Scouts in Burkas

Muslim Scout adventures

OMG!  I'm just listening to a report on BBC Radio, here in Hong Kong, about the Scouting movement in the UK, which has decided that it need to "appeal to the Muslims", to bring in more "ethnic minorities" into the Scouting movement, has designed a uniform for Girl Scouts that has a veil, and "modest" dresses.

Now I've seen Scouts, boys and girls all over the world. Last year when I did a trip from Cape Town to Cairo, we saw Scouts all over Africa. I see them here in Hong Kong, and throughout Asia. What I notice about these is that the uniform is the same all over the world, not matter what the country, what the religion.

It's only for Islam that there's seen to be the need to bend to their requirements.  More of what we see in the broader society: bending to the needs of Islam.  I wouldn't mind at all if those needs, demands, were for mores which improved society in some way.  But that's not the case in, say, the Sharia Courts in the UK, which have been shown to be bad for women and children, or for women's rights, or for upholding of free speech (blasphemy laws and the rest).  Islamisation is an objective negative for the west...

Oh dear....

"Be Prepared"; the Scout's motto.  Be prepared for more Islamisation...

How China picks leaders

Some readers see me as an unalloyed apologist for China.  I don't think I am.  I've lived, studied and worked in China, have many mates there, have family there.  I know all about the darker sides of their society, the horrid excesses of their government -- the corruption, the expropriation of land, the supression of free speech (you can't get Blogger, Twitter, YouTube there...), and so on.
It's just that it's not all as bad as they're perceived and presented in the western media and especially by politicians in a US election cycle.
This article “How China’s Next Leader Will Guide” by Robert Lawrence Kuhn is a good one, and lazy that I am, I'll let Kuhn make the case for me; a few extracts:

China is an oligarchy, not a dictatorship, and ultimate authority will not be vested individually with Xi, but collectively with the Politburo’s Standing Committee, which has nine members. Everything in China reports to one of these nine. Xi will be first among equals, but equals the nine are, and together they have the final say on policy....

Of the committee’s nine members, all will have run large geographic regions and/or ministries, and six or seven will have led at least two provinces or major municipalities. All will have worked with Western business chiefs and other important foreign leaders....

Xi’s motto is: “Be proud, not complacent. Motivated, not pompous. Pragmatic, not erratic.”

There are worse ways to choose leaders than choosing from a group that have had wide executive experience, who have shown themselves basically uncorrupt and who have experience of the outside world. And have a motto of pragmatism.

ADDED: The article on the Internet Archive

Bo, Bo black sheep

Bo Xilai has been sacked and that makes my wife right 17 years ago when she predicted this.
That I'm married to my wife ("Mrs Battle") and that I have with her a son, and that we had a business we sold back in 2006 just before the GFC, and that as a result of that sale I can now relax in comfortable retirement, all this is due to Bo Xilai, the now disgraced ex-head of Chongqing in China.
Here's how it went down:
In 1995 I was head of Austrade's East Asia division, the Australian Trade Commission.
Our head of China operations (I'll just call him "Al") suggested that we get out in the provinces, that we establish "outrigger offices", to steal a march on other countries.  I agreed, and supported his suggestion for an Australia-China Forum in Dalian, the capital of Liaoning province of NE China. At the time, Bo Xilai was Mayor of Dalian.

Repeating mistakes of the past...

“Christians and Jews had full religious freedom. They built churches and synagogues…”
Prentice Hall, World Explorer,
- -  Medieval Times to Today, 2003, pp. 81 – 82
Contrary to the historically false claim that Christians and Jews conquered by Muslim armies had “full religious freedom,” one Muslim historian estimated that as many as 30,000 churches in the Middle East were destroyed by Muslim invaders during the first few centuries of jihad. [ACT for America] 

There's been something of the same trend in Australia  of whitewashing elements of Islamic history.  History, note, which comes from Muslim sources, such as the Sirah, the life of Muhammad, which recounts in detail his military exploits and commandments to "subjugate" the infidels and their places of worship.  For what's happening in the US, read ACT's report "Education or Indoctrination", for which the above quote is an introduction.

Religion in Prisons

Highest of the three "Abrahamic religions,
but don't mention Islam!

A Pew Research Survey of prison chaplains in all 50 US states shows that "America's state penitentiaries bustle with religious activity."  One of the charts [above] shows that Religious Extremism is "very/somewhat" common amongst Muslims (57%), more than double, or up to seven times that of other major religions such as Protestants (24%), Jews (14%) and Catholics (8%).
It's notable in the commentary on these figures that Pew does not mention these figures for Muslim inmates, but only mentions the figures for such as pagan/earth-based, Catholic and Jews.
I wonder why that is, given the clear prevalence of extremism amongst Muslim prisoners perceived by these prison imams....

French leftists blind themselves with ideology

It's interesting. On BBC radio yesterday and today they ran repeatedly the thoughts of a French leftist intellectual (I didn't get his name), who railed against Marie Le Pen's rightist party for having made anti-semitism "acceptable".  This was his analysis of that had caused the killings of Jews in Toulouse.  That is, her alleged anti-semitic rants had made anti-semitism acceptable and hence had led to the murders we've been reading, seeing and hearing about.  It was a right-winger, a Nazi, he opined.
But I thought: strange.  For Le Pen's party has for some time got off the anti-semitic gig and been all about raising issues about radical Islam in France.  And it was more likely that any other theory, I thought, that it was Islamists that were killing these Jews in France. And if that were the case, this French lefty was attacking the people that had pointed out that danger, and not the perpetrators of the horrid killings.
And of course that's how it's turned out.
The motor-bike killer in Toulouse is an Al-Qaeda sympathiser.
Will this leftist dupe revise his views? Not likely.
LATER:
A thoughtful piece.
A trenchant and at times amusing piece. [inasmuch as humour is permissible in such a tragic case...]
A dopey piece. [torn apart by the commenters]
Does it matter if he was Neo-Nazi or Muslim?  [Yes, she argues]

"Penalizing Criticism of Islam Threatens Free Speech and Reforms"

... Defamation was reworked as incitement to discrimination, at the U.N. World Conference against Racism (Durban II) in April 2009. In their 4th Annual Report on Islamophobia in April 2011, the OIC defined incitement by applying the "test of consequences," so that criminal liability only fell on the instigators and not on the responders. In this way, any perceived provocation, insult or "defamation" could be penalized on the grounds that it led to incitement...

Interesting.... if the test of "defamation" is if you -- the alleged "defamee" -- go on a rampage when someone criticises you (or even comments on your religion), then the clear message is that you ought to go on a rampage, because then you'll be protected; protected by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, at least.  Because "clearly" the fact that there were consequences (your rampage) means that by definition what you said was "defamatory".
Oh dear.... A post-modern Catch-22....

This is an interesting post by Ida Lichter, critical of the attack on free speech by the OIC, especially interesting in that it's in the Huffington Post, a leftie site more often known for posting Islamopologist pieces.
Good on them for doing this!

"The Rise of Sharia in the West'

These are the people who wish to impose sharia in the West and are gaining ground for three reasons.

One, because there is a failed attempt to understand the psyche of radical Islamists and uncover their covert methods in blackmailing and coercing immigrants into their way of thinking

Two,  there is deafening silence from the majority of moderate Muslims who are sitting quietly on the fence

Three, Western governments have failed because of their mistaken acceptance of dominant religious leaders as the sole legitimate representatives of Islam in the West, while ignoring women and the more moderate liberal voices.

This is why the Islamists are still here in the West. 

Read it all.

The article is interesting for it's not written by the Usual Suspects, but by Raheel Raza who describes herself as "...Pakistani by birth, a Canadian by choice and Islam is my spiritual journey."

H/t BCF

"In Reactions to Two Incidents, a U.S.-Afghan Disconnect"

This article is interesting, as it made blogs on both left and right....

"Jihad by Aggrievement; Submission by Apology"

This would be funny, if it weren't....
Cartoon Rage >> Teddy Bear Rage >> Fitna Rage >> Pastor Jones Rage >> Koran burning Rage >> ....

Four-three-four.. what are we waiting for?...

Graffiti of woman slumped on stairwell in Kabul

4.34 is the verse in the Koran that allows men to beat their women if they're "disobedient". [see Koran online link at the left]

Wandering round the Intertubes, I came across this piece by Qasim Rashid on Huffington Post, which is quite one of the worst cases of Islamopology that I've seen.  For Rashid black is white and 2 plus 2 is ... what? well, who knows it could be anything.  "Beat" doesn't mean "beat", it means to discuss, to conciliate, to enter counselling, anything but the plain and clear meaning of the word... "beat".
Rashid constructs a great edifice of sophistry on top of the Koranic verse 4:34, an edifice so weighted by the farrago of pomp and tendentiousness that it crushes the thin verse on which it sits, crushes it out of existence: he doesn't even quote it.
So, let me quote it here, in its entirety. While noting that there are many other translations of the verse which are available online at the link on the left. And don't come at me with "you've got to understand the original Arabic" gumpf.  I read and write Chinese and have often heard the same said in relation to that, but it's rubbish.  Of course it's possible to have a clear and faithful translation.  I've just picked one, that of Picknall, an Orthodox Muslim translation:

4:34.   Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and beat them. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great. [my emphasis]

So here is what we have, from the Koran, in relation to men and women:
1. Men are superior to women
2. Men have authority over women
3. Women must be obedient to men
4.  If they are not obedient, men may:
    a.  admonish them
    b.  send them off to sleep on their own
    c.  Beat them.
In what way is this the least consistent with women's rights in the west?
In what way is this consistent with what progressive women consider fair and proper in any context, other than in Islam?
In what way is this consistent with the United Nations' International Declaration on Human Rights (*)
In what way is this consistent with the laws in western democracies against any discrimination on the basis of gender?
In short, how can this verse be defended?

Rashid uses what I'll call the "progressive defence". That is, that it's a progressive process. The woman is first "admonished" and if she doesn't measure up she's sent off to sleep on her own.  Only if this doesn't do the trick, then she can be beaten. Note that there's no hint here that the man may be in the wrong.  And note that it's up to the man to decide when "admonishment" and "banishment" have failed and that he can now beat the crap out of her, because Allah is ever High, Exalted, Perverted.

In truth, this verse can only be defended if the reader wishes to be willfully blind. If the reader is determined to see nothing wrong in Islam, no matter what is presented as evidence.

Rashid's defense of this verse is a farrago of tendentious nonsense, especially when set against what the verse actually says.  I say: use common sense. See what the verse says. It's inimical to all the progressive west, that progressive women, stand for.
But, for pious Muslim men, it's "one two three four, what are we fighting for"!  But updated: "four three four; what are we waiting for!" Let's get them's biatches!
Later: Today's South China Morning Post has a piece "Clerics' code harks back to Taliban" (behind paywall), which quotes said clerics as saying that the Afghan constitution is "flawed from a religious perspective" (in the case of equality of men and women), that "men are fundamental and women are secondary" and that "the use of words and expressions that contradict the sacred verses must be strictly avoided".  The Guardian's article on "restrictive code for women" sums it up in any case.
Anyone would think these clerics had read the Koran and understood the plain meaning of 4:34!

**********

(*): ".... the equal rights of men and women":  paragraph 5 of the United Nations Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. [my emphasis]

"U.S. State Department Actively Promoting Islam in Europe"

The United States ambassador to Spain recently met with a group of Muslim immigrants in one of the most Islamized neighborhoods of Barcelona to apologize for American foreign policymaking in the Middle East.

U.S. Ambassador Alan Solomont told Muslims assembled at the town hall-like meeting in the heart of Barcelona's old city that the United States is not an "enemy of Islam" and that U.S. President Barack Obama wants to improve America's image in the Middle East as quickly as possible by closing the "dark chapters" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.

"There are things that the United States has done badly," Solomont said at the February 28 gathering organized by a non-profit organization called the Cultural, Educational and Social Association of Pakistani Women. "But now the Obama government wants to improve relations with Muslims," he promised.

Read the rest here.

"Islam, Free Speech, and Democracy"

On the ludicrous "Zombie Muhammad" case, I think this article is the best and most balanced word.  Clip:

....there is something inherently disturbing about a public official chastising a citizen for engaging in constitutionally protected expression, however obnoxious. It is especially troubling when it's a matter of criticizing or even lampooning religion, an area in which free speech has so often been trampled.

Meanwhile, Judge Martin had before him a defendant who, by his own and his lawyer's admission, was grossly ignorant of the protections for free speech in America. Surely, a lecture on civics would not have been amiss....

The case has another worrisome aspect. While no religion has a monopoly on fanaticism, it is no secret that, for many complex reasons, religious intolerance is at present far more entrenched, more common, and more extreme in Islam than in other major religions. Some argue that violent suppression of dissent is in the nature of Islam, and insinuate that every Muslim in the West is a potential agent of sharia tyranny.

Judge Martin did not, of course, invoke sharia law as a basis for his ruling; nor did he suggest that Elbayomy would have been justified in assaulting Perce because his religion commanded it. But he did seem to suggest that insults to the Muslim faith are especially bad because of how impermissible blasphemy is in many Muslim countries and because of the role religion plays in Muslims' lives. Indeed, he specifically drew a distinction between "how Americans practice Christianity" and how Muslims practice Islam: "Islam is not just a religion, it’s their culture … it’s their very essence, their very being."

Read it all here.

People listen to what LEAP has to say....

Click for Vid

Just in from LEAP
Here at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, our law enforcement members have spent decades fighting the drug war from the front lines. We speak to this issue from a position of experience and our level of credibility is high - people listen to what LEAP has to say.