[Dark_crow]

I ran across this article where Professor Richard Dawkins said:

Political Mavens » IRANIAN MINA AHADI WINS “SECULARIST OF THE YEAR”

“I have long felt that the key to solving the worldwide menace of Islamic terrorism and oppression would eventually be the awakening of women, and Mina Ahadi is a charismatic leader working to that end. The brutal suppression of the rights of women in many countries throughout the Islamic world is an obvious outrage. Slightly less obvious, but just as outrageous, is the supine willingness of western liberals to go along with it. It is worse than supine, it is patronising and condescending. Wife-beating is part of ‘their’ culture. Who are we to condemn their traditions? A religion so insecure as to mandate the death penalty for apostasy is not to be trifled with, and ex-Muslims who stand up and fight deserve our huge admiration and gratitude for their courage. Right out in front of this honourable band is Mina Ahadi. I salute her and congratulate her on this well-deserved award as Secularist of the Year.”

Although the story is about Mina Ahadi, a courageous Iranian dissident who has struggled mightily for the rights of women since she was 16, the propositions I highlighted in bold are the points I wanted some input on. What are your thoughts about them?

[kp2171]

Not an answer to your question, but my wife and I just read khaled hosseini's The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns... interesting, well written, historical fiction pieces that will give you some perspective about afghan society and the violence and struggles for those within it. If you haven't read them, its worth the time.

Always interesting to learn about history when its wrapped around decent writing.

[labman]

Before 911, the feminists were screaming about doing something about the Taliban. Perhaps I didn't follow the news carefully enough to catch their acclaim for George Bush.

[Choux]

I have been saying that the only way for Islam to get out of the Seventh Century is for women to take action. I said this on the other Site since 2002!!

Power structures don't give away their power!! People have to fight to get their rights and to end oppression. Case in point is America. We fought for the rights of African-Americans in the 1960's and then for women's rights.

FREEDOM FOR *ALL* IS THE FIGHT OF **LIBERALS**.

FASCISTS DO NOT STAND FOR HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL!! THEY STAND FOR AUTHORITARIAN RULE AND RULERS WHO ARE SUPPORTED BY THE MILITARY AND LARGE CORPORATIONS.

[excon]

Wife-beating is part of 'their' culture.

Hello DC:

Yeah - those wife beaters! Let's bomb 'em!

excon

[Dark_crow]

I have been saying that the only way for Islam to get out of the Seventh Century is for women to take action. I said this on the other Site since 2002!!!

Power structures don't give away their power!!! People have to fight to get their rights and to end oppression. Case in point is America. We fought for the rights of African-Americans in the 1960's and then for women's rights.

FREEDOM FOR *ALL* IS THE FIGHT OF **LIBERALS**.

FASCISTS DO NOT STAND FOR HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL!!! THEY STAND FOR AUTHORITARIAN RULE AND RULERS WHO ARE SUPPORTED BY THE MILITARY AND LARGE CORPORATIONS.

I agree, you have been saying that since 2002; I was just pointing out a lady that was doing something about it.

I agree too that people have to fight for their rights.

I agree with you about Liberals.

I agree with you about Fascist; however, there is no government that is not supported by big business…economically it is impossible.

[Choux]

In America, Bush the Fascist did nothing when Corporations exported middle class jobs to India and other foreign countries. What a travesty when government, Corporations and right wing religions conspire and condone the transferring of middle class jobs out of America.

That is pure Fascism, PURE. War on the middle class, as it were, by a government set up *OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE*.

[Dark_crow]

In America, Bush the Fascist did nothing when Corporations exported middle class jobs to India and other foreign countries. What a travesty when government, Corporations and right wing religions conspire and condone the transferring of middle class jobs out of America.

That is pure Fascism, PURE. War on the middle class, as it were, by a government set up *OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE*.

My Dearest sweet cheeks:) …it would have been Fascist to not allow free trade. And it is not middle-class jobs that are going, but rather jobs that put people below the poverty level, for the most part. And our growing economy absorbed them into the services industry at the same low level earnings.

[Choux]

You are lying, middle class jobs are going. I'm not saying that lower paying jobs aren't going, too.

I'm not interested in you demeaning me with cutsie names.

[nicespringgirl]

I am going to open an martial arts school at their place... women need to fight back, I am willing to teach them hand by hand.
Or should I import hand guns to the women there?
Anyway... I might be able to start a business there.;)

[BABRAM]

I am going to open an martial arts school at their place...women need to fight back, I am willing to teach them hand by hand.
Or should I import hand guns to the women there?
Anyway...I might be able to start a business there.;)

May I ask your discipline art(s)? I'm guessing Tai-Chi and Wing Chun.


Bobby

[tomder55]

DC Two things to support this view

David Horowitz has a book that explores the peculiar alliance

'Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left '

He hit on the key in an interview with FrontPage Magazine.

The second conclusion I come to is that the driving force of this leftism is a nihilistic assault on America rather than a positive agenda of socialist construction as was evident in the past. There is no unifying agenda or theme that solidifies the current leftist movement, a fact that often causes people on the left to claim that there is no left, absurd as that may sound. What actually unifies them is their hatred for the United States as it exists in the present. It is much like the election: they don't much like Kerry, but they passionately want to get rid of Bush. In the same way, they may not like the Islamic fascists (although many of them actually do), but they passionately want to get rid of the corporations whom they see as predators but who in fact organize what is the most prosperous, the most democratic, the most egalitarian societies that have ever existed.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={8511DC3A-2E48-44BA-9B51-BD4C5F93608C}

Read this article by Amir Teheri about a conference recently held in Tehran ;partly sponsored by Hugo Chavez.

'CHE LIKE CHAMRAN' IS A PARADOX
by Amir Taheri
Gulf News
October 17, 2007
In his latest video-taped message, Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden tried to lay the foundations for an alliance between radical Islamism and Western leftist "progressisim".

He quoted with admiration a number of American and European leftists, including Noam Chomsky, the polemicist--linguist who believes that the United States is a "rogue state" and the source of all evil on earth.

The dream of an Islamist-Marxist alliance, however, is not confined to Bin Laden and Al Qaida. It also plays a part in the overall strategy of Iran.

It is in the name of "a global progressist front", Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez are sponsoring a number of projects to underline "the ideological kinship of the left and revolutionary Islam".

The theme, hammered in by Ahmadinejad during his recent visit to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, was the inspiration for a four-day seminar organised by his supporters at Tehran University last week. With the blessings of Chavez, who partly financed the event, and Ahmadinejad the hope was that the conference would produce a synthesis of Marxist and Khomeinist ideologies and highlight what the Iranian leader has labelled "the divine aspect of revolutionary war".

The conference was given the title of "Che Like Chamran", a play on words designed to emphasise "the common goals" of Marxism and Islamism.

Defence minister

Mustapha Chamran was a Khomeinist militant of Iranian origin who lived in California and became a US citizen in the 1960s before travelling to Lebanon where he founded the Shiite Amal militia. He entered Iran in 1979 and helped the mullahs seize power. In 1981, Khomeini appointed him defence minister. Chamran was killed in a car crash a few months later.

The Tehran conference was organised to honour Chamran on the 26th anniversary of his death, which coincided with the 40th anniversary of the death of the Cuban-Argentine guerrilla icon Guevara.

The conference had three guests of honour. One was Mahdi Chamran, a brother of the late Mustapha and an associate of Ahmadinejad. The two others were Guevara's children, daughter Aleida and son Camilo. Aleida, a middle-aged paediatrician who lives in Havana, Cuba, was wearing the mandatory Khomeinist hijab while her brother had grown designer stubble to please the hosts.

Also in attendance were an array of ageing European and Latin American "Guevarista" and cadres from the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah.

Initially, the conference was all plain sailing as participants agreed that the sole source of evil in the world was the US and its "earth-devouring ambitions."

The Khomeinists were pleased to hear their European and Latin American guests denounce "America's criminal plans to attack the Islamic revolution", and insist that Iran had every right to develop its nuclear capabilities. The ageing Guevarista were equally pleased as their Khomeinist hosts praised the dead T-shirt poster image boy as "a fighter for universal justice".

Mahdi Chamran claimed that Ahmadinejad, Chavez, and "the leaders of the revolution in Nicaragua and Bolivia" belong to the same family of "strugglers for universal justice".

Another Khomeinist speaker Mortaza Firuzabadi boasted that the banner of fighting America "everywhere and all the time" had now passed to Islamists.

"Our duty is to the whole of humanity," he said. "We seek unity with revolutionary movements everywhere. This is why we have invited the children of Che Guevara."

Claiming that the Khomeinists will win because they do not fear death while "Americans are scared of dying", Firuzabadi invited all anti-American forces to accept the leadership of Ahmadinejad's revolutionary regime.

Things went pear-shape when one of the keynote speakers Hajj Saeed Qassemi, whose title is "Coordinator of the Association of Volunteers for Suicide-Martyrdom," took the podium.

He praised the late "Che" as "a true revolutionary who made the American Great Satan tremble". Qassemi went on to claim he was in a position to reveal that the late Guevara had been "a truly religious man who believed in God and hated Communism and the Soviet Union".

"Today, Communism has been consigned to the garbage can of history as foreseen by Imam Khomeini," Qassemi said. "Thus progressists everywhere must accept the leadership of our religious, pro-justice movement."

He also claimed that the Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega had told his group during a visit to Tehran that the reason for the Sandinista's electoral defeats a decade ago had been their "failure to understand the importance of religion".

Waving a Persian-language book as "proof", Qassemi claimed that his assertion of Guevara's "deep religious beliefs" was based on the late Cuban guerrilla leader's writings.

Demanding the right to respond, Aleida Guevara, sitting at the podium told the conference that Qassemi's claim might be based on a wrong translation of her father's writings.

"My father never mentioned God," she said as the hall sighed in chagrined disbelief. "He never met God."

The remarks caused a commotion amid which Aleida and her brother were whisked away, led into a car and driven to their hotel under escort.

Qassemi returned to the podium to unleash an unscripted attack on "Godless Communists". He called on "the left in Latin America and elsewhere" to clarify its position.

He claimed that Guevara and his "Supreme Guide Fidel Castro" had decided to hide their religious beliefs in order to secure Soviet support.

"Both were men of God and never believed socialism or communism," Qassemi asserted. (The practice of hiding one's religious belief to achieve security or desperately needed help is known as taqiyah and recognised in Shiite Islam as legitimate.)

A few hours after the incident, the Guevara siblings attended another meeting, this time organised at Amir-Kabir University by a group called The Mobilisation of the Downtrodden Militia. Camilo Guevara confirmed his sister's earlier remarks but insisted that "progressists everywhere" focus on fighting America rather than probing each other's personal beliefs.

Forgot the Guevaras

By the end of the day, the two Guevaras had become non-persons. The state-controlled media that had given them VIP billing, suddenly forgot their existence. The anniversary of Guevara's death was mentioned in passing with no reference to his Marxism.

While all non-Khomeinist ideologies are banned in Iran, two are specifically punishable by imprisonment or death: socialism and liberal democracy.

The two Guevaras, who left Iran in some haste, managed to anger some Iranian progressists. The siblings refused to mention the mass arrest of workers' leaders throughout Iran in the past few months or condemn the current wave of repression against trade unions, women's organisations, teachers, and farm workers.

"These people don't give a damn about the toiling masses," says Parviz Jamshidi, a lawyer for imprisoned trade unionists. "To them workers represent nothing but an abstraction, an excuse for appearing left and chic. They don't see that the Khomeinist regime is at war against the poorest sections of our society."

Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.

'CHE LIKE CHAMRAN' IS A PARADOX - Amir Taheri - Benador Associates

Evidently Aleida Guevara went to the conference to complain about the distortion of his murderous father's ideology. He misses the point . There is no commonality between the ideologies ,but they share a common enemy .So it doesn't matter that the Islamo-fascists would be the first to stone them for their core beliefs ;it only matters that they hate the US.

[Dark_crow]

DC Two things to support this view

David Horowitz has a book that explores the peculiar alliance

'Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left '

He hit on the key in an interview with FrontPage Magazine.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={8511DC3A-2E48-44BA-9B51-BD4C5F93608C}

Read this article by Amir Teheri about a conference recently held in Tehran ;partly sponsored by Hugo Chavez.

'CHE LIKE CHAMRAN' IS A PARADOX - Amir Taheri - Benador Associates

Evidently Aleida Guevara went to the conference to complain about the distortion of his murderous father's ideology. He misses the point . There is no commonality between the ideologies ,but they share a common enemy .So it doesn't matter that the Islamo-fascists would be the first to stone them for their core beliefs ;it only matters that they hate the US.

There is a great deal of difference between the ”Western Liberal” and the “Left.” The distinction I draw, or to phrase it differently, the inference I draw is that the western liberal's agree with the foreign policy of Carter and Clinton, as opposed to Reagan and Bush. The western liberal is not anti-Capitalist or anti-America.

What I do not understand is why. The truth of the matter is that war against international terrorism began with Reagan when he sent American bombers against Libya because of the attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub. Terrorism started in the Carter years during 1979 with the kidnapping of our embassy personnel in Iran.

“Iranians “criminals and kidnappers,” he sent out the warning, “the Iranians should be prepared that this country will take whatever action is appropriate.” Ronald Reagan's tough talk succeeded where Carter's reliance on persuasion failed.”

Clinton came along, cut eight divisions and reduced intelligence drastically; spending the money saved on social programs…remembrances of Rome?


On February 26, 1993, terrorist exploded a bomb with the intent of bringing “Tower One of the World Trade Center” down on nearly 100,000 people.

Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for that bomb, fled to Iraq where he was given sanctuary. It was not until Bush came along that anything was done about it.

“There was no significant counteroffensive against terror during the entire eight-year term because Clinton wanted it that way. Bill Clinton chose to avoid the political risks of averting Middle Eastern terror. Consequently, he left the whole population at risk. National security suffered for the sake of his presidential legacy. During his term as leader of the free world, he gladly passed the responsibility of Iraq over to the UN, resigned our country to “co-existing” with terrorism, and even strove to cover up the full-scale assault underway by Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. The full story has yet to be told concerning the Oklahoma City bombing and Flight TWA 800.”

Busch - 2004, July 13

[nicespringgirl]

May I ask your discipline art(s)? I'm guessing Tai-Chi and Wing Chun.


Bobby

Shao lin Sword.

Babram, you are so cool.;)

[ETWolverine]

NSG,

What art do you practice?

I studied the Shoulin-style animal forms, tai chi chuan, Aikido, escrima, tuite jutsu (the Okinawan equivalent of Chin Na), Shotokan Karate Do, and Ryukyu Kempo Karate Jutsu. Also a bit of Brazilian Jujitsu. My main style is an eclectic style called Tora Dojo Karate, which was developed by Grand Master Harvey Sober of New York. It has Chinese, Okinawan and Japanese elements. I'm a bit of a jack of all trades, and a master of none. Right now I'm concentrating on the tuite jutsu pressure point and joint manipulation techniques... the one- two- and three-strike knockouts. Very cool stuff.

Elliot

[speechlesstx]

In America, Bush the Fascist did nothing when Corporations exported middle class jobs to India and other foreign countries. What a travesty when government, Corporations and right wing religions conspire and condone the transferring of middle class jobs out of America.

That is pure Fascism, PURE. War on the middle class, as it were, by a government set up *OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE*.

That's perfect, Choux, calling us fascists while advocating fascism. :D

Fascism
a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

[Dark_crow]

That's perfect, Choux, calling us fascists while advocating fascism. :D

Good luck, she missed it when I pointed it out.:rolleyes:

[speechlesstx]

Funny you should mention wife-beating - OK, so not really funny at all. I heard this reported today:

Move over, Dr. Phil, there's a new relationship expert in town.

He's Saudi author and cleric, "Dr." Muhammad Al-'Arifi, who in a remarkable segment broadcast on Saudi and Kuwaiti television in September, counseled young Muslim men on how to treat their wives.

"Admonish them – once, twice, three times, four times, ten times," he advised. "If this doesn't help, refuse to share their beds."

And if that doesn't work?

"Beat them," one of his three young advisees responded.

"That's right," Al-'Arifi said.

Click here to view the segment at MEMRITV.org

He goes on to calmly explain to the young men that hitting their future wives in the face is a no-no.

"Beating in the face is forbidden, even when it comes to animals," he explained. "Even if you want your camel or donkey to start walking, you are not allowed to beat it in the face. If this is true for animals, it is all the more true when it comes to humans. So beatings should be light and not in the face."

His final words of wisdom?

"Woman, it has gone too far. I can't bear it anymore," he tells the men to tell their wives. "If he beats her, the beatings must be light and must not make her face ugly.

"He must beat her where it will not leave marks. He should not beat her on the hand... He should beat her in some places where it will not cause any damage. He should not beat her like he would beat an animal or a child -- slapping them right and left.

"Unfortunately, many husbands beat their wives only when they get mad, and when they start beating, it as if they are punching a wall – they beat with their hands, right and left, and sometimes use their feet. Brother, it is a human being you are beating. This is forbidden. He must not do this."

Take that, Match.com!

I'm still wondering where all the feminists are on issues like this. No wait, seems a certain First Lady has been receiving all sorts of praise from journalists across the spectrum for her efforts in reaching out to Islamic women.

[firmbeliever]

As a muslim woman I think I am fairly educated and a lot of muslim women I know are well educated and so are their husbands.

Wife beating is not an Islamic culture, it comes from tribalism, which has been passed down and that the men think it is necessary to beat their women.

Women are to be respected,husbands and wives are to remind each other of their religious duties and help each other follow the right path.

If Islam is such a wife beating religion, I am not sure what all the women accepting Islam from the West are really seeing in Islam.And these women I am talking about are not illiterate,dumb women,but people with degrees and honours.They were independent and making their own decisions and they choose to follow Islam and even wear the hijab/niqab.

What a shock!Why would they accept if Islam is so bad to its women.

And I would think the people on this thread were a bit more educated than most and not lump all muslim men and women in the same group "wife beaters" and "oppressed" and "supressed"!

[speechlesstx]

What a shock!Why would they accept if Islam is so bad to its women.

And I would think the people on this thread were a bit more educated than most and not lump all muslim men and women in the same group "wife beaters" and "oppressed" and "supressed"!

Firm, pardon my mumbling nonsense below, I tried to backspace and my computer thought I was done :)

I think most of us here are smart enough to know Islam is not "a wife beating religion." Unfortunately, when you get videos like the one by "Dr." Muhammad Al-'Arifi it looks really bad...