Listen, My Children...

Peaceful...

SOS website is now here.

Swedish Reform

Just so long as they clarify it, so that it's forced arranged marriage they're opposed to and not arranged marriage in general (as in the form many here enter into, where the parents say, "here's a nice girl, we'd like you to meet her and see if you'll want to marry her"), I'll get on board with this platform.

I'll kill you if you call me violent again!

I know everyone's said it before, but:

-There are violent protests when the pope quotes someone who called Muslims violent.

-We're regularly told we shouldn't characterize even a minority group within Islam as violent, lest that incite them to justifiably kill us all.

....does nobody see the irony in this? 

Wisdom on "Boutique Multiculturalism"

Jeff Goldstein discusses the difficulty people might have reconciling their commitment to tolerance with intolerable cultural practices.  Good stuff.

The Appeal of the West

So saith a cleric in the Rahman case:

"If he is allowed to live in the West, then others will claim to be Christian so they can, too," he said. "We must set an example. ... He must be hanged."

Huh -- living in the West is so appealing that people will deny their religion in order to get that privilege.  So the solution?  Kill them all!  Not, say, work to make staying in-country more appealing or anything...

Here's to the Guardian

I like the way the Guardian is handling it -- rather than saying, like CNN, "We're not showing you what all the fuss is about because we don't want to offend Muslims," they say where you can find the cartoons and provide you with a link.

On the other hand, their idea of "only" is a bit different from mine -- when they say,

In Britain, a poll of Muslims last night found evidence of growing alienation, with four in 10 calling for religious sharia law to be imposed in parts of the UK with a mainly Muslim population. The law specifies stonings and amputations as punishments, and involves religious police bringing suspects before courts.

One in five also expressed some sympathy with the 'feelings and motives' of the July 7 bombers. However the survey for the Sunday Telegraph found 91 per cent still felt loyal to Britain and only one per cent actually backed the London bomb attacks.

I hear "only one per cent" and I realize that that's over 15,000 people living in England who cheered on those attacks.  Sounds a bit like the kind of people to make me totally terrified....

Different Fundamentals

Power Line says it better than I have:

Freedom of speech is a form of terrorism. This is a point of view that makes compromise difficult.

Much more succinctly put than my long-winded way of saying that it's rather impossible to have a fruitful discussion on anything (e.g.: abortion) if you have different ground rules, different fundamental beliefs, or a different understanding of what exactly it is you're talking about.

Offence to religion

OxBlog has some comments on why the various things that the west considers awful (blowing up wedding parties, prison abuse, and so forth) don't tend to raise more than a few complaints in the Muslim world, but things we see all the time (newspaper cartoons offensive to, making fun of, or just plain depicting religion or religious figures) cause calls for beheading on the streets of London and a 500-kg of gold reward for anyone who will kill the man who drew this. 

Then again, it's not only Muslims who think pictures are a good reason for suing someone or trying to kill him...

Calendrically Challenged

Here's a new one:

The West's publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over Hamas' win in the Palestinian elections, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tuesday.

The Last Laugh

Think you can't make Muslim jokes anymore?  You're not the only one.