Eideard

Christians who want to be exempt from equality legislation are like Muslims trying to impose sharia on Britain, Trevor Phillips, the human rights watchdog, has declared.

Religious rules should end “at the door of the temple” and give way to the “public law” laid down by Parliament, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said. He argued that Roman Catholic adoption agencies and other faith groups providing public services must choose between their religion and obeying the law when their beliefs conflict with the will of the state.

Mr Phillips singled out the adoption agencies that fought a long legal battle to avoid being forced to accept homosexual couples under equality laws. Last year, following a High Court case, the Charity Commission ruled against an exemption for Catholic Care, an adoption agency operating in Leeds.

Speaking at a debate in London on diverse societies, Mr Phillips backed the new laws, which led to the closure of all Catholic adoption agencies in England. “You can’t say because we decide we’re different then we need a different set of laws,” he said, in comments reported by The Tablet, the Catholic newspaper.

“To me there’s nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn’t apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn’t work.”

He added that religious groups should be free to follow their own rules within their own settings but not outside. “Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law,” he said.
“Institutions have to make a decision whether they want to do that or they don’t want to do that…”

Mr Phillips has been outspoken in his defence of human rights law even when they conflict with religious beliefs.

He has accused some Christian groups of being more militant than Muslims. During the debate, he praised both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches for their work in inner cities, particularly through faith schools, but accused some religious groups of growing intolerance.

“There is something rather odd that is happening amongst what I call the righteous brigade, that is people of good will and so on,” Mr Phillips said. “And that is that if you don’t agree 100 per cent with them and excoriate people who have a different point of view actually somehow you are joining a bad bunch of people.”

Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society, said Mr Phillips was “absolutely right…If society has decided that it wants to ensure by law that every citizen of this country has equal rights, then there cannot be endless exemptions for religious bodies or anyone else,” he said.

“There is no such thing as partial equality, and every time an exemption is made, someone else’s rights are compromised.”

Sound familiar? Except that Trevor Phillips has more backbone than Barack Obama when it comes to confronting civil rights, the validity of civil law over religious belief in a constitutional democracy. Confronting sharia-style precepts, Muslim or Catholic or whichever fundamentalist source requires the courage to maintain constitutional protections via civil law. Maybe he’ll be invited sometime to drop in and give lessons at the White House.

But, don’t hold your breath waiting.

So, um, who’s winning this week?

A second man has been charged after an Islam convert was allegedly whipped 40 times for drinking alcohol with friends as part of a sharia law punishment.

The 43-year-old man was arrested when he attended Auburn Police Station this morning.

He has been charged with aggravated break and enter with intent to commit an indictable offence, detain person in company with intent obtain advantage, and two counts of steal from dwelling.

The man has been refused bail and will appear in Burwood Local Court tomorrow.

Earlier today Tolga Cifci, 20, one of three men accused of attacking a 31-year-old victim at his Silverwater unit on Sunday, appeared in Burwood Local Court.

The victim who converted to Islam recently was allegedly whipped up to 40 times for going out for alcoholic drinks with friends.

The man awoke in the middle of the night to find that four men had broken into his bedroom. As three men held the victim down on the bed, the fourth man is alleged to have lashed him 40 times with a cable…

Police opposed bail and said Mr Cifci put his religious rules above the laws of New South Wales…

Magistrate Tim Keady granted Mr Cifci bail but imposed strict conditions, including a curfew and reporting daily to police.

Nothing new about a lynching, mob rule to satisfy bigotry. Circumstances vary according to where in the world nutballs decide to take the law into their own hands. Whether the result is death or torture, torment or dishonor – the motivation is the same.

Only the uncivilized will justify the guidance of their god in harming another ordinary citizen who somehow offended their belief system.

 
To be fair, I’m not sure if all Republicans love Sharia law, but they certainly do love talking about it.

Republicans Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum don’t agree on everything, but they all concur that we must stop Sharia law from being imposed upon America.

And Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, winner of a Tea Party convention straw poll in February, went a step further when he recently declared that he would not even nominate an American-Muslim to his Cabinet because in his words, Muslims “are trying to force Sharia law on the people of this country.” (Although to be honest, Charlie Sheen has a better chance of “winning” the 2012 presidential election than Cain.)

Add to this mix Republican state legislators in more than a dozen states who have introduced legislation to ban state court judges from considering Sharia law. And in Tennessee, Republican state Sen. Bill Ketron has upped the ante by proposing a law that would make it a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison for any person who knowingly supports Sharia law.

To warrant this hysterical call to arms by these Republicans, American-Muslims must certainly be aggressively pushing for Sharia law to be imposed upon all Americans — which would be an especially amazing feat considering only about 2% of our nation’s population is Muslim.

So I began looking into the issue of which American-Muslims are calling for this. I started out simply enough by asking the Muslims in my family and my Muslim friends if they wanted Sharia law to be the new law of America. After they stopped laughing, they all responded “no.”

This isn’t surprising to me because I have never met an American-Muslim who has commented: “America is great, but you know what would make it even better? More laws like Afghanistan.”

RTFA for the details you should expect. Perhaps not – if you’re from the Kool Aid Party or someone who joined up for the chance to hate people on a larger scale by voting for your role model in a Republican primary.

Maybe that’s why so many are now ex-Republicans?

The Federal Supreme Court in the United Arab Emirates has ruled that a man can beat his wife and young children as long as no marks are left, The National newspaper reported…

“Although the (law) permits the husband to use his right (to discipline), he has to abide by the limits of this right,” it quoted Chief Justice Falah al-Hajeri as having written in a ruling released in a court document on Sunday.

The court ruled that a man who “slapped and kicked his daughter and slapped his wife” violated his “right” under sharia, or Islamic law, to discipline his wife and children, as he beat his wife too severely and his daughter, aged 23, was too old for such discipline, the newspaper said.

The UAE is less conservative than some Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, where women cannot drive and need a male guardian’s permission to travel.

But Islamic religious law remains a part of the legal framework in the UAE, which also has secular laws.

I’m just posting this for the record. The backwardness of theocracies – and especially those superstitious lands where something as archaic as Shari’a law is practiced – is recognized by most educated adults.

Just one more example of someplace I will never choose to live and work.

Prime Minister Erdogan at a rally supporting the referendum
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Turkish voters have approved a sweeping package of constitutional reforms by a wide margin, handing a major victory to the Islamist-rooted government and marking another concrete step in an inexorable shift in power away from the secular Westernized elite that has governed modern Turkey for most of its history.

The proposed changes were intended to bring Turkey’s post-coup Constitution in line with European law but were widely viewed by voters and politicians here as a referendum on the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.

With nearly 96 percent of the ballot boxes counted late Sunday night, the package of 26 constitutional amendments passed with 58 percent of the vote, the semi-official Anatolian News Agency reported. About 41 percent voted against the measure…

Analysts said the vote would bolster the government’s prospects of winning reelection next spring, but was also likely to reinforce sharp ideological divisions in this deeply polarized country.

The governing Justice and Development Party, which proposed the changes and brought them to a referendum, portrayed the constitutional overhaul as an effort to strengthen Turkey’s democracy while helping clear its path toward membership in the European Union. The amendments, the government says, were a long overdue attempt to revamp a Constitution ratified after the 1982 military coup…

But opponents of the changes say they constitute an orchestrated power grab aimed at undermining the secular order established by the country’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923 and giving the religious conservatives power over the military and judiciary, the last independent guardians of the secular state…

The heated debate over what both sides cast as the future of this Muslim democracy on Europe’s edge drew nearly 36 million voters to the polls, a remarkable 73 percent of eligible voters, Anatolian News Agency reported…

Read the rest of this entry »

When Abdelaziz Aouragh first thought up the idea of an online sex shop for Muslim couples, I bet he didn’t imagine for a moment the amount of interest his new venture would generate. But the site actually attracted so many visitors (70,000 hits within the first four days) that eventually it crashed, and Aouragh was forced to find a new web host to deal with the volume of traffic he was getting.

El Asira, as Aouragh’s sex-shop-that’s-not-really-a-sex-shop is called, is back up and running now, but I wouldn’t bother going there if you’re after anything racier than massage oils or herbal potions. Because everything Aouragh sells is strictly halal, and as you can imagine that leaves a lot of things out. You won’t find…anything that requires batteries…

What the instant success of a site like El Asira has shown though is that there’s obviously a gap in the market for this kind of thing – marital aids for couples of faith. Indeed, this is something that Christians have been aware of for some time now; hence the proliferation of online Christian sex shops.

But Christian sex shops are an entirely different beast from the tame, sharia-compliant business that Aouragh has just set up. In fact let’s be honest, if it wasn’t for the absence of naked models on these sites, and if wasn’t for the constant reminders that the items on sale are for the enjoyment of married couples and married couples only, you’d be hard pushed to work out what exactly it is that makes these places Christian at all. I don’t remember reading anything in the Bible about anal beads or rubber ticklers for instance, but then theologians have always been adept at interpreting the text to fit their arguments, so if the vicar says they’re okay then who am I to question otherwise..?

“Traditionally, married couples may only purchase fun and spicy marital toys from stores that sell a plethora of pornographic and inappropriate products. The experience of shopping in these stores is awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassing, ‘dirty’, and spiritually overwhelming. It is extremely difficult to serve God, serve your spouse, and appropriately guard your mind and heart while browsing these stores…”

Har!

An Islamic court in Nigeria has banned a rights group from hosting debates on the Twitter and Facebook websites on the use of amputations as a punishment.

The court, in the northern city of Kaduna, backed a case brought by a pro-Sharia group arguing that the forums would mock the Sharia system. The rights group, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, said it would appeal against the ruling.

Sharia judges can order amputations of limbs for petty crimes in some states…

The newspaper ThisDay quoted the judge’s ruling as saying:”An order is hereby given restraining the respondents either by themselves or their agents from opening a chat forum on Facebook, Twitter, or any blog for the purpose of the debate on the amputation of Malam Buba Bello Jangebe.”

In 2000, Jangebe made history as the first person in Nigeria to have an amputation carried out under Islamic law after being found guilty of stealing a cow.

The Civil Rights Congress said it had started a Twitter feed, blog and Facebook debate on Jangebe so “Nigerians could air their opinions on Sharia law as a whole”…

The Sharia code runs alongside the secular state system in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states, and citizens can choose which system they deal with.

You might think I’d tire of outrage after a half-century of political activism. Between the jingoism, deceit and corruption of the land I live in – and the hypocrisy and greed parceled among political flunkies in the rest of the world, I’ve had enough to be concerned with.

Still, nothing trips my trigger like some backwards bugger with a special hat on his head making life and death decisions founded upon ignorance from several centuries in the dimly-lit past. And whole chunks of the world nodding their heads in agreement.

Fifty-two unmarried couples could face charges of sexual misconduct and jail terms after being caught in hotel rooms by Malaysia’s Islamic morality police.

Scores of officers conducted raids on budget hotels on New Year’s Day in the western state of Selangor.

Those detained in the early hours of New Year’s Day were mainly students and young factory workers.

The Muslim couples are expected to be charged with the offence of close proximity, or Khalwat.

Under Malaysia’s Islamic Sharia Law, couples who are not married to each other should not be in a secluded area or confined space, which could give rise to suspicion that they were engaged in immoral acts.

A spokesman for the Selangor State Islamic Department says they chose New Year’s Day because many people are known to commit this offence when celebrating a major holiday.

Har!

Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman has said that he intends to have the state gradually adopt Jewish religious law.

“Step by step we will impose on Israeli citizens the laws of the Torah and we will make the laws of Halacha (Jewish religious law) the governing law of the state,” Neeman said in comments aired on public radio.

“We have to impose the heritage of our forefathers on the nation. The Torah has all the answers to the questions that concern us,” he said…

There was no immediate comment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the statement, but opposition chief Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima party quickly slammed them as dangerous.

“The statement by Mr. Neeman should worry every Israeli citizen who cares about democracy,” Livni told reporters.

The head of the left-wing Meretz party Haim Oron said that the comments “are worrying proof of the Talibanisation of Israeli society.”

NSS. Some of the right-wingers in Israel’s government are dashing madly about trying to head-off criticism – the usual babble about clarifications and misunderstanding.

The rest are already on board with the plan.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Nine Muslims were arrested in Spain – seven of whom are being held in prison – for allegedly trying to kill a woman they had “condemned” for adultery under Islamic Sharia law, police said.

The arrested men formed a “court” that subjected the woman to a “trial” for alleged adultery according to Islamic law in a country house in the province of Tarragona, but the victim was able to flee when her captors were distracted.

The incident occurred in March, and the arrests of the nine suspects came in November after several months of investigation and raids conducted by police on their homes, police said.

The seven men who have been placed in prison have been accused of illegal detention, criminal conspiracy and attempted murder.

I sort of remember when immigrants to just about any country in the West felt it useful – even necessary – to get along with the customs and laws of their adopted country. When did that disappear?