RUTHFULLY YOURS

Recently, Chinese, Japanese and other educators have found that rote learning and endless drills produce high achievers without creativity, originality, or the ability to think for themselves. Western academic standards of rationality and objectivity have been behind most of the West’s achievements.

“The campus has three mosques with a fourth one planned, but no bookstore. No Pakistani university, including QAU, allowed Abdus Salam to set foot on its campus, although he had received the Nobel Prize in 1979 for his role in formulating the standard model of particle physics.” — Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy, commenting on Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, the second-best university among the 57 Muslim states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The very thought that “Islamic science” has to be different from “Western science” suggests the need for a radically different way of thinking. Scientific method is scientific method and rationality is rationality, regardless of the religion practiced by individual scientists.

In April this year, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shaykh ‘Ali Gomaa, told an interviewer what he meant as a flat statement of fact: that there are no female heart surgeons, as such work required strength and other capabilities that no woman possesses. He put it this way:

“You may have noticed that there is not a single female heart surgeon in the world… It’s amazing. It’s peculiar. Why do you think that there are none? Because it requires great physical effort — beyond what a woman is capable of. That’s in general. Along comes a woman who challenges this, and she succeeds in becoming a surgeon. But she is one woman among several million male surgeons.”

Now even a child could have carried out a simple Google search and realized that there are countless female surgeons and many female heart surgeons. It would not have taken long to find, for example, the US Association of Women Surgeons, which includes heart surgeons — and that would have settled his hash. But apparently deep-seated, pre-formed judgements about women’s abilities prevented Gomaa from using whatever powers of reasoning and intelligence he may possess.

Sadly, there often seems a profound absence of scientific probing within the Muslim world.

It seems reasonable to assume that levels of intelligence are pretty well the same around the world, regardless of race, gender, or religious affiliation. As human beings, we share the same brainpower, just as we share all other physical functions. Mercifully, earlier views of racial inequality have in most places been replaced by a more fact-based understanding of human characteristics. Today, theories put forward in the last two centuries of a supposed “racial supremacy” of white people have been happily discarded. In democratic societies, white supremacists are universally loathed.

In the OECD’s 2015 PISA science results, seven out of the top ten countries, based on achievements at school level, were in the Far East — including Japan and China, with Korea at eleven. The United States was number 25. In mathematics, the results were even more striking: the top seven countries ranged from Singapore to Korea, with the United States at 39, well below most European nations. While such results show that Asian students are indeed intelligent, there is a price to pay for those outstanding results. Students put in long school days and long school years, and live regimented lives. Recently, Chinese, Japanese and other educators have found that rote learning and endless drills produce high achievers without creativity, originality, or the ability to think for themselves. Often, as we shall see, rote learning in the Middle East seems to lead to poor educational outcomes.[1]

For all that, we are all aware that different nations, different cultures and different religions achieve varied and even conflicting levels of intellectual achievement. The Western democracies, including Israel, have for some time now been the highest achievers in fields such as science, technology, medicine, information technology, astronomy and the exploration of space, as well as in modern academic disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, critical history, economics, analytical politics, statistics, and unbiased religious studies, among others. Western academic standards of rationality and objectivity have been behind most of those achievements. Sadly, many scholars in Western countries, not least the US, have abandoned even a semblance of neutrality on and off campus, following a deep politicization of many humanities subjects, above all the Middle East and related studies.

The last (worst) rankings of the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum, from 128th to 144th, are without exception overwhelmingly Muslim countries, including Turkey at the 130th place.

A 2016 study by Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry revealed that no fewer than 86% of Turkish women have suffered physical or psychological violence at the hands of their partners or family.

So, tell us, Ms. Simonovic: Do Turkish men beat and sometimes kill their wives because of Israeli occupation? Is there “a clear link” between Turkey’s rising numbers indicating violence against women and “Israel’s prolonged occupation?”

The United Nations panels lovingly practice hypocrisy all the time. In 2016, a UN debate revolved around the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which voted to blame Israel for Palestinian domestic violence. This year’s show was hardly different in the content of nonsense. The executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, asked Dubravka Simonovic, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, at a session on June 12: “Ms. Simonovic, in other words, what you are saying is as follows: ‘When Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault.'”

At first glance it sounds like dark humor, but it is not. Not just one but two reports presented before the UNHRC by Simonovic argue that Israel is to blame for Palestinian violence against women, through “a clear linkage between the prolonged occupation and violence”.

Where, Neuer asked Simonovic, is the data? There is data, but not the kind that Simonovic would prefer to believe exists.

According to the Global Gender Gap Index of the World Economic Forum, there is not a single overwhelmingly Muslim nation in the best 50 scoring list of countries. In contrast, the last (worst) rankings of the index, from 128th to 144th, are without exception overwhelmingly Muslim countries, including Turkey at the 130th place. Turkey’s case is important to note, as the increasing supremacy of Islamist politics in daily life in the country has boosted patriarchal behavior and worsened gender equality since 2002, when President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power. In other words Turkey, the 17th biggest economy in the world, is the 15th-last country in terms of gender equality.

The United Nations Population Fund grimly observed in a report:

“… women and girls are still exposed to violence, being abused, trafficked, their access to education and political participation is refused and face with many other human rights violations … The fact of violence against women as a concept emerged through gender inequality is widespread in Turkey”.

A 2013 Hurriyet Daily News survey found that 34% of Turkish men think violence against women is “occasionally necessary,” while 28% say violence can be used to discipline women; a combined 62% approval of violence against women.

In 2014, Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry reported that its domestic violence hotline received over 100,000 calls, and estimated that the number of unreported cases is three to five times that number.

A 2016 study by the same ministry revealed that no fewer than 86% of Turkish women have suffered physical or psychological violence at the hands of their partners or family. According to the ministry’s findings, physical violence is the most common form of abuse, as 70% of women reported they were physically assaulted.

Al-Shabaab issued a lengthy slam against a report that the group decried as fake news, laying out a Sharia case against using anonymous sourcing and trying to shore up their defense with a list of terror leaders who think they’re great.

The terror group is taking issue with “Why My Wife and I Left Shabab in Somalia,” a two-part Skype interview featuring two Europeans, unnamed and with their faces covered and voices altered, who described life with the terror group and their imprisonment upon attempting to flee Al-Shabaab. The interviews were posted by New Yorker Bilal Abdul Kareem, who runs a video channel called On the Ground News.

Shabaab expresses “dismay” that the lengthy interviews were “nothing more than unsubstantiated allegations and sweeping statements that sought to delegitimize the Mujahideen of East Africa by portraying them as an oppressive band of crooks and criminals,” and accused “brother Bilal” of deviation from “the expected journalistic integrity and Islamic etiquettes required from a Muslim reporter.”

In a document penned earlier this month by Abu Muhammad Al-Muhajir — he says he came from another country and has fought with Al-Shabaab for nearly a decade — and distributed online by al-Qaeda’s Global Islamic Media Front, the group then lays out what they believe to be those journalistic standards.

“Entertaining allegations and presenting them as facts without double-checking their veracity is something unjustified, both from a Shari’ah as well as from a journalistic perspective,” the document states, accusing the video site of giving the couple “a platform to spread a one-sided, gloomy depiction of the Jihad in East Africa.”

Al-Shabaab’s second piece of advice says it’s against Islamic law to use anonymous or obscured sourcing.

“Of course, one might argue that hiding their identities was done out of concern for their safety. The rules, however, are binding considering the harmful effects of accepting disparaging testimonies from anonymous sources,” Al-Muhajir writes.

“For argument’s sake, even if the identities of these individuals were known to the reporter, then that still would not justify accepting their version of events to be true without verifying them, for that would be great injustice and bias,” the document continues. “Furthermore, it is imperative to ask ourselves, is the disparagement of these two unknown individuals enough to discredit an established Jihadi organization that has been recognized, recommended and respected by the senior leadership of all the Jihadi groups worldwide?”

“This is a group that has been praised by the likes of Shaikh Osama ibn Laden, Shaikh Abu Basir Nasir Al-Wuhayshi, Shaikh Abu Umar al-Baghdadi, Shaikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, Shaikh Abu Yahya Al-Libi, Shaikh Anwar Al-Awlaki, Shaikh Mustafa Abu Yazid, Shaikh Ayman Ad-Dhawahiri and others. Is it therefore logical or acceptable from a Shari’ah standpoint, for brother Bilal to cast away the praise and recommendations of such revered Islamic leaders based on the accusations of two anonymous individuals?”

Al-Muhajir also questioned whether the couple were “coerced by the apostate intelligence agencies” after leaving Al-Shabaab and whether they were part of a “new media strategy” against jihadists.

“Taking into consideration the gravity of the allegations and the damaging consequences they may cause, it would have been befitting for brother Bilal to carefully scrutinize the profile of Abdurahman ‘Doe’ and Saffiyah ‘Doe’ to know whether these anonymous individuals were trustworthy sources of information before disseminating their narratives to the world as facts,” the document adds.

Later on, the author admits that Al-Shabaab, as in “every Jihadi arena,” acknowledges “mistakes which have occurred and will continue to occur because error is something innate in human nature,” but insists mistakes — “if we were to hypothetically say that innocent people were killed during some of [Al-Shabaab’s] military operations” — don’t “render their Jihad illegitimate.”

The group claims that the couple were detained because the terror organization was trying to find a safe route by which they could go home. Al-Muhajir then complains that the couple didn’t talk about crimes against Muslims by “Crusaders” during their hourlong interview, “as if the couples’ personal dilemma is more important than the greater struggle” of jihad.

“In Islam, there is absolutely no room for entertaining unfounded accusations and merely claiming that ‘everyone knows’ will never hold water in the court of Shari’ah,” adds the rebuttal.CONTINUE AT SITE

Cyberattacks wreaked havoc across Europe and the U.S. on Tuesday in a confidence-shaking attack that appeared to stem in part from an obscure Ukrainian tax software product.

The virus, whose victims included major global companies from Merck MRK -0.58% & Co. to PAO Rosneft , bore similarities to last month’s global ransomware attack but was in some ways more insidious, security experts say.

The attack, which security experts dubbed Petya, exposed fresh weakness in the computer systems that run modern-day societies as the virus rapidly spread unimpeded across Ukraine, Russia and other European and U.S. locations.

Researchers were still investigating late on Tuesday the source of the outbreak, which locked digital files and demanded payment for them to be returned at more than 100 companies and institutions.

But two companies investigating the outbreak say that a software update from Kiev-based Intellekt Servis was a principal—and inadvertent—source. The company described itself as a victim of Tuesday’s attack, saying the virus had disrupted its own operations. It said that when it released its latest software on June 22 it didn’t contain any virus.

Some experts disagreed with that assessment. The software was pushed out to customers five days ago and then quietly spread within corporate networks before being triggered on Tuesday, said Craig Williams, security outreach manager with Cisco Systems Inc., a networking hardware company, Kaspersky Lab ZAO, an antivirus company, also cited Intellekt Servis as a main source of the outbreak but saw no evidence of triggering mechanism.

The cyber security department of Ukraine’s national police warned on its Facebook page that preliminary analysis suggested the accounting software was “only one of the vectors of the attack.” The Russian security firm Group-IB agreed, saying it saw companies infected via malicious email attachments. CONTINUE AT SITE

As one major European city after another gives way to the invader, one measure of how far along the conquest has advanced is the frequency of car-burnings.

These acts of arson are especially common on one annual holiday – New Year’s Eve – and during one season, namely summer. Earlier this year Robert Spencer quoted an article that traced the “custom” of European car burnings back to “Strasbourg, Germany and eastern France during the 1990’s.” They’re since spread elsewhere, notably to Muslim neighborhoods in the Swedish cities of Stockholm Gothenburg, and Malmö. They’re also especially big in Paris and other French cities, where in on New Years Eve 2012-13, at least 1,193 cars were torched.

On January 3, 2013, Time ran a piece by Bruce Crumley that, bizarrely, made light of all the car-burning. “Burn out the old year; torch in the new,” Crumley began, joking that France had kicked off 2013 “in its uniquely pyromaniac fashion.” He quipped about “France’s distinctive car-burning penchant,” about its “auto roasts,” about “flame-happy France,” about France’s “flaming-auto fetish.” Although Crumley brushed up against the truth – referring euphemistically to the fact that all these acts were taking place in “disadvantaged areas” and the so-called “projects” – he was careful to avoid using the word “Islam” or “Muslim.” No, the whole point of his piece was to spin the annual car fires as a quirky French tradition.

But then it’s par for the course for journalists, politicians, and police spokespeople alike to treat these car fires as a joke, a quirk, a temporary problem, a minor inconvenience – and, most important, to pretend not to know who’s setting them and why. “This crime is very hard to investigate,” said Malmö cop Lars Forstell last January. “We don’t see any patterns and we don’t have any suspects.” Last August, responding to the fact that car-burning was now becoming a familiar activity in Copenhagen, police spokesman Rasmus Bernt Skovsgaard said, “It is still too early to say anything on the extent to which this could have a connection to the fires that have happened in Sweden.” A month later, in a report on the Copenhagen car-burnings, the New York Times quoted a Danish detective inspector, Jens Moller Jensen, as saying: “It is a mystery why this is happening, and there has been a big increase over the last few months and that is worrying.” Jensen added: “I am working on several hypotheses….One theory is that cars in Denmark are being burned by individuals from an angry underclass in a country where far-right groups have organized bitter protests against immigration, calling it a threat to the nation’s identity.” In other words, the firebugs are immigrants whose feelings have been hurt by far-right bigotry. So the fires are, ultimately, the fault of Islamophobes.

Routinely, the mainstream media attribute the car fires to unnamed perpetrators whom they vaguely identify as “youths” and “hooligans.” Last September, the Atlantic’s urban-policy website, CityLab, actually ran a piece headlined “The Mystery of Scandinavia’s Car-Burning Spree.” Noting that dozens of cars had been set ablaze over the summer in Stockholm, Gothenberg, and Malmö, and that Copenhagen was now not far behind, author Feargus O’Sullivan spent 500 words puzzling over the phenomenon. What could possibly be the cause of all this arson? After all, “no particular group [was] claiming responsibility.” Could car owners themselves be doing this to collect insurance money? Could these crimes be “an expression of rage from young men who see no other outlet for it, or find that the attention it gets them a kick”? Like Crumley, O’Sullivan then brushed against the truth, noting that the car burnings “have mainly been concentrated in relatively deprived areas such as Malmö’s Rosengård, neighborhoods where social and ethnic segregation and a perceived lack of opportunities have left many young people, especially those from a non-Swedish background, frustrated that their futures are being overlooked.” In short, the car burnings are a cry for help by those who’ve been “deprived” and “overlooked.”