Even Women’s Breasts Are Not Safe From Torture!

In certain parts of Africa, a number of horrifying customs are still prevalent. One such practice is that of female genital mutilation (FGM), done to ensure women cannot experience sexual pleasure. Another is breast ironing, essentially nothing but torture, to ensure breasts don’t grow and men don’t feel sexual attraction for her. The fact that such customs are still practiced in Africa is technically not new information. In fact, it is fairly common for African immigrants and people of African descent in Europe and America to make their girls undergo female genital mutilation too. However, what is new is that even in the United Kingdom, right this very moment, there are at least twelve girls who are undergoing absolute torture in the name of ‘breast ironing’. London, Yorkshire, Essex, West Midlands – news has trickled in from many such places that there have been instances of hot stones being rubbed on girls’ breasts to singe the cells and stunt their natural growth. This painful torture is brought down upon these girls every week, or at least once every fortnight. A women’s rights organisation from the United Kingdom has issued a statement that although the cases of these twelve girls are relatively recent, if a proper survey was to be conducted one would discover that at least a thousand girls of African descent have gone through this torture till date.

Women’s bodies are tortured and mutilated only to make sure men cannot sexually abuse them. With breast ironing, the practice inhibits the natural growth of breasts, they never look like how they are meant to. The damage for the girl in question is both physical and psychological. Besides, these tortures are carried out by their own mothers and grandmothers, women who truly believe that these practices will protect their girls from falling prey to rapists and such people. The question that remains, however, is this – in order to prevent rape or sexual violence committed against a woman why does society not take any steps to educate men and make them aware? Why is it that women are the ones who have to undergo a series of strange, unnatural and humiliating experiences, ironically just to ensure their own safety? Men will grope, they will stare, they will pounce, they will harass and rape – women have to be wary of myriad such anxieties right from their childhood. So the moment they hit puberty their well-wishers shower and smother them with advice after advice – cover yourself, cover your breasts, cover your hair, your thighs and legs! Customs have to be followed out of fear of male violence. The fact that men are the predators and women are the prey – this logic is drilled into women even before they reach adolescence. It is indeed quite strange that those people to who young girls are the closest to in society are also their worst enemies – their rapists, their abusers, their murderers. Is such a society of any use to humanity? If this was the case with men, if they had to be always on edge that their bodies were going to be violated, that their lack of breasts was going to be a point of abuse, that their genitalia was going to be crushed and brutalised, then such a social formation would surely not have worked for them. Why are their breasts not as big as women’s, why are their genitalia so weird, why do their testicles hang, why do they have mustaches and beards – what if men were to be attacked over these things by the very people they cohabit with, the ones they trust the most? Surely, they would have termed such a society uninhabitable! Men must similarly understand the condition of women. They must understand that the society they have built up is equally uninhabitable for women.

I was born a woman. Why should I have to be ashamed or afraid of my own body? Why should the fear of a man force me to endure my breasts being flattened, have my genitals mutilated, often sewed shut to prevent me from experiencing sexual pleasure till a husband can literally cut me open and have me for the first time! Why should I have to suffer my entire life because I was born with the body of a woman! Don’t we have to pay for being women all our lives anyway? Why do you have hair on your body? Hide it! Cover your face! And why do you have breasts? Cover your breasts! And why hips! Cover it, and the butt too! Why do you have a vagina? Keep it secure! Thighs! Feet! Cover them as well! From the root of her hair to the tip of her toe, every part of a woman’s body has been put under embargo by the patriarchal society that surrounds us.

Breast ironing involves hot stones being rubbed on a pubescent girl’s breasts to arrest their rapid growth. Let more people become aware that such a thing exists, that breasts are things that can be ironed too! Despite the number of rapes men commit, their genitalia never face being melted with a hot iron as punishment. But despite not having done anything wrong with their breasts, women force women to undergo breast ironing only to prevent men from being swayed into committing a crime at the sight of them. None of this is for the sake of women, it’s all of the sake of the men. The sole objective behind practices like breast ironing and female genital mutilation is the drive to make sure that if a girl manages to escape rape or harassment when she is young, then the man who gets to marry her is promised someone chaste, a virgin body that he can be the sole consumer of. The primary function of women’s bodies is to provide sexual pleasure to men. They must keep their bodies pure to be offered up to the opposite sex. Consequently, the most primitive rituals connected with preserving the chastity of a woman are still so very prevalent everywhere, definitely in Africa, and in Asia as well. Many Africans and Asians too, no matter which end of the earth they move to and settle in, carry their customs there with them irrespective of how inhumane some of those rites might be.

Misogyny is now travelling from one end of the world to the other; it is being globalised. Practices from many backward cultures are seeping into many progressive and so-called civilised societies. On the other hand, discourses on human rights, women’s equal rights, democracy and the freedom of expression, all hallmarks of a civilised social system, are not making the reverse journey and finding their way into repressive and regressive societies. What people claim as democracy is not democracy at all, while most regular people are not even made aware of things like human rights and gender equality. When someone tries to rectify these oversights, they are invariably trapped in some circuitous legal mess and their freedom to express their opinions is taken from them. Such is the picture in much of the east. The civilised societies of the west, which men and women have built out of years of struggle over human rights and women’s rights, now face a severe crisis when practices like female genital mutilation and breast ironing find their way there, or when their social institutions find themselves stumped by the rise of things like burqas and niqabs.

Many women of the west have found their life-partners in many men who have immigrated there from other cultures. When you live in one society it’s expected that people will meet, that they will fall in love. Many women from the west have come into contact with men from the east and taken to the hijab, the burqa etc. Who can tell that one day they will not lose every last bit of reason and logic and end up advocating for terribly misogynist customs like breast ironing and genital mutilation as well! As it is the left has long been magnanimous in its proclamations that customs of all communities have to be respected, even the hijab and the burqa and suchlike. Perhaps even the ritual of genital mutilation too! Will we never accept the fact that not all cultural customs deserve to be accorded the same respect? One culture encourages music and dancing, the other propagates breast ironing – do they both deserve the same respect? Just because a handful of misogynous people continue to sustain and preserve patriarchal and misogynous customs does not make it necessary for us to adhere to them. Rather we must rise up in protest to ensure such rites are prohibited for good. We must not forget that in most communities the majority of traditions and customs are inherently laced with misogyny. In order to truly become civilised we must acknowledge the importance of equal rights of women in society. In order to truly become civilised we have no recourse other than completely delegitimising any and every misogynous tradition that we see around us.

Sweden is closing its prisons. What about a prisonless world?

sweden prison-uddevalla

Swedish prison uddevalla.

Swedish Prisons are for rehabilitation, not for punishment. Sweden is now closing its prisons, due to lack of prisoners.

The Swedish prison population has dropped by nearly a sixth since it peaked at 5,722 in 2004. In 2012, there were 4,852 people in prison in Sweden, out of a population of 9.5 million. The US has a prison population of 2,239,751, equivalent to 716 people per 100,000. China ranks second with 1,640,000 people behind bars, or 121 people per 100,000, while Russia’s inmates are 681,600, amounting to 475 individuals per 100,000. Brazilian prisons hold 548,003 citizens, 274 people per 100,000; finally, India’s prison population amounts to 385,135, with a per capita rate of just 30 inmates per 100,000 citizens.

sweden jail1

Swedish prison Sollentuna.

sweden jail 4

Swedish prison cell.

Kumla prison in Sweden

Swedish prison cell.

Sweden doesn’t have the Death Penalty, neither it has any real punishment or real prison for criminals. But Sweden has less crimes than other countries. It is because Swedish society is an equal society, there is no big gap between rich and poor, obviously Sweden is a good welfare state and needless to say that there is more equality between men and women in Sweden than most countries in the world. Sweden has been experiencing less violent crimes than before. Theft and drugs offenses still exist though.

We have learned from Sweden that if we can create equality in society, the crime rates will go down. If we can create equality in the world, there will be no crime, and there will be no prison. I am dreaming of that crimeless prisonless beautiful world.

Hey Egypt, stop killing people.

The Egyptian government acknowledged that its security forces had killed 36 Islamists in its custody on Sunday, as the country’s military leaders and Islamists vowed to keep up their fight over Egypt’s future.
image

More than 1,000 Islamists and their supporters are gunned down by security forces. This is ridiculous. Egypt must stop killing people.

Morsi supporters are brainwashed Islamists. They are bad people, but still they have the right to live as everyone has the right to live. Muslim Brotherhood is a religion-based political party. A secular country can ban religion-based politics, religion-based laws and religion-based education system as it separates religion from the state, but can not kill Islamists only because they are Islamists. It is not their crime that they become Islamists. They have chosen the wrong path, but they have the right to be wrong. They were not born as Islamists. Your bad, corrupt, superstitious and unscientific, unenlightened society and system made them Islamists. You have to deal with it, and you have to deal with it without bloodshed.

Freedom of movement and settlement.

I was at UNESCO to receive Universal Citizenship Passport on May 23. It was really a great day. André Cohen, from Mouvement Utopia wrote an article here as a guest blogger about our celebration for the freedom of movement and settlement.

Freedom of movement and settlement – It used to be a Utopia, it is now a necessity.

IMG_1179

As with drug prohibition, sexual and gender education, as well as market regulation, what seems like the greatest difficulty with migratory policies is not imagining realistic alternatives, but establishing that there can, and that in fact there must be alternatives to today’s dead-end repressive consensus among the governing classes of dominant powers.

I will not delve into the complex issues of identity and multiculturalism, save to remind our readers that top anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, historians have established at least four decades ago that identity, be it national, gender, local, class or ethnic, is an ever-fluctuating social construct, which evolves according to the political and social issues of each era. So far, to my knowledge, none of the so-called scientific arguments of the mainly right-wing anti-immigrant populists have succeeded in proving these theories wrong in any substantial way.

No, today, most people I will expose the idea of freedom of movement and settlement will agree with the principle but object that it is unfeasible, utopian, in one word, unrealistic.
Now, in order to escape the most obvious counterargument, that of security issues, I will immediately make it clear that free movement and opened border policies are not the same thing. Indeed, as a European citizen, I have full freedom to enter Great Britain, Germany or any other neighboring country, and the right to settle and work there too. It does not mean however, that all these borders are unmanned, that the border patrols, customs officers and coast guards have all been let off. These borders, rife with cameras, mobile patrols and immigration service officers, are as “safe” as they ever have been, and the army and police can do their job looking for contraband, weapons, terrorists, criminals and smugglers. And Germany or Spain are free to kick me out if I behave improperly. Now that is made clear, I will show why, to me, the global freedom of movement and settlement is not a danger, but a necessity.

IMG_1134

The invasion of the poor

The idea most often heard in rich countries regarding open immigration policies is the following: opening our borders would bring about a foreign invasion of poor people, a massive flow of starving masses, which would tear apart the national social fabric. They point to this or that neighborhood, this or that passageway to Europe, this or that crisis or conflict sending thousands of refugees at our doors.
As it turns out, most of it is not to be feared: of the more than 200 million migrants around the world, the immense majority have migrated from a southern country to another southern country, or from a northern country to another. This represents somewhere along 80% of migrations, leaving us with approximately 20% of South-to-North migratory trajectories. Not much of an invasion.
Moreover, despite our heavily armed and sealed borders being both costly and inefficient, letting through thousands of migrants, the total share of illegal immigrants among the world total is estimated at around 2%, a lot of them in a few major regions where the demand for a low-cost, undocumented labor force is concentrated. This explains both why the poorest neighborhoods in these regions are often cited as counterexamples, and why they are not representative of any major trend.

Another important factor here: we often cite the number of migrants who, legally or not, make it into rich countries, but rarely do the right-wing politicians evoke the number who willingly leave. It’s like they can barely imagine someone wanting to go back to Asia or Africa. Who would want that? I mean our Northern democracies are so much more civilized and…well, better!
In truth, a clear majority of migrants head back home after an average stay of 6 years. In the case of France, the share of migrants who leave within ten years of their arrival is 60%! And this share is comparable in most wealthy countries.

So, there we are with these few thousand people getting around our border fences and into rich countries, most of them planning to eventually go back to their countries of origin. It doesn’t seem like any invasion to me, but for the sake of debate, let’s admit this number could increase significantly if borders were suddenly opened. What then, would be our issues?

The first issue in the case of rich countries with well-developed models of welfare State is the perceived “social burden” that migrants would constitute, too often represented as slothful paupers enjoying a “Western lifestyle” without working or women with five or more children profiting from our school systems and child assistance policies. While everyone who lives or works in the bleak de-industrialized zones of these countries may be able to name an example of unemployed migrants who have given up on looking for a job, statistics show us this is anything but the main trend. The great majority of migrants are working age people who are quite productive and pay taxes (in many cases, undocumented workers pay taxes anyway, but do not have access to most public services). In fact, according to the World Bank’s figures for the early 2000’s migrants had brought over 160 billion dollars to the economies of industrialized countries. So in fact, migrants contribute quite heavily to our economies, on average more than non-migrants (since they are net contributors to State budgets that are in deficit), which can partially be explained by the fact that most are working-age, and even young and in good shape, in countries that are on average not so young anymore, and that so many leave before retirement age.
So not only does the deportation of an undocumented migrant very costly (costing a country such as France an estimated 700 million to 2 billion euros a year), it actually hurts the economy quite a bit. In fact, the risks taken to enter northern countries are such that although they don’t effectively deter candidates to immigration, they do deter migrants from going to their countries of origin, knowing full well that they would have trouble coming back. So these policies actually artificially creates undocumented workers (who feel stuck in the host country) and illegal immigration (by kicking out migrants who sneak back in).

Now to picture exactly how much this costs us, you must also take into account the effect of migrations on countries of origin. While these are not always positive (we’ve all heard of the infamous “brain drain”), they can be amazingly powerful on local and even national scales. Indeed, the money sent home by migrants is the first source of income of several different countries, in a few cases representing more than a third of the national income. Moreover, if you take all the combined sums sent back home to migrants’ families, this adds up (in 2007, once again according to the World Bank) to something around 337 billion dollars. This represents a whooping three times the total amount of the international aid to developing countries – probably a lot more considering the amount of that declared aid which simply consists in tax breaks for investors, debt reduction and canceling, and transfers to poor territories within rich countries, such as the American Samoa or the French Overseas Territories.
As we can see, not only are migrations a powerful factor for the development of their countries of origin, they also outbid the industrialized countries’ participation to this effort by a three-to-one ratio, which is that much less that rich countries have to give to avoid this or that country’s economic collapse.

IMG_1171

The reserve army of capital

A second common perception of immigration which is widely spread by populist right-wing circles is that immigrants are the tools of the rich to keep the wages low, thus taking the “nationals”’s job away from them and driving them into poverty.
While in some cases, this statement is somewhat true, and much has been written about the subject by scholars much more knowledgeable than me on the matter, I can safely claim that this is not the case in a great number of cases.
In fact, a large number of unqualified jobs are unwanted by the local work force, not only because of the low wages but also due to the terrible work hours and working conditions, and above all for their near-complete absence of promotion perspectives (a terrible thing for those brought up in the Western myth of meritocracy). Among these, the most frequently cited are the lower wrung of construction jobs (dangerous, tiring), cooking job in restaurants (long and intense hours, terrible heat), gardening jobs (long hours, cold, rain and heat, very low wages), fruit-picking (only a part of the year, with very long days), janitorial jobs (dirty, thankless, exposed to toxic products and often in the very early morning), some factory jobs (noisy, exhausting and repetitive), taxi driving (long hours, irregular wage), and trash pick-up (dirty, early morning, quite physical). One striking example is that of slaughterhouses in French and German countrysides: since nobody in even remote villages is willing to do the dirty work, slaughterhouses have been recruiting out in the Turkish hill villages and Romanian hamlets, where the slaughter of chicken and goats is still an ordinary sight.
For most people growing up in rich countries, the wage is just not worth this kind of effort, risk-taking and degradation. Life is just better on public assistance or some part-time job as a clerk. These are the jobs European and North-American youth are just not raised to want. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs that have stayed vacant despite four decades of mass unemployment.

Another factor that makes this fear of the job-thieves unrealistic is the demographic trend in Europe (as well as in Japan, and to a lesser extent, North America), where the average couple has less than to children, making the workforce shrink from year to year. Finally, one has to say that this prejudiced view is based on the perception of migrants as necessarily unqualified. This has never been father from the truth. Beyond the fact that over a fifth of African doctors have left the continent for Northern countries, today more than 40% of incoming migrants to France are college-level students, that is more than the percentage in the native French population.

Even if the number of immigrant workers necessary to keep Europe’s economy afloat given by the U.N., 195 million people needed by 2025, is arguably excessive; even if one can also think of ways to stimulate the economy by raising wages and making the working conditions in these undesirable jobs less stressful, one must agree on the fact that putting the full blame on the employers is sometimes not justified, and criminalizing the immigrant is a lot more absurd.
In fact, there is no correlation between unemployment levels and immigration, and such high-immigration countries such as Switzerland, Australia and Canada keep their unemployment levels far below the OECD average, while regions that house fewer immigrants, such as western Ireland, central Greece, eastern Germany and southern Italy often struggle with persistent unemployment problems.

These are a few of the arguments against anti-immigrant rhetoric that are backed by solid science and statistics. But once one proves migrants are good for the economy, only half the job is done. And numbers alone can’t show how much more than money is at stake by allowing migrants to travel freely.

IMG_1172

Beyond the migrator economicus

To show the full picture, one has to take into account the dramatic human consequences of repressive migratory policies: migrant workers who’s only crime is their nationality are routinely detained, mistreated, deported; the filtering process for asylum seekers and refugees has become so rigged that less than 10% of files are accepted. While there certainly are some fakers, hundreds upon hundreds of cases of actual refugees sent back to war zones, dangerous situations, ravaged homes and miserable refugee camps. Every year, cases are revealed of people being denied asylum and getting killed just days after deportation, and many more people are jailed on arrival, with some countries considering illegal emigration a crime.
Moreover, over the last thirty years, thousands of migrants have died trying to enter northern countries through ever more dangerous routes.

The cultural aspect, taking into account all the cultural, linguistic, human wealth created by interactions between different people cannot be quantified but must surely be put forward. Immigrants today bring a huge influx of talent into scientific, musical, athletic, artistic sectors of industrialized countries.

But the bottom line argument is that of equity: today, the injustice created by the two tier travel system, residents of the global North being encouraged to study abroad, explore tourist destinations and take on jobs that let them travel around the world business class while citizens of southern countries are forced, sometimes brutally, to stay at home, no matter what their reason for traveling may be.

If you find these arguments convincing, I encourage you to learn more about the Organization for a Universal Citizenship and sign our Call for global freedom of movement and settlement, posted below.

IMG_1149

Let’s see what the organization for a Universal Citizenship says about universal citizenship and for freedom of movement and settlement of people on a global scale!

We, citizens and representatives of organizations from the various continents, united within the Organization for a Universal Citizenship, call for universal citizenship and the freedom of movement and settlement.

Today, a change of policy in the field of migrations has become necessary: the systems that regulate migrations are essentially prerogatives of the States and are therefor no longer adapted to the realities of migrations in the 21st century, marked by globalization. These systems trample what constitutes, in our eyes, a fundamental right inscribed in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

These regulative systems institutionalize a two-tier mobility: the more privileged countries can offer their citizens almost limitless travel possibilities, whereas three quarters of humanity cannot escape a form of de facto home imprisonment. This indeed leads to outrageous administrative processes, excessive financial guarantee conditions, working conditions reminiscent of slave labor and a growing criminalization of illegal immigration… Migrants have today become victims of arbitrary decisions and institutional violence as well as preys for criminal networks.

In a number of Northern countries, we see a resurgence of myths built on fear and on xenophobic and racist prejudice. These feed into multiple forms of political intoxication and exploitation; they nourish the most reactionary currents, dangerously waving the fables of foreign invasion, of threats upon national identity and of the dangers of a so-called impossible integration. The prejudices then serve as basis for the most irrational closed-border policies and as justifications for the systematic violations of the most fundamental rights conferred to migrants by international treaties and conventions.

More tragically, the closing and militarization of borders, most notably those of Europe, North America and Australia have revealed themselves to be a murderous system for thousands of people over more than two decades. Costly in human lives, this system is also costly in public funds, throwing away several hundred million dollars, in times of recession, all for obviously inefficient results.

We believe it is illusory to think that closed borders and controlled migratory flows can stop those who have lost all hope of a better life at home from taking their chances elsewhere. We are also certain that we can’t stop those whose living environment has been destroyed by the ecological crisis from moving to greener pastures either. Climate refugees, already an estimated 38 million people today, could number as many as 150 million by 2050.

It is urgent to finally take an appeased look at migration as an ordinary social fact, a characteristic of times past, present and future, deeply related to global transformations of which they are both a cause and a consequence.

We’ve learned that humanity has built its history and wealth through migrations: it is an error and a denial to think it could be otherwise in the future.

We are determined to act today, in order to guarantee that every person’s fundamental rights be respected.

We call for the organization of an international conference in the United Nations on the theme of freedom of movement and settlement, and for the adoption of a legally binding international convention on this subject. It should be prepared by broad talks between all parties involved.

We invite everyone to support a strong symbolic initiative : the Universal Citizenship Passport. This Passport will serve as a travel document, recognized by signatory States, and will symbolize their engagement for the respect of migrants’ rights and for the recognition of the freedom of movement and settlement as a fundamental right for every human being, based on Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

We demand the effective recognition of a universal citizenship for each inhabitant of our planet, guaranteeing for each person access to fundamental rights in each country where he may travel or reside. We also demand the parallel separation of citizenship from nationality, as is already partially the case in such frames as the European Union, the Mercosur, the CEDEAO or the Trans Tasman Travel Agreement.

Consequently, we call upon the associative and citizen movements, NGO’s, political parties, trade unions, social movements as well as economic actors who share our vision to support our initiatives, to spread our messages and to join the Organization for a Universal Citizenship.

We also call the States and their governments, the commonwealths and international organizations to join our Universal Citizenship Passport project and to struggle for the recognition of the effective right to a freedom of movement and settlement by international and United Nations institutions. We encourage them to sign multilateral agreements in favor of free circulation, to introduce national policies opening their borders and to guarantee the rights of migrants.

Finally, we call each citizen to mobilize for universal citizenship and for the global freedom of movement and settlement. We incite you to put pressure on all political levels for these perspectives to become realities.

Paris, May 23rd 2013.

Everything is so perfect! I just can’t stop loving it!

One world. One passport.

I received a Universal Citizenship Passport yesterday. The organizers seriously issued passports for 100 people . A milestone was achieved yesterday with the official launch of the Organisation for Universal Citizenship at UNESCO in Paris and the official handover of passports to people. I am grateful to Emmaüs International, France Libertés and Mouvement Utopia for making my dream of one world and one passport come true.

IMG_1160

image

Passport number. Surname. First name. Date of birth. Date of issue. That’s all. No mention of birthplace, country of birth, gender, religion, colour, country.

The passport says:

The states that recognise the validity of the Universal Citizenship Passport allow holders to cross their borders and settle freely in their territory without a visa.
In order to be valid, every Universal Citizenship Passport must be countersigned by the official representative of the relevant state and by the Organisation for Universal Citizenship.

This passport is a travel document and does not serve as an identity document.

image

The world is a shared heritage: no-one chooses the place, time or circumstances, political, economic or environmental, of their birth.
Universal Citizenship has its roots in the history of the struggle for the recognition of human rights.
It is based on major texts such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and more recently World Charter for Migrants. As an extension of these documents, this Manifesto is contributing to the struggle to secure their application.

Universal Citizenship is based on freedom of movement and settlement anywhere in the world for all individuals, irrespective of their nationality
.

The signatories to this Manifesto are committed to considering Universal Citizenship as a fundamental value whose implementation they will defend, alongside with following political goals.

*Abolishing policies aimed at restricting people’s freedom of movement and settlement, with particular reference to visas.
*No migrant may be classed as illegal.
*Unconditional access for migrants to the rights in force in the host country, in the areas of education, social protection, and more especially health-care and employment.
*Recognition of the right to asylum is a fundamental and inalienable right.

Ecuador is the first country which is going to recognise Universal Citizenship Passport. Other countries should think about recognising it. If humans move forward, there will be no national border to restrict movement of humans. Universal Passport may look like a fiction today, but one day it will definitely be reality.

IMG_1143

IMG_150

IMG_1178

IMG_1146

The bearded man standing beside me is Adolfo Kaminsky. He started forging documents after escaping deportation to a Nazi death camp. He went on to become one of the world’s best forgers, creating documents that saved the lives of Jews, spies and freedom fighters. Adolfo Kaminsky has received Universal Passport. Many other extra-ordinary people and victims of repressive migration policy have also received Universal Passport.

Isn’t it wonderful?

Why don’t you blame god?

CLEVELAND-REFER-popup
(Source)

Why don’t you blame God for not saving Amanda from being kidnapped?
Why don’t you blame God for not saving innocent girls from being raped & tortured year after year?
Why don’t you blame God for helping Ariel Castro to commit heinous crimes year after year?
Why don’t you blame God for destroying three young lives, their youth, their future forever?
Why don’t you blame God for humiliating, insulting, abusing humanity year after year?

‘Why not, not eat pigs together!’

Israel bombed Syria.

Syria warned Israel.

Jews and Muslims hate each other a lot. But both Jews and Muslims have a great deal in common in the way they perceive their respective histories. Judaism developed as a monotheistic religion in the Middle East in the 12th century BCE. Islam originated in the 7th century CE. But Judaism and Islam, the two religions share similar values, guidelines, and principles. Hebrew and Arabic, the languages of Jews and Muslims are both Semitic languages.

Let’s see the similarities between the Jews and the Muslims.

The Bible and the Quran are having almost the same stories but the names are changed little bit for the Quran to make it different from the Bible. Adam and Eve of the Bible are Adam and Hawwaa in the Quran. Cain and Abel are Qabil and Habil. Noah is Nuh. Joseph is Yusuf. Moses is Musa. Korah is Qarun. Saul,David and Golith are Talut, Dawud and Galut. Jonah is Yunus. Zachariah and John are Zakariya and Yahya. Mary is Maryam. Jesus is Isa.

Muslims adopted almost all Jews and Christian practices and rituals.
Jews and Muslims both perform circumcision,an ancient Egyptian practice. Both wear hats or caps and beards. Both hate women. Both slaughter animals using the same painful method to get halal and kosher meat. And both do not eat pigs. They should try to get some peace on the basis of their common ground.

I like Tim Minchin for writing wonderful songs. His Palestine anthem or the pig song is one of my favourites.

‘We don’t eat pigs,
You don’t eat pigs,
It seems it’s been that way forever

So if you don’t eat pigs,
And we don’t eat pigs,
Why not, not eat pigs together?’