the mosques, the selection of books and periodicals that may be read in mosque libraries or sold in mosque bookshops, and the policies governing the exclusion or suppression of dissenters from the congregations.

Through its affiliate, the North American Islamic Trust -- a Saudi government-backed organization created to fund Islamist enterprises in North America -- the Saudi-subsidized ISNA reportedly holds the mortgages on 50 to 80 percent of all mosques in the U.S. and Canada. Thus the organization can freely exercise ultimate authority over these houses of worship and their teachings....

The entire article is HERE.

Here's to hoping that Senator McCain understands what ISNA really is and really stands for. In any case, Hillary and Obama aren't taking a strong stand against Islamic terrorism.

MOTOONS AN ISSUE AT THE OIC

The letters "OIC" stand for the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which just wrapped up a two-day summit in Dakar Senegal.

From the AP article "Muslims Nations: Defame Islam, Get Sued?":

The Muslim world has created a battle plan to defend its religion from political cartoonists and bigots.

Concerned about what they see as a rise in the defamation of Islam, leaders of the world's Muslim nations are considering taking legal action against those that slight their religion or its sacred symbols. It was a key issue during a two-day summit that ended Friday in this western Africa capital.

The Muslim leaders are attempting to demand redress from nations like Denmark, which allowed the publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Muhammad in 2006 and again last month, to the fury of the Muslim world....

Read the entire AP article HERE.

Apparently a larger group than Islamic activists in Jordan may resort to some form of litigation-ifada.

At the summit, Sada Cumber, the U.S. envoy to the OIC emphasized how much America respects Islam.

2008 grinds on as the The Year of Silencing Voices.

Additional reading on the topic of the OIC.

SILENCING THE VOICES

Being sidelined has its benefits. I've had a lot of time to think.

What follows is another of my long reads and delineates more of the trend of whining Muslims as they continue to attempt even more erosion of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. At present, the information in this posting may not be directly affecting you. In my view, however, the curbing of speech and press WILL directly touch you.

Mark Steyn, author of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, and a Canadian magazine have caught the attention of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Canada's largest non-profit Islamic organization, which is now seeking to silence Maclean's Magazine for publishing an excerpt from Steyn's book....

Read the rest at Always On Watch.

WASHINGTON POST GLOSSES OVER LASHINGS

The November 28, 2007 Washington Post story of Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher arrested in Sudan for allegations of blasphemy over her young students' naming a teddy bear Muhammad, omitted the possibility of her receiving 40 lashes if she is convicted.

The Washington Post also omitted the following snippet from Reuters:

KHARTOUM, Sudan - A British primary school teacher has been arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam's Prophet by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Muhammad, her school said on Monday.

Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons told Reuters they feared for her safety after receiving reports that young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station where the Liverpool woman was being held.

Teachers at Unity High School in central Khartoum said Gibbons, 54, made an innocent mistake and simply let her pupils choose their favorite name for the toy as part of a school project.

Police arrested Gibbons on Sunday at her home inside the school premises, said Unity director Robert Boulos, after a number of parents made a complaint to Sudan's Ministry of Education.

Boulos said she had since been charged with "blasphemy," an offense he said was punishable with up to three months in prison and a fine.

A spokesman from the British Embassy in Khartoum said it was still unclear whether Gibbons had been formerly charged. "We are following it up with the authorities and trying to meet her in person," he said.

Boulos said he had decided to close down the school until January for fear of reprisals in Sudan's predominantly Muslim capital. "This is a very sensitive issue."...

Apparently, Ms. Gibbons didn't understand the implications of the cartoonifada.

The Washington Post article did, however, contain the following insightful information:

..."We don't have any teddy bears over here, so in Sudan, for us, it is a fierce and dangerous animal," Khalid al-Mubarak, a spokesman for the Sudanese Embassy in London, told the BBC.

[...]

In Liverpool, the city's Anglican bishop and top Muslim leader issued a joint statement calling on Sudanese authorities to show mercy.

"We, as Christian and Muslim leaders in the city of Liverpool, appeal to the Sudanese government to show compassion in the name of God the most merciful and release Gillian Gibbons," said the statement from the Right Rev. James Jones and Akbar Ali, chairman of Liverpool Mosque.

The Danish cartoon controversy that began in late 2005 led to violent protests around the globe by Muslims outraged over the perceived insult to Islam. The Sudanese case has not led to similar protests.

"I don't consider it to be blasphemous," said Humera Khan, a member of al-Nisa, a Muslim women's organization in London.

In an interview, Khan said that in addition to the issue of reverence for Muhammad, Muslims generally do not give human names to objects or animals. "Our relationship with inanimate objects and animals is not as sentimental as in the West," she said.

Khan said Gibbons "should have been more aware" of the cultural sensitivities in the country where she was living. But, she said, the Sudanese "government shouldn't have been so stupid, either."...

"Stupid" is the word for insulting Islam by the naming of a teddy bear, all right.