Ibn Rushd: the voice of rationality

I've started my master's

2009-09-03T22:55:00.002-06:00

I'm out of town doing my MA program in Biblical Studies. This will help with applications to Islam and the historical-critical method. Too many scholars don't have this background, so their scholarship is lacking in advanced methodology.

Sorry it's been so long. I really didn't know what to put on here.

Karl Marx and Communism

2006-02-15T20:05:00.000-07:00

I did a presentation on Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto last week for a class. For the research I discovered that he wrote it for the Communist League in Belgium (partly because he got kicked out of Germany and France for his hard stance) in 1848. The League was disbanded in 1851, leaving Marx to the dustbin of obscurity for a time. Its popularity did not take off until the 1880s and then there were the revolutions in the 1917 in Russia, the Near East in the 1920s, 1949 in China, and the 1960s on US campi. This was all very interesting.

Communism at its core is anti-imperialist and anti-class. But those who joined the revolution joined another form of imperialism: that of Communism. The Egyptian Communists hoped that the Red and Sickle flag would soon fly over Cairo and replace the flag that was already there. Communism's Empire would spread over much of the world. This is a very scary thought.

But I wish to bring to attention what this means for Canada. Because we have this sense of guilt (imagined more than real), our government chooses not to impose Canadian "values" on its immigrants and even native born. This means that no one is really required to learn English (French is another matter), get jobs, integrate into society, or follow the law. This led to a severe case of "welfare state"-ism and low-grade morals.

It is not appreciative when one lives in such a loose country. I hope someday it will get better.

Cartoons and why Canadian presses are against us

2006-02-15T19:56:00.001-07:00

We ex-Muslims are not for murder but education. I just listened to a radio interview which was recorded earlier today and posted on this blog to a magazine that I subscribe to. It's about the cartoon debate that is going on today.

The comments by Rémi and kazemi are of note because they point out the obvious in the debate in the comments section itself. An Islamic country could never allow the kind of debate that goes on on a daily basis here in Canada and the USA. I can only say that I am with them.

If you would like to see the pictures, they are available on Jihad Watch and Faith Freedom International at the top of the page.

Gospel imagery in Islamic literature.

2005-09-02T11:41:00.000-06:00

I have been delving into the Sira by Ibn Ishaq (Is-haq), later edited and cleaned by Ibn Hisham. This was spurned by reading chapter 1 of John Wansbrough's Sectarian Milieu and he said in there that there were certain topoi or literary stock-stories that the incident of the dispute between the Jews and Muhammad in Medina. As I read the Sira, I was struck by the similarities that I had read before in one of the Gospels. That is the Gospel of John, in verse 8. We see there the story of a confrontation between the Jews and Jesus. Jesus says that he was before Abraham and that Abraham was not a Jew. To this the Jews respond that he was, and that they are of his seed. The argument continues and the ending is not important. What is important is that in A. Guillame's translation of the Sira on pages 247-70, plays the same story, with the addition that Christians say Abraham was a Christian.

This represents a very stock-filled story that cannot have happened. This means that it cannot have happened because of the close similarities in the texts, and that it is so familiar to readers of the New Testament, that we cannot ignore that he must have had the Gospel in front of him.

More to come.

Armenian Genocide: not that bad.

2005-01-21T20:24:00.000-07:00

I learned in my Ottoman history course, that the Armenian genocide wasn't a genocide, and that they in reality started it first. As such, they got their just reward. I consulted Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch, and he recommended Dadrian's books and Balakhian's book on the American response to it. Balakhian is a healthy dose of reality and should be read by all. You can easily find it on the shelf, as opposed to other more needy books. I have found it most interesting, and fact filled. We learn that the army and navy of the Ottomans was dismantled because Abdul Hamit II thought that the soldiers would use the weapons on him, so they were ill prepared for anything, which is why they had to ask for German help in WWI. This unprotective army contributed to the uprisings and desire to get rid of an incompetent (or even impotent) caliphate, through the means of the Young Turk movement. This was headed in part by Mustafa Kemal, later called Ataturk, but he was no hero.

Be sure and read these books, as they are an effective counter measure against negationism. Also, Balakhian's book has a concluding chapter which details when and how it was denied. Even Bernard Lewis denies it.

2 bad books.

2005-01-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

I have to read 2 books for these first 3 weeks, and they are terrible. One is on the Snake handlers of the Appalchian mountains in the Southeastern USA, and the other is about Vodou (Voodoo) priestess in New York city (Brooklyn). These are, respectively:

Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Brown, Karen McCarthy. Universtiy of California Press, 2001.

Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalchia. Covington, Dennis. Penguin, 1995.

Mama Lola is very boring, and right in the Introduction, Ms. Brown says that she made up a lot of the stuff in the chapters. The books is half a family history and half a story of the voodoo gods that Mama Lola encounters in her job as a healer. It's praised as a postmodern, feminist book, but she is an anthropologist and the book doesn't appear to be worth the printing. I wouldn't recommend it.

The snakes is slightly better, as it starts off covering a trial about Glenn Summerford and his attempted murder of his wife with the churches snakes. It is fast paced and exciting, as the author is a journalist, who knows how to make a juicy story. However, it is still not worth wasting your money on.

More hidden cams from Iran.

2005-01-21T20:15:00.000-07:00

There are 2 new cams at bia2: #19 & #20. Go and see. There's some leg shots, and road shots. Very good, shows us reality in Iran.

4 more days!

2004-12-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

I have 4 more days of school left, and then I will be free to write for this blog a few more posts as well as work on the book that I'm writing. Please, readers, do not lose heart, as I am extremely busy working on essays for school, as well as translation. I have not forgotten you.

In the meantime, there are some new "hidden cams" at bia2, so I hope you'll get there.

And, I just bought earlier this week, Giles Milton's White Gold, which is proving to be a most excellent read. After I'm done that, I will post a review and some excerpts.

Wisdom

2004-11-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

I have just recovered today from my dental surgery. I got my wisdom teeth extracted. How fun, I've been dizzy and woosy. But in a few weeks all will be back to normal.

I'm sorry to my readers for the hiatus. I have been busy in school, with many essays. And it is my last year, so I hope to do good. Thanks for waiting.

"Un día da para mucho"

2004-09-15T17:36:00.000-06:00

A day gives for much. This is what the post at Allah is about. He links to another blog which discusses the add put out by El País in Spain, and it contains a translation too.

Just started school yesterday,

2004-09-09T22:49:00.000-06:00

and as of today, I've had one of each course. One is on the Ottoman Empire and already I see myth as fact (what I said before about the book I'm working on concerning the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain). It amazes me still (I've only been taking uni course for 4 years, so this may cease to be surprising, especially after this year) that historians and scholars believe such utter nonsense with regard to their subject. It's like they don't even research their areas/topics, just say "oh it's this, it's that" just like they did in the 1700s. Same garbage, same stuff, no change.

One of the other courses that I'll be watching is on Early Medieval Europe and one of the texts we're using has me confused. I tried to read the first bit of the readings in it, and I had absolutely no idea what was being discussed or where it was going. If this is what passes for up-to-date and top-of-the-line scholarship, then it is a terrible state that we are in. The non-recommended, and not in the library books are far better: Richard Fletcher (all works), Ibn Warraq (all works), Henry Kamen, Regine Pernoud (not sure of the spelling but she is French and dead, and far better than any historian that's recommended). Check out all these authors on http://amazon.com .

Ahhhhhhhhhh! The Jihad/Dhimmitude gets worse.

2004-09-09T22:45:00.000-06:00

The link is to a very important story and over 50 comments at Robert Spencer's Dhimmi Watch. Sweden has lost the 3rd largest city to Islam. The ambulances don't even feel safe going in without a hefty police guard. The main text is illuminating, but the comments are so much better in this case. I just spent 20 min. reading them and they should be read with attention.

It also ties in with what we saw last time with Canadastan's multiculturalism.

Suha Arafat and her $$$, and Canadian intolerance.

2004-08-30T16:10:00.000-06:00

There are 2 links today. The first should make you laugh because Suha (of course, was there any doubt) blames the jooooooooz for making the claim that she spent all that money. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1091859380832&apage=1

This second one tells of how multiculturalism leads to intolerance. http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14712 We should remember that this is becoming more the case with its forbidden Christmas, JihadTV, and shari'a.

Canadian antiBush site.

2004-08-30T13:47:00.000-06:00

I saw the owner and creator of this site on CBC Newsworld about an hour ago. He says he hates Bush and wants Canadians to show the support by using this petition. I think this guy is nuts. Perhaps he wants to live under Saddam and experience fear in the flesh? He can still do so by going to Iran and/or Syria. Saudi Arabia may also be a choice, but he must be Muslim (we all know about the apartheid). Perhaps my readers should send this guy a note, put him in the right track.

New $20 bill.

2004-08-26T09:45:00.000-06:00

There is set to be a new $20 bill coming out this Sept. The sample picture in the story doesn't look too pleasing. The $5 and $10 look okay, and the $10 has the Flanders' Fields poem on it. But this new fad of putting out new bills with "facelifts" is for the birds.

Life through photos in Iran.

2004-08-25T22:02:00.000-06:00

I found this site: http://www.iranian.com/Arts/2004/August/Dress/index.html through "Allah". It is a photo essay on dress. There is a brief intro by the compiler and this interesting experience is worth highlighting:

~~Once I made pictures on the Tehran bazaar, suddenly an unknown man appeared beside and while we were walking he whispered quickley in my ear: 'Try to make pictures of the young people, try to show their sadness in the deepth of their heart, try to show it on your pictures!" Then he quickley turned left and disappeared.

There was no time for me to tell him, that I already had done this.~~

There are 50 photos and to see each one, you have to click the next button on the screen.

The other site that I want you to see is: http://bia2.com which is "Home of the Proud Persians". There are photos in this too. To see them, go to the hidden camera or to the picture link. In the hidden camera, #7 & 8 are especially enlighting because they focus on driving.

Siege of Vienna in 1683

2004-08-23T11:10:00.000-06:00

I just found this article - or rather, book review - of a book published in 1964 and now in print and available in the USA. It details the events of the Siege of Vienna on Sept. 11, 1683. This makes for a parallel with our own times in that our day was an anniversary of the earlier. Of course in the 1683 version the Muslims/Turks lost and didn't gain a stronghold in Europe as they had wished. I suggest that you take a look and pass it around.

Paralympic games

2004-08-16T21:10:00.000-06:00

The paralympic games to be held in Sept after this round will be the biggest ever. 140 nations are set to go, as compared to 123 in Sydney 2000. They don't have to pay their way, so this is why so many will come now, because Athens is paying. I much enjoy watching them and I hope you will too.

I looked at the swimming timetable and there is only men's registered, no women. That's too bad. They did say that in the realm of weightlifting, some of them can exceed normal weightlifters by 12kg! Wow! Take a look at the link for more.

Canada wins 1st medal today

2004-08-16T21:01:00.000-06:00

It was in the 10m platform synchro-diving for women. We got the bronze. I'm so happy! Finally we're up on the board.

Congrats to the Iraqi football team in their second win. I'm sure they're really happy not having to be scared back home.

Movies by Pierre Rehov

2004-08-13T12:26:00.000-06:00

I found this link via http://www.allahpundit.com and watched the Jewish Exodus. You can bet that I was crying. Something little known outside of scholars and those who lived it. You can watch the movies until Sept. 12. Perhaps you can download to save for the future.

Review of Carmen bin Ladin's new book.

2004-08-10T22:10:00.000-06:00

At last the book came yesterday and I couldn't put it down. I read it in 2 days, and could've read it in only one, had I not gone to sleep. This is perhaps the best book on a life of a Saudi in Saudi Arabia. The book is called Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia and the subtitle tells you that most of the book takes place in Saudi, not out of it, even though her time outside of it was little indeed. She offers us an inside look that foreigners (especially Westerners) never see. She was offered this look because she married a Saudi, Yeslam bin Ladin, 10th in the line of the bin Laden family. She differentiates between herself and her immediate family with the different spelling.

The action takes place mostly in the late '70s and '80s. She opens and closes with 9/11 as the guiding motif behind the book: she needed to write about her life there so that her 3 daughters would be safe in the West where they would have freedoms.

She describes for us what the heat is like, what happens when it rains (61), how Saudi society works, and what it's like for women. I give now some passages, so that you may see for yourself what she has to say.

All of a sudden I began noticing little things, as if society was going backward. One afternoon, I was in a supermarket when a pregnant woman fainted; her husband rushed to help her up. The mutawa were there, and they stopped him, yelling at him that he must not take his wife in his arms in public.
If the prayer call rang out when we were shopping, we couldn't stay, as before, while the men went out to pray: The shopkeepers were frightened, and closed their shutters hurriedly.
The mutawa yelled at us in the street - "You, woman, what are you doing?" - if our hands were showing, or if my abaya was held too high. Abdou, my Sudanese driver, would always protect me - "Bin Laden." Even now, the religious integrity of a Bin Laden woman could not be questioned. Nonetheless, I began to be afraid.
The mutawa broke into homes and smashed hi-fis. If they found alcohol, they hauled men off to jail and beat them there. They prohibited the sale of children's dolls - dolls became contraband, like whiskey, because they were human images. Suddenly, the only dolls for sale were shapeless figures with no faces, like the one owned by Aïsha, the Prophet Mohamed's child-wife, in the seventh century. But this was 1979!
There was no discussing such matters with the Bin Laden women. They would never have violated the rules in the first place. To them, the mutawa were doing their job, and that job was honorable and just. They felt certain there was no such thing as being too strictly religious. But the foreigners all noticed how much more severe, and terrifying, the mutawa had become.
Once I did strike up a converstion on the subject with my sister-in-law Rafah. We were talking about the veil, and I told her I found it unnecessary and insulting - insulting to Saudi men. Were they really so weak and so obsessed with sex that they would be tempted to sin by a mere glance at a woman's face? Rafah stared at me as though I'd been speaking ancient Greek. I could read it in her eyes - "poor ignorant foreigner." I simply could not get through to her. (120-121)

The emphasis above is mine.

I remember the look of astonishment and dismay that passed between my mother-in-law and Yeslam's sister Fawzia when I first thanked their maid - just for something trivial, like a cup of tea. It was quite startling. And I remember the surprise, and a kind of joy, that sprang into that young woman's face. (37)

The next excerpt focuses on her arrival for the first time in Jeddah to be married. She comes with her sister.

Then Yeslam and I took the plance to Jeddah, with my sister Salomé. (My mother and my other two sisters followed us two days later.) Yeslam wore the white cotton Saudi robe called a thobe. It is quite crisp and elegant when it is done will: I thought him even more romantic in this exotic costume. A few minutes before we landed, Salomé and I put on our veils. We were covered completely in thick black cloth - hands, head, body. Just our feet stuck out. Even our eyes were hidden behind the impenetrable black gauze. I looked over at Salomé. It was a shock. She had no face.

I watched the desert approach as we landed. The light through the black gauze cloth was so dim, I didn't know if this new country was simply the darkest, emptiest place I had ever seen, or if the cloth across my eyes was preventing me from seeing anything that was there. It gave me a strange, oppressive feeling. This was not like when I had tried the veil on at the tailor's in Geneva. Then I had been excited - I was getting married - but now I felt a sense of melancholy inside me, an apprehension that met the blackness of the outside world.
The heat was stifling. I could hardly breathe under the thick folds of my abaya. Every movement was slow and awkward. We came down the steps of the plane, and my sister stumbled on the stairs. Everything spilled out of her beauty case, and yet nobody helped her up or picked up anything. She turned to me, a completely black triangle speaking, and said, "What is this place?" In Saudi Arabia, no man could touch her, or even come too close.
I was so fixated on keeping the veil in place, I couldn't pay attention to aything else. I caught sight of Yeslam's brother Ibrahim, with his crinkly eyes and friendly face. I loudly called, "Hi, Ibrahim" - I was so relieved, to see someone familiar - but he said nothing. He looked almost embarrassed. Then, very softly, he said "Hi." I had forgotten, although Yeslam had wanred me: I was not permitted to speak to any man in public. (32-33)
This first encounter seems scary with the fall and no one to help or answer a simple hello. I have also read about similar falls in Afganistan because the women couldn't see where they were going.
My little Najia was a few months old, and Osama's wife, Najwah - a Syrian girl, the daughter of one of his mother's brothers - had a baby, Abdallah, who was about the same age. Osama's baby commenced howling, and kept it up for hours. He was thirsty. Najwah kept trying to feed him water with a teaspoon, but it was bovious this tiny baby was far too small to manage to drink properly from a spoon. My little Najia was gulping water from her baby bottle constantly, and I offered it to Najwah.
"Take it, he's thirsty," I told her.
But najwah wouldn't take the bottle. She was almost crying herself. "He doesn't want the water," she kept saying. "He won't take the sppon."
Om Yeslam had to explain to me that Osama didn't want the baby to use a bottle. There was simply nothing Najwah could do about it. She was so sad, and so powerless - a drab little figure, very young, cradling her baby in the fold of here arm, watching him in such obvious distress. I couldn't stand it.
It was punishingly hot outside: perhaps a hundred degrees. A baby can dehydrate in a few hours at such temperatures. I couldn't believe someone would really let his tiny child suffer so much over some ridiculous dogmatic idea about a rubber teat. I couldn't just sit there and watch this happen.
Surely Yeslam could do something. I couldn't go over to the men's side of the house to appeal to him to intercede: As a sister-in-law I was not permitted to enter the men's quarters unveiled. But a sister, who had grown up unveiled with her brothers, could go there. I begged one of the sisters to get Yeslam.
When Yeslam arrived, I railed at him. "Go and tell your brother that his child is suffering," I said. "The baby needs a bottle. This has to stop."
But Yeslam came back shaking his head. He told me, "It's no use. This is Osama."
Osama is known in the family for his piety and is well respected. Oops, I forgot the page number in the quote block, so the pages are 85-86. I don't know exactly how to work this blogger yet. An amusing account follows, with more heat.

One time, after a sandstorm, I asked our elderly Pakistani doorman to clean the marble terrace we had installed outside the house. He took the new mop I had purchased, wet it, and began moving it around in circles. The result was muddy circles. I repeated my request; the result was the same. I admit I raised my voice - I was exasperated. I asked him what, exactly, he could not understand about this simply task. But then I stopped myself. What did this poor man know of mopping? He had lived most of his life witha beaten-earth floor. So I kicked off my sneakers, hiked up the legs of my pants, and began to show him how to mop, in straight lines.
Yeslam arrived just at that moment. "What are you doing?" he cried at me, infuraited. I hurried inside. I didn't know what he thought was worse - displaying my ankles to a man, or mopping the floor. A Bin Laden woman does neither.
I found that incident rather amusing; but on other occasions I was somewhat less forgiving. I once found Yeslam's Yemeni driver parked inside our compound, in front of our house, with the motor running. Even from a distance of a few meters I could feel the heat coming off the engine and could smell it burning. I said, "Turn off the engine, it'ls going to overheat." But Yeslam's driver ignored me. "I have to keep the air-conditioning on for Sheikh Yeslam," he said. When I insisted, he added, "I don't take orders from women."
It was so insulting and absurd - the car was on the verge of bursting into flames! I yelled at him, "When Sheikh Yeslam is not here, I'm the one in charge!" Bakr heard the commotion from his house across the street, and came over to intervene. Needless to say, the driver immediately turned off the engine. (98-99).
The emphasis of Yeslam is in the original. Now I'm sure you're all wondering about the incident with Osama at the door. I will put it next.
One day, Yeslam's younger brother Osama came to visit. Today, of course, he is by far the most notorious of Yeslam's brothers. Back then, however, he was a minor figure: a young student attending King Abdel Aziz University in Jeddah, respected in the family for his stern religious beliefs, and recently married to a Syrian niece of his mother's.
Osama was perfectly integrated into the family, although he didn't live at Kilometer Seven. He was a tall man, despite the slightness of his build, and he had a commanding presence - when Osama stepped into the room, you felt it. But he was not strikingly different from the other brothers - just younger, and more reserved. That afternoon I was plyaing with Wafah, in the hallway, and when the doorbell rang, I stupidly, automatically, answered it myself, instead of calling for the houseboy.
Catching sight of Osama and Aïsha's son Mafouz, I smiled and aksed them in. "Yeslam is here," I assured them. But Osama snapped his head away when he saw me, and glared back toward the gate. "No, really," I insisted. "Come in." Osama was making rapid back-off gestures with his hand, waving me aside, muttering something in Arabic, but I truly didn't understand what he meant. Mafouz could see that I was seemingly lacking in the basics of social etiquette, and he finally explained that Osama could not see my naked face.
In Saudi culture, any man who might one day become your husband is not supposed to see you unveiled. The only men who may look at a woman's face are her father, her brothers, her husband, her stepfather. Osama was among those men who followed the rule strictly. So I retreated ina back room while my admirably devout brother-in-law visited my husband. I felt stupid and awkward. (70-71)
----------------------------------
Throughout the book she shows that she knows what Saudi society is like and explains the Bedouin culture. Bakr is the 1st son, Yeslam 10th and Osama 17th. Yeslam is by far the smartest and most able to handle a company, as is shown by the book. His brothers took advantage of him and claimed credit in the papers for his doing. But of course, in Saudi society you cannot harm your brothers because they are your allies. The Iraqi saying that Zeyad said is also quoted in this book: Me and my cousin against the outsider, me and my brother against my cousin.
The Bin Laden famliy is made up of full brothers and half brothers. If you were a full brother, you had it better with them than if you were only half.
She also goes in depth with the social ills of Saudi. Homosexuality is high in both men and women, both lay and royal. Alcohol is common, as evidenced by the earlier story of the Religious Police (mutawa).
There is a chapter near the end that deals with the royals, called Princes and Princesses. I will post this in another day with some other observations after I read the book Princess by Jean Sasson. I have also read Veiled Threat by Sally Armstrong and she makes comments on bone density problems too.
Needless to say, you should buy and read this book. It is possibly the best that money can buy. You see the women's side of it, and see how the men are oppressed and kept from advancing. The reason why women have no rights is because the men have none themselves.
Edit: What a dumb post, the alignments are all wrong. I've tried to fix it a bit with bold for my comments in between and a line at the bottom. I don't know why it did that. Remember, I still want to show you the parts on homosexuality.

Due to recent unavoidable events,

2004-08-08T21:30:00.000-06:00

I have suffered a major loss. My great uncle died of cancer related illnesses just at 5am on Fri. This came as quite a shock since we kept hearing that he was doing alright and hanging in, but I guess he didn't make it in the end. I feel very sad since we did not get to visit him and we really wanted to. This makes it all the more painful since he was on our minds but we didn't get to see him.

I've started to write a book.

2004-08-08T21:23:00.000-06:00

It's about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and the myths regarding said event in the years and centuries following. One such is that huge numbers left Spain and headed straight to Islamic lands (notably Turkey) without a look back, increasing the $$$ of the Islamic lands exponentially. This sounds like someone's dream who wished it did happen.

Another is that they were rich as all getout and took Spain's middle class away from it. This is not the case since the accusation that the Jews had all the money is based on a desire to spew anger, not debate facts.

These and other myths will be gone over in detail, from the first sparks of an idea, to the full blown movement of thought that exists in our own day. Details on the book's developements will follow as more is written.

Hebrew Alphabet

2004-07-03T17:54:00.000-06:00

As promised to the other readers on Zaydoun's blog, here are the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. You can spell your name now!

א = ‘alef (‘)
ב = beth (b)
ג = gamel (g)
ד = dalet (d)
ה = he (h)
ו = vav (v/w)
ז = zayin (z)
ח = het (h)
ט = tet (t)
י = yod (i/y)
כ ,ך = kaf (k/kh)
ל = lamed
מ ,ם = mem (m)
נ ,ן = nun (n)
ס = samekh (s)
ע = ‘ayin (‘)
פ ,ף = pe’ (f/p)
צ ,ץ = tsade (ts/tz/z)
ק = qof (q)
ר = resh (r)
שׁ, שׂ = shin, sin (sh, s)
ת = tau (t)

Some letters represent two different sounds like sin/shin and pe' is both f and p. As you can see, 5 letters have 2 forms: one regular and one final. The final forms of the letters are on the left. I have included the English equivalent of the letters on the right, with some modifications. Since my computer can't put dots underneath the letters you have a partial transliteration. The letter "het" is usually written with a dot under the h, the "tsade" as an s with a dot, and the "tet" is a t with a dot. The letter "yod" is sort of like an i sound and when it occurrs at the beginning of the word, it can be like y. This is what usually comes up as j in English: this is because in the Middle Ages, Latin users shaped their is differently and the j was born.

Hope you all enjoy!

Election results: Freedom of the Vote

2004-06-29T17:09:00.000-06:00

Well the election is over and the Liberals are not in total control anymore. Thankfully we are able to vote. I was thinking and discussing with my family that the voting system in Canada is not as good as it could be. Here's why: each riding only gets one winner. Therefore, parties get more seats than what if represented by the populus.

Here are the results: Liberals=135, Cons.=97, BQ=54, NDP=21, Other=1; Lib=38%, Cons=29%, Green Party=5%. I can't remember the others but I think BQ was around 15%. Total=308 seats.

Going by these percentages, the Lib should've only gotten 117 seats, the Cons 89, the Green 15, and the BQ 46. If we were to get a new system where people vote for the party and all the results are tallied at the end, we would have a more representative gov't. But instead, we have the people voting for the party they want and since the votes in each riding were not powerful enough, the party or person didn't get in.

Say we want a certain person in Parliament. If his riding doesn't win, he doesn't go and the people are not represented the way they want. If we had the percentages voting, those 15 Green seats would be there to protect the interests of their voters. The Libs would be considerably less and their control would not be as strong.

Another thing with this voting: the Quebec people may have a hard time (as seen by last night) picking which party will best suit there interests. Both the BQ and the Lib are based in Quebec, in the same city. So what this means is, both parties are pro-Quebec and give money to it because that is their home province. Somebody should write to their MP and get these voting methods changed.

Freedom of Speech.

2004-06-25T16:07:00.000-06:00

This post today focuses on 2 blogs of Note: Zaydoun in Kuwait and Iraq the Model. This concerns the fact that until April 9, 2003 in Iraq, the people there could not have their free say, in fact they could not have any say since going on the Internet could lead to death. I very much appreciate these guys because they give us an inside view of what it's like to live in their countries both before and after Saddam, and after contact with the outside world (somewhat akin to China and USSR).

We all take our freedoms for granted because we have not had them taken away nor have we lived in a country that doesn't have them. This is why it comes as such a surprise when we meet people from countries that don't have them. Before Saddam was ousted, I thought that all the people in the Mid East and Africa hated our guts. But to my surprise, with these new blogs, they didn't. Most of them loved us. And now I have made friends in the strangest of places thanks to the internet which guarantees a readership. Please read Iraq The Model's post for Fri., it is very enlightening.

Walid Shoebat, former terrorist, denied access to Canadian soil

2004-06-03T13:29:00.000-06:00

Walid Shoebat

This atrocity is far beneath what Canada stands for, ... or is it?

We are home to terrorist organizations, Chretien was in cohoots with al-Qaida from.. will from long ago, racism abounds in the schools as detailed below. What's wrong with us? This is wrong and double wrong.

What with the islamic courts in Ontario, 1 and 2 and 3, and their supreme ability to not have a watchdog over them are extremely alarming for those of us who are not muslim, or are ex-muslim. We all know that the punishment for the crime of apostacy is death. Bugger the papers and the TV. Tell CNN, they might not listen.

JihadTV and its porno.

2004-05-22T21:06:00.000-06:00

We have been slammed with the recent scandal of the Iraqi prisoner abuse. Soon after the media hype, it was found that a lot of them were porno pictures of the internet, and that the people posing in the photos were actors. See JihadWatch for more.

Since porn is forbidden in the Islamic world, why would these pictures of clearly porno background have gone to the TV? This could indicate what mental state the media is in, too sex driven to focus on reality, resorting only to fiction to make it big. If the media is allowed to freely watch porn and put it on TV for all to see, can we really think that porn is banned? Clearly the ban is a face put up for the benefit - or shock - of the Rest of the world.

Racism in the schools

2004-05-22T20:52:00.000-06:00

Racism, we would think is dead in the schools of the west. After all, we have fought of the KKK, neo-Nazism, and other forms of white supremacism. We are not allowed to say that blacks suffered persecution, but that people of African origin were subject to harsh circumstances. This is just part of slavery and the evil West.

However, in high school and universities, they call the Europeans whites thereby enforcing their own form of racism on themselves. Only the whites are capable of doing such evil things. But being white implies that you're Christian, and any one who is not white/Christian, is clean from all blame. Therefore all who are not white/not Christian are heroes of anti-slavery/anti-racism. The big religion next to Christianity is of course Islam, and the image that people think of when they think of Islam, is a bunch of dark or black skinned people.

Hating the whites is a subtle form of racism. But the bigger form of racism that abounds in its place is support of Islam. What I'm trying to say is that if anyone bashes the blacks, they are called racists. If anyone bashes Islam, they are called racists. This implies that Islam is a race. This is quite simply not true since an idea is not a race, it doesn't exist in real time or space. If we consider that Islam is a race, we must return to the old thinking that Jews are a race, blacks should be called blacks, faggots, specs, gays and whoever else is out there, is a race.

By this reasoning, we can see that Western society with its anti-racism, is actually more racist than it was, since it is trying to imply racism without "coming out" and actually saying it. Those of us who are white, or part white, are implied to be evil people simply because of their skin color. We do not like this, since we are not evil and we have not evil intentions.

Future with Dhimmitude

2004-05-13T13:50:00.000-06:00

This post is inspired by Dhimmi Watch of today: dhimmiwatch

Picture if you will a future date (perhaps less than a year) where a speech is being given that states:

"Today we incorporate the Dhimma into our laws, superseding our own. Since you are all Liberals and Democrats [aka Dhimmi-crats], I expect that you will jump for joy when I am finished. Be warned though, that any outward sign of your existence and the fact that you are not Muslim, is enough to get you killed."

{The guards at the side smirck as though they know what's coming.}

"I conclude now that we have Dhimmi laws and that this land should be called *Dhimmiland*."

Of course a huge roar of support comes from the Liberals followed almost instantaneously by gun shots from machine guns. After a momentary silence (~0.5 secs), people start screaming out of fear and children start crying. Yet more gun shots ring out. When the guards come closer they pull out their razor-sharp knives and start cutting throats and beheading the people.

After a few minutes of this, nobody is left alive except for the speaker (me) and some of the other officials standing on the riser to my side. I'm so terrified of the killing that just happened that I let out a wobbly breath and I hear an immediate gun shot. Alas, but I too am now dead.

*************

Please note that this is fiction. I made it up right now I was so mad. If you don't want to turn into some Islamic turn of Disneyland, do something now. The Dhimmiland is of course a reference to Canada and the Liberals to the current gov't who are killing us all.

Fixin's

2004-05-10T12:35:00.000-06:00

If someone could help me with fixin' the side with links and an email, that would be great. You can post comments in the box.

Greetings to the world.

2004-05-10T10:36:00.000-06:00

After much thought and feedback, I have decided to make a blog. It's easy to send info to the world, and many people like to read it. I hope that I get many visitors here and some feedback. I'll see about a comment box.