Turkey: Secular Snobs Profiled in NY Times

There’s a lot of ugly in this article about the attitudes of secular Turks in regards to their religious compatriots. Are secular Turks really as snobby and ignorant as the ones profiled in this article? I’m sure they’re not, but still… This article really bothered me.

In Turkey, Fear About Religious Lifestyle

Sabrina Tavernise (NY Times)

When hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of Istanbul on Sunday, it may have looked like a protest of government policy.

It was not.

Behind the slogans and signs of marchers in Istanbul on Sunday and in Ankara two weeks ago was something much more basic: a fear of the lifestyles of their more religious compatriots.

Some concerns were snobbish: religious Turks were uneducated and poor, their pesky prayer rugs got underfoot in hospital halls.

Others were less elitist and had more personal worries: how much tolerance for our secular lifestyles will an emerging class of religious Turks have?…

US: Warnings Issued for Kohl Containing Lead

HEALTH DEPARTMENT WARNS NEW YORKERS NOT TO USE IMPORTED EYE MAKEUP THAT CONTAINS LEAD

Products called “Kohl,” “Kajal,” and “Surma” Can Damage the Brain and Nervous System

The warning was issued by the New York City Health Department. If you read the bulletin, you will note that these products don’t just “contain lead.” Rather, at 47%, 36% and 27%, lead would seem to be the primary ingredient. With totals like these, I find it extremely difficult to believe that the named companies didn’t know exactly what they are selling to us.

Bahrain: Artists Under Attack for Performance at Spring of Culture Festival

Marcel Khalife and Qassim Haddad cause fury in Bahrain’s parliament

Members of parliament in the small Gulf kingdom Bahrain attacked a performance by Lebanese composer Marcel Khalife and Bahraini poet Qassim Haddad as being a violation of Islamic morals and sharia laws.

Controversy has emerged with a new work by the renowned Lebanese musician and composer Marcel Khalife and Bahraini poet Qassim Haddad. The controversy revolves around the setting of an epic love poem entitled ‘Majnoon Laila’, or ‘Laila Wal Majnoon’, (which means ‘Laila and the Possessed’ or ‘Laila and the Madman’), to music, dance, song and drama by Marcel Khalife…

An online petition in support of Haddad and Khalife is available here.

France: Renewed Virginity in the News Again

Another article about French Muslim women and hymenoplasty.

Here is what I don’t understand: the surgery is done to make the new husband believe he is getting a virgin bride. But, if he is a virgin himself, how would he be able to tell? Are these marvelous virgin dudes all experts on the topic of female hoo-hoos?

Despite the lurid wives’ tales of blood and pain, not all virgins bleed and not all virgins have tough hymens. (Some don’t have hymens at all. They were born that way.)

Hymenoplasty is a custom that needs to be laid to rest. Quite a few of these guys who are so interested in virgins are not virgins themselves, so they have no business humiliating their new bride based on their doubts. And those who want to marry virgins should spend more time in religious circles, rather than hanging with their very un-Islamic and non-intact girl friends.

Muslim women in France regain virginity in clinics

Alexandra Steigrad (Reuters)

Morocco: Former Gitmo Prisoner, Falsely Accused, Now Feared Held in Secret Moroccan Prison

Many thanks to misterlister for the tip-off on this article:

Chef who was held on false claim vanishes into Morocco

Sean O’Neill (London Times)

A chef who cooked in London restaurants for 16 years has been released from Guantanamo Bay and flown secretly to Morocco after ministers refused to intervene to secure his return to Britain.

Ahmed Errachidi’s lawyers were told of his release yesterday but US sources said he arrived in Morocco on Tuesday.

Neither his legal team nor his family have been able to make contact with him and they fear that he has been taken to a secret detention centre.

Mr Errachidi, 40, who suffers from bipolar disorder, was held for five years in the US military internment camp on the basis of a false claim by an unidentified informant that he received military training at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan in July 2001. But The Times has seen payslips, bank documents and witness statements that prove that Mr Errachidi was working at the five-star Westbury Hotel in Mayfair that month and sending money to his relatives in Morocco…

Worth a Visit: Just Foreign Policy

Tired of tearing your hair out? Take a cyber-hike over to Just Foreign Policy to check out their blog and to find out what you can do to make a difference.

Just Foreign Policy is an independent and non-partisan mass-membership organization. We are dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy to serve the interests and reflect the values of the broad majority of Americans, rather than those of special interests both inside and outside of government.

US: Congressional Impotence

A hat tip to my anonymous friend for this interesting article:

Amazing Statement Of Congressional Impotence By Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller

(A Tiny Revolution)

Syria: Rumors of New Conversions to Shia Islam

Catalytic Converters

Andrew Tabler (NY Times)

The Middle East is abuzz with talk of “Shiitization.” Since the war in Lebanon last summer, newspapers, TV news channels and Web sites in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have reported that Sunnis, taken with Hezbollah’s charismatic Shiite leader Hassan Nasrallah and his group’s “resistance” to Israel, were converting to Shiite Islam. When I recently visited the semi-arid plains of eastern Syria, known as the Jazeera, Sunni tribal leaders whispered stories of Iranians roaming the Syrian countryside handing out bags of cash and macaroni to convert families and even entire villages to Shiite Islam.

Much of the buzz is surely propaganda from the region’s Sunni governments…

US: Bosnian Refugees Adjusting to New Lives

Bosnians in America: A Two-Sided Saga

Lynette Clemetson (NY Times)

Guantanamo: Detainees Cleared, Nowhere to Be Released

The US is continuing to hold prisoners at Guantanamo Bay who have been cleared of charges, but would face torture and executions if returned home to such places as the Peoples Republic of China.

The US is trying to persuade other countries to take in these prisoners (now refugees). Other countries wonder why the US doesn’t take them in. After all, even though these men were declared “the worst of the worst”, they turned out to be not-so-bad after all. (In reality, many of the detainees were not combatants or terrorists; and some were either juveniles or extremely elderly.)

82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

U.S. Cites Difficulty Deporting Detainees

Craig Whitlock (Washington Post)
More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

US: Arab-American Repeated Subjected to Searches and Detentions During Routine Border Crossings

Borders Spell Trouble for Arab-American

Neil MacFarquhar (NY Times)

Abe Dabdoub calls the day he was sworn in as an American citizen last year the proudest moment of his life, little suspecting that his new identity would set off a bureaucratic nightmare at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security.

Most of his family members live in Canada, and on each of Mr. Dabdoub’s 14 trips to visit them since last August, on his way back across the Ambassador Bridge into Michigan, the Customs and Border Patrol agents have sent him through a security gantlet, he says.

He has been fingerprinted 14 times, his body searched 9 times, been handcuffed 4 times and isolated in a separate detention room 13 times. On the fourth trip, the border patrol agents started subjecting his wife to similar scrutiny…

Denmark: Muslim Woman Announces Run for Parliament

It’s ironic that when a Muslim woman runs for Danish parliament the protests come from both left and right. Aren’t we constantly being told that Muslims do not adequately participate in the Western societies in which they dwell. Well, here’s a woman who does want to participate fully — and no one seems to know how to handle it.

Abdol-Hamid hardly seems to have a “radical” view point. She states that “she does not support the death penalty … and is ‘unconcerned with whatever sexual or ethnic background people have.’” This seems to indicate that she’s not even particularly conservative. So, what is the problem? Well, hmmm… she’s Muslim and she wears hijab. Ergo, as far as her detractors are concerned, her values are alien to Denmark and she should not participate in politics.

Muslim woman runs for Danish parliament

Karl Ritter (Associated Press Writer)

A Muslim woman denounced and ridiculed by nationalists for wearing an Islamic head scarf announced Friday she was running for Parliament — a move bound to rekindle heated debate about Islam in Denmark.

Even mainstream politicians and party colleagues in the left-wing Red-Green Alliance have questioned whether Abdol-Hamid, who moved to Denmark at age 6 with her Palestinian family, shares the fundamental values of Danish society.

“I want another Denmark where we talk about the difference between groups,” she said at a news conference announcing her candidacy. “When we talk about values, (we need) to be open to whatever people are, Muslim or non-Muslim…”

USA: Most Overseas Katrina Aid Unclaimed

Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed

John Solomon and Spencer S. Hsu (Washington Post)

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.

Titled “Echo-Chamber Message” — a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again — the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans “practical help and moral support” and “highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving.”

Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies’ offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina’s victims.

Iran: Pattern of Eroding Women’s Rights

Women’s rights regress under Iranian regime

Scheherezade Faramarzi (Associated Press)

Iranian police shoved and kicked them, loaded them into a curtained minibus and drove them away. Hours later, at the gates of Evin prison, they were blindfolded and forced to wear all-enveloping chadors, and then were interrogated through the night.

All 31 were women – activists accused of receiving foreign funds to stir up dissent in Iran. But their real crime, says Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, was gathering peacefully outside Tehran’s Revolutionary Court in support of five fellow activists on trial for demanding changes in laws that discriminate against women.

During her 15 days in prison, “I tried to convince them that asking for our rights had nothing to do with the enemy,” Abbasgholizadeh said by phone from Tehran. “But they insisted that foreign governments were exploiting our cause…”

…Abbasgholizadeh said discrimination extended even into her prison cell in Section 209 of Evin prison: Male prisoners got to smoke and drink tea as much as they liked, while women were limited to two cigarettes and two cups of tea a day. Men could exercise in sunshine; women got their 15 minutes outdoors at sunset…

Then there’s this:

Ahmadinejad’s government has now turned its crackdown to colleges. It is drafting a law to limit women students to half the places in college, instead of the 65 percent they now occupy. It is also restricting women’s entry to medical schools.

Restricting access to education remains a favorite weapon of tyrants. Who needs so many educated females, especially doctors, anyway?

Blitzkrieg in Guernica

The Germans used the Spanish Civil War as a training camp for their future invasions of other countries.

Practicing Blitzkrieg in Basque Country

By Jörg Diehl (International Spiegel)

The attack quickly became the symbol of senseless destruction and for Nazi brutality: Exactly 70 years ago, the Condor Legion rained death down on the Spanish town of Guernica. For the Germans, it was little more than a training run.

“Guernica, city with 5,000 residents,” the commander of the Condor Legion, Wolfram von Richthofen, noted curtly in his journal, “has been literally razed to the ground. Bomb craters can be seen in the streets. Simply wonderful…”

Many of us are familiar with Picasso’s famous painting “Guernica.” Actual photos of the destruction of this small town are available here:

Guernica Photos