These are all the Blogs posted on Wednesday, 3, 2008.
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
CAIR & Scottish Muslim Society Announce Agreement
 Press release:
Two senior members from the Council on American Islamic Relations will be touring Scotland in advance of their appearance at the Scottish Muslim Futures conference.
CAIR are arguably the most advanced Muslim organisation in the West at dealing with public affairs.
This is part of an informal agreement will see individuals from both Glasgow and Chicago visiting key community organisations, sharing experiences and building on the close links between the American and Scottish people.
Commenting on the transatlantic partnership, Ahmed Rehab, Executive Director of CAIR-Chicago said:
“The need for meaningful transatlantic cooperation to deal with challenge and expand on opportunity for Western Muslims is paramount and long overdue. We are proud to initiate a strategic partnership with a great community that I believe is poised to emerge as a healthy model for Muslim life in Europe in terms of positive social activism, integration and engagement."
Noman Tahir, the SIF director who brokered the agreement, commented:
"Bringing Ahmed and Yaser's wisdom and experience across the Atlantic will not only benefit Scotland, but will promote the need for a strategic transatlantic partnership which will empower Western Muslims to play their part in society and participate in the democratic process. With support from our friends in the US, I am sure the Scottish-Islamic Foundation will be leading the way for years to come." Posted on 12/03/2008 9:57 AM by Rebecca Bynum
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
School cancels Christmas nativity in favour of Muslim Eid celebrations
Nothing men and women in supposedly responsible management positions do surprises me these days. From The Telegraph. Still stand up to them and they generally see sense.
Greenwood Junior School sent out a letter to parents saying the three-day festival of Eid al-Adha, which takes place between December 8 and 11, meant that Muslim children would be off school.
That meant planning for the traditional nativity play were shelved because the school felt it would be too difficult to run both celebrations side by side. The move has left parents furious.
Janette Lynch, whose seven-year-old son Keanu attends the school, in Sneinton, Nottingham, said: "The head has a whole year to plan for Eid and so she should be able to plan for both religious festivals. I have never heard of this at a school. It is the first year my son has been there and a lot of the mums like me were really looking forward to seeing the children in the nativity."
She said a letter, sent from "The staff at Greenwood Junior School', said: "It is with much regret that we have had to cancel this year's Christmas performances. This is due to the Eid celebrations that take place next week and its effect on our performers."
Following outrage from parents, the school was forced to send out a second letter saying that the Christmas play would be done in January.
Sent by the head teacher, Amber Latif, (Ah, a lot has just been explained) and Yvonne Wright, chair of governors, it apologised for "any misunderstanding" but said it had to respect "the cultures and religions of all the children". It added: "The Christmas performance has not been cancelled outright but has been postponed until the New Year." When it is no longer Christmas. Christmas is not a movable feast.
Sajad Hussain, 35, of who has two children at Greenwood Junior, said: "My children will be off for the two days next week to see their family. It's not that complicated; they could have one event on one day and another on another day, they should have both celebrations at the school. If you do not have both it becomes a racist thing and that's why you have to be careful If an issue is made out of it, it could become nasty."
Yesterday, a statement issued by Greenwood Junior, said: "We would like to apologise for any confusion caused as a result of [the original] letter we sent out and would like to reassure parents and the community that Christmas has not been cancelled at Greenwood Junior School. For very practical reasons we have taken the difficult decision to re-arrange some significant events on the school calendar to ensure maximum pupil and staff attendance."
It shouldn't be difficult. I am leading the toddlers in our nativity tomorrow. I know from long experience just how difficult it isn't. Posted on 12/03/2008 9:53 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Dealing With The Yvonne-Wrights Of This World
"We are a very inclusive school and fully respect the cultures and religions of all the children."-a treacly, and now obviously false, remark, uttered by Yvonne Wright, to be found in this story
The affected (non-Muslim) parents should respond.
And the first thing they should do is simply refuse to allow their children to attend, or in any way to participate in, the "Eid celebration." For this is part of Islam, this would have them participate in a celebration of Islam, and Islam is not, pace Yvonne Wright, merely or mainly a "religion." It is also a Total Belief-System, with a politics and a geopolitics, and one that clearly inculcates hatred of Infidels, and insists on the Muslim duty to participate in the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, everywhere. Let those parents bring to the school, let them make a big fuss about, the Jihad-verses in the Qur'an. Let them quote sura and ayat, and make sure that journalists covering the story include, say, much of Sura 9 in their stories about the brouhaha.
If Yvonne Wright does not know any of this, and of course she does not, she does not think she has to read the texts of Islam, grasp the nature of Islam, in order to speak with self-assurance about Islam, and, if the Board of Governors of the school has also been kept in the dark about what Islam is all about, if they have learned "all about Islam" comes, say, from the likes of teacher Amber Latif, then they have a duty at this point to study, to learn, to disabuse themselves of their dreamy assumptions. A duty. A responsibility. Words that the likes of Yvonne Wright are unused to, so full are they of the Idols of the Age -- Diversity and Inclusiveness, that make no sense unless one knows what one is being inclusive about, and what kind of "diversity" one is fostering. If that "diversity" encourages respect for Islam that is unmerited, because an important part of Islam is the inculcated hatred for non-Muslims to be found in the immutable texts,and because Muslims are taught not to work for "diversity" but rather, to work for a world where Islam everywhere dominates, a world ideally without anything but Muslims -- well, that's not quite "diversity," even for the Yvonne Wrights of this world.
And if they do their duty, if they assume their responsibility to learn about Islam rather than simply to make pronouncements about Islam, then that phrase which I plucked out and put at the top of this post would, one assumes never have been uttered. Not even by the likes of Yvonne Wright, whose type we all know.
If there is some way for non-Muslims students at the school, Christians and Hindus and Sikhs and Jews -- by the way, are the Hindus and Jews going to have school-wide observances of Diwali or of Hanukkah, in which Muslim students will be expected to participate as, apparently, it is expected that non-Muslim students will participate in this three-day(!) Eid event? -- to stay away from the Eid celebration, because it is part of a faith that teaches hatred of them, those Christians, those Jews, those Hindus, they should do so. And if Yvonne Wright insists that they attend, they should bring with them, printed out, a dozen or two of the offending Qur'anic texts, and distribute them to all those who care to listen.
Finally, this matter should be made much of all over England, Great Britain, and elsewhere in Western Europe. It is a sign. It is a portent.
Oh, sorry. Just one more thing. Yvonne Wright should be fired and the Board of Governors replaced. Is there a Minister of Education? Is there someone, is there no one, who can fire her? Posted on 12/03/2008 10:58 AM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Pakistan Does Not Disappoint
"Pakistan refuses to hand over suspects to India" -- headline of this story
The Pakistani government of "moderate" Asif Ali Zardari has thus announced it has no intention of handing over any of the those suspected terrorists, now living freely in Pakistan, whose names were given to it, not for the first time, by the government of India.
But this response, this refusal by Pakistan to honor, after the Mumbai murders and mayhem, a most justified request,by India, the repeated victim of Muslim terrorism (much of it, as in Kashmir, clearly coming from Pakistan), infuriates, but does not disappoint. For it was perfectly predictable. Only the naive American government , and perhaps some in the Indian government, would ever have allowed themselves to have thought it possible for a Muslim state, run of, by, and for Muslims, even with a few smooth and plausible anglophones - ah, those Ispahani girls! -- at the top, could ever have handed over these men. Why, that would be like an Arab country surrendering a known Arab terrorist to Israel. It would be like Lebanon not holding a celebration for child-murderer Samir Kuntar -- you didn't really think the Muslim Arabs would refrain from honoring Samir Kuntar as a hero, did you?
Get real. About Islam. About Islam's effects on the minds of men. And since most men everywhere are molded by their beliefs, and most people are irredeemably primitive to begin with, when that belief system is as hate-filled, violence-filled, aggressive, and at the same time offers the Complete Regulation of Life and a Total Explanation of the Universe, thus relieving so many of the pain of thought, this leaves no room for independent moral judgment (for Allah Knows Best) and that stunts mental growth by discouraging all attempts at free inquiry or discussion, and that punishes, by death, those who dare to "blaspheme" in any way Islam, and to punish with death those who dare, openly, to leave it -- well, in such societies, suffused with Islam, the Total Belief-System of Islam, what do you expect? What can you expect, either from Pakistan, or from the Arabs in the Arab-populated lands, for Pakistanis, like the Arabs, and unlike the Kurds, Berbers, and even the Iranians, have no alternate identity to remember, or cling to, or revive. They have, you see, only Islam.
And that is why no government of Pakistan, none, will ever give up Muslims charged by Infidels with doing what Muslims are encouraged to do, by their texts and their tenets, are honored for so doing. No, no Pakistan government could possibly give them up, because that would be an offense against Islam. They can't. They won't. They can only be brought low, by having all that unending American aid cut off, all resupply of Pakistan's military ended, and American missiles pointed right at wherever those nuclear weapons are believed to be, and let India do what it must, without any further public announcements of what it might do, which merely makes the members of this or that terrorist group in Pakistan scurry away, able to live to mount other attacks, another day.
Seeing Pakistan for what it is not and can never be has been a mistake of American foreign policy since the days of the Dulles brothers, who fell for that "Islam is a bulwark against Communism" line, and who found, as did so many American generals, the Pakistani military to be composed of fine terry-thomased moustached fellows, some of them no doubt graduates of Sandhurst, and so much finer, as fellows, than those oily Left-Book-Club bandungisant tiersmondisant leaders of India, Jawaharlal Nehru and that practically bolshevik Brahmin Krishna Menon, with his superior airs.
The Pakistanis have had a long run in Washington. They even had it right up through the present Bush Administration, that has idiotically lavished aid upon it -- some $30 billion in military and economic aid and debt relief since 2001 -- on the assumption that the Pakistani government really was "our ally in the war on (Islamic) terror." But it isn't. It has been playing a game, sometimes putting on shows of military activity, sometimes even encouraging signs of terrorism so as to increase American aid, sometimes warning Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters of impending American strikes, sometimes helping to foment civilian fury at those Infidels. Oh, meretricious and endlessly mendacious Pakistan. Now with that smooth man, Husain Haqqani, who likes to point to all of his plausible articles, published in the West, seeming to deplore terrorism, but never getting to the point, the pith, the essence of it all, that explains why it would be folly to continue to support and still worse, give more and more aid to the government of Pakistan. What's that thing that Husain Haqqani keeps ignoring, keeps hoping no one will notice. Oh, that's simple.
It's Islam. Islam, Islam, Islam. Posted on 12/03/2008 12:46 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Mumbai, Muslims, A Meeting Of Minds At NATO
Surely at this point NATO ministers -- NATO without Turkey, or with a Turkish representative who is as secular as they come, and means it -- should be preparing a meeting to be held soon. And at that meeting, behind the closest of doors, they should now come ready to discuss the Islamic threat, or put more truthfully, the threat of Islam, to the peoples of Western Europe, to their legal and political institutions, and to their physical security. This threat should include terrorism, but not be limited to it, and should, noisily or quietly, include a discussion not only of the Muslim duty to participate, directly or indirectly, in the "struggle" or Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, but the varied instruments of Jihad, now available as they were not to the early Muslims, who had to be content with qitaal or combat.
These instruments -- a threat to the wellbeing, the cohesion, and the future survival of the Western world -- include Muslim deployment of what may be called (and is called by Muslims themselves) as the "Wealth" or "Money" Weapon, well-financed and carefully-targetted campaigns of Da'wa, aimed especially at the economically and the psychically marginal (with special attention to prisoners), and demographic conquest, which proceeds inexorably, and is made easier by the reluctance, possibly now out of fear rather than naiveté, of the governments and peoples of the West to end Muslim immigration, to halt the transfer of money from the Gulf that is used to support Muslim institutions and spread Islam deep within Western lands, in capillary fashion through mass building of mosques, madrasas, Islamic societies, and of course buying up influence.
Let there be special attention at this NATO meeting to the Money Weapon. Who supplies it? And how can those who do – those Saudis, Emiratians, Kuwaitis, Qataris, and others – have that supply interdicted by NATO efforts, by mass seizure of funds, and by reading those little sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia, all of them hopelessly dependent on Western goods and services, on Western wage-slaves and Western knowhow, on access to Western education and Western medical care, on Western arms and on Western, or rather American, guarantees for the safety of the ruling families, and yet are allowed to continue to send vast sums – Saudi Arabia alone has spent in the past few decades about one hundred billion dollars on spreading Islam, everywhere (and not only in the West: Saudi tentacles have been reported to me by black African informants, in Niger, where they have transformed the easygoing, syncretistic form of Islam, and in the Ivory Coast and even Togo, where the Christians now are uneasily aware of Muslims, and mosques, suddenly appearing where they had never been before).
Let the NATO meeting be the first of many, because the Western world is not imperiled only now, or only for the next few years until things “calm down.” This imperilment does not stop if Iran’s nuclear project is halted. It does not stop if those intent on throwing Israel to the wolves – oh, they don’t see it that way, of course – by ”making peace between Arabs and Israelis”on the terms of the Slow Jihadists of Fatah, succeed in their mad effort. It does not stop if Pakistan decides, that for now it needs American money and military aid so will put up a facade of disapproval of its own many and varied terrorist groups, and perhaps even raid a camp or two, in the spirit of Captain Renaud rounding up the usual suspects. It does not stop if the Danish government shuts down Jyllens-Posten,. It does not stop if the British government rounds up everyone who, alarmed by Muslim immigration, dares to speak out or to leak documents to Shadow Ministers. It does not stop if the French government keeps up this policy of deux-rivisme with the Maghreb, or builds mosques that are supposed to help “moderate” opinion (but if the Qur’an and Hadith remain immutable and inviolate, if the ideology of Islam remains what it has been for 1350 years, what is to prevent even those going to a French-taxpayer-funded mosque, with French-taxpayer-funded imams, from still getting that old-time religion, merely by reading, merely by studying, with a little help, possibly, from the Internet?). It does not stop if the Italian government, or even the Vatican, were to distance itself, out of fear and feigned disapproval, from Magdi Allam’s new political movement or offers to build all sorts of infrastructure, beginning with a coastal highway, for Libya. It does not stop if the Spanish government ceases to try to stop Moroccan immigrants, surrenders Melilla and Ceuta, and even allows itself to be blackmailed into paying “reparations” to Morocco. It does not stop, because the desire, the deep need, the positive duty, to spread Islam and to make sure that Islam comes to dominate, and Muslims rule, everywhere, is central to the ideology of Islam, a religion but also, and much more importantly, a politics and a geopolitics.
There are some in the Western world who, as individuals, profit from the policies of appeasement. They do not care, they allow themselves not to think about, what this means for the societies and countries in which they live. The obvious cases are of those who violate the laws, and sell weapons components to Iran for its nuclear project, or helped and still help -- not unwittingly but wittingly -- other Muslim countries to obtain weaponry or knowhow that they need if they are to truly threaten Infidels militarily. But many of the most powerful companies participate as well. Back in 1981, during the famous debate over selling AWACs to Saudi Arabia, American corporations shamelessly lobbied for the Saudis, and the effort was led by United Technologies (planes and arms), and Whitney Corporation (a supplier of hospitals) – that did a lot of business with Saudi Arabia, and willing, even eager, to be its Washington servants and lapdogs.
For decades the American government has been unable to even begin to think about properly taxing gasoline and oil, or to otherwise diminish the use of oil. The ARAMCO lobby became the Saudi ARAMCO lobby, and for those decades we heard, from the powerful and the well-connected, the very people who always seem to receive huge sums for addressing Arab audiences, or presents from Prince Bandar, or contracts to do public relations for Saudi Arabia, that we could rely on "our staunch ally Saudi Arabia" to "moderate" prices in OPEC. This was nonsense; Saudi Arabia at any moment calculates what price will maximize the future value of its reserves, and its current budgetary needs. Saudi Arabia charges the market price to the United States as it does to any other country, and since oil is fungible, the very idea that one need offer political favors to a particular oil producer, in order to obtain "access" to that oil, makes no economic, or political, sense. Oil is sold on a world market, and bought on a world market. One need not do favors to oil producers in order to buy the oil they produce any more than one need do favors for the gas station owner down the street to buy gas from him -- in both cases, paying the current price is all that is necessary. It has taken a very long while for that to be understood, and in large part, that delay in understanding, promoted by so many Western hirelings of the Saudis and other Muslims, has fatefully delayed the establishment of an energy policy that might once have headed off, and now can only mitigate, climate-disruption disasters.
NATO should discuss the importance of interdicting the flow of funds from Saudi Arabia and elsewhere that are used to support the Muslim bases within Europe, and that fund campaigns of Da'wa to spread Islam. There should be open discussion of how schools and universities have come to be dominated, in their teaching about Islam and the Middle East and even the history of Europe, to force a Muslim viewpoint upon others, whether it be to claim, falsely, that "Europe owes so much to Islam" (it doesn't), or that "the Renaissance comes from Islam" (it doesn't), or that "Islam is a peaceful and splendid religion" (it isn't), and so on.
The problem of the buying up of academics, of whole "centers" by the Saudis (see Durham, see Exeter), or funding obviously scandalous operations (see John Esposito's "Prince Somethingorother Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding"), or the funding of special chairs for special friends who then sit in those well-upholstered chairs, and the buying up of businessmen, before whom fat contracts are dangled, and of ex-diplomats, rewarded with "consulting contracts" for their "expertise in international business, with particular attention to the Middle East," and of course assorted whorish journalists, some of whom are directly on the Arab take --all of this helps to explain how the peoples of Western Europe have not been kept adequately informed, and thus been unable to demand, until now, and now only partially, the kind of measures that ought long ago have been put in place to diminish that Money Weapon, to cut off those campaigns of Da'wa, and to halt Muslim immigration and to begin, using all the most artful means, to reverse that Muslim in-flow, and to make it harder and harder for those who adhere to a Total Belief-System, or who may not adhere to it but out of a strong residual loyalty will nonetheless continue to defend it through deception and threats, to continue to remain, and receive all the benefits, that have so far been foolishly lavished upon them by Infidel states and societies seemingly incapable of defending themselves in rational fashion.
Yes, NATO has to meet to discuss not only terrorism, but the problem of Muslim access to NATO armories, the fiendishly difficult security problems that arise, especially if Western governments allow Muslims, even encourage them, to join the army, to join the police, in greater and greater numbers, all in order, apparently, to reassure the Muslims that they are regarded without any suspicion. But why should they be reassured about that? And why should we attempt to convince ourselves, and our fellow citizens, of that obvious falsehood? And why should this dangerous farce continue, unnecessarily endangering us still more than we already are by the large-scale presence of Muslims who have settled deep behind what they themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines?
Discussion of the Money Weapon should not just be limited to how it works, but also on measures that can be undertaken to render it less potent. Obviously, diminishing OPEC oil revenues is important (and diminishing the use of oil and other fossil fuels is vital for other, quite independent reasons), but the members of NATO need also to find ways to force the Arabs and Muslims to share their accumulated and accumulating wealth with poorer Muslims and all Infidel aid to those poorer Muslims should now be withdrawn, and responsibility for saving Muslims who do not have oil from the clear consequences of Islam itself -- the despotism and inshallah-fatalism -- transferred, noisily, to the rich Arab states.
Then there is a need to check, to halt, or to render less effective, all the campaigns of Da'wa. Western governments need to figure out how to conduct, with funding both public and private, campaigns of what may be called counter-Da'wa, in an attempt to immunize the most vulnerable categories of Infidels, by presenting them with evidence of how Islam treats Believers as "slaves of Allah," discourages free and skeptical inquiry and artistic expression (let those prisoners know about how Islam forbids sculpture, most painting, and most music), prevents freedom of conscience, encourages mistreatment of women, stunts in every way moral and mental growth. And along with that information about the ideology of Islam, for particularly vulnerable groups -- i.e., black prisoners -- go into the history of the Arab slave trade, and the role of Islam as a vehicle of Arab supremacism. And do not stop, but carry that war into the very Camp of Islam, attempting to make the case, among those non-Arab Muslims who constitute 80% of the world's Muslims, that they are being used, that they have been sundered from their own pre-Islamic histories, by the arrival of this history-destroying, past-destroying Total Belief-System that relies on inveigling would-be converts into by withholding much of what Islam is about, and only slowly dispensing that information, after you have already said the Shehada and become a Muslim (and then a swarm of Muslims attempts to offer you every sign of interest and kindness so that you don't have second thoughts, especially as you learn more, and then more). And of course, then you find out that you are not allowed, as you may once not have realized, to get out: you are in, for life.
And finally, NATO governments -- and other interested Infidels (India, Israel, Australia, Russia, even China) need to discuss, openly, the problem of demographic conquest from within, and how to discuss things so that Infidels will understand that Islam is an ideology, not a race, that the ideology has a clear set of principles, a clear laying-down of duties, that the central duty is to remove all obstacles to the dominance of Islam, that this necessarily means destroying, in the end, those Infidel legal and political institutions that are flatly contradicted by the Shari'a, that this is a real and not theoretical problem to be discussed in some mythical future, and that the larger the Muslim presence in the Western world, the greater the pressure, at every point, and never to stop no matter what, on our own liberties, including freedom of speech and freedom of conscience, and that this pressure never comes to an end, but only increases, with each new victory, for Islam is a triumphalist faith, and what Westerners might describe as their admirable willingness to compromise becomes, for Muslims, a sign of Western weakness, and always and everywhere whets, and never sates, Muslim appetites. What may seem to non-Muslims as obvious demonstrations of good will, to be met by similar demonstrations by the Muslim side, is based on a misunderstanding of Islam and its effect on the minds of men. Too few -- we unhappy few! -- comprehend how deep and wide is the hold of Islam on the minds of men, and especially on the minds of primitive Muslim masses (kept primitive by Islam itself).
We Westerners soothingly allow ourselves to take, as representative Muslims, a handful of plausible, smiling, educated, knowing-exactly-what-to-say-to-the-Infidels elites, the golden anglophone children, all Oxford and Harvard, of the zamindars in Pakistan, the Indian Muslim of the Fareed-Zakaria school, who may drink alcohol or even, as Zakaria once did, even have a wine column, but who remains the very slyest of apologists for Islam. These most unrepresentative "representatives" of Islam are not, themselves, participants in Jihad, but as protectors of Islam, as people whose effect, objectively, is to delay the day of Infidel understanding, they can be called deceivers -- out of filial piety or civilizational embarrassment, but deceivers nonetheless, and it is important to recognize what they are up to, and to understand that even without deep belief in Islam, if they consider themselves as Muslims, if they cannot make the break from Islam, then they can do no other.
But we, the Infidels, can. Posted on 12/03/2008 12:58 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Advent calendar
A painting which was reproduced as one of the UK's most popular Christmas cards came to public notice earlier this year when its owner, a private lady decided to sell her house and some contents. The picture was auctioned today in Edinburgh and bought by a private collector for twice the anticipated price.
The picture in question is Beneath the Snow Encumbered Branches by Joseph Farquharson who painted several scenes of his estate in Aberdeenshire in the late 19th, early 20th century.
Posted on 12/03/2008 1:50 PM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
AIG Offers First Takaful Homeowners Insurance Product for U.S.
U.S. taxpayers, having bailed out AIG, are now part owners of the company. Thanks to Jeffrey Imm for sending this article:
Risk Specialists Companies, Inc. (RSC), a subsidiary of AIG Commercial Insurance, is introducing what it says is a first in the U.S.: a homeowners insurance product that is compliant with key Islamic finance tenets and based on the concept of mutual insurance.
The Takaful Homeowners Policy is underwritten through RSC member company A.I. Risk Specialists Insurance, Inc., in conjunction with Lexington Insurance Co. and in association with AIG Takaful Enaya. Headquartered in Bahrain, AIG Takaful Enaya was established in 2006 to provide Takaful products, including accident and health, auto, energy, property and casualty products.
The Takaful home policy is the first installment in Lexington Takaful Solutions, a series of Shari'ah-compliant (Takaful) product offerings in the U.S.
According to Ernst & Young's 2008 World Takaful Report, Takaful was estimated to be a $5.7 billion market globally with over 130 providers in 2006. The Takaful market is estimated to be in excess of $10 billion by 2010.
Takaful is similar to mutual insurance and cooperative risk sharing but there are key differences including a clear segregation of funds owned by participants and those owned by the insurance operations entity. Investments of funds are also restricted to avoid companies involved in entertainment, alcohol, pork and other elements prohibited by Islamic law.
Muslim countries only account for 5 percent of the global insurance market although they represent 25 percent of the world's population, according to AIG, which launched its Takaful operation in October 2006.
Read more about the perfidious nature of Islamic finance here. Posted on 12/03/2008 2:29 PM by Rebecca Bynum
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Italy Coming To Its Senses Quicker Than Elsewhere
Maroni proposes a moratorium on all new mosque-building. Now he also has to propose closing and tearing down mosques whose members have been implicated, in any way, with terrorist plotting. The symbolic value of tearing down those mosques and Muslim "centers" would be very great, would be a salutary act for all Infidels.
The story, untranslated, is here:
Islam/ Maroni: si aggrava problema moschee e attività svolte
Si possono immaginare ulteriori misure normative in ddl sicurezza
Roma, 3 dic. (Apcom) - In Italia "si aggrava il problema delle moschee, dei centri islamici e delle attività svolte in questi centri che svolgono anche attività di proselitismo, di predicazione estremista, di raccolte di fondi per finanziare attività e strutture terroristiche all'estero e persino di reclutamento di potenziali terroristi". Lo ha detto il ministro dell'Interno, Roberto Maroni, riferendo alla Camera sull'arresto di due presunti terroristi ieri a Milano.
Poi, una proposta: "Sarebbe utile - ha detto - che il Governo e il Parlamento definiscano ulteriori misure normative, che possono essere contenute nel disegno di legge per la sicurezza ora al Senato, in cui si immagini che il ministro dell'Interno, nei casi di urgenza e quando emergono finalità di terrorismo, possa ordinare la sospensione delle attività di associazioni, fossero anche delle onlus, di movimenti o associazioni che svolgano o favoriscano tali attività, perlomeno fino alla sentenza definitiva del giudice competente", come accade oggi per la legge Mancino.
Sono state avanzate anche altre proposte - ha poi proseguito - che io valuto con grande attenzione, come quella di una moratoria per la costruzione di nuove moschee".
Posted on 12/03/2008 2:47 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
Southall Job Centre workers dispute Muslim teacher's red tape claims
A MUSLIM teacher has hit out at job centre bureaucrats who she claims told her to skip Eid for a “useless” meeting.
Nasrin Islam, 30, of Allendale Avenue, Southall, says she was told to go to a training interview designed to help her get a job, despite the fact she already has one and is due to start on Tuesday.
The mother-of-two claims she was warned that if she does not go then her final benefit check will be cut off.
She said: “Why should I attend an interview that's useless to me. How dare they tell me that my benefits will get cut off if I don't attend a useless interview.“Even if it's only £120, I've got gas bills to pay.”
Her first pay check (don't you mean cheque?) for her new job will not come until mid to late December at the earliest and she is worried it may even be bumped back to January because of the time of year she is starting work.
The training interview clashes with morning prayers, for the Muslim holiday Eid, which are due to be held at her local mosque.
The Ealing Times asked the Job centre for a response, which is as follows.
A GOVERNMENT department has denied calling in a Muslim woman for a “useless” meeting during Eid morning prayers.
Neil Lands, a spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions, said the full interview would not take place, since Ms Islam has found a job, and claimed the issue was that she must still come in to sign on.
He said: “If you want to claim benefit and are getting benefit you have to go in physically and sign on. She can't just say 'I've found a job I'm not coming in, send me a check'. We need a signature to prove she was unemployed for those two weeks.”
Ms Islam said she had offered to come and sign on at 11.30am as usual but had been told she had to come in at 9.30am for the meeting.
Mr Lands said she had not asked to come in at 11.30am but could call the job centre to try and arrange to.
She is lucky she is getting a payment in those circumstances at all. I know a woman who was told to apply for a hardship loan if she had no money to tide her over until her first wages were paid. Posted on 12/03/2008 2:44 PM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
A Musical Interlude: Living In Clover (Jack Buchanan)
Posted on 12/03/2008 3:18 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
A Little Tale Of Christmas
Have You Got A Few Minutes? Good! Then Let Me Tell You A Little Tale Of Christmas, Please
by John M. Joyce (Dec. 2008)
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
Well, that wasn’t really true for there was a little mouse down in the pantry who was wide-awake. In fact, boys and girls, he was trying very, very hard to get the lid of the great big tin which had the Christmas Cake in it (you remember the tin, don’t you: it’s the one that only gets used at Christmas and has pictures of Santa Claus on it and lots of pictures of reindeer and squiggly bits of holly and ivy and Christmas trees all decorated in bright coloured things and candles on it as well – it’s a beautiful big tin and a special tin just for Christmas). more>>> Posted on 12/03/2008 4:10 PM by NER
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
A Sociological Interlude: The Conjugal Rights Guide (Harry Enfield)
Posted on 12/03/2008 9:17 PM by Hugh Fitzgerald
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