“Barack Obama suffers from serious case of the real Islamophobia — fear of telling the truth about Islam. Even though a “progressive,” he says nary a word about the rampant misogyny and homophobia in Islam or about Sharia law whose medieval strictures are preferred by 51% of American Muslims. Nor does he seem to care that so few of these same American Muslims actively oppose radical Islam. The president prefers the Hamas-linked CAIR to courageous reformers like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. But that’s no surprise. For Obama, radical Islam doesn’t even exist.”
You all know by now that I used to have TS-SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearance. With that in mind:
Do you realize that if Hillary becomes president, many intelligence agencies will withhold vital information from the president?
They won’t trust her. They are very careful about their area of responsibility. It isn’t just for national security, it involves their position and, to some degree, the funding they get from congress. They will bypass the President and deal with congressional committees.
I would not be at all surprised if that isn’t happening now. They trusted GW Bush, I’m sure, and Likely Bill. But6 they won’t trust Hillary.
It doesn’t have to do with “preferable”, it ha to do with the particular agency. Besides, the members of the intelligence committees have been cleared.
“As President and Michelle Obama argued decades ago in the context of the U.S. civil rights movement, separate is indeed unequal. To Muslim women’s rights activists fighting for equal access to mosques as part of a broader campaign for reform — from equal education for women and girls to freedom from so-called “honor killings” — the president’s visit to a mosque that practices such blatant inequity represents a step backwards. While it may be meant to convey a message of religious inclusiveness to American Muslims, the visit demonstrates tacit acceptance of a form of discrimination that amounts to gender apartheid. For that reason, we will be standing outside the mosque on Johnnycake Road, as close as the Secret Service allows, to protest the separate and unequal standards inside and advocate for equal rights.
We believe it is the role of government to protect women’s rights within religion, if a place of worship gets federal nonprofit benefits, just as it protects civil rights in the secular space. Places of worship in the U.S. would not be allowed tax-exempt status if, for example, they were to seat African Americans in segregated spaces. To condone the mosque’s gender segregation is particularly ironic coming days after the White House announced efforts to win equal pay for women and increased workplace benefits for women in the military.
President Obama should be aware that on any given day a woman or girl worshiping in the mosque would be dispatched away from the musallah where he will stand to speak out against “Islamophobia,” to the “prayer room for females,” as one worshipper described it. In much the same way that he wants to mitigate Americans seeing Muslims as the “other,” we have to challenge the Muslim systems that segregate women as the “other.” He should know that promoting women’s rights in mosques is a key part of fighting the ideology of extremism — a fight that he asked American Muslims to help wage in an address to the nation in December. A theology of Islamic feminism is our best answer to the extremism of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Muslim militant groups. Even the most conservative of Islamic scholars acknowledge that, in the 7th century, the sunnah, or tradition of the prophet Muhammad, was to allow women to pray in the main hall of his mosque in Medina without any barrier in front of them.
“While the free world awaits a Muslim reformation, the leader of the free world shows blatant disregard for gender equality by visiting a mosque that treats females like second-class citizens,” says Raheel Raza, a Pakistani-Canadian activist, author and cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement, a new initiative that we support, advocating for peace, women’s rights and secular governance. “This makes our work as activists extremely difficult because equality is one of the main tenets of our reform movement.”
Early rant: The President — judging from remarks he made today at the prayer breakfast — seems convinced that most Christians live in fear of “the other.”
This doesn’t match my personal experience or 30 years of church contacts in the least. So I suspect it’s something of a stereotype he’s developed through a very liberal (and mostly secular) lens. Frustrating.
Although he’s clearly sending a message to Trump here. But Trump, I don’t believe, is a Christian. And I wonder about some of his so-called “evangelical” supporters. It’s a label that’s self-applied in polling, not all are practicing believers, I’m convinced.
I also don’t get the sense that Americans are “demonizing” Muslims in a widespread way. There are concerns — based on reality — about Islamic terrorism (there, I said it) and also about how the surge of Muslim immigration is changing the culture in so many western nations.
Islam itself has a lot to answer for in terms of the terrorism which the faith as a whole hasn’t seemed to take very seriously (and now so many are trying to change the subject to Muslim “demonization”).
Well, anyway, I rant. 🙂 Sorry.
Not all of the speech was off-center, some of what he said — including a recognition of Christian persecution — I’d agree with.
President Barack Obama’s message to Christian politicians: practice what you preach.
Citing Christianity’s call to love one another and reject fear, Obama leaned heavily on scripture to bolster his argument that Americans shouldn’t demonize Muslims during his last appearance as president at an annual prayer breakfast on Thursday.
From “The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright:
p. 97. “The main object of Islamists’ struggle wsas to impose Islamic law – Sharia. They believe that the five hundred Quranic verses that constitute the basis of sharia are the immutable commandments of God, offering a road bacfk to the perfected era of the Prophet and his immediate successors – although the legal code actually evolved several centuries after the Prophet’s death. These verses comment upon behaviour as precise and various as how to respond to someone who sneezes and the permissibility of wearing gold jewelry. They also prescribe specific punishments for some crimes, such as adultery and drinking, but not for others, including homicide. Islamists say the Sharia cannot be imporved upn, despite fifteen centuries of social change, because it arised directlyfrom the mind of God.”
I once read a book by a Palestinian doctor whose daughters and wife were killed by Israeli artillery. He worked in an Israeli hospital patching up victims from both sides. In fact thats why he wasnt home when his family was killed.
Instead of vowing revenge, he started a foundation to aid Palestinian girls. He sensed the real problem in Arab Muslim societies was the marginialization of women. He’s right.
In fact, the one clear cultural advantage the West has is the near full involvement of women while other populations (not just Muslims) marginalize half their population. What a waste of talent and potential.
Interestingly, while most mosques in North America are gender segregated, many immigrants come from places where that isnt always the case. However Saudi money is often a determining fact. This may only last a generation or two. Many of the girls I teach including those who wear hajibs won’t tolerate that nonsense. One girl, wearing a hajib, told me she’d never marry an Arab. In their own personal way, they struggle to separate religion from culture.
Those who think it can’t be done should remember there are several variants of Islam. Hopefully the second and third generation can find a variant that works for them (or better yet become agnostic).
Or as a friend once suggested if you want young men to behave give them a mortgage. And if possible a wife and kids and they will integrate.
Biblical Christianity is in a way a happy medium between the harsh patriarchy of Islam and the insane Western idea that there are no differences between the genders.
Tychicus’ article cited the misogyny and “homophobia” of Islam. There is no such thing as “homophobia”. Most cultures throughout history abhor and attempt to discourage perversion. How is the Islamic view of perversion different than the Old Testament view of perversion?
The sexual revolution and the rise of radical feminism in the West has been a disaster for women. Men don’t want to get married. More and more often, women are single parents with the government for a husband. They are abused by predators such as Bill Clinton or Billl Cosby. Saudi women scoffed at Karen Hughes when Little Bush sent her to tell them American women had it better than they did.
Wandering Views 
Isn’t it hypocritical to rant hyperbole and demagogue the GOP, yet ignore the REAL threat of Islamic fanatics?
https://pjmedia.com/diaryofamadvoter/2016/02/03/obamas-islamophobia/
“Barack Obama suffers from serious case of the real Islamophobia — fear of telling the truth about Islam. Even though a “progressive,” he says nary a word about the rampant misogyny and homophobia in Islam or about Sharia law whose medieval strictures are preferred by 51% of American Muslims. Nor does he seem to care that so few of these same American Muslims actively oppose radical Islam. The president prefers the Hamas-linked CAIR to courageous reformers like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. But that’s no surprise. For Obama, radical Islam doesn’t even exist.”
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You all know by now that I used to have TS-SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) clearance. With that in mind:
Do you realize that if Hillary becomes president, many intelligence agencies will withhold vital information from the president?
They won’t trust her. They are very careful about their area of responsibility. It isn’t just for national security, it involves their position and, to some degree, the funding they get from congress. They will bypass the President and deal with congressional committees.
I would not be at all surprised if that isn’t happening now. They trusted GW Bush, I’m sure, and Likely Bill. But6 they won’t trust Hillary.
LikeLike
Would that be preferable? Put security in the hands of Congress?
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It doesn’t have to do with “preferable”, it ha to do with the particular agency. Besides, the members of the intelligence committees have been cleared.
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Heads of the Congressional committees already have that information.
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Ricky,
Obama is finally taking some heat on the matter from the left as well. Maybe Bill Maher is starting to get thru to them. 🙂
Left or right, there’s plenty to dislike about Islam, and not just our president’s unwavering support of it.
http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/02/03/obamas-mosque-visit-demonstrates-tacit-acceptance-of-a-form-of-gender-apartheid/
“As President and Michelle Obama argued decades ago in the context of the U.S. civil rights movement, separate is indeed unequal. To Muslim women’s rights activists fighting for equal access to mosques as part of a broader campaign for reform — from equal education for women and girls to freedom from so-called “honor killings” — the president’s visit to a mosque that practices such blatant inequity represents a step backwards. While it may be meant to convey a message of religious inclusiveness to American Muslims, the visit demonstrates tacit acceptance of a form of discrimination that amounts to gender apartheid. For that reason, we will be standing outside the mosque on Johnnycake Road, as close as the Secret Service allows, to protest the separate and unequal standards inside and advocate for equal rights.
We believe it is the role of government to protect women’s rights within religion, if a place of worship gets federal nonprofit benefits, just as it protects civil rights in the secular space. Places of worship in the U.S. would not be allowed tax-exempt status if, for example, they were to seat African Americans in segregated spaces. To condone the mosque’s gender segregation is particularly ironic coming days after the White House announced efforts to win equal pay for women and increased workplace benefits for women in the military.
President Obama should be aware that on any given day a woman or girl worshiping in the mosque would be dispatched away from the musallah where he will stand to speak out against “Islamophobia,” to the “prayer room for females,” as one worshipper described it. In much the same way that he wants to mitigate Americans seeing Muslims as the “other,” we have to challenge the Muslim systems that segregate women as the “other.” He should know that promoting women’s rights in mosques is a key part of fighting the ideology of extremism — a fight that he asked American Muslims to help wage in an address to the nation in December. A theology of Islamic feminism is our best answer to the extremism of ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Muslim militant groups. Even the most conservative of Islamic scholars acknowledge that, in the 7th century, the sunnah, or tradition of the prophet Muhammad, was to allow women to pray in the main hall of his mosque in Medina without any barrier in front of them.
“While the free world awaits a Muslim reformation, the leader of the free world shows blatant disregard for gender equality by visiting a mosque that treats females like second-class citizens,” says Raheel Raza, a Pakistani-Canadian activist, author and cofounder of the Muslim Reform Movement, a new initiative that we support, advocating for peace, women’s rights and secular governance. “This makes our work as activists extremely difficult because equality is one of the main tenets of our reform movement.”
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Sorry.
Not Ricky…..
I meant Tychicus. 😳
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Early rant: The President — judging from remarks he made today at the prayer breakfast — seems convinced that most Christians live in fear of “the other.”
This doesn’t match my personal experience or 30 years of church contacts in the least. So I suspect it’s something of a stereotype he’s developed through a very liberal (and mostly secular) lens. Frustrating.
Although he’s clearly sending a message to Trump here. But Trump, I don’t believe, is a Christian. And I wonder about some of his so-called “evangelical” supporters. It’s a label that’s self-applied in polling, not all are practicing believers, I’m convinced.
I also don’t get the sense that Americans are “demonizing” Muslims in a widespread way. There are concerns — based on reality — about Islamic terrorism (there, I said it) and also about how the surge of Muslim immigration is changing the culture in so many western nations.
Islam itself has a lot to answer for in terms of the terrorism which the faith as a whole hasn’t seemed to take very seriously (and now so many are trying to change the subject to Muslim “demonization”).
Well, anyway, I rant. 🙂 Sorry.
Not all of the speech was off-center, some of what he said — including a recognition of Christian persecution — I’d agree with.
But …
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/obama-christian-politicians-218733
_____________________________
President Barack Obama’s message to Christian politicians: practice what you preach.
Citing Christianity’s call to love one another and reject fear, Obama leaned heavily on scripture to bolster his argument that Americans shouldn’t demonize Muslims during his last appearance as president at an annual prayer breakfast on Thursday.
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Islam can’t reform. The Koran isn’t open to interpretation.
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From “The Looming Tower: al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by Lawrence Wright:
p. 97. “The main object of Islamists’ struggle wsas to impose Islamic law – Sharia. They believe that the five hundred Quranic verses that constitute the basis of sharia are the immutable commandments of God, offering a road bacfk to the perfected era of the Prophet and his immediate successors – although the legal code actually evolved several centuries after the Prophet’s death. These verses comment upon behaviour as precise and various as how to respond to someone who sneezes and the permissibility of wearing gold jewelry. They also prescribe specific punishments for some crimes, such as adultery and drinking, but not for others, including homicide. Islamists say the Sharia cannot be imporved upn, despite fifteen centuries of social change, because it arised directlyfrom the mind of God.”
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Well, I did give up gold jewelry for silver a lot of years ago now …
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It’s our hats and boots. All Texans look alike.
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I once read a book by a Palestinian doctor whose daughters and wife were killed by Israeli artillery. He worked in an Israeli hospital patching up victims from both sides. In fact thats why he wasnt home when his family was killed.
Instead of vowing revenge, he started a foundation to aid Palestinian girls. He sensed the real problem in Arab Muslim societies was the marginialization of women. He’s right.
In fact, the one clear cultural advantage the West has is the near full involvement of women while other populations (not just Muslims) marginalize half their population. What a waste of talent and potential.
Interestingly, while most mosques in North America are gender segregated, many immigrants come from places where that isnt always the case. However Saudi money is often a determining fact. This may only last a generation or two. Many of the girls I teach including those who wear hajibs won’t tolerate that nonsense. One girl, wearing a hajib, told me she’d never marry an Arab. In their own personal way, they struggle to separate religion from culture.
Those who think it can’t be done should remember there are several variants of Islam. Hopefully the second and third generation can find a variant that works for them (or better yet become agnostic).
Or as a friend once suggested if you want young men to behave give them a mortgage. And if possible a wife and kids and they will integrate.
LikeLiked by 1 person
America’s loss if we don’t elect Ben Carson.
https://www.bencarson.com/issues/government-reform
https://www.bencarson.com/issues/immigration
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Biblical Christianity is in a way a happy medium between the harsh patriarchy of Islam and the insane Western idea that there are no differences between the genders.
Tychicus’ article cited the misogyny and “homophobia” of Islam. There is no such thing as “homophobia”. Most cultures throughout history abhor and attempt to discourage perversion. How is the Islamic view of perversion different than the Old Testament view of perversion?
The sexual revolution and the rise of radical feminism in the West has been a disaster for women. Men don’t want to get married. More and more often, women are single parents with the government for a husband. They are abused by predators such as Bill Clinton or Billl Cosby. Saudi women scoffed at Karen Hughes when Little Bush sent her to tell them American women had it better than they did.
LikeLike