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Shariah High Court Appoints First Women Judges In Malaysia

By on June 30, 2016 in Loon-at-large

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When most think of Shariah they have a simplistic understanding of it as a misogynistic law system that oppresses women and minorities. Little do they know of the egalitarian and compassionate spirit that is supposed to underpin its logic. It looks like in Malaysia strides are being made to resurrect that original ethos.

via. The Malay Mail Online

SHAH ALAM, June 27 — Two women judges from Selangor have been appointed to the Shariah High Court, a first in Malaysia, the Star Online reported

Noor Huda Roslan, 40, and Nenney Shuhaidah Shamsuddin, 41, received their appointment letters from the Sultan of Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah during a ceremony at the Istana Bukit Kayangan.

According to the news portal, the Shariah chief judge Datuk Dr Mohd Na’im Mokhtar said the appointments showed the Sultan’s concern about Shariah Court matters.

Dr Mohd Na’im added that the appointments had nothing to do with gender, and the two women were qualified for the job.

Seven other women were made Shariah Lower Court judges.

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    • Petrichor1986

      Women have always held authoritative positions in Islamic societies since the time of prophet’s wife Aisha.

    • Omar_The_Egyptian

      Excellent

    • GaribaldiOfLoonwatch

      Yes, post-colonialism, there’s no doubt Muslim female judges are in most, if not all Islamic countries (I believe the exceptions are Saudi Arabia and Iran). To me it is interesting that even over a thousand years ago there were female Muslim judges.

  • mindy1

    Good going ladies, I wish them luck

What Role Did FBI Play In Radicalizing Omar Mateen?

By on June 20, 2016 in Loon at large

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Today it was revealed that the FBI is censoring parts of Omar Mateen’s 911 call proclaiming “allegiance” to the Islamic State which are sure to feed conspiracy theories. This is on top of an Alternet expose by Max Blumlenthal and Sarah Lazare about FBI efforts to lure Mateen into a terrorist plot and questions of whether or not it backfired by contributing to Mateen’s “lethal mindset.”

Via. Alternet

Before Omar Mateen gunned down 49 patrons of the LGBTQ Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, the FBI attempted to induce him to participate in a terror plot. Sheriff Ken Mascara of Florida’s St. Lucie County told the Vero Beach Press Journal that after Mateen threatened a courthouse deputy in 2013 by claiming he could order Al Qaeda operatives to kill his family, the FBI dispatched an informant to “lure Omar into some kind of act and Omar did not bite.”

While self-styled terror experts and former counter-terror officials have criticized the FBI for failing to stop Mateen before he committed a massacre, the new revelation raises the question of whether the FBI played a role in pushing Mateen towards an act of lethal violence.

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    • Awesome

      Given the FBI’s track record of entrapment as well as the oddities with regards to Omar Mateen and this latest massacre, it seems very likely it was a setup of some sort.

    • AJ

      Nothing new about a terror plot in USA and a FBI patsy….

    • mindy1

      Too bad you can’t screen for nuttiness like you can other conditions…

    • Joey Sanders

      I remember, a few years back, Loonwatch doing a story about some guy who was saying all these crazy things in a mosque and then mosque officials reported him to the FBI. It turned out the guy was an informant.

      Since 9/11, the FBI has been trying to create terrorists and then catch them. Then they go on TV and state they foiled a plot to kill Americans. Ultimately, they wind up getting more funding from Congress to stop terrorism. It’s all about the Benjamins.

      If Mateen was as mentally unstable as his friends and ex-wife says he was, this was not the kind of person to rile up. But, of course, no one in our government will be held responsible for this.

Robert Kinder Farris Charged With Hate Crime After Threatening Seattle Mosque

By on June 17, 2016 in Loon-at-large

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By Caitlin Moran, via. The Seattle Times

The King County prosecutor has filed a hate-crime charge against Robert Kinder Farris, the Seattle man accused of threatening the Idris Mosque near Northgate earlier this week.

Farris, 37, was charged with one count of malicious harassment, Washington state’s hate-crime statute, and will be arraigned June 30. The felony is punishable by up to five years in prison.

He was arrested Tuesday afternoon at his Greenwood apartment after a brief standoff with police and remains in jail on $2 million bail.

According to charging documents, Farris began posting threatening comments about Muslims on his Facebook account Sunday and continued doing so until his arrest. One of his posts included a photo of the Idris Mosque in North Seattle from Google Street View with the comment, “Idriss [sic] Mosque in Seattle, too many targets to count.” He also vowed to “take revenge” against Muslims, an apparent reference to the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday.

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    • Friend of Bosnia

      Neither do I but what we can be 100% sure of is that any Muslim who commits an act of violence, be it justified or not (I mean self-defense), be it motivated by whatever, will have all of Islam and all Muslims collectively blamed and held guilty by association. It’s a foregone conclusion that they (and all other Muslims with them) will get the book thrown at them in the bargain. That’s the world and the interesting times we are condemned to live in. The same political climate of Germany in the 1930s and of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Justified or not? Well, mostly I think not, but most people are such lazy thinkers and simpletons … Justice and fairness? Only in Heaven (or on Judgment Day)…

    • Friend of Bosnia

      Of course they don’t. Now, since the islamophobes, fascists and Nazis always collectively blame Islam and the Muslims every single time a Muslim commits an act of violence I will turn the tables on them. Since I know that about 50% of the population have anti-Muslim feelings, I will hold them all – and all other people with Nazi-like ideas too – collectively guilty for all and any acts of violence committed against Muslims, no matter whether rightful or not. And I mean all. All who are alive today, all who have already died, all who will yet be born. They all have blood on their hands. They all have the blood of the 100.000 victims of the Bosnian War of Independence, the victims of the Rwandan Genocide, of the anti-Muslim pogroms in Burma, of Anders Behring Breivik’s victims, of Jo Cox (there was a good person if there was one) of Zoran Djindjic (there was a Serb who tried so hard not to come across ans a genocidal anti-Bosniak maniac) and of countless other good people on their hands. Is that just or not? Of course it’s not, I know full well. But I don’t care any more that guilt by association and collective blame are wrong. Because the islamophobes and Nazis (and as I said, about 50% of people, even those who see themselves as middle of the road, not as extremists, share such feelings and ideas) have already passed judgment on people such as me. So they want to see me dead, gone, on my knees or all three. They say so hundreds of thousands of times every single day. Just read the comments on any news even just remotely concerning Muslims. Millions and billions of individuals on this accursed planet, where evil clearly outweighs good, won’t be satisfied until they see the “others” dead and gone. And for me this is just the final proof that 1) man is indeed man’s wolf and 2) life is wasted on the living. I understand that IS and other retrograde islamists who wish for life to be as it allegedly was during our Prophet’s (saws) lifetime do so out of a feeling of fear of a changing world in which there is no stable ground (our current very interesting times). But they can’t know what life was like then because like everybody else they only have a secondhand description (or did they travel back by time machine and find Paradise? If so, why didn’t they stay, instead of coming back and just giving us trouble?). Also, like the authoritarians and Nazis old and new they don’t have a constructive solution for the world’s or life’s problems; they can only deny and destroy (as Goethe had Mephistopheles say: “I’m the spirit wo always ever denies/And that rightly so, because all that exists/Is worthy of perishing/Thus, all that you call sin, ruin and evil/Is my true element.” Goes for the authoritarians, fascists and IS and such too). So, they aren’t an alternative. In truth, they want to f#ck me to death, we’ll see who f#cks whom to death. The only thing for me to do is, if that sort of trouble comes my way and I can’t escape it, to try and destroy them before they destroy me. Oh, I know in the end they will, because they have more than enough brute force to do so, but the very least that I can do is to make their victory as costly and bloody for them as I can. That’s the only thing one can do in such a messed up situation. I recommend that to my beloved Bosniak people too. Because it’s a foregone conclusion that their sworn enemies will not rest until they have eliminated them to the last man, women and child. Could the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto expect any mercy from their enemies? Could the Spanish Muslims of Al Andalus of old? The Tutsi? The Central African Muslims? Can the Bosniaks? Can I? Nope, none at all. All they (and I) can do is, when the time comes to be sent back to our Lord by cruel and violent hands, to die with our boots on, and not give them the satisfaction of going down on our knees. Of begging for mercy. Of being led like lambs to the slaughter.

    • Awesome

      As expected, identity politics rears its ugly head once again with a useful idiot like Mr. Farris serving as another one of its mediums.

    • Joey Sanders

      It states in the article:

      “Farris does not appear to have previous criminal convictions, but he has been investigated by police before. In 2015, he allegedly called a mosque in Redmond and said he would kill the person who answered the phone.”

      I don’t know why he was not arrested, but it shows that people like this don’t just come out of anywhere. That includes Mateen too.

    • mindy1

      Hopefully he will get the max, but in this political climate I would not count on it…

Malik Jalal: What It Feels Like To Be Hunted By Drones

By on April 29, 2016 in Loon at large
Pakistanis protest Hillary Clinton's visit, demanding an explanation for illegal drone attacks

Pakistanis protest Hillary Clinton’s visit, demanding an explanation for illegal drone attacks

via. The Independent

I am in the strange position of knowing that I am on the ‘Kill List’. I know this because I have been told, and I know because I have been targeted for death over and over again. Four times missiles have been fired at me. I am extraordinarily fortunate to be alive.

I don’t want to end up a “Bugsplat” – the ugly word that is used for what remains of a human being after being blown up by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone. More importantly, I don’t want my family to become victims, or even to live with the droning engines overhead, knowing that at any moment they could be vaporized.

I am in England this week because I decided that if Westerners wanted to kill me without bothering to come to speak with me first, perhaps I should come to speak to them instead. I’ll tell my story so that you can judge for yourselves whether I am the kind of person you want to be murdered.

I am from Waziristan, the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I am one of the leaders of the North Waziristan Peace Committee (NWPC), which is a body of local Maliks (or community leaders) that is devoted to trying to keep the peace in our region. We are sanctioned by the Pakistan government, and our main mission is to try to prevent violence between the local Taliban and the authorities.

In January 2010, I lent my vehicle to my nephew, Salimullah, to drive to Deegan for an oil change and to have one of the tires checked. Rumours had surfaced that drones were targeting particular vehicles, and tracking particular phone signals. The sky was clear and there were drones circling overhead.

As Salimullah conversed with the mechanic, a second vehicle pulled up next to mine. There were four men inside, just local chromite miners. A missile destroyed both vehicles, killed all four men, and seriously injured Salimullah, who spent the next 31 days in hospital.

Upon reflection, because the drones target the vehicles of people they want to kill in Waziristan, I was worried that they were aiming for me.

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    • Awesome

      Video: Texas White Supremacists Train to Shoot Muslims with Bullets Dipped in Pig’s Blood

      It is truly laughable how these troglodytes think that pigs are like kryptonite for Muslims. That they waste their time with silly pig-blood bullets only serves to undermine their self-proclaimed supremacy.

      In reality, the only thing that matters to a religious Muslim in regards to pigs, is to ensure that nothing, which comes from it is consumed. And even then, under dire circumstances, there are exceptions:

      Qur’an (English Translation) 2:172-173: You who believe, eat the good things We have provided for you and be grateful to God, if it is Him that you worship. He has only forbidden you carrion, blood, pig’s meat, and animals over which any name other than God’s has been invoked. But if anyone is forced to eat such things by hunger, rather than desire or excess, he commits no sin: God is most merciful and forgiving.

      Hence, the sin is only in the willful and unnecessary consumption of it. Otherwise, the sin is upon whoever forces or deceives a Muslim into consuming it. Thus, all of the pig-flinging is utterly meaningless.

    • 1DrM

      Oh look, it’s “rocky bore” high from the living the finer life in his lead lined trailer. Looks like this inbred has become malignant of late. These are better hashtags : #EndWhiteTerrorism #BanZionism, #SterilizeNaziVermin

    • 1DrM

      Just return the favor with bullets dipped in feces.

    • Awesome

      meanwhile, on jihad watch, there are 7 to 10 new articles/news items everyday with legitimate stories about islam’s very real dark side

      It is an easy job for the authors at jihadwatch to find a bad news story involving a Muslim, and through lies, half-truths, and hysteria, spin it into something about Islam.

      However, loonwatch has more integrity than that, so new items can be somewhat scarce sometimes. In addition, as Ilisha mentioned, it is also a money issue.

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The Intercept: FBI Uses “Honeypot” To Ensnare Michigan Man

By on April 29, 2016 in Loon-at-large

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(h/t:JD)

via. The Intercept

KHALIL ABU RAYYAN was a lonely young man in Detroit, eager to find a wife. Jannah Bride claimed she was a 19-year-old Sunni Muslim whose husband was killed in an airstrike in Syria. The two struck up a romantic connection through online communications.

Now, Rayyan, a 21-year-old Michigan man, is accused by federal prosecutors of supporting the Islamic State.

Documents released Tuesday show, however, that Rayyan was motivated not by religious radicalism but by the desire to impress Bride, who said she wanted to be a martyr.

Jannah Bride, not a real name, was in fact an FBI informant hired to communicate with Rayyan, who first came to the FBI’s attention when he retweeted a video from the Islamic State of people being thrown from buildings. He wrote later on Twitter: “Thanks, brother, that made my day.”

Rayyan, who had previously been arrested for having marijuana, is now charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and making a false statement to acquire a firearm.

Although Rayyan is not charged with terrorism, the FBI and federal prosecutors have treated his case as a national security concern, making numerous references in court filings and at a detention hearing to statements Rayyan made about the Islamic State and his supposed aspirations for violence.

Rayyan has pleaded not guilty to the federal gun charges, and his lawyers have asked the court to force the government to turn over all remaining communications between Rayyan and the FBI informant.

According to transcripts of conversations between Rayyan and the informant — which were made public for the first time this week — Rayyan had fallen in love with Bride and had even proposed marriage.

The transcripts show that the FBI informant initiated conversations about violence on several occasions, and when she did, Rayyan would tell her that he didn’t want to hurt anyone. In an online conversation on December 26, 2015, the informant asked Rayyan, using the Arabic word meaning this earthly life, “What do you want from this Dunya?”

“Honestly to get married,” he responded. “I think if I get married I will be happy. I’m just lonely sometimes. I want to start a family.”

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    • Awesome

      Why was Rayyan even considering becoming involved with what he believed was a women involved in terrorism and extremist thinking?

      Infatuation with a member of the opposite sex that sometimes pressures people into doing things that they otherwise would never do?

      Why didn’t he remember that Islam is a religion of peace, ditch the ‘women’ and her un-Islamic mentality and inform the authorities?

      Because he was a 19-year old, fresh-out-of-high school layman whose focus was on trying to impress a girl, rather than on what was right or wrong? Does anyone expect anything else from most teenagers when so many of them are ambivalent of the rules? Or do you think that day prison they call “grade school” is just for prepping kids for their menial roles in the real world that the majority of them are going to end up with?

    • Reynardine

      Not enough room in the little head for a brain, you know.

    • The greenmantle

      nothing so stupid as a man with an erection

      Sir David

    • Friend of Bosnia

      And they say they have the higher moral ground, and that women are respected in the Wedst.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      Like the NKVD of Stalin’s Soviet Union of old. They too had quotas of people arrested, convicted of trumped-up charges and sent to the gulags or to the grave, to fulfill. Admittedly their quotas were much higher, but the general idea is the same. Because the world is turning back to authoritarianism, repression, tyranny, the abolishment or curtailing of public freedoms, in short, a big step backwards.

    • Joey Sanders

      Think about what has happened in many small towns mainly comprised of white people over the years. As many of their jobs declined due to companies sending their jobs overseas, people sought ways to make money.

      In the last 15 years, a lot of these small towns around the United States have become inundated with meth and crack. Most of the drug dealers are not these thuggish black people that they portray on TV. They are mainly white guys with southern accents.

      it is really saddening what is going on in that area. One of my motels is located in a small town off of I-95. It is amazing what I have to go through. I have to guard that property against drug dealers, meth heads, crackheads, and prostitutes.

      One time, a husband and wife came to my motel. The man said that his wife would be willing to do certain things if I gave them a room. I told them, nicely, to hit the road. I could tell you many more stories of how many times I have been solicited for sex. These are not poor black people. They are white southerners. Don’t tell that to Fox News.

    • Laurent Weppe

      It is like the Drug War. Though there are studies that show that whites do drugs at a similar clip to black people

      Not only that, but Whites are more likely to sell drug than Blacks: relevant quote:

      analysis of data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 6.6 percent of white adolescents and young adults (aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, compared to just 5.0 percent of blacks (a 32 percent difference).

      That means that for every black dealer, there is seven non-hispanic whites dealers, yet nearly 60% of the inmates sent to prison for drug offense are Blacks. It’s almost as if the system was deliberately rigged to spare white criminals

    • Reynardine

      If it passes the “but-for” test: But for the inducement, he would never have committed this type of crime. Certainly, his attorney will plead that.

    • mindy1

      I wonder if this would count as entrapment

    • Reynardine

      Darwin

    • Jekyll

      Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, lovely, lovely…well he won’t be either in prison

    • Laurent Weppe

      Not only that, but it reeks of incompetence: undercover informants are supposed to find criminals and terrorists: here, they are fabricating them, in order to show off flattering statistics “We arrested X number of people: clearly we’re skilled and competent and deserve our salaries and perks“.

      This attitude reminds me of that old skit by the Inconnus:

      For those who don’t understand French, the skit is about a (fictional) club of woefully incompetent hunters who waste their day off looking for a specific bird to hunt only to decide in the end to release a bunch of domesticated fowls in an open field so they can slaughter the birds and not come home empty-ended.

    • Reynardine

      Though you could dismiss this case as Darwin, various letter agencies have long honeytrapped victims… there was a case when I was young where a male informant seduced a female target and got her to procure drugs for him, whereupon he turned her in. She was acquitted on grounds of entrapment, but not before going through a complete trial process, and, over the years, I have heard of many others not so lucky. It is a legally and morally repugnant way for an agency to make its case or an agent to make his or her bones.

[VIDEO] Decoding Islamophobia: “Regressive Liberals”

By on April 28, 2016 in Video

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    • Geo Anthony

      Which side were the muslims on?

    • Agnostos

      Too much of a circular argument there, Khizer. I’d prefer to have your take on it. How about it?

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Chicago: Man Asks Cabbie If He Is Muslim Before Attacking Him

By on April 22, 2016 in Loon Violence, Loon-at-large

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A cab driver was attacked in Chicago by a pedestrian in what has been deemed a hate crime. The lawyer is using the mental health defense and the fact that his client was intoxicated as an excuse to say his behavior was an “anomaly.”

via. DNA Info

A suburban man is charged with a hate crime after he walked up to a Chicago cab driver, asked him if he was Muslim and then beat him when he responded “yes,” prosecutors said.

The driver was stopped at a red light near Division and Larrabee streets about 3 a.m. Feb. 21 when 37-year-old John Alletto walked up, opened the driver’s door “and asked if he was Muslim,” prosecutors said.

The 42-year-old driver replied, “yes,” and Alletto began to punch the man in his head, neck and body, Assistant State’s Attorney Lorraine Scaduto said during a bond hearing Wednesday.

At that point, the driver’s passenger got out of the cab, prosecutors said.

When a witness approached, Alletto yelled out that the driver was Muslim, according to Scaduto. The witness said it was racist to attack a Muslim and called Alletto “a racist,” Scaduto said.

Alletto then turned toward the witness, and the two began to fight, according to prosecutors.

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    • Reynardine

      As half a Bulgarian and half a linguist, I can say that standard Bulgarian and standard Macedonian are distinct languages, but — as with Russian and Ukrainian — there is a dialect continuum between them, as there is between Serb, Croat, and Bosnian. Slovene is one of the more ancient languages in this group, and probably has more features in common with the ancestral South Slav. Certain archaic dialects in Slovenia shared some features in common with similarly archaic dialects in Slovakia, which indicates that there was once a language continuum that was broken by the intrusion of the Magyars and the expansion of Romanian dialects. It must have been long ago, as Polish tradition speaks of eponymous brothers Lech, Czech, and Rus, but the fourth, South Slavic, brother is missing.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      I wonder too. As far as I know, Slovene, Macedonian and Bulgarian are distinct languages (Bulgarians wouldn’t agree on the two latter) and they are distinct from Serb/Bosnian/Croat. Now Serb (as spoken in Serbia proper), Bosnian and Croat languagess are different dialects of the same language. Bosnian and Croat have a similar pronunciation, but it’s different from Serb. In Bosnia-Herzegovina the language is the same for all three groups, but Serbs try to introduce the Serbian dialect, and Croats the Croation dialect (not with much succeess). Of the Bosniaks they say they use more loan-words introduced from Arabic and Turkish. Yet, when I use such Turkish loan-words, they ask me “why do you talk like a Serb?” It’s really such a mess…

      .

    • Reynardine

      I understood South Slav to be a language group that included Slovene, Macedonian, and Bulgarian. What do they call us now?

    • Reynardine

      He has the same clock-round face with big, fat jowls you find in Dominionist ministers and guys who swagger open-carry through Kroger’s.

    • Friend of Bosnia

      At least I can promise you that if I overhear someone talking in Southern Slav (they used to call it Serbo-Croat but you can’t call it that any longer) I will not ask him if he’s a Serb (a Bosnian Serb that is, because in BiH they all talk the same; not so in Serbia proper, there they have their own dialect, and it is easy to distinguish). And I will not punch him in the nose. As long as they behave respectfully to me, I will behave respectfully to them. I will not seek a confrontation. Should however someone seek a confrontation with me, I will defend myself with all I have at my disposal.

    • mindy1

      FFS, what is wrong with people?!?!?!?!

Electronic Intifada: “Death to Arabs” Protest In Tel Aviv

By on April 22, 2016 in Loon-at-large

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via. Electronic Intifada

In Tel Aviv’s Yitzhak Rabin Square on Tuesday evening, thousands of Israelis rallied in support of Elor Azarya, the soldier filmed executing a gravely wounded Palestinian last month.

Rally-goers shouted anti-Arab slogans and attacked persons perceived as being leftists or journalists.

Hours earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a call for leniency for the soldier.

Times of Israel reporter Judah Ari Gross tweeted that an activist from B’Tselem, the human rights group that released the video of Azarya shooting and killing Abd al-Fattah al-Sharif, had to be escorted out of Rabin Square by police in order to “protect his life.”

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    • Awesome

      I think islam is bad because, according to the hadith, the punishment deemed appropriate for leaving islam is death.

      More accurately, the death penalty for apostasy is in accordance with medieval Islamic legal tradition that is derived from those ahadith. However, God in the Qur’an says that there is “no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an 2:256) as well as ordaining that “whosoever will, let him believe and whosoever will, let him disbelieve” (Qur’an 18:29) and while God mentions those who apostate from Islam in the Qur’an, God mentions nothing about any legal punishment for them, much less the death penalty in the Qur’an. In addition, there is no authentic account of Prophet Muhammad or any of his companions killing any apostates from Islam simply for apostasy, while there are authentic accounts of unpunished apostasy from Islam during that time.

      Rather, there is a controversial legal tradition developed by medieval Muslim scholars and jurists, after the time of Prophet Muhammad and his companions, in which apostasy from Islam is penalized with capital punishment by the state. This legal tradition is based on 2 somewhat-ambiguous statements in certain ahadith, (which have significant variations in their various transmissions) and there has always been a minority of Muslim scholars and jurists – since the inception of this legal tradition – that have opposed it. In these ahadith, it is alleged that Prophet Muhammad said that, “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” in one statement (Sahih Bukhari 52:260, 84:57, Sunan Abu Dawud 40:4337, Jami’ at-Tirmidhi 15:1458, Sunan an-Nasa’i 37:4064-4070, Muwatta Malik 36:1419) and that it is permissible (which does not necessarily mean obligatory) to shed the blood of a Muslim who “abandons his religion and separates from the community” in the other statement (Sahih Bukhari 83:17, Sahih Muslim 16:4152, 4154, Sunan Abu Dawud 40:4352, 4353, Sunan an-Nasa’i 37:4021, 4022, 4053).

      Obviously, one must preclude the other between the Qur’an and the ahadith on this matter. For most, it is generally understood that “no compulsion in religion” only applies to someone who has never been a Muslim. For others it is maintained that the death penalty was really a punishment for treason, which happened to go hand-in-hand with apostasy at the time.

      In the case of the latter viewpoint, both statements would be viewed as more specifically referring to those apostates who “wage war against God and His Messenger” – through threats, intrigue and armed attacks against the Muslim state – and thus became enemy combatants. This is in fact what (Sunan Abu Dawud 40:4353) and (Sunan an-Nasa’I 37:4053) say and is consistent with (Qur’an 5:33) and the fact that the apostates that were killed, were always guilty of it, while those apostates who were not guilty of it, were not killed.

      Like the jizya tax, the death penalty for apostasy originally only applied to those guilty of “waging war against God and His Messenger”, and was therefore originally about defense and security. Also, just as the jizya tax was generalized in Islamic legal tradition after the first generation for all non-Muslims (regardless of enemy status) so too did the death penalty for apostates become generalized for all apostates from Islam (regardless of enemy status).

      Historically, it is a pre-Islamic law that the Romans applied both before and after their conversion to Christianity, and which up until the 1700s-1800s CE, was legally applied by the Christian establishment with “burning at the stake”. This provides precedence and context for its inclusion in medieval Islamic legal tradition and today the death penalty for apostasy is only part of the legal system for a minority of Muslim-majority countries, as being burned at the stake is by certain Christian societies.

      However, regardless of what the case may be and even on the basis of this medieval Islamic legal tradition, what a person who was a Muslim actually believes in their heart is irrelevant because apostasy is legally judged based on words and/or actions and not on what is inside a person, which cannot really be accurately determined by legal means anyway. Ultimately, it is a matter pertaining to statehood in Islam and not to the religion of Islam itself. Any obligation with regards to its application is therefore only relevant to those in public office where it is legally applied. There is little-to-no obligation for anyone else in this regard, which makes it largely irrelevant.

    • Awesome

      Yes, the bible has stuff in it too, but I’m addressing Islam here. What is the relevance of any other religion here? And how can what I say about punishing apostates be refuted when what I wrote is a fact. According to trusted Muslim sources, Muhammad said that those who leave Islam should be killed, and I consider that a bad thing. If other religions have bad things in them, that doesn’t make islam less bad. It’s irrelevant.

      In comparing Islam to other religions, it is very relevant. While you say that other religions may have “bad things” in them, you only say that Islam itself is bad because of it. If the fact that these things exist in other religions is irrelevant, then it stands to reason, that the fact that it exists in Islamic legal tradition is also irrelevant.

      And what makes it all the more disquieting is the fact that these exhortations to kill apostates are still valid today and are enshrined in the laws of muslim countries. There are no Christian countries where blasphemy or apostasy are punishable by death, but this is the case in several muslim countries.

      Yes, there is a death penalty for those who openly apostate from Islam in several Muslim-majority countries. However, that should be kept in perspective, as it is only in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Mauritaria where apostasy from Islam is punishable with death, which is only 8 Muslim-majority countries out of 20 that have laws against it out of a total of 54 Muslim-majority countries worldwide. That means that there are 34 Muslim-majority countries (more than half of the total) that do not have any laws against apostasy and 46 Muslim-majority countries (approximately 6/7 of them) that have no death penalty for apostasy from Islam.

      Christianity has no political power today like it did centuries ago, so there is no penalization for apostasy and blasphemy in Christian-majority countries like there used to be. In addition, unlike Islam with its sacred texts, there are no laws or any legal tradition that Christianity can derive from its New Testament. Thus, when it gained statehood, its governance was subject to the whims of whoever happened to be in power.

      Since dealing with apostasy has always been a state matter, it follows that religious traditions with no statehood policies and with no statehood cannot properly factor into a comparison about apostasy with religious traditions that have statehood policies and a statehood. Controversial medieval legal policies that a small fraction of Muslim-majority countries still have in place today hardly seem relevant enough to be at the forefront of a discussion about the religion itself. There are more relevant aspects to Islam besides controversial legal codes and penalties.

    • Adam C

      OMG! Do you think that makes it okay? Why should someone have to keep their departure from islam private? To kill anyone because they change their religion is appallingly backward. Not in the Quran, but did Muhammad not say that “Whoever changes his Muslim religion, then kill him”? (Sahih Bukhari 9:57)

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Bottles Of Alcohol Thrown At Mosque Windows As People Pray Inside

By on April 21, 2016 in Loon-at-large

Totteridge Mosque

via. BuckFreePress

A mosque in High Wycombe has been targeted in a “racist hate attack”, with bottles of alcohol being thrown at the building in an attempt to smash the windows while people prayed inside.

Community leaders have now condemned last week’s attack on Totteridge Mosque which they say poses a “serious threat to a cohesive and diverse society”.

A “youth” was spotted throwing the bottles against a window at the back of the mosque, in Totteridge Road, at about 10.50pm last Wednesday, before driving off quickly in a car.

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    • Reynardine

      Probably threw it because he couldn’t finish the bottle.

    • Awesome

      Alcohol truly does bring out the worst in people sometimes.

    • mindy1

      FFS, let people pray in peace, if they are not hurting you, let them be.

Asra Nomani Testifies Before Congress, Says Hijab Can Lead To Terror

By on April 7, 2016 in Loon-at-large

congress_hearing_women_terrorism

Alternet’s Grayzone project on Islamophobia has an excellent article by Maha Hilal on how the recent congressional panel on “women and terrorism puts women in the War on Terror’s crosshairs. It is a must read.

Islamophobia-enabler Asra Nomani was among those testifying at the hearings. Nomani, was there to put forward the discredited argument that increased outward religiosity, in the sense of starting to wear hijab is a sign of a trajectory toward terrorism and a potential threat indicator.

via. Alternet, Grayzone Project

Next, Asra Nomani, a Muslim, provided personal anecdotes of her own family’s path to radicalization. She spoke about book after book that documented Muslim women victimized by the brutal patriarchal culture of the Islamic world, using the hijab, or headscarf, as a specific token through which their oppression is made visible. Nomani then constructed a scenario in which hijab serves as a warning sign of terrorist intentions.

“On the conveyor belt of ideas, what you end up with is Libya, ISIS putting up billboards telling you how thick it has to be,” said Nomani. “You end up with women beating women who do not comply with these regulations, you end up with mandatory laws that require that women live with this partition. Because hijab does not mean headscarf, it means separation.”

“It’s a very dangerous trajectory,” Nomani continued, “and it’s one in which we hear disturbing comments in which mothers in the Islamic state are forcing some of these sex slaves to have abortions so that their sons can continue to have sex with these sex slaves.

According to Nomani, putting on a headscarf can set women on a path that eventually leads to martyrdom. “It is a virtue then to kill,” she declared. “For all the reasons that have come before us on the conveyor belt, a woman is virtuous if she then becomes a shaheed, or a martyr.”

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    • Vince Kondo

      Perhaps one ought to examine the example of a culture more experienced in this matter than a Western one namely Turkey. Surely the long standing policy of a headscarf ban(1924) would have been successfully challenged by now in a 95% Muslim country. An arbitrary choice this was not in the most successful example of Islam and tolerance for other faiths to coexist in a majority Muslim nation.

    • JayGoldenBeach

      I bet Hellfire missiles radicalise people faster than anything else.

    • Jekyll

      Stop slut shaming!

    • Jekyll

      Don’t worry, be happy…or not bc of feminism

    • Reynardine

      Your inflatable girlfriend is lonesome. Go pay attention to her.

    • Alyeth

      Don’t you think that’s a little too harsh? Just a bit…

    • 1DrM

      Nomani also ran for Morgantown Masjid board but dropped out after realizing she had zero support in the community(circa 2002). She thought because her daddy donated money to the Masjid at some point it would lead to an easy path to power. It was after this fiasco that she started her anti-Muslim campaign and has been in bed with pro-“israeli” propagandists since. It’s easy money for a mediocre journalist(milking Daniel Pearl’s murder) who thought she could be speak on behalf of a community she never belonged to and be a trophy wife to some henpecked simp. She’s more mentally unsound(narcissism, fall back on convenient feminism and neocon prostitution) then smart as her past(multiple unhealthy relationships with men, inside and outside of marriage) demonstrates. I don’t have the “cultural” background to appreciate zina and nepotism. As far as I’m concerned she is no Muslim, her attacks on the Qur’an are proof of this.

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