RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist, pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle Eastern Forum, and director of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992.

Today a report appeared in The Australian, a national daily newspaper, which discussed forced marriages in our nation. There were many good points made in this article, which was entitled It is the young flesh they want.

However the article reported, as if it were true, a completely false and easily disprovable statement about the Koran. The offending paragraph was:

“It is critical that the whole community is educated,” says Jennifer Burn of Anti-Slavery Australia. “The Koran does not support child marriage and the Grand Mufti of Australia says that consent is vital. But there are over 60 different traditions within the Muslim community, with different interpretations of the religious scriptures. We need the religious leaders to take the message into the communities, because they will listen to their leaders rather than us.”

It is true that the Koran does not refer specifically to child marriage. However in discussing divorce it does refer to conditions applying for a female who has not yet menstruated, i.e. for a pre-pubescent girl. The reference is found in Sura 65:4 in a list of regulations concerning the waiting period (the Iddah or Iddat) for divorced women before they can remarry. The verse deals systematically with different cases of women who for some reason are not having regular periods. It reads:

“And of those of your women who have given up hope of menstruating, if you doubt, their (waiting) period is three months, as well as those who do not menstruate. And those who are pregnant, their period is until they deliver their burdens.” (Sura 65:4)

It might be thought that this verse is ambiguous in relation to young girls. However it is quite clear. It systematically covers the three main cases where a female is not menstruating: the old, the young, and those who are pregnant.

Ibn Kathir’s highly respected commentary on the Koran has this to say about this passage (see here).

Allah the Exalted clarifies the waiting period of the woman in menopause. And that is the one whose menstruation has stopped due to her older age. Her ‘Iddah [waiting period before marriage] is three months instead of the three monthly cycles for those who menstruate, which is based upon the Ayah in (Surat) Al-Baqarah. [see 2:228] The same for the young, who have not reached the years of menstruation. Their‘Iddah is three months like those in menopause.

The disappearance and presumed kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers took place on Thursday evening, Israel time. By Friday evening, Israel time, the IDF had released their names and photos.

They are: Gil-ad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach. It has been confirmed that one of these students is also an American citizen; we have not been told who that might be. Two are students at Makor Chaim yeshiva. The third is a student at Shavey Hevron yeshiva in Hebron. Perhaps the IDF hopes that releasing this information will help witnesses come forward or that humanizing the boys may lead to sympathy for them.

Last night, hundreds prayed for them at the Western Wall. Their fate was discussed at every Sabbath table including my own and in many synagogues around the world.

Since 9/11, truly, we are all Israelis. What used to happen only to Jews or mainly to Israeli Jews (hijackings, suicide/homicide bombings) remained unchecked by the world and now that same style of hatred and violence has increasingly been unleashed against civilians everywhere. We are all at the mercy of merciless, maniacal Jihadists.

When an Israeli civilian—essentially a teenager–is kidnapped, it is always an act of evil, a statement of vulgar anti-Semitism, and a rejection of the entire Western enterprise. Please bear in mind that Israel lives in a neighborhood that has exiled Jews from Arab lands, has denied that this is the case, and wishes to exterminate Jewish Israel. Read the Hamas charter, it is quite chilling. Israel is also the most stable country in the Middle East, where a Sunni-Shiia Holy War is raging out of control. It also remains a strong military power in a neighborhood in which Islamists are about to gain state power in Iraq and elsewhere.

This kidnapping is a casus belli. Those who quote Rabin’s remark that “peace is made with enemies” leave out something important. Peace is made with defeated enemies, because undefeated ones are trying to kill you, or worse, your children. That’s what an enemy is.

The kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers in Judea Thursday brings home a fact that might not stand out abstract discussions about the significance of the Palestinian Unity Government, or the various 2-state, 1-state, or any-number-state plans.

This is the fact that the Palestinian Arabs — they want to be a nation, so call them the Palestinian Nation — is the deadly enemy of the Jewish state and individual Jews.

Palestinian sources are quiet now about the kidnapping, although there are reports that prisoners in Israel are ‘celebrating’, in the hope that there will soon be yet another “prisoner exchange” like the one that freed 1024 Arab prisoners in return for Gilad Shalit.

They understand that their Jewish enemies are upset and angry and they would prefer not to provoke them at this point. The jubilation will have to wait for the ultimate outcome, which, if everything goes their way, will be yet another instance of Jewish submission to Arab strength. They’ll shoot in the air and give out candy, and another thousand or so murderers will go home (it’s too painful to speculate about the condition the boys will be in, if they survive).

We could have coexisted with them peacefully and profitably for both peoples. But starting with al-Husseini, they chose a different path, the path of rejection. Yes — they chose. And it didn’t turn out well for them. But even when it was possible to go a different way, they were resolute. They made their choices and then they doubled down. They bear the responsibility for the consequences.

Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitanopera@metopera.org
Attn: Peter Sellars, Peter Gelb, Nicole Halton, Susan Hayes

To the Staff of the Metropolitan Opera:

During World War II, a violinist dressed in military uniform went to play for the servicemen in a United States Army hospital in Italy. As he entered a ward designated for young men who had recently lost limbs, he was shocked to see that one patient was attempting to applaud with his only hand. As the musician’s face lit up with compassion and sensitivity, he raised his violin and played. His name was Jascha Heifetz, a Lithuanian-born Jewish American whose 65-year career began at age four. He made his Carnegie Hall debut at age 16, and became world renowned for the perfection to which other violinists still aspire.

Seated next to Heifetz at the hospital piano was pianist Milton Kaye. Fifty years later, Kaye recalled that memorable concert when he heard “the greatest violinist of the ages.” The following year, pianist Seymour Lipkin beheld that same magnificence when he accompanied Heifetz on another GI tour, stating that the violinist always played his best, no matter the circumstances. Heifetz had been so moved when he entertained the paraplegics, that despite his grueling schedule, he continued to add more such concerts to his tours, and Kaye remembers those days as “the greatest privilege” of his musical life.

In addition to an unparalleled talent, Heifetz had what is known as neshamah, a Jewish soul – what may be described as an energy and essence of virtue and humanity, passion and compassion, and depth of empathy for others. It was even apparent to his father who saw the four-year-old prodigy cry when he played sad music. No doubt, it is the Israeli neshamah that provides quality medical attention even to their enemies, and the same that sends Israeli first responders to countries devastated by natural disasters. And it is this same quality that appears to have eluded the next generation of Heifetzes,– Jascha’s great nephew, Peter Gelb, artistic director at the Metropolitan Opera (The “Met”).

It was said of Gelb that he declares himself a man of the people, but that he is out of touch with the prevailing zeitgeist (culture of the time). Noted in the Berkshire Fine Arts, Gelb lacks the qualifications to organize a program and appoint or audition singers and, despite his inexpertise, captured this Met position from the ailing James Levine. But it is Gelb’s choice of opera for the 2014 fall season that is most disturbing.

“Both Mr. Assad and the jihadists represent a challenge to the United States’ core interests,” former U.S. Ambassador in Damascus Robert S. Ford wrote in The New York Times on June 10. He advocated a strategy that would supposedly deal with both Bashar al-Assad and the jihadists: “with partner countries from the Friends of Syria group like France, Britain, Germany, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, we must ramp up sharply the training and material aid provided to the moderates in the armed opposition.”

Decrying Washington’s “hesitation and unwillingness to commit to enabling the moderate opposition fighters to fight more effectively both the jihadists and the regime,” Ambassador Ford advocated providing his unnamed Syrian “moderates” with advanced military hardware, including “mortars and rockets to pound airfields to impede regime air supply operations and, subject to reasonable safeguards, surface-to-air missiles.”

Ford’s article is irresponsible and ill-informed at best. It was published on the very day the insurgents belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (also known as “ISIS” to include Syria) started its spectacular advance on Mosul, Tikrit, and points further south. Even more surreally dangerous were the BloombergView editors, who urged (also on June 10) an outright, American-led anti-Assad intervention: “the U.S. and its European and regional allies should take the initiative to circumvent the UN Security Council and put the needed military muscle on the ground. Yes, Russia and China will be furious. So be it.” Now that would be a bold strategy, with many exciting ramifications in Ukraine, along the shores of the South China Sea, and elsewhere. With their gas supplies in balance, “the European allies” can hardly wait.

Ambassador Ford has wisely stayed out of the news over the past couple of days, but it would be interesting to find out if he still stands by the assessment he made four days ago. Does he still advocate arming the Free Syrian Army (FSA) “moderates,” who have been comprehensively routed by the Syrian security forces and who no longer exist as a fighting force? That same FSA, whose units invariably melt away – Iraqi-army-style – whenever confronted with the warriors of jihad, and who have observed a truce with ISIS since late September 2013? To claim that its pathetic remnant can be trained, armed and equipped to the point where it would be able take on Bashar’s army and ISIS simultaneously is insane. Or does Ford have the murderous Al Nusra Front in mind, jihadist to boot, which is a battlefield rival to ISIS and hence perhaps worthy of being treated as a “moderate” force? That same Al Nusra which is currently spreading its reign of terror into Lebanon?

UN Chief Ban Ki-moon compared the Israeli air strike against an active Hamas/Salafi Jihad terrorist to the kidnapping of 3 Israeli children.

Following repeated missile launches from Gaza into Israel, as well as a plot to take down a helicopter, the IAF struck back, taking out Hamas policeman and rocket terrorist Mohammed Awar last Wednesday. Also injured in the strike was Awar’s human shield, his 7 year old nephew, who died on Saturday.

Unlike Ban Ki-moon’s unequivocal condemnation of the kidnapping of Turkish diplomats in Iraq last week where he said, “this is totally unacceptable” and he was “shocked” to learn of the kidnapping by “terrorists”, Ki-moon felt, in the case of Israel, the need to compare, in his boilerplate statement, the deliberate kidnapping of three Israeli children, to the strike against an active terrorist, which also killed a human shield the terrorist thought would protect him from an Israeli strike, as he continues his terror attacks.

Ban Ki-moon expressed, “deep concern on the trend toward violence on the ground and attendant loss of life, including today of a child in Gaza as a result of a recent Israeli airstrike.” Ban urged all parties to “exercise restraint and lend urgent support for the release and safe return of the three youths.”

Ban Hi-moon should have pulled an Obama, and just kept his mouth shut.

CONTRARY TAKES

– The real winner in Iraq may not be Al Qaeda, but Iran. Ir may just be Jihadist gossip, but ISIS appears to have an interesting working relationship with Assad and now Maliki behind the scenes, despite trying to massacre Shiites. The ISIS assault may be what Iran needs to turn Iraq into a puppet.

– I don’t want to dampen any of the Brat celebrations, but that MSNBC interview gave me a Doug Hoffman vibe. Hopefully that’s not the case and his district is conservative. As much as I like to see Tea Party candidates beat the establishment GOP, I would like to see them beat the Dems even more.

– I’m not celebrating the Rivlin win in Israel either. Rivlin is being described as a hard-liner and he is, compared to Peres, but he’s also often unpredictably liberal. He’s a wild card and he’s certain to continue the politicization of the presidency and I suspect he’ll speak out more from the left…

I hope I’m wrong.

THE KKK: A WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF DEES INC.

Two years ago the Southern Poverty Law Center named me, a bar sign and a brand of gun lubricant as hate groups. It wasn’t the punch line to a joke about a Minister, a Rabbi and a Priest. Instead it was another tribute to the research skills of the country’s wealthiest, dumbest and laziest civil rights group.

Morris Dees began in the mail order business and ended up in the mail order civil rights business. Every month elderly retirees receive envelopes covered with pictures of Klansmen burning crosses. Those photos are the SPLC brand the way that the “swoosh” is for Nike and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Dees had already trademarked the KKK.

The Southern Poverty Law Center Stands Up for Hamas

Politician Who Smuggled Guns to Druglords Thinks Americans Need to do “Soul Searching” Over Guns

Obama: Al Qaeda Takeover of Iraqi Cities Not a Military Problem

Before heading to a Laguna Beach fundraiser, where 25 supporters paid $32,400 for a shot at him, Obama said, “We will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, but I have asked my national security team to prepare a range of other options that could help support Iraq security forces and I’ll be reviewing those options in the days ahead.”

Sure. He’s been saying that ever since the crisis began. Here’s a nutty idea, maybe he should have been on top of this from the beginning instead of treating it like extra work.

And maybe he can skip the fundraiser when a major terrorist group is taking over entire cities. But he didn’t do it for Benghazi. Why would he do it here.

It’s true. Obama is too smart to be president. Can’t someone get him a job delivering TED talks or a New York Times column.

THANKS TO VICTOR SHARPE
WWIII By James E. Horn
Retired U.S. Diplomat
info@jamesehorn.com
Author: EXPERIENCING ISLAM [Censored by the CIA, Banned by Librarians]

Is the USA prepared for an unmitigated disaster that may take out thousands of American lives? Soon?

Iran and Iraq, and American Folly

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
Western powers have not fared well in dealing with Islam. The British were handed their royal backsides in a basket after nearly two hundred years in Afghanistan/Pakistan and departed with their tails between their legs.
The Russians and Eastern Europeans have done better. The Austrians and Poles stopped the Turks and saved Europe 200 years ago. Russia has been a bulwark resisting Islam in the Caucasus for centuries.
When the Russians went into Afghanistan forty years ago, they had a good chance of success until the myopic progressives and reactionary conservatives of the west, led by Jimmy Carter, stepped in to help our mortal enemy against the Russians. In disgust, the Russians bailed and left a void soon filled by America’s creation, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. In repayment for the billions spent in nurturing Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the World Trade Center was wiped out, and embassies have been attacked and bombed with impunity.
With billions invested in working to civilize Iran, Jimmy Carter started to seriously dismantle America’s defenses to let the Mohammedans take over Iran, whose surrogate Shiia militia, Hezbollah later murdered 243 Marines in Beirut (Reagan ran away from that fight), and slick Willie let other Islamists humiliate us in Somalia. The paper tiger became a reality.

POLITICAL ISLAMIC CORRUPTION IN AMERICA
The mainstream Islamists of OPEC surged forward in Europe and the United States funneling billions of petrodollars in bribes to successfully take control of greedy western politicians and institutions. Most of those witless politicians believed they were merely getting cash donations, while a few seditionist traitors just knew they were selling their American people down the drain to oblivion. Americans included in this list include the Clintons (including aspiring POTUS, Hillary) the Bushes, Chuck Schumer, “Turban” Durbin, and many others; and the self-affirmed Islamist in the White House, Barak Hussein Obama.
These treacherous greedy bastards have clearly accepted bribes and placed anti-American Islamist colonizers in the highest places of American National Security organizations and in institutions all over the country. Politically, the US leadership is hamstrung with many in the tank for Islamists who are increasingly controlling us as they attack our Constitution from all flanks.

TRAIN WRECK
“What difference does it make?” bellowed Hillary Clinton regarding the four dead at Benghazi, a terrorist action directed at an American diplomatic mission that happened nearly two years ago with no appropriate retribution from the USA, a further affirming our inability to hold Islamofascist terrorists accountable. Neither did Hillary and her fellow obeisant servant to the Saudis, Obama retaliate at the Moslem Brotherhood for their attack on the Embassy in Cairo. In fact, Obama with Hillary’s connivance paid tribute to Morsi and his Moslem Brotherhood.

Afghanistan and Iraq
Witless George Bush decided to go after the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where empires have fallen on their asses. Ignorant, Bush went into Iraq to take out a tyrant which led to the installation of a greater evil. Bush’s adviser on Arabic affairs spoke not a word of Arabic, had never cracked the cover of a Koran, and then advised Bush to declare that Islam is a religion of peace without understanding the duplicitous meaning of that word vis-à-vis Islam. Bush’s equally ignorant Security Adviser, Condi Rice blissfully played along because she had no idea of what needed to be done.

“Consequently, the sight of Mahmood Abbas negotiating a peace deal with Israel, under pressure from Obama and Kerry, is a pathetic farce and the actors know it. The slightest compromise by Abbas would effectively sign his own death warrant. The farce of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations proceeds largely for the benefit and amusement of the rest of the world.There is an even deeper reason why an Arab peace with Israel is unlikely. According to Muslim law, once a territory has been under Islamic control, it may never revert to ownership by non-Muslims. It is the Islamic version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, under which a communist country must never be allowed to revert to a non-communist one.Meantime, the talks will go on, terrorist attacks on Israel will proceed under Iranian and Syrian directives, and Palestinian Arabs living beyond Israel’s borders will continue to wallow in the ordure created for them by their fellow Arabs.”

There are no such people as Palestinians and there never have been. Nor was there ever a state called Palestine or a Palestinian culture or a Palestinian language. If truth prevails over the left’s revisionist history, Palestine will never be more than the name of a geographical region

Following the rise of the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1969, there was a push to convince the world that Palestinians are a unique people of Arab origin who had inhabited the lands of Israel for thousands of years. The uninformed and gullible believed it, and leftists still promote it.

In fact, there are no such people as Palestinians and there never have been. If anyone doubts this they should consider the following statement made in 1977 by Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive committee member, during an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a “distinct Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.

Nor was there ever a state called Palestine or a Palestinian culture or a Palestinian language. Like the Jordanians, Palestinians are a recent creation. If truth and justice prevail over revisionist history promoted by the Left, there never will be a state called Palestine in place of Israel and the word will remain no more than the name of a geographical region.

The Roman emperor Hadrian, in an effort to destroy Jews once and for all, renamed the territory of Judea (the present-day West Bank), Palaestina, after the Philistines, an Aegean people who had conquered the coast of Canaan. They appear in the Old Testament as depraved pagans and have long since vanished from history.

Hadrian’s intention was to eradicate memory of the Jewish people whom the Romans exiled from their homeland as punishment for having rebelled against them in 130 AD. Nevertheless, a handful of Jews remained in Israel, and their descendants have been a Jewish presence ever since. In fact, Jews are the only group of people to have lived continuously in Israel for the past 3700 years.

With the fall of the Roman empire, a host of interlopers took over the region called Palestine—Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Crusaders and Mamluks—but they never created an independent country. Even under Ottoman rule (1517 to 1917) Palestine did not become a state.

Fundraising sounds harmless and caring. The vast majority of fundraising is just that.
Many years ago I attended a fundraiser for Afghanistan against Russia held at Faneuil Hall, birth place of the Boston Tea party of December 16, 1773. Feeling moved I donated money not knowing the true nature of Islamic terrorists.

Main stream media rarely reports on radical Islamists who are attacking us, frequently, violently and subtly. Here I present an important tool they use, fundraising. Money is of major importance in any war. Radical Islam is well aware of its value. Covertly they are taking our money and sending it to terrorists who, in turn, are using it for weapons that are killing our soldiers.

The Holy Land Foundation (HLF) was the largest Islamic fundraiser in the United States. They were found guilty of funneling $12 Million to Hamas. The U.S. government designated HLF a terrorist organization, seized its assets, and closed the charity. HLF and five of its organizers were convicted of supporting Hamas. One of the defendants, Mohammad El-Mezain, ran Holy Land’s California office, also raised money for KindHearts.

KindHearts, an Ohio charity, allegedly supported the terrorist organization Hamas, as well. It had it’s assets frozen in 2006. KindHearts made a deal with the U.S. Treasury Dept in November, 2011. It was disbanded after agreeing to distribute its funds to various humanitarian causes.

It has been well established that The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has ties with terrorist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. CAIR was classified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial.

A federal jury in Boston found Libyan-born Emadeddin Muntasser, Muhamed Mubayyid, a Lebanon native and Samir Al-Monla, an immigrant from Kuwait, guilty of conspiring to defraud the government by using tax-free donations to support holy war and holy warriors. They raised nearly $ 2,000,000. Muntasser, was turned down for U.S. citizenship.
Sam Al-Arian a Florida professor was one of the founding fathers of the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the United States. He’s also a founder of the Islamic Society of North America. Sami was convicted of fundraising for Palestinian terrorist organizations.