Camels With Hammers

Archive for the ‘World Affairs’ Category

Dissent of the Day

I received secondhand this reply to my post on Clinton’s response to the situation in Egypt: 1. I’d like his explicit definition or explication of “long term concerns for stability in the region.” 2. If we really want the United States not to be dictating to foreign countries what they should do then we should [...]

Is This What Secretary Clinton Really Means?

I have already made my case that Secretary Clinton is saying the right things. In the interest of giving equal time to alternative viewpoints, here is a wholly uncharitable and scathing video which “translates” recent remarks to show that she allegedly “really means” the wrong things: Your Thoughts?

Thoughts On Secretary Clinton’s Response To Egypt

As always when I venture out of my areas of specialization, let me preface all following remarks with the obvious reminder—I am by no means a foreign policy expert or a Middle East expert.  So take the following on the merits of my arguments and bring forth any facts you think I may need to [...]

Projecting US Pathologies Onto Muslims

Glenn Greenwald offers a mirror for those of us who worry about the elements of theocratic expansionism which are enough a part of the Koran and early Islamic history to be considered potentially dangerous forms of the religion itself on its own terms (and not just of its appropriation by political agents): I’m always amazed [...]

France To Ban Burqa-Like Veils

EuroNews.net writes: A law banning the wearing of a full Islamic veil in public in France has been adopted by the lower house of parliament. The ruling UMP and the New Centre party voted for the ban on the burqa or niqab while the Socialists, Communists and Greens abstained. The law goes to the upper house in [...]

“Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” Advocates Under Threat

The New York Daily News reports: A CHARISMATIC terror leader linked to the botched Times Square car bomb has placed the Seattle cartoonist who launched “Everybody Draw Muhammed Day” on an execution hit list. Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki – the radical who has also been cited as inspiring the Fort Hood, Tex., massacre and the [...]

Arrested For Being A Single Man In A Shopping Mall

Saudiwoman writes: I have to tell you what I was up to last night. My very dear friend Tine has finished her time here in Saudi and is leaving soon. Unfortunately, being cooped up in expat compounds; she has never had a chance to see muttawas in action. These lions of Saudi morality are a [...]

Haiti’s Orphans Still In Crisis

Let’s not forget them: Your Thoughts?

Iran Bans Mullets

Your Thoughts?

Gay Rights Advocate Decapitated In Uganda

Unspeakably sad and outraging: A search for a missing pro-gay priest, the Rev Henry Kayizzi Nsubuga, who disappeared almost two and half weeks ago after delivering a scathing speech at St. Paul’s Church, Kanyanya supporting homosexuality in Uganda, led the joint search team of Integrity Uganda and Namirembe Diocese to the severed head of another [...]

Iranian Woman Sentenced To Stoning After Being Lashed 99 Times Until She “Confessed” Adultery

CNN reports: Ashtiani, 42, will be buried up to her chest, according to an Amnesty International report citing the Iranian penal code. The stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately. Ashtiani, who is from the northern city of Tabriz, was [...]

Threatened With Death Penalty, Maldivian Skeptic Of Islam Recants

A while back I highlighted the story of a Maldivian man who was attacked by a crowd for expressing his lack of belief in Islam during the Q&A session by a the visiting Indian scholar Dr. Zakir Naik. Maldives is a state where it is illegal to not believe. Now, via Atheist Media Blog, here’s video [...]

A Dictatorship Of Relativism?

BBC Radio 4 analyzes the pope’s catchphrase, “a dictatorship of relativism”, used for describing the secular West.  Here’s the program description: The idea that no one has a monopoly on the truth seems to be fixed in the modern Western psyche. But it’s an idea that is under attack. Pope Benedict claims that we are [...]

Contrasting Muslim And Western Psychologies: The Locus Of Control

Nicolai Sennels spent several years working with criminal Muslims in Copenhagen (where as of March 2009 “70% of the prison population in the Copenhagen youth prison consists of young man of Muslim heritage.”)   He writes the following about the different ways that Westerners and Muslims view the locus of control: There is another strong difference between the [...]

New Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard Affirms Her Non-Belief, Will Not Patronize Believers

I love what she has to say and do not know why anyone, religious or irreligious, would prefer a faith panderer to this, even if the faithful politician was at least somewhat sincere: She says does not go through religious rituals for the sake of appearance. “I am not going to pretend a faith I [...]