Most prominent among those scholars was Abu Bakr al-Razi (865-925 CE) who believed in the supreme importance of reason. He argued that the mind had an innate capacity to distinguish between good and evil, and between what was useful and what was harmful. According to him, the mind did not need any guidance from outside it, and for this reason the presence of prophets was redundant and superfluous.

Al-Razi directed his most vehement attack against the holy books in general, including the Qur’an, because he saw them as illogical and self-contradictory. He also believed that all human beings were equal in their intellectual capacities as they were in all other things. It made no sense therefore that God should single out one individual from among them in order to reveal to him his divine wisdom and assign him the task of guiding other human beings. Furthermore, he found that prophets’ pronouncements and stories often contradicted those of other prophets. If their source was divine revelation as is claimed, their views would have been identical. The idea of a divinely-appointed mediator was therefore a myth.

Al-Razi understood the hold of religious belief on society, which he attributed to several factors. Firstly, systems of beliefs spread mainly through the human propensity for imitating and copying others. Secondly, religion‘s popularity rested on the close alliance between clerics and political rulers. The clerics often used this alliance to impose their own personal beliefs on people by force whenever the power of persuasion failed. Thirdly, the lavish and imposing character of the attire of religious men contributed to the high regard in which they were held by common people. Lastly, with the passage of time religious ideas became so familiar that they turned almost into deep-seated instincts that were no longer questioned.

In examining this chapter of Islamic history, regardless of the validity or otherwise of the views expressed, one cannot help feel amazed at the fact that the Islamic thinkers of the 10th century had the freedom to discuss and publish their “unorthodox” ideas, while the Islamic world now cannot, or will not, deal with any form of intellectual dissent. It might be reasonable to suggest then that the problem of Islam does not lie in inherited texts and traditions, but in interpretation. The Islamic heritage, like its Christian counterpart, is made up of a huge body of commentaries and interpretations that were produced in various periods of history to address problems specific to their age. We need to remember that the Christian scriptures have not changed since the middle ages. It was in the name of these very texts that innumerable so-called heretics were burnt at the stake.

What is the point of banning an organisation when it will only reappear with the same personnel under a different name?

So far they’ve come up with:

• Al-Muhajiroun
• Al Ghurabaa
• Islam4UK
• Call to Submission
• Islamic Path
• London School of Sharia
• The Saved Sect or Saviour Sect

Help out Andy Choudary and the girls. What should be the name of their next incarnation?

The Yasmin Fostok Fanclub

the state of "yiddishkeit" yesterday

anyway, it appears to be (you can download it from here) from one of the increasingly odd sub-groups of the breslover sect of hasidim, who you may have seen in the recent tv documentary partying at their annual jamboree at the sect founder’s tomb in the town of uman in the ukraine. they are regarded as somewhat odd even by other hasidim (in a kind of sufi high-on-G!D hippy kind of way) but they are rather obsessed with the kabbalistic aspects of correct sexual activity, the piece itself being extremely revealing of the attitudes that filter through in much of the discourse from the haredi world, particularly the hasidic bits, so i thought i’d share it, with some translation and commentary:

1. a “leshem yichud” is a kabbalistic formula meant to be recited before an action in order to concentrate the proper intention and mindfulness.
2. the “sita aher”, normally called the “sitra ahra”, is a kabbalistic term for, not to put too fine a point on it, the “dark side of the Force”.
3. “klipot” is a term referring to the “shells” that enclose the “sparks of holiness that were trapped in the lower worlds (including ours) during the cosmic catastrophe of the creation of evil in lurianic kabbalah.
4. “pogem enayim” means “defiler of one’s eyes” – a transgression of a Torah commandment; according to most interpretations, gazing at immodestly dressed women will constitute this transgression – haredi interpretations of “immodestly dressed” covers pretty much anything that doesn’t cover hair, elbows, knees, neckline or reveals the curves of the (female, of course) body.
5. a “lav doraysa” is a negative prohibition (thou shalt not) directly commanded in the Torah.
6. “lo sasuro achary levavchem vachari anachem” is a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which refers to the commandment which is found in the third paragraph of the “shema”, numbers 15:37-41, to not “stray after your hearts”, in other words, follow impulses which might lead to idolatrous behavour.
7. “heshumer mkal dvar ra” is, again, a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which refers to the commandment which is found deuteronomy 23:10, to “guard the camp when you go out against your enemies”, usually understood as “watch your back”, but easily reinterpreted to signify the protection of one’s home from evil influences; you will note the implicit attitude to the outside world.
8. a “deraysa” is a Torah commandment. to be “over a deraysa” (again, hasidishe transliteration, inconsistently done) one means to transgress the Torah commandment.
9. “poskim” are halakhic decisors, some of the important ones of whom are mentioned here; of course, it is by no means clear that the *way* in which these guys mean it is the same as the way in which these poskim mean it, certainly their decisions do refer explicitly to watching a film, but rather to other situations. however, if you want to take it that way, this is where you’d get the precedent from. of course, you can see “immodest” women (as these guys think of it) anywhere you like these days, you don’t need to be watching a film.
10. ” to be over on “Vehyisem Kedoshim” and “Kidoshim Tihyo”” means to transgress the Torah commandments to imitate G!D by being “holy” – leviticus 11:45 / 19:1-2 – which is taken by these guys to refer to refraining from illicit sexual acts, although ramban – nachmanides – has a big argument with rashi on this precise point, so clearly this isn’t as clear as it is made out to be.
11. “reshaim” – evil people; presumably this means the baddies.
12. “pogem habris” means “defiler of the covenant”, which is generally understood to be the misuse of the bit of you that the brit affects – in breslover thought i believe this is generally understood to be a euphemism for [male] masturbation, in any case they don’t half go on about it.
13. “see keri while i am asleep” – i.e. have sexual dreams.
14. “shmoneh esreis” – this refers to the “amidah”, the “18 benedictions” or standing prayer, which is of supreme importance in jewish prayer and is said three times daily; they’re worried that your mind will drift off during it.
15. “hiruray znus with my tefillin on” – a hasidishe transliteration of the hebrew phrase which can be translated as “thoughts of whoredom”, in other words, the contemplation of illicit sexual acts while wearing phylacteries during morning prayers, which they suppose will be much more likely; the preservation of proper mindfulness while wearing tefillin is of great importance.
16. “kfirot” – denial of the truth of Torah.
17. “tzadikim” – sages.
18. “holy Shemot” – the various Divine Names, the contemplation and manipulation of which are the practical structures on which many kabbalistic techniques are founded.
19. “azilut, briah, yitzirah and asiyah” – the kabbalistic names of the “four worlds”.
20. “nefesh, ruch, neshamah” – one schema describing the structure of the human soul.
21. “avodas haShem” – the service of G!D, which should of course be one’s primary consideration. the thought that watching a film might actually assist in this, or teach moral lessons, does not, of course, occur.
22. “moshiach” – the messiah.
23. “kedusha” – holiness.
24. “emunah” – belief / trust.
25. “chitzinim” – literally, “externalities”, which, kabbalistically speaking are elements of Creation that “act as a spiritual barrier” between humans and G!D, which are there effectively play “devil’s advocate” and be overcome in order to choose the way of Torah and commandments and closeness to G!D of our own free will.
26. “do teshuvah” – repent.
27. “find my zivug” – to locate and marry one’s destined wife.
28. “if i am married then i am willing to have my children considered semi mamzarim since i will not be able to control my thoughts.” – this, in my view is the most serious, as the prohibitions and disabilities associated with mamzerut (the offspring of Torah-prohibited intercourse such as an incestuous or adulterous liaison) are incredibly unpleasant, restrictive and persistent. this is pretty much tantamount to saying that they wouldn’t be able to get married (quite a penalty in the haredi world) because of your sins. to call this “overstated” barely covers it; there is no such halakhic status of being a “semi-mamzer”; the avoidance of potential mamzerut being a fundamental concern. raising it as a real possibility is, in my view, an outrageous piece of scaremongering based on the falsification of halakhah; it’s basically making up a new category of prohibition which can’t possibly be justified in intent, let alone determined in practice or policed; if having “impure thoughts” makes your kids “semi-mamzerim”, then nobody could possibly consider themselves free of these.

all in all, this would have been funny and mordant as a piece of swiftian satire – as a serious piece of moral exhortation, it is arrant nonsense and appallingly manipulative. if i find out who has been leaving this stuff lying around, i will have words.

i came across this particular gem of an essay  from his website today. it is an elegant argument for the ability to reconcile scientific and religious viewpoints:

“…Even if the Darwinian mechanisms were inadequate, presumably G!D had some sort of means of transforming creatures via natural law, which science would eventually discover. Dissing the neo-Darwinian explanation would mislead people into thinking that it necessarily happened in a supernatural manner.

Together with further contemplation of the topic, in which it occurred to me that the “random” nature of Darwinian evolution was no more theologically problematic than the “random” nature of the events of Purim or of a lottery, I realized that it didn’t make a whit of theological difference which mechanism powered evolution. As a result, I lost all interest in whether the neo-Darwinian explanation of the mechanism made sense or not. It was no more relevant to me than any other obscure problem of science.”

you can read the rest here.

r. slifkin’s continued writing, in the face of the continuing unjustifed attacks on him, is something that we at the spittoon should support. we are against obscurantism and nuttery and attempts to stifle discussion – and we are entirely in favour of the assertion of principles that are both rational, clearly expressed and both scientifically and spiritually honest to a degree that is all too rare in todays polarised debate.

But, today, the BBC ran a similar story this time surrounding a faux-controversy over a swimsuit round to pass onto the next stage.

Weirdly, a big chunk of the article has the rants of Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadan Foundation.

Those of you who don’t know who Shafiq is, he rather enjoys blaming Islamic terrorism not on Islamism but on erm … anything else he can think of. In an interview to Haaretz, here is how he describes the Muslim community:

“I was deeply disappointed in the prime minister, who made allegations that tar a whole community. Who is he talking about? Muslims in Britain by and large are integrated and oppose terrorism in the U.K. and anywhere else in the world just like any other Brits. Terror is an evil and the killing of innocent people is forbidden in Islam.”

Like seriously guys! What home grown Muslim terrorists are you talking about? Are you talking about this guy? Or this guy? Or how about this guy? What about him?

No, no. We mustn’t call these people terrorists, let’s call them err … young men with erm … homicidal difficulties.

In the BBC article, Shafiq plays the ‘I respect your right but I don’t really’ card. When he has his ‘moderate Muslim’ hat on he agrees that Shanna has every right to wear swimwear but at the same time makes it clear that when he has his ‘mainstream Muslim’ hat on, she’s nothing but dirt.

Here are the offending words:

“We are clear that we find what she’s doing distasteful. Lots of women find these [competitions] degrading.”

He said he accepts the right for Muslim women to wear whatever they choose, but that those living in a western country should still be respectful of Islam.

“We celebrate individual freedom but to suggest that someone who is opposed to something she’s doing needs to move off to another country is quite offensive,” he continued.

Err, that’s not quite how social cohesion works. Who made Mohammed Shafiq ‘community leader’ for all Muslims?

Life has been tough on stereotype-breaking confident Muslim ladies lately. If Freudian-nightmare-esqe mullahs in Pakistan are not tormenting them then Mohammed Shafiq is telling them what they can and cannot wear. Yuck.

She has received threats from Muslims, white supremacists and even feminists but reading deeper into the article, it would seem most of her problems come from dealing with her own Muslim community.

The most telling paragraphs read:

But even she has been surprised by the furore that her participation in the British heats of Miss Universe has prompted. Rather than confirming her hopes that society had progressed since her childhood, the controversy has made her question the state of multiculturalism in modern Britain. “It has highlighted the divisions that exist, a lack of social integration, a lack of adhesion between white and coloured people, and this needs to be addressed,” she said. “I thought my participation might be something that people did not agree with, but I never thought I’d get abused.”

and:

Since then, she has received around 300 messages a day on her Facebook page, a handful of which are abusive. Most of the negative comments have come from a minority of Muslim men. “I get people saying, ‘you’re not a Muslim’ and ‘you’re using religion to get attention’. I said they were the ones bringing religion into it. I’m not representing Islam; I just want to represent my country, and of that I am very proud. They are trying to control me, using religion as a tool to attack.”

I think I can speak for The Spittoon that we wish Shanna the very best of luck. In her semi-final contest, she had the highest popular vote which means she could become Britain’s first Miss Universe.

The case above highlights that not even beautiful people can get away from the horrid failure of state multiculturalism in Britain.

“Since we decided to do this conference, it seems to me the energy has gone insane all around the world.”

according to her, this is because of the butterfly effect. as usual, proper science is being pressed into service as pseudo-scientific twaddle in order to bolster outrageous claims of causality and influence, but as we know from that deepak chopra-caused earthquake, that’s nothing new.

what is somewhat more worrying is the attendee list at the conference. a quick scan reveals the following:

• philanthropist / socialite lisa tchenguiz, also known as “britain’s richest divorcée” and sister of the property magnates and entrepreneurs vincent and robert tchenguiz – so presumably, like other celebrity aficionados, a key target for flattery and significant personal and family funding.
• former foreign secretary lord owen, a key player in uk politics, particularly foreign affairs for many decades – why someone this eminent should need or go near the kabbalah centre is baffling, but clearly also someone whose contact book would be a valuable resource for them.
• miriam gonzález duártez, wife of the deputy prime minister and generally considered to be a pretty tough egg in her field, as head of international trade at dla piper – this could bring the centre worryingly close to the centres of british political power; it may be that someone has told her that her name indicates sephardic ancestors (along with a significant proportion of the spanish population) although as we have seen, high-flying lawyerly prime ministerial spouses are hardly immune to the allure of new age quackery.

a kabbalah centre attendee yesterday

the jc reports that numerous very high-profile victims of tragedy, such as the parents of damilola taylor and jimmy mizen, were also present. i have no objection to the tales of the centre’s exploitation of the rich, famous and gullible, so if madonna wants to fill her radiators with “kabbalah water” that’s fine with me, but i would worry if people whose media profile has come about through circumstances not of their own choosing – i.e. real people who have suffered tragic bereavements are having their vulnerability exploited; there are numerous reports of controversial and troubling behaviour by the centre, as well as a bbc investigation by john sweeney, the man who took on the might of xenu’s hordes.

my own experience as a student of the mystical tradition, based on conversations with people involved with the centre in london at various levels, echo the concerns in this thoughtful and literate piece by jay michaelson.

those who dig deeper, as the controversial “cult-buster” rick ross has done, will find an extremely long list of issues to concern them.

We have already met the salafi jihadi Abu Zubair, who is on record for calling for Usama Hasan’s death both publicly on the premises of Masjid Tawhid and online.

Hitching themselves to this cowardly crusade are two indigenous English converts to Islam, who like to see themselves as white Muslim examples of Malcolm X’s “field Negroes” because these two brave white men “don’t take shit from the Man”, don’t you know.

First off, Dawud [David?] Mannion aka Daw’ud Abu Abdillah Al-Injaliziy, who issued this diatribe called Usama Hasan and his call to Kufr on his blog The Islamic Standard, of which he uses to criticise British troops and praise terrorists. This is his description of the public reaction to Dr Hasan’s lecture on evolution at the Tawhid Mosque:

Dawud Mannion

Usama Hasan then announced a talk where the Taghoot ideology of darwinism was to be taught in the Masjid with the agreement of Suhaib Hasan and the committee.

In this talk, though it only dealt with his belief in evolution, many Muslims walked out, one elderly regular of the Masjid calling Usama a Shaitan, others attempted to refute Usama and were escorted from the premises for attempting to refute this Taghoot ideology in Masjid Tawhid.

He confirmed his belief that Adam (as) was not made by Allah from clay, but instead that Allah used evolution to create Adam (as) and that his parents were not humans, but apes.

Mannion’s implausible recount makes it sound as if those of the congregation who disagreed with Usama Hasan’s thesis on evolution formed an orderly queue, begged to be excused and peacefully walked out of the mosque. Nothing could be further from the truth, by all accounts. Why does he fail to mention the chaos, the tense disrupted atmosphere that Dr Hasan was forced to endure, not to mention the heckling, haranguing or the loud vocal calls for his death?

Since the lecture was delivered, things have come to a head and Dr Hasan has been forced to issue a statement on his blog. Although he has managed to retain his position as imam, it looks very much like a capitulation to the dark forces of Muslim obscurantism. This is depressing indeed but Usama had a parting shot:

This does not excuse the cowardly and fraudulent campaign spreading lies and slander against me over the last two months.

The second of our nasty, befuddled white English converts is Matthew Smith aka Yusuf Smith who runs the popular blogistan site, under the pseudonym Indigo Jo. Smith makes all the same charges of Usama Hasan as Mannion does, but most appalling of all is his dismissal of the reality of the death threats, insinuating that it’s merely a “tactic” employed by Hasan and he has made it all up:

Matthew "Yusuf" Smith

He accuses people of threatening his life; that is the hallmark of the Quilliam group, who are fond of portraying themselves to the mass media as boldly speaking out against extremism when nobody else will (it is a standard tactic of anyone who wants to portray themselves as lone defenders of truth; the death threats do not have to be real). One recalls Hassan Butt, who admitted inflicting stab wounds on himself and attributing it to a “Muslim extremist” who was angry at him for turning against them, when in fact he had made up much of his story about his “adventures” with al-Qa’ida in Pakistan.

Why does the life of another Muslim become so cheap when you have convinced yourself you’re speaking on behalf of Allah?

There is a very strange irony palpable here. If you were to find an instance of white extremists calling for the victimisation of a British Pakistani Muslim and his family, who tacitly defended the veiled threats and agreed with calls for his death – how would it be defined? Anywhere else it would be described as an “overtly Islamophobic” campaign and the outcry by the usual coterie of far-left and Muslim talking heads would be deafening. But in this case there is a stony silence.

The zealotry of these two idiotic converts may be beyond caricature, but by jumping onto the anti-Usama bandwagon, they are playing a very dangerous and irresponsible game

We hope the authorities have been called in to protect Dr Usama Hasan and his family and to also look into the incitement of hatred and violence by these two white extremists.

Mussamet Hena, whipped to death for being raped by her cousin

A teenager whipped to death in Bangladesh for having a relationship with a married man was allegedly raped by her cousin, it has emerged.
Four Islamic clerics were arrested this week for ordering Mosammet Hena, 14, to receive 100 lashes in a fatwa or religious edict at a village in the south-western Shariatpur district.

It has now been reported that the teenage girl was raped by her married cousin and then accused of having an affair with him.
The girl collapsed after she was lashed in public with a bamboo cane around 70 times on Monday, police chief Shahidur Rahman said.
She was taken to hospital, but died hours later.

Police chief Shahidur Rahman said the 40-year-old man with whom the girl was allegedly involved was also sentenced to 100 lashes, but he fled to escape the punishment.

And it does in Pakistan, where schoolboys are arrested for blasphemy:

A magistrate ordered Muhammad Samiullah, 17, to be held at a juvenile detention centre in Karachi after the chief controller of the pupil’s school exam board filed a complaint to police.

Mr Samiullah’s arrest comes as hardliners demonstrated in support of the blasphemy laws, taking to the streets and threatening anyone who seeks to have them even amended. Human rights groups denounce the laws as discriminatory, helping the persecution of religious minorities and often used as a tool of social and political coercion.

“While Pakistan has earned global notoriety for abuses it perpetrates under the blasphemy laws, this is appalling even by those dismal standards,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, of Human Rights Watch. “It is obscene that a mere child be imprisoned for scribbling something on an exam paper, however inappropriate it may have been.”

It is unclear what Mr Samiullah may have written. When the police were asked about his alleged offence, they declined to elaborate, suggesting that it would blasphemous to repeat the words written. It is often the case, human rights groups say, that the evidence is disputable in cases of alleged blasphemy.

Earlier this month Usama Hasan, an imam at the Tawhid mosque in Leyton, East London, defended the theory of evolution at a meeting in the mosque.

A medieval tirade has been his reward.

Meet ”Abu Zubair”, one of the people behind Islamic Awakening. It’s an internet gathering point for extremists. Its most popular forum topic is titled “Politics, Jihad and Current Affairs”.

(Part 2 of the video is here.)

This is how bad speaking up for evolution is, according to Zubair:

The call to evolution is a call to kufr [disbelief] and apostasy from Islam.

Zubair proceeds to draw on the rulings of Saudi scholars. What’s the solution for someone like Usama Hasan? Death, that’s what:

Ibn al-Uthaymeen in particular, he was asked this question about a teacher who comes into the classroom and teaches evolution. He said that not only this person, who is in a position of a teacher at school, should be expelled, but even outside of school he should be monitored in terms of his activities and his contacts to make sure he is not misguiding others. And he should be stopped by any means necessary even if it means his execution.

Upon that Ibn al-Uthaymeen was asked “do you mean that it is permissible to execute him?”. Ibn al-Uthaymeen says “yes, if there is absolutely no other way of stopping this person except execution, then this person should be executed because he is an apostate and apostates are executed.”

Usama Hasan is also gravely in error on the hijab:

If a person denies the obligation of wearing the hijab, which is to cover the head for women of course, then this person is an apostate. He is no longer a Muslim.

Why Usama Hasan even spoke at an event of the “anti-Muslim” Quilliam Foundation!

He actually gave lectures at the launch of the Quilliam Foundation, which is an anti-Muslim secular organisation that seeks to shape Islam from within and shed Islam of all its political aspects, the sharia in its entirety.

Secularism as well is for apostates. Even capitalism is off limits:

Anybody who attributes themselves to kufr philosophy, such as communism, secularism, capitalism, these people are apostates. They claim to be Muslims but these people are major hypocrites because on the one hand they outwardly claim to be Muslims while they are inwardly kuffars, disbelievers.

Mockery too must be severely punished:

Anybody who mocks Allah or his messenger or anyone or any aspect of religion which is known from the deen [religion], by necessity is a kaffir and a murtad [apostate] and is subject to execution because the prophet said “execute the one who changes his religion”.

You can also read Zubair’s “charges” against Usama Hasan in this pdf file.

Zubair doesn’t want to go to prison. So he adds this “disclaimer”:

The point of quoting this fatwa is not that people or individuals listen to this message and they figure out for themselves what to do. This fatwa is only being quoted for information purposes, because executing people is only the responsibility of the imam who is implementing sharia in a Muslim country and it is not up to individuals to take the law into their own hands and contemplate executing Usama Hasan.

Zubair can issue as many “disclaimers” as he likes. The point is that he is an utterly repugnant man using vicious rhetoric to stoke up hatred and promote ludicrous ignorance.

Even if they cannot or will not press charges for this tirade, the police certainly should keep an eye on him and his followers.

It would be nice to learn that mosques across the country will do their bit by barring him from their premises.

Though he does have an occasional moment of self-awareness, as you will see here:

Lucy Lips adds: The threat has one curious sentence:

“Usama Hasan’s contemptuous attitude towards Masjid al-Tawheed congregation, by considering them descendants

of apes, ninjas and clowns…”

Apes and clowns, fair enough. But ninjas? I wouldn’t mess with them. Not if you know what’s good for you.

It is shocking but not surprising to learn that one of Britain’s leading moderate Muslim Imams is being hounded out of his job for expressing views which are unpalatable to the conservative Muslims.

There has been a concerted campaign by many Muslims to remove Usama Hasan from his post as Imam of Masjid al-Tawhid in Leyton, East London. The “charges” against him are:

• Seeking to reconcile Islam with the theory of evolution
• Claiming that the Hijab is not mandatory
• Acceptance of secularism in the practice of good governance

It’s important to note that the elements of religious intolerance which are seeking to remove him are not extremist Muslims but mainstream conservative Muslims. It just goes to show how intolerant and thuggish traditional Muslims have become and how liberal Muslims are the real victims, even here in the UK. This campaign to denounce Hasan have included calling him an unbeliever and an apostate. Needless to say that these accusations come with the calls for his execution which some have been “brave” enough to make. This is an episode straight out of the Middle Ages in Europe when scientists were attacked for challenging conventional wisdoms like the earth being flat or a geo-centric universe.

Here is a video of the events last Saturday which gives an indication of the chaos and backwardness that Hasan was subjected to at the meeting when he presented his thesis in support of evolution at Masjid Tawhid.

The evidence that exists for evolution today is undisputable. The fact that we have evolved from less sophisticated species and have origins in Africa has also been proven by DNA records. There are also records which prove that humans have been around for over 200,000 years and the sheer diversity of humans on this planet makes the belief that we are all the offspring of a single couple from Arabia look laughable. In truth, the Adam and Eve story in my view is merely the story of the Semitic people. It is highly likely that this couple moved to Arabia from Africa or the Yemen at some stage and started from there. Even then it is highly unlikely that their children married each other, if that was the case then they wouldn’t have survived at all.

So when Abrahamic faiths talk of Adam and Eve being their ancestors, they are probably right. But obviously the writers of the Quran and Bible were not aware of what was going on in the rest of the world. Obviously the story of Adam and Eve had been passed down through generations and so they assumed that they must have been the first human beings. The fact that people still believe this nonsense in 2011 is very worrying indeed.

a falafel for the effendi!

he is also a man of many contradictions. this is the man that gave the principle of “land for peace” the sanction of halakhah (jewish law) – no mean contribution to an eventual settlement – the man who stood up successfully for the rights of the ethiopian jews against the demands of the askhenazi haredi establishment that they convert, who supports the top-level inter-religious dialogue forum known as the alexandria process and a man who has consistently fought for the rights of blue-collar workers with large, traditionalist (but not necessarily that religious) sephardi and mizrahi families, which of course is more or less the majority of shas voters. interestingly enough, the same attributes are also characteristic of most israeli arabs, which has led to the  ironic outcome that quite a few of them end up voting shas for the social and economic programmes it supports. it is ironic, of course, because of r. yosef’s tendency (for all that he was born in baghdad and is a native speaker of arabic) to make astoundingly racist and bigoted comments about arabs, usually in his saturday night religious lectures, but also more or less whenever he gets the opportunity. he is also not a stranger to upsetting nearly anyone else; here are a few of his public statements that have contributed a great deal to peace, harmony and reconciliation…..not.

“It is forbidden to be merciful to [arabs]. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”

he later claimed this only referred to arab terrorists, but it hasn’t been forgotten.

“the holocaust was G!D’s retaliation aginst the reincarnated souls of jewish sinners”

this managed to offend all ashkenazim and anyone who didn’t subscribe to the kabbalistic doctrine of the karmic “transmigration of souls”; just call it his glenn hoddle moment.

“Let our enemies and those who hate us die [referring to palestinian authority president abbas] and all these evil people should perish from this world. G!D should strike them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.”

for which he had to make a grovelling apology to mubarak and others.
referring to the black inhabitants of new orleans as “kushim” – and that hurricane katrina was george bush’s punishment for supporting the gaza disengagement, enough said.

on why non-religious israeli soldiers get killed:

“They don’t observe the Sabbath, they don’t observe the Torah, they don’t pray, they don’t put on phylacteries every day. Is it any wonder that they’re killed? It’s no wonder. May the Almighty have mercy on them and bring them back to religion.”

let’s forget for a moment that he expects these people to fight while his own supporters sit about studying Torah on government stipends; pheuuwww.

and the latest delightful remark, of course, is this:

“The sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.”

i mean, really? is this what judaism has survived 3,000 years for? if this is what judaism is about, i’ll eat my own tefillin. what are we to make of this embarrassment? his opinions, especially the most recent, beggar belief. there is no apparent successor to his credibility; aryeh deri was once touted as such, but got jailed for fraud and racketeering (although admittedly there was quite a lot of racism involved in the prosecution as well, you don’t see the askhenazi rabbonim getting investigated although they’re just as bad). eli yishai, the leader of the shas party in the knesset, is widely regarded as a parochial sock puppet who gives little away to yosef in the outspoken bigotry stakes. shmuel eliyahu, another provincial powerbroker, has just caused another outcry with a disgusting call for jews not to rent property to arabs.

my own opinion, frankly, is that he’s senile or, quite possibly, has had some kind of minor stroke; it is not uncommon for such people to vocalise prejudices that they had previously known enough to avoid saying out loud. of course, that’s not really any excuse, he shouldn’t be thinking like that in the first place. all in all, this is a deplorable state of affairs for the religious leadership of the world’s sephardic and mizrahi jews to be in. there was a time when r. yosef provided principled leadership (not just land for peace, he also opposes ladies’ wigs); in fact, there was a time when sephardi and mizrahi rabbis were the intellectual and philosophical élite, the most cultured, the most urbane and the most open-minded. clearly this era is long over; i’m not a great enthusiast for the doctrine of the “decline of the generations“, but i have to admit this is pretty persuasive stuff in its favour, certainly the current leadership provides very little reason for optimism. roll on the next generation; at least we can see some changes happening at grass-roots level with the new rabbis coming through, but it will be a long time before this filters up to the oxygen-poor, brain-dead level of israeli religious politics.

The echoes of 1933 when the Nazis burnt some 20,000 books in Germany is clear. But this is not the first time Christian fundamentalists in the USA have shown their intolerance towards books by burning them, as this video show.

It goes without saying that this is an outrageous act of provocation. The fear is – how will Muslims react to this? My only hope is that they will not respond to this act of irrational cynicism and stupidity by reacting in kind, or worse. But perhaps that is asking for too much.

Nothing ruins my day quite like coming into contact with that breed of especially stupid person who thinks that 9/11 was an ‘inside’ job. Walking around Broadway Market in east London this weekend, I saw a poster which reminded me that such people have a like-minded community with whom they can share their delusions.

The poster advertised the 9/11 ‘truth’ events taking place all over London this week, hosted by an organisation called Truth Rising, to coincide with the nine year anniversary of 9/11. So, if you are that way inclined, you can go to a ‘party’ where you dress up as your favourite neocon, watch ‘Loose Change’ (a fictional movie pretending to be a documentary that is a fave with conspiracy theorists) and then be entertained by spoken word ‘legend’, MC Angel, and someone who calls himself Planetman.

Alternatively, if Brazilian music interspersed with ‘truth’ films about 9/11 is more your bag, you are catered for at Notting Hill Arts Club. Earlier in the day, you could get together with Stop the War Hounslow, WeAreChange London and London Truth Action for a demonstration outside the BBC to ‘pressurise’ them into reporting the truth about 9/11.

We’ve all been unfortunate enough to meet the types that go to such events. The sort of person who thinks that President Bush and co were devious enough to:

• Mastermind the destruction of the Twin Towers (using explosives/remote controlled planes/holograms of planes, delete as appropriate);
• Pin it on al-Qaeda (the dozens of protestations of al-Qaeda that, yes, they really did do it was another cunning sleight of hand by the Bush administration);
• Find new and exciting ways to restrict civil liberties (it was truly astonishing how you could find absolutely no dissent or
  criticism of Bush in the news, on the street, in music, film, or art during his entire time in the White House);
• Lie about weapons of mass destruction in order to justify going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq (to further the interests of Halliburton/the military industrial complex/Israel/world Jewry/the neoconservatives/other people we don’t like)

They seemingly weren’t devious enough to take the next logical
step and then fabricate WMDs in Iraq once they had invaded,
in order to complete the illusion. Still, they pulled off most of their grand masterplan, and had managed to keep it secret from the entire world – until, of course, a few bright sparks on the internet got wind of the plans.

I suppose we should be used to such lunatics by now. But I do think we should manage to maintain our sense of anger and moral outrage at those who – when confronted with totalitarianism, wickedness and mass murder – choose to blame anybody but those actually responsible.

Warning: Social cohesion it is not. But don’t worry, no ‘black Muslim Puerto Rican types’ were physically hurt in the making of this video.

This is a take of it from gawker.com :

Both supporters and opponents of the “Ground Zero” “Mosque”—a proposed community center—held rallies in lower Manhattan today. Can you guess which side started chanting “no mosque here” at a black guy wandering through the crowd?

While you spent your Sunday trying to teach your cat to go to the bathroom on a human toilet, a group of brave, freedom-loving Americans gathered in New York City to express their extreme disapproval with the Park 51 project, an al-Qaeda plot to build a community center featuring a swimming pool and auditorium on the very site where a Burlington Coat Factory once stood.

As you can see in the video above, at some point during the rally, a dark-skinned man wearing an Under Armor skullcap and what looks like a necklace with a Puerto Rican flag walked through the anti-”Mosque” crowd. The crowd, astutely recognizing that he was on his way to build the mosque, began to chant “NO MOSQUE HERE” at him. In the video, someone says, “run away, coward.” The man turns around, perturbed. “Y’all motherfuckers don’t know my opinion about shit,” he says. Au contraire, my friend: You are a black man wearing a skullcap, after all! You are definitely a pro-Mosque, anti-freedom Jihadist! Why, aren’t you, in fact… Osama Bin Laden??

No, actually, according to the guy who uploaded the video to YouTube, the skullcap-wearing gentleman’s name is Kenny and he’s “a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero.” Kenny is also—as he points out several times in the video—not a Muslim. (No word on whether or not he voted for Obama, as one of the very reasonable and intelligent-sounding anti-”Mosque” protestors speculates.) But I’ll bet you Kenny has been totally convinced about the truth of the Burlington Coat Factory Desecration Community Center. Who wouldn’t be?

recently, i gave up posting on pickled politics, partly because of the level of personal animosity i was facing, but mostly just in frustration at my apparent inability to get my point across. now, i suppose i have nobody very much to blame for that apart from myself, but i’ve never felt that was a problem before now. now, i think i’m starting to work out what it is that is bothering me; certainly, it’s not about the denizens of one blog, or even the blogosphere, or even the media. it’s not any one set of views, not any one person, but a set of trends, a collective movement i sense in wider society.

one of the things i like about the spittoon and my co-contributors is that they take a robust approach towards the cosy relationship between the left and the various apologists for, supporters of and partisans of islamist extremism. they take, of course, an equally dim view of other forms of clerical fascism, whether it be jewish, christian, or hindu, although, of course, we are often excoriated for not writing sufficiently on these subjects. and why is that? well, the answer that “they’re not as big a problem” simply won’t do. clearly, the activities of the likes of rss/shiv sena in india, or hardcore fundamentalists in the american south ultimately affect all of us. for me personally, the behaviour of both the extreme west bank settlers and that of rejectionist ultra-orthodoxy evokes both profound heartache and deep anger – just as the “as-a-jew” clique that only appear as jews in order to display their preening self-importance whenever an opportunity to attack israel arises. however, i would nonetheless argue that, from the perspective of wider UK society, these concerns are less immediate, in that these groups have no meaningful accommodation with either our government or the UK media, however influential they may be in the communities they come from. what bothers me, really, is what the effects of ongoing and intensifying fundamentalism on me, my family and community and wider society – in this, locally speaking, islamists are in the vanguard, as the leading proponents and practitioners of violence against my community specifically and, generally, against UK civil society.

the question inevitably arises – who’s really worse? well, i think i would on balance come down in favour of the idea that wherever a particular group becomes influential and the closer they come to the levers of power, the more of a problem they are in a particular country. thus, in the UK, the utterly misguided, racism-of-lower-expectations the-west-is-ultimately-responsible-for-everything-bad-y’know attitude has allowed the entryism of islamist organisations and sympathisers everywhere from the police to government to the left-wing media. but would it be any different anywhere else? i expect not – militant fundamentalist christians are busily inching closer to the levers of power in washington, india has had already had one bjp government and i think we’re all aware of the subversion of mainstream democracy and the processes of civil society in israel by the religious parties and the settler lobby. we’ve got a lot of muslim fundamentalists here in the UK and, in a profound act of ignorance and credulity, we’ve allowed islamic education to be systematically outsourced to salafi and wahhabi dawa organisations for a generation, with entirely predictable results – i think we can say the same of many european countries, although i would fall well short of the apocalyptic and hysterical “eurabia” scenario – in fact, i’d be more worried personally about the behaviour of the catholic party in poland led by an anti-semitic priest and any prospective alliance of a russian political party with the orthodox church – not trend anyone jewish can afford to ignore.

of course, in europe particularly, this isn’t the first time we’ve been here. there was of course an “enlightenment”, which consisted in large part of reaction against the authoritarianism of various forms of christianity, whether by trying to eliminate it altogether and replace it with a sort of ersatz state paganism, as in france, or whether to regulate it as a sort of national industry, as in germany and scandinavia, or whether to simply satirise and philosophise it into a manageable social pressure and community support lobby, as in britain. the enlightenment taught that religion was nothing but a corrupt power structure which only the mad, the bad and the deluded would indulge. as we also know, removing religion simply forced the mad, the bad and the deluded to find other channels for their unpleasant attitudes and activities. we still see this outdated and reductionist position being reinvented for modern times using all the tools of modern cultural influence, from popular science to childrens’ books to comedy. religious people are portrayed as knaves or fools. there appears to be no middle ground, no compromise possible – religion must be rooted out, cleansed and exterminated.

of course, we’ve been there before too – modern fundamentalism, as karen armstrong (before she started to become part of the problem by sucking up to the goons at MPAC-UK) pointed out in her still masterful study of fundamentalism “the battle for G!D” evolved largely as a reaction against the enforced, clumsy and often brutal imposition of modernity on societies all around the world. the fundamentalisms we have today have reached their current forms because of the political, technological and social realities of the societies in which they evolved. their priorities and obsessions are driven by the battles they originally fought, against pluralism, liberalisation of dress, behaviour, increased social equality (or inequality), against practically irreversible geopolitical realities, against the aftereffects of wars and economic dislocation. those who give aid and comfort to fundamentalists are inevitably picking and choosing where they have shared priorities and obsessions – anti-imperialism, anti-abortion, anti-homosexuality, anti-israel, social breakdown, the emancipation of women, the legacy of slavery – but they are always at odds with fundamental features of the societies they criticise.

what i see developing, however, is a sort of multi-lateral polarisation in which the first casualty is moderation, the second is tolerance and the third is social consensus. the effects of this, however, touch all of us, but the effects are peculiarly corrosive on those of us who are able to combine amd integrate reason and religion and deal with the subtleties of creation, revelation and evolution. we are frequently at odds with obscurantists and bigots within our faith, but we are now fighting a rearguard defence against anti-religious forces, without any letup in the attack on reasonableness, complexity and dialogue that continues from reactionary fanatics. both sides, naturally, accuse us of giving aid and comfort to the other in its mission to destroy them – if we’re not with them, we’re against them – and no prisoners will be taken.

so, on one hand, we have the forces of militant anti-religion mounting attacks on everything from headgear to faith schools, on the other we have the walls of the ghetto being built anew, only with gun-ports this time. we can also see the social contract of the enlightenment renewed; previously, the deal was “give up your difference and you’ll get rights as a citizen” – this time, it’s “you’ve abused your rights as a citizen, we can no longer tolerate your differences”. the behaviour of religious fanatics, in their quest to dominate their own communities, has destroyed the delicate balance which allowed religion to be an integrated part of civil society. naturally, comes the response: they want all or nothing? fine – let them have nothing. but what of those of us who always wanted to co-exist? who prize our cultural and spiritual distincitiveness? oh no, distinctiveness is still allowed – but religion will no longer be a valid reason for it. diversity in sexuality, gender, disability, intelligence, talent, wealth – all these are permitted, but not religion. we are offered the choice – everything or nothing. well, we want neither.

i refuse to hide in the ghetto. i contribute to this society. i work. i pay my taxes. i don’t walk about naked, nor do i hide my face from the world. i will not assimilate, nor will i act as if i am living in another country or another century. i refuse to eat foods that are forbidden to me and i refuse to forbid those foods to others who may want them. i refuse to give up the sabbath, the festivals, the Torah and my other sacred texts – and i refuse to impose my vision of them on those who do not share my perspective. if i am attacked, i will defend myself. if i am insulted, i will respond in kind. i am not looking for a fight, but i will not shrink from one. i will not allow others to define what i am. the search for social consensus has been a long and painful one – and now it has been destroyed again, by the hubris and arrogance of religious and anti-religious fanatics. i do not know if we can put the pieces back together again, but there has to be a basis for us to live together – both enforced segregation and enforced assimilation are fascistic responses.

judaism has always been not so much a culture or a religion as it has been a 3000+ year-old argument. there is nothing so boring as loads of people violently agreeing with each other – except perhaps two groups of people refusing to concede anything that the other is saying has any value or validity. the counter-enlightenment is in full swing, without any sign that it has learnt anything from the enlightenment.

That was a party political broadcast brought to you by Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

Abu Faris has dismantled Naik’s spurious theology quite succinctly:

[Zakir Naik] is a past master of making false analogies. One of my favourites concerns his defence of state intolerance of non-Muslim faith communities in Muslim-majority countries. It runs like this:

(1) If you were running a school then you would not appoint a maths teacher who believed 2 + 2 = 5, because this is clearly not true.

(2) All other religions are false – that is, by false analogy, they are like the bad maths teacher who thinks and teaches that 2 + 2 = 5

(3) Only Islam is true – that is, by false analogy, it is like the good maths teacher who thinks and teaches the truth, that is that 2 + 2 = 4.

(4) So, in false conclusion, just as the school would be within its rights only to appoint the maths teacher who knows and teaches the truth, so the Muslim state is correct to ban or otherwise restrict the preaching and activities of faiths and their believers other than the Islamic faith – as all other faiths are false and only Islam is true.

Fascist nonsense, of course – and a measure of the disgusting sophistry and ignorance of even the basics of reasoning at the heart of so much Islamist “scholarship”.

As to be expected, Inayat Bunglawala, the Muslim Council of Britain, Islamophobia-Watch and MPACuk rush to Naik’s defence so that he may preach this cultural illiteracy and religious supremacism and pass it off as mainstream Islam to people living in Britain’s multicultural society.

A hereditary head of state, as Thomas Paine so crisply phrased it, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary physician or a hereditary astronomer. To this innate absurdity, Prince Charles manages to bring fatuities that are entirely his own. And, as he paged his way through his dreary wad of babble, there must have been some wolfish smiles among his Muslim audience. I quote from a recent document published by the Islamic Forum of Europe, a group dedicated to the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate and the imposition of sharia, which has been very active in London mosques and in the infiltration of local political parties. “The primary work” in the establishment of a future Muslim empire, it announces, “is in Europe, because it is this continent, despite all the furore about its achievements, which has a moral and spiritual vacuum.”

Prince Charles’ is whistling in the dark if he thinks his half-baked misapprehension of “traditionalism” is ever going to usher in a new Golden Age. This is a period in the future when it is hoped Europe’s ‘spiritual crisis’ will be reversed by the re-installation of a high-caste kshatriya super-nobility whose glory will be attended to by a devoted clerical class of brahman spiritual elite, a lá the ‘Perennialist’ fantasies of the protofascist, Julius Evola. But the problem boils down to the fact that Charles has no inkling, or is wilfully ignorant, of the difference between a sheikh of the Shadhiliyyah Darqawi order and an oily, on-the-make Jamaat-e-Islami rabble rouser.

Hitchens is right. The type of muslim supporter Charles’ attracts nowadays is not so much “spiritual elite” as “clerical fascist”. Inayat Bunglawala for example:

The Prince does come in for a fair amount of criticism, but as far as work with faith communities goes, he has done sterling work over many years and is well respected in return and rightly so.

The “sterling work” by Prince Charles which Bunglawala is gushing about is this kind of thing. In other words, his work with “faith communities” is, amongst other things, granting his royal endorsement to the the IFE and the Jamaat-e-Islam embedded in the East London Mosque.

Ansar Ahmed Ullah, another local opponent of the IFE, says that local people are frustrated with the way in which the white political establishment has endorsed and legitimised a mosque whose true nature they do not appear to understand. “We have told them many times about these people,” he says. “But you still get people like Boris Johnson, government ministers and Prince Charles going down there. People see that, and it gives them credibility.”

a reptilian overlord yesterday

anyway, we’ve had boobquake, gayquake and immorality-inspired flooding so, predictably, our new icelandic friend eyjafjallajökull has been pressed into surface for this purpose, proving variously that:

1. we should never have turned on that large hadron collider

2. iceland is being too tolerant of neo-paganism and europe of gay rights

3. G!D Disapproves of “obamacare”

4. people are having a go at the pope

5. aliens (or satan) are doing space paintings with ufos

6. G!D Disapproves of the british advertising standards authority ruling that the israeli tourist board can’t show the western wall as part of israel, because they’ve never taken the trouble to annex the Temple mount.

and my personal favourite:

7. the iron core engine of the planet is today becoming reenergized by the huge magnetic force field of the incoming twin binary dark star to our solar system (called “nibiru” in ancient sumer, or “nemesis the destroyer”)

personally, my money’s on deepak chopra’s laxatives.