Germany: The White Rose; Anti-War Activism in the Third Reich

Doug has posted a moving account of The White Rose, an anti-war group that operated in Nazi Germany. Please take the time to read about the great courage displayed by this small group of activists striving to get the truth out in the midst of a police state.

The members of The White Rose paid the ultimate price for standing up for their beliefs. They have not been forgotten.

February 18 1943: The White Rose

(Doug’s Dark World)

This is about The White Rose, a little known anti-war group in Hitler’s Germany. Yes, there were an anti-war groups in Germany during World War Two. There were actually as many as 300 of them, all small and fragmented by the monstrous police state Hitler’s regime had become…

…This is possibly humanity’s greatest trait, that some will sacrifice themselves for others no matter what the cost to themselves. One such group of people called themselves The White Rose. This is their story.

The White Rose formed in World War Two when a handful of students and a philosophy professor realized they were united in their belief that the war was wrong and Hitler was an evil man who was bringing Germany to ruin…

Photos of The White Rose and memorials to the group may be seen here.

Netherlands: Sharia and the Secular State

Sheikh Abdullahi an-Na’im theorizes that Sharia is a moral system, rather than a legal code, and that Sharia cannot be imposed by the State without destroying its essence.

The Future of Shari’a
An interview with Muslim reformer Abdullahi an-Na’im

Michel Hoebink, interviewer (Radio Netherlands)

Islamic shari’a is best off in a secular state. That is what Sudanese Muslim reformer Abdullahi an-Na’im argues in lectures and seminars all over the Muslim world. And the response he gets is surprisingly positive…

Quoting Sheik Budullahi an-Na’im:

“I challenge the way the Islamists define shari’a and secularism. Shari’a, for a start, can never be enacted by the state. Shari’a is a moral code rather than a fixed set of legal rules. It has to be interpreted in order to be applied. When it is enacted by the state, it simply ceases to be shari’a. It becomes the political will of the ruling elite imposing its own religious interpretation on society. An Islamic state is always a state in which one group imposes its interpretation of Islam on others. Take for instance Sunni Muslims in Iran or non-Wahhabi Muslims in Saudi Arabia: They cannot live according to their beliefs because the state holds a different view…

“… I challenge the Islamist view. Because a secular state is not an anti-religious state, as the Islamists want us to believe. It is not a state that suppresses religion. On the contrary, a secular state is a state that is neutral towards religion. It protects the right of all religious and non-religious groups to manifest themselves in public life and politics, but without one group imposing its views on the others…”

India: Orphanages to Open for Infant Girls

In the wake of the gruesome discovery of the bones of approximately 400 infants near a hospital, India has decided to open a series of orphanages for unwanted baby girls.

India to open orphanages to take thousands of unwanted girls who would otherwise be killed

Randeep Ramesh (The Guardian)

The Indian government announced a nationwide series of orphanages for girls yesterday, alarmed by the inability to stem the widespread practice of female foeticide.

The news came on the day that police arrested two people near the city of Bhopal, in central India, after officers recovered almost 400 pieces of bones believed to be of newly born female babies or foetuses.

The orphanage scheme is a reponse to the deepening crisis over the country’s “missing girls”. Renuka Chowdhury, the minister of state for women and child development, estimates the number of either female foetuses aborted or newborn girls killed to be 10 million over the past two decades…