Sakineh's forced confession on Iranian TV

The following is from the Iran Human Rights website, it was posted just an hour ago:

Sakineh Ashtiani in danger of execution

Iran Human Rights condemns Sakineh Ashtiani’s forced confessions against herself on the Iranian TV

Thursday 12 August 2010

Iran Human Rights, August 11: Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman whose sentence to death by stoning sparked an international outcry, was put on a state-run TV programme last night where she confessed to adultery and involvement in a murder.

The British newspaper the Guardian wrote: “Speaking shakily in her native Azeri language, which could be heard through a voiceover, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani told an interviewer that she was an accomplice to the murder of her husband and that she had an extramarital relationship with her husband’s cousin. Her lawyer told the Guardian last night that his client, a 43-year-old mother of two, was tortured for two days before the interview was recorded in Tabriz prison, where she has been held for the past four years".

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesperson of Iran Human Rights, condemned Mrs. Ashtiani’s forced confessions on the Iranian TV and said: "Having confessed to murder and adultery on the TV puts her in imminent danger of execution". Amiry-Moghaddam added: “One can clearly see the footprints of the Iranian intelligence service in this program, and it is not the first time that Iranian authorities televise this kind of confessions on the Iranian TV". He added:" Putting a woman who has been struggling with the nightmare of being stoned to death, under such a tremendous pressure and making her confess against herself, shows yet another inhumane side of the Iranian authorities".

Amiry-Moghaddam added: "We ask the international community to keep up the pressure on the Iranian authorities and make them understand that their continuous violations of the human rights will have practical consequences."

Also see the related stories at BBC.com and also The Guardian.

Adventures in WTFage

When I first saw it at Pajamas Media (or some similar wingnut website), I thought, "no, that can't be right." But now there it is at the Christian Science Monitor:

The State Department plans to send Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the controversial ground zero mosque, to the Middle East as part of a public diplomacy mission to explain how Islam is perceived in America.

wtf?

The State Department plans to send Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the controversial ground zero mosque, to the Middle East as part of a public diplomacy mission to explain how Islam is perceived in America.

WTF!?!?!?!?!?!?

Do the math: If Imam Rauf's Ground Zero Mosque were a presidential candidate it would be Jimmy Carter in 1980. If it were a movie it would be Waterworld. If it were a TV Reality Show it would be I'm Hotter Than My Daughter. If it were an airplane it would be the Spruce Goose. If it were a live performance it would be Ashley Simpson lip syncing on SNL. And if it were a diplomatic mission it would be Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.

The best part is that the Imam is going to be explaining to people "how Islam is viewed in America." Wait a minute. Now that I think about it, he might be just the man for that particular job.

Anne Rice: Still Clinging to Christ

At first I was (naively and mistakenly, as it turns out) impressed with Anne Rice's decision to "leave Christianity."

But from the moment she announced her faux apostasy, Rice has continued to loudly and monotonously defend both the founder of the Christian religion and the "sacred" writings of that religion, while condemning the religion itself, in its modern form, as a "deservedly infamous group."

Those who claim that Christianity was originally a wonderful religion of brotherly love and simple morality have never seriously studied the New Testament itself, at least not with anything approaching a critical eye. The Gospels tell us that Jesus preached intolerance for all other points of view, and encouraged his own followers to treat others contemptuously unless they meekly submitted to Jesus' teachings. Jesus explicitly pronounces that all those who refuse to follow him are condemned to Hell.

And it was Jesus himself who taught, "By their fruits shall ye know them." Therefore there is no justification for judging Jesus separately from the "fruits" of his teachings, namely, "this thing called Christianity", as Thomas Paine put it so eloquently.

If anyone wishes to get up to speed on the reality of Christianity, including the truth about it's founder, here are some suggestions for further study:

Intolerance and the Gospel: Selected Texts from the New Testament
by Gerd Luedemann
Contemporary Christians usually suppose that Christianity is quite congenial to the democratic ideals that are the basis of free, open Western societies. Among these ideals is freedom of religion, which encourages a broad tolerance for different belief systems. Nonetheless, a careful examination of core Christian beliefs and the history of Christianity reveal little tolerance for thinking or acting outside the orthodox Christian tradition.
[Amazon blurb]

The Price of Monotheism
by Jan Assmann
There are two kinds of religion. First there are those "primary" religions that spontaneously arise as a natural expression of the intrinsic spiritual urges of homo religiosus. These religions are polytheistic, tolerant, and ubiquitous throughout human history.

Then there are secondary religions. These arise first and foremost as a rejection of primary religion. "For these religions, and for these religions alone, the truth to be proclaimed comes with an enemy to be fought." That is how Jan Assmann describes these "counterreligions".
[blurb de moi]

There is no crime for those who have Christ
by Michael Gaddis
"There is no crime for those who have Christ," claimed a fifth-century zealot, neatly expressing the belief of religious extremists that righteous zeal for God trumps worldly law. This book provides an in-depth and penetrating look at religious violence and the attitudes that drove it in the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth and fifth centuries, a unique period shaped by the marriage of Christian ideology and Roman imperial power. Drawing together materials spanning a wide chronological and geographical range, Gaddis asks what religious conflict meant to those involved, both perpetrators and victims, and how violence was experienced, represented, justified, or contested. His innovative analysis reveals how various groups employed the language of religious violence to construct their own identities, to undermine the legitimacy of their rivals, and to advance themselves in the competitive and high-stakes process of Christianizing the Roman Empire.
[Amazon blurb]

Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
by Ramsay MacMullen
Persecution: describing the determination of the Christian leadership to extirpate all religious alternatives, expressed in the silencing of pagan sources and, beyond that, in the suppression of pagan acts and practices, with increasing harshness and machinery of enforcement.
[chapter description from the book]

I am beginning to believe that Daisy Khan and Feisal Abdul Rauf really are moderates. This would explain a lot.

Why has "moderate" Islam failed so miserably in the face of the ever growing popularity of extremism throughout the Muslim world?

Maybe it's because so-called moderate Muslims are as breathtakingly inept, cravenly dishonest, ethically compromised, and intellectually bankrupt as so-called "progressive" Christians.

For now I only have time to address the issue of ineptitude. Seriously. If I were a "moderate" Muslim, I would not secretly plan for years to build a Mosque at Ground Zero, refuse to denounce extremist groups such as Hamas, raise $100M in foreign money mostly from parts of the world where Jihadism is increasingly popular and powerful, name my organization after a city that symbolizes Islamic theocratic expansionism, and launch an international organization of Muslim clerics with the word "Shariah" in its title.

I used to think that there was no evidence that the Cordoba Initiative is sincere in their claims to be "moderates" who are genuinely committed to opposing terrorism and aggression in the name of Islam. But now I am beginning to think that they are in fact shining examples of the best that "moderate" Islam can do.

If we consider the track record of Islamic "moderates", then perhaps the combination of incompetence, arrogance, and base stupidity displayed by the Cordoba Initiative is all the proof we need that these folks are genuine "moderates". Anyone who thought that the response to the Ground Zero Mosque would be any different from the firestorm of anti-Islam sentiment that has been unleashed is a fool. And so perhaps the Cordoba Initiative, and "moderate" Islam generally, is just a ship of fools.

It would explain a lot.

Melanie Phillips on Lars Hedegaard

Melanie Phillips is the author of Londonistan. The following is from her August 8, 2010 piece in the Spectator under the title "The jihad of the word erupts yet again in Denmark".

A chilling development in Denmark illustrates just how ‘hate speech’ laws, which were introduced by deluded western liberals, are being used to stifle and criminalise the expression of legitimate opinion and essential debate -- the prerequisite of a liberal society. Lars Hedegaard is president of Denmark’s International Free Press Society, which is devoted to fighting to preserve freedom of expression -- particularly against the threat from radical Islam to shut it down on the spurious grounds of ‘Islamophobia’. The inevitable has now happened: as Nathaniel Sugarman writes at The Legal Project, Hedegaard finds himself facing prosecution for ‘racism’ over remarks he has made about Islam.

The basis for Hedegaard's prosecution was an interview from December 2009 in which he made controversial statements about Islam. These assertions included critiques of what Hedegaard saw as Islam's permissiveness regarding child abuse and bearing false witness, as well as Islam's general intolerance concerning apostacism and critical speech. Snaphanen, a Danish blog, published the original interview, and Hedegaard has since clarified some of his remarks.

Hedegaard's statements earned him a hate speech charge under Danish law. While Denmark's constitution ostensibly protects freedom of expression and forbids censorship (see Section 77), the Criminal code provides that "expressing and spreading racial hatred" is a criminal offense punishable with up to two years imprisonment. (Article 266b).

It seems this is not the first such prosecution in Denmark:

On June 16, 2010, the Danish parliament voted to strip a lawmaker of immunity so that he could face charges over anti-Muslim comments. The politician, Jesper Langballe, is a veteran member of the Danish People's Party (PPD) and a crucial ally of the center-right government. In January 2010, he penned a newspaper column discussing the status of women in Islam and the "Islamisation of Europe." Included was the statement that "Muslims kill their daughters over crimes of honour and turn a blind eye while they are raped by their uncles." He is currently awaiting trial for violating Article 266b—the same hate speech statute that will likely be applied to Hedegaard.

There is however a ray of light for Denmark: it seems that the Justice Minister is now considering amending the hate speech laws on the grounds that they could be misused to restrict free speech. If so, this would underscore Denmark's general reputation for robustness in defence of its core civilisational values. It's a reputation which has nevertheless taken a knock from its adoption of these illiberal hate crime laws in the first place -- but remember the heroic Jyllands-Posten, whose staff found themselves under a death sentence for publishing the Mohammed cartoons.

However, the possible amendment of Denmark's hate laws is scant consolation for other western countries, with the UN having decided to criminalise all criticism of sharia law, as reported here. Until and unless western liberals finally understand that radical Islamists are not a minority whose human rights need to be defended but are instead a mortal threat to human rights which must be defeated -- and crucially, that the UN is the vehicle of Islamist oppression and must in turn be fought by all who care about human rights -- the light of freedom will continue to be extinguished in the west.

Here are some other relevant posts from this blog on the subject of freedom of expression in this modern world:

Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Lars Hedegaard & Lifting the Veil on Sexual Assault
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Sharia World: A Brief News Round-Up
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Doda: "Forbidden Fruit Tastes Better"
Monday, June 21, 2010
Two More "Hate Speech" Cases Rearing Their Ugly Heads In Europe
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Sex, Religion, Art, Music & Freedom of Expression in Poland
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Holocaust Denial is OK, but criticizing Islam is not. Apparently.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
The Kids Are Alright (In Which I Praise Extreme Pagan Metal)
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Early March, 2010 Blasphemy World Roundup!!
Friday, March 5, 2010
"Should the right to oppose Islam not exist?"
Friday, January 29, 2010
Fascism, Islam, and Freedom of Expression
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Case of Geert Wilders: Islam, Free Speech, Tolerance, and Politics

Today's Arabic Vocabulary Lesson: "Mosque" & "Taqiyya"

"Mosque"
The word mosque is derived from the Arabic word masjid, which literally means the place of prostration (sujud). This is the position in Islamic ritual prayers (Salaat), in which the forehead of the worshipper touches the ground in the supreme act of submission and surrender before God .... Unlike the Middle East where mosques are strictly sites for worship, mosques in the US play the multi-faceted roles of religious institutions, welfare organizations, community centers, locations for voter registration drives, and sites frequented visited by local political candidates.
[What is the role of Mosque? By Muhammed Khako]

"Taqiyya":
The word "al-Taqiyya" literally means: "Concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury."

A one-word translation would be "Dissimulation."

.... The true spirit of "al-Taqiyya" is better embodied in the single word "diplomacy" because it encompasses a comprehensive spectrum of behaviors that serve to further the vested interests of all parties involved.
[Al-Islam.Org website]

Hmmm. "Diplomacy", eh?

"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock."
Will Rogers

"Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness."
Otto von Bismark

"Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war."
Randolph Bourne

"DIPLOMACY, n. Lying in state, or the patriotic art of lying for one's country."
Ambrose Bierce

Accentuate the Positive

I give thanks:

Universal Health Care

Gay Marriage

Stem-cell research decriminalized

Non-Fascists now being appointed to the Supreme Court

Racists no longer running the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department

Apple now bigger than Microsoft

It's not a Depression (fingers crossed)

H1N1 influenza didn't kill us all

John Woo now safely back in the private sector

Sharon Angle

Sometimes Zen Buddhists Are Fucking Morons

Today Brad Warner (a Zen teacher of some notoriety) wrote in his blog:

I saw a thing about the Second Amendment lately where someone was trying to say we had to be true to what the Founding Fathers intended. Why? That's the religious view of scripture right there. The Founding Fathers were not infallible. Their intentions may have been completely wrong. Or, more pointedly, their intentions may have been right but right for their time, not ours.

Statements like this are human idiocy at its worst and lowest and most idiotic.

You don't fuck with the Bill of Rights. And if you don't understand that, then you deserve to be enslaved. Literally. But you won't be. Why? Because most people have more sense than Brad Warner and realize that fundamental human rights are not a matter of "what is right for the times."

It really is a shame, in the literal sense that it is something that Americans should be ashamed of, that we had to wait almost another century after the first 10 Amendments before the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were finally added to the Constitution to abolish the evil of slavery.

But as shameful as that is, it is even more shameful when any American today insists on looking at the Bill of Rights through the shit-colored lenses of moral relativism.

It is true that those who wrote the Bill of Rights were human beings, and, therefore, far from perfect. But they knew what the fuck they were talking about when they wrote the second amendment. These were people who had fought for their freedom (our freedom), arms in hand. And for that matter, those later Amendments that finally abolished slavery did not come about as a result of nonviolent protests and community dialoguing sessions, either.

Today of all days it is a time to celebrate the rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and those other Amendments, especially the ones numbered 13, 14, and 15. Enshrined in the 14th Amendment are some sacred words now commonly referred to as "the equal protection clause":

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Those words provided the solid basis for Judge Vaughn Walker's historic ruling striking down California's ban on gay marriage.

Right and wrong do not change over time. It is true that at any given time, our understanding of right and wrong is woefully limited. But when the clouds part and we are able to catch a glimpse, what we see is true, and that truth is not some cultural construct to be revisited, re-evaluated and deconstructed later on.

In the interests of full disclosure I am, among other things, something of a Zen Buddhist myself. In fact, the particular Zen tradition that I am part of traces itself back to the great 16th century Korean Zen Master, Sosan Taesa (aka Cheongheo Hyujeong) -- who is most famous for organizing a guerilla army composed of Buddhist monks to defend Korea against the invasion by Japan in 1592.

The last fucking thing that American Buddhism needs is morons applying new-agey bullshit relativistic "reasoning" masquerading as Dharma, to basic issues of fundamental rights and freedoms.

Otherwise, I do not have any strong feelings about that subject.

malware. meh.

This morning I was perturbed to see a big, ugly MALWARE warning when I looked at my blog. The cause of the problem was that one of the other blogs listed in my blogroll, euro-islam.info, has been flagged by google.

I have reluctantly removed euro-islam.info from my blogroll, but hopefully the problem will be resolved soon, and then I will restore it. Personally I am suspicious that either that site was hacked by someone who doesn't like what they are doing, or possibly someone managed to get that blog flagged even though there really is no malware there at all. Of course it is also completely possible that the flagging is perfectly legitimate.

Below is a screen shot of the warning page for euro-islam.info. If you click on the image it will take you to a page with the relevant diagnostic information: