@Goldberg3000 gives seven perspectives on the Israeli political revolution (Kadima joining Likud).
Though, I still doubt Israel will ever attack Iran, and if anything this new alliance makes it even more unlikely.
Tagged: iran RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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aziz
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thabet
The Saudi Lobby:
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Arwi
Saudi Arabia’s record is no better than Iran’s when it comes to respect for human rights.
Saudi is surely far worse. A limited, flawed and marred democracy is better than a monarchy, and women in Saudi are struggling for the right to drive while women in Iran have far more autonomy, professional opportunity and public participation.
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thabet
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thabet
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thabet
Speaking to a delegation in Kuwait, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, stressed that since the tiny Gulf state was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, it was necessary to destroy all of the churches in the country, Arabic media have reported.
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thabet
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aziz
An Israeli diplomat’s car was sabotaged in New Delhi this morning – photo captured on Twitter. The NYT summarizes: in a nutshell, Israel and India are blaming Iran, and as @blakehounshell just noted, the proability of war on Iran just went up drastically.
Another grenade bomb also targeting an Israeli diplomat was defused in Tbilisi, Georgia. Looks to be a coordinated attempt.
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aziz
Jonathan Tobin, making the case for terrorism:
For a democracy at war, the only truly immoral thing to do would be to let totalitarian Islamists like those in Tehran triumph.
Sadly, this moral bankruptcy is perfectly reflected across the democracy/totalitarian boundary.
Also – see Larison.
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aziz
Iranian regime propagandist and paid shill Liliane Khalil is back with new fake identities, including @HabibaDalal and Gisele Nasr.
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aziz
So, Huntsman revealed his neocon crazy last night:
“I cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran. If there was ever a reason to use American force, it would be that.”
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thabet
And some people expect us to take these criminals seriously and show them some ‘respect’:
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Zack
South Asia is a huge region with more than 1.5 billion people and a lot of diversity. Current public genome databases do not have a lot of samples from South Asia. Also, a number of samples that do exist are from small, isolated groups like the Kalash or Burusho. Being of South Asian descent, I thought that it would be good to analyze genome data from different South Asian groups for a better understanding of our ancestry. Thus was born the Harappa Ancestry Project. I named it after Harappa, an archaeological site of the Indus Valley Civilization in Punjab, Pakistan.
People of South Asian origin, or from neighboring countries, are eligible to participate in this project. The list of countries of origin I am accepting are as follows:
- Afghanistan
- Bangladesh
- Bhutan
- Burma
- India
- Iran
- Maldives
- Nepal
- Pakistan
- Sri Lanka
- Tibet
Right now, I am only accepting raw data samples from people who have tested with 23andme.
If you would like to participate, please send your All DNA raw data text file (zipped is better) downloaded from 23andme to harappa@zackvision.com along with ancestral background information about you and all four of your grandparents. Background information would include where they were born, mother tongue, caste/community to which they belonged, etc. Please provide as much ancestry information as possible and try to be specific. Do especially include information about any ancestry from outside South Asia. Please do not send data from close relatives.
Please spread the word!
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aziz
i wish i hadn’t missed the boat on the $99 deal. Is there a way to be informed automatically next time they run it?
I wonder if you can get 23andme to sponsr a special rate for people participating in the project? might be worth approaching them. Razib is probably known to them as well, so you could get him to help make the case.
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Zack
If you follow Razib on twitter or Facebook, you won’t miss a 23andme sale.
Now that I have an interest in more people testing and participating in the Harappa Project, I’ll keep an eye out and announce any sales.
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thabet
Christian warmonger and war criminal calls for more bloodshed in the Middle East:
Speaking at Britain’s inquiry into the war in Iraq, he rejected suggestions from the panel that the 2003 US-led invasion there had actually empowered neighbouring Iran and encouraged it to pursue its nuclear programme.
“I say this to you with all of the passion I possibly can — at some point the West has to get out of what I think is a wretched policy or posture of apology for believing that we are causing what the Iranians are doing, or what these extremists are doing,” he said.
“We are not. The fact is they are doing it because they disagree fundamentally with our way of life and they’ll carry on doing it unless they are met by the requisite determination and if necessary, force.”
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thabet
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abunoor
Hamid Karzai doesn’t understand the concern about bags of cash from Iran going to his cronies…he says we get “bags of cash” from the U.S. as well. I mean, this is what being a puppet is all about. And bags of cash are very “transparent.”
Actually, the oddest part of this story to me are the shockingly low numbers being tossed around. UAE gave 1.5 million 9 years ago? Less than 1.5 million a year from Iran?-
abunoor
The U.S. was spending almost 4 billion a month in Afghanistan before the surge…The Afghan war altogether has cost the U.S. 358, 631, 787, 000 dollars and counting…..
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thabet
The Nejdi Lobby:
The state department said details of the deal had been sent to Congress, which now has 30 days to object.
Reports said the sale, which could be the most lucrative in US history, would support 75,000 jobs in the country.
Sources say the plan is part of a strategy to deal with the threat from Iran. The state department said Israel was not expected to raise objections.
State department official Andrew Shapiro said the weapons were critical for Saudi Arabia’s defence from threats such as al-Qaeda and Iran.
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BK
Another arrow pointed at Iran.
That is why AIPAC/Tel Aviv ok’d the deal
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thabet
Another reason to avoid the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC): after spending several minutes calling on people to ‘stand up to state oppression’, Massoud Shadjareh, the head of the IHRC, responds to questions on Iranian state oppression by saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about”.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, Shadjareh is a nobody. He doesn’t command a vast military and agencies to carry out mass acts of violence, kidnap, torture, etc. But it isn’t too hard to imagine an alternate universe in which the likes of Shadjareh are cheering on wars of aggression for their side…
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thabet
Turkey and other U.S. allies ‘allowing Iranian banks linked to Tehran’s nuclear program to do business within their borders’:
An examination of classified reports and interviews with Western diplomats, government and intelligence officials underscore that Turkey and others have resisted international pressure to make it harder for Iran to finance its uranium enrichment program.
“Turkey’s blossoming financial-economic relationship with Iran provides Iran with a gateway to the entire European financial system,” according to an intelligence report on Turkey and Iran provided to Reuters by a diplomat. “The fact that Turkey is allowing itself to be used as a conduit for Iranian activity via Turkish banks and the Turkish lira is making it possible for Iranian funds in Turkish guise to make their way into Europe.”
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midwinterspring
Turkey’s response has been to stress that it is not violating any UN sanctions and that it is not bound by bilateral US-EU sanctions.
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Lawrence of Arabia
Hana Makhmalbaf’s Green Days, on the opposition protests in Iran last year, was pulled from its 12 October slot at the Beirut International Film Festival, when its showing would have coincided with the arrival of Ahmadinejad, and moved to 14 or 15 October, to coincide with his departure, due the intervention of Lebanese General Security.
Makhmalbaf’s written comments on the situation can be seen here.
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Lawrence of Arabia
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Lawrence of Arabia
Ahmadinejad sends ‘thank you letter’ to the Pope…
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MikeLyons
The Pope should send it back unopened. A man who has paranoid fantasies about Jews and the state of Israel and threatens to “wipe Israel off the map” has no business even criticizing a mall parish pastor over burning a book.
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midwinterspring
” A man who … threatens to “wipe Israel off the map”
Ahmedinejad never said any such thing. He’s still a horrible person and plenty open to criticism for anti-Semitism, but this is a pernicious, dangerous cliche that people who value truth ought to stop repeating.
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Abu Noor
people who value truth ought to stop repeating.
mws, you realize you’re dealing with MikeLyons here, right?
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midwinterspring
I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt within a given thread. Without a little feigned amnesia, I would never bother debating on the Internet in general.
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MikeLyons
Oh, well, he said Israel must be erased from the page of time. Same result: to murder all Jews in Israel and end Israel.
Racist genocide is racist genocide whichever words you choose to use.
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Null
Eh, wiping out Jews seems to be more of a European – or should that be ‘Judeo-Christian’? – past time.
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midwinterspring
No, he said the Israeli regime should vanish. You know, regime change. When America talks about regime change in Iran does that mean they want to commit genocide against Iranians?
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aziz
Mike, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt as to your well-meaning intentions here. However, you should know that your attitude is combative, disrespectful, and needlessly argumentative. You are not a regular, you’re a newcomer, so you are held to a different standard than people who have a long history here.
Other newcomers- even highly critical ones like Hitch – have managed to establish themselves as voices of reason and sincere intent.
I am extending you more courtesy than I did the last person who showed up here a few years ago and proceeded to gradually lapse from argument into outright trolling. You’re on that same trajectory towards trolldom, and if you don’t do a course correction, I’m going to probably start taking some sort of mild action to nudge you towards responsible participation again.
I’m sure you think I’m a pushover, unlike the sort of liberals you have out in Oregon. But I’m really quite intent in preserving Talk Islam from abuse. So let’s not turn this into a needless conflict.
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Shams al-Nahar
Actually Lyons is proving my hypothesis of the emergent IQ gradient between political affiliations in american politics. He consistently displays backfire effect and fact denial. i will not tolerate the ‘flipping’ argument i have described on my threads, however. its pointless.
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Shams al-Nahar
fact-blocking is the technical term– liberals also present on factblocking, but backfire effect, where belief in the falsehood is intensified by correction, is only observed in conservatives. It is my thesis that this is the proximate cause that conservatives cannot field high IQ highly educated candidates and only teabagger whackojobs like O’Donnell and Palin.
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Lawrence of Arabia
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Lawrence of Arabia
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thabet
Maybe the death penalty and crucifixion just isn’t ‘medieval’ enough to elicit a comment from William Hague?
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shams
not our bidness, brother thabet.
the consent of the governed.-
thabet
William Hague made it his business to comment on Iran’s judicial system.
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shams
then hes an assclown. this is just more colonialism.
western civ has to save those muslims from themselves……with JESUS DEMOCRACY!
hahahaha-
thabet
I agree, which is why I am looking for consistency from Hague. Instead we have the usual abuse of the language of ‘human rights’.
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shams
aziz is not gonna like that.
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MikeLyons
“The consent of the governed” must be balanced by “inalienable rights of individuals” or Gulags, concentration camps and “cultural revolutions” will result.
And if the ones with the “consent of the governed” violate these rights of individuals they lose the right to govern even if 100% of the people approve of them. Period
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shams
yes exactly, the inalienable rights of blacks, browns, homosexuals, women and children suppressed by your stupid JESUS democracy, political christianity.
get a clue, retard cudlip.
the founders and framers intended for all citizens to have inalienable rights not just the white protestant cudlips and ‘slines.
And that time is coming, and you can’t stop it. The hammergun of the demographic timer is waiting at the end of the belt where the oligarchs fatten you for the final slaughter.
Millenials will write the history books…..and you be called teabaggers.
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thabet
Barack Obama finally decides torturers deserve punishment!
Oh wait…
At a State Department news conference, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said this is the first time the United States has imposed sanctions on Iranians for human rights violations.
Before I indulge in my inevitable polemic, I have a serious question to ask: do people like Hillary Clinton genuinely expect people to take her seriously when she says stuff like that?
And notice the total silence from Obama administration over the ongoing abuses in, say, Bahrain.
Or Israel.
Or Saudi Arabia.
Or Egypt.
Or India.
Or the UK.
And so so on.
This is even before we note the United States’ own crimes, both under the Bush administration (which Obama has effectively pardoned) and his own:
But then we all know ‘international norms’ only apply to Iran.
Costas Douzinas and others have rightfully noted how the language of human rights is just the latest (‘civilisation’, ‘Christianity’, etc) to be utilised in the service of empire.
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shams
But brother thabet…..this is judeochristian/westernstyle democracy in action.
The President serves at the will of the people.
A majority of Americans approve torture, propping occidental dictators, islamophobia, and absolutely anything Isreal wants to do.
Do you think Obama should become an Ataturk for the new age, and crown himself king?-
thabet
this is judeochristian/westernstyle democracy in action.
Then my harping should show you why your bizarre barbs about me are wrong. I think democracy in the ‘Angloamerican world’ is mostly a crock.
But it’s a nice change of direction when Obama’s actual record comes under question.
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shams
sure, but is your harping productive?
so you do admit America is a judeochristian nation with a secular jurisprudent branch?
and that islamic democracy is what is happening in Turkey and Iraq?-
thabet
We’re talking about Emperor Obama here, not my views.
If you don’t like it, you can join your equally ignorant friend BK and leave.
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shams
brother thabet, i don’t get you. whassup?
you link an article about muslim cousin marriage and when i point out ALL semites intermarry (both jews and arabs) you freak out and delete all the comments.
you insist that the AKP is not the islamic party when it is described as the islamic party everywhere.
you hate Obama, okfine…..this happened to a lot of my guystyle efriends when he got elected….allahp, jeff goldstein, razib, john derbyshire, instapundit, reihan salam……all went nutz.
what is it?
it is a curious thing. -
thabet
Nice diversion. Still no actual discussion of Obama’s policies. His FP differs little from Bush Inc. I am not the only one to note this.
Why do you have so much invested in the cult of his personality?
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shams
i dont.
im a machiavellian pragmatist and a Quellist.
Obamas policies are w/e he can get to work.
in this timeslice Obama is the best hope of the Quellists.
if you and Bibi and the ‘secular right’ and the WECs and wingnuts and bankstahs and oligarchs and rest of the ‘conservative’ assclowns get their way, we get Bush redux with boobs and big hair ala Sarah Palin.
you don’t get it– you are on the stupid side. You are helping them.
Bush and Palin are the avatars of the right.
The Epic Stupid of Bush is why we are embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan RIGHT NOW.Obama is the avatar of the natural aristoi….hes in MY TRIBE.
i think its fine if you crit his policies– i crit his policies– i think WE SHOULD LEAVE RIGHT NAOW THIS MINNIT.and im genuinely curious about the basis of Obama hatred.
you say its because his FP is the same as Bush? -
shams
post your letter.
ill post mine too.
have you considered…….what happens to Iran if Palin gets elected?
what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan?
crit O all you want.
you can’t shake my allegiance.
he is the best option we have got. -
thabet
How am I helping Bush and Palin?! This is is one of your funniest assertions yet.
Still it is another diversion from the “facts” which you’re keen to avoid or hide behind bullshit jargon. Obama’s policies and orders continue to:
- kill Muslims,
- burn Qur’ans,
- promote distrust and hatred of the US,
- promote American militarism and empire.
- torture,
- kidnap,
- operate black sites like Bagram/Guantanamo (who cares he “said” he wants it closed?)
- hold a slavishly bias approach to Israel,
- occupy Iraq and Afghanistan,
- militarise the ME while bleating about peace and Iran.I don’t care about the cult of Obama ‘the man’. This is something only white liberals and far-right nutters seem to care about.
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Shams al-Nahar
i responded an my comment disappeared…fish it out of the spam filter or don’t ca m’ete egal.
Irrational Obama hatred seems to be sex limited to the XY…. i wonder what the cognitive correlates are….in Sailor and Derbyshire it seems to be racism against blacks….worth some study, i guess. -
Shams al-Nahar
you ignore pre-existing conditions and the art of the possible.
who do you replace Obama with?
it looks like Sarah Palin is your only alternative from here.
all the things you dislike about O magnified tenfold:
think about that parallel future–
-bombing Iran leading to WWIII
-more drones, more troops, more death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan
-permanent occupation of Iraq and Iran
-internment camps for muslims in America
-more interventionism in FP– attempts to force Turkey to be ‘more secular’.
-WEC megachurches in any MENA city too poor or too weak to resist.
what do you not understand about divided government?your Obama-hatred is quite remarkable– it is the mirror of my conservative aquaintences….it is not rational.
like my dressage trainer allus says– you ride the horse you have, not the the one you wish you have.
Obamas policy towards Israel is very different than Bushs.
At least O is trying to help America quit being Israel’s bitch.
you hate O for not changing America fast enough to suit you?
tant pis.
the guy is doing his level best, and the alternative is too hideous to contemplate. -
thabet
you ignore pre-existing conditions and the art of the possible.
Oh, I hadn’t seen this. Nice diversion as usual, shams.
The art of the possible: let’s start with Bagram, shall we?
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thabet
Maybe the lethal injection just isn’t ‘medieval’ enough for William Hague to comment on?
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thabet
Barack Obama responded quite rightfully by dismissing and criticising Mahmoud Ahmadinajed’s deranged suggestion that the US was involved in 9/11. However, he then went onto chide Iran for ‘not international norms’.
International norms he says? Must be different to the international norms that don’t apply to his own country or its close geopolitical allies.
He then went onto pose a hypothetical case whereby Iran’s nuclear ambitions would lead to a regional arms race. Fair enough; it’s a good point to consider. But when questioned by the BBC Persia interviewer’s comment on Israel’s role in the region (e.g. Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities), he said he didn’t want to engage in ‘hypotheticals’.
The rest of the interview contained the usual guff about the Iranian government oppressing its people and the need for the US to speak out against these abuses. Heh, etc.
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thabet
An update on Barack Obama’s commitment to Middle East peace:
Washington had urged countries to vote down the symbolically important although non-binding resolution, saying it could derail broader efforts to ban nuclear warheads in the Middle East and also damage fresh Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
“The winner here is the peace process, the winner here is the opportunity to move forward with a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East,” said Glyn Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
(Via Steve Hynd.)
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thabet
Barack Obama plays ‘good cop’ to Hillary Clinton’s ‘bad cop’.
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thabet
‘Waging war against God’:
In another indication of the regime’s determination to punish those who took part in protests after last year’s disputed presidential election, Shiva Nazar Ahari was convicted of the crime known as “moharebeh” – usually punishable by death.
The 26-year-old, who founded the Committee of Human Rights Reporters in Tehran, was also convicted of plotting to commit crimes and agitating against the ruling system, Iran’s semi-official ILNA news agency reported.
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MikeLyons
Never trust (or believe in) a “God” who needs us mere mortals to defend him or her.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Of course the classical Islamic juristic concept of hiraba has been identified as the one closest to modern day laws against domestic terrorism. Dr. Sherman Jackson, in an influential 2001 piece, makes this argument and also points out the differences between the concepts.
I am no fan of nor apologist for the Iranian regime and assume they are using a noble concept here to engage in something evil, which they do often and which makes me dislike them even more than similarly evil regimes which do not falsely claim to be acting in the interests of righteousness.
As to your statement though, MikeLyons, it’s sounds good but perhaps doesn’t hold up to examination. Of course, no human can harm God in the least. So any notion that God needs to be defended is indeed false. But would you say, don’t believe in a God that needs you to take care of orphans for him or her, or feed the hungry for him or her, or speak out against oppression for him or her…we do these things for the sake of God not because God “needs us” to do them for God, but because we are in need of God and God is pleased with such actions. You see what I mean?
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MikeLyons
No, I was speaking strictly of God or Gods who need us to defend him or her. If those same God or Gods need us to follow a set of rules not regarding their defense then that is just religion.
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Abu Noor
If that’s what you mean then I agree with you 100 percent and it is indeed a very “islamic” argument. (I don’t mean that it exclusively belongs to Muslims or points to Islam but just that it is an argument frequently used in teaching stories by Muslims against worship of anyone or anything other than God.)
But if that’s the argument it doesn’t necessarily mean blasphemy laws are wrong, for example, which is what I think a lot of moderns would like to use statements similar to yours to prove.
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Lawrence of Arabia
Always choose the blasphemer over the supporter of anti-blasphemy laws; the former might be wrong, but the latter is certainly a tyrant.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
LoA : I think you are probably right in your assessment for almost all cases. However, I just do not think it can possibly be that easy for a serious Muslim. There are incidents from the life of the Prophet (saw) that can possibly be interpreted as ones where he (saw) punished blasphemy and did so quite harshly. (Not only would that mean that perhaps the Prophet (saw)’s guidance includes having societal sanctions for certain kinds of blasphemy but it would mean that there is a danger of someone using your statement to say that the Prophet (saw) was “certainly a tyrant.” Now, I have not made an indepth study of this issue, but from some level of examination I think that it is possible to draw other conclusions about those incidents or to in other ways make serious Islamic arguments against blasphemy laws. But I don’t think simply dismissing the concept out of hand is one which is intellectually honest from the perspective of orthodox Muslim understanding. This discussion is of course overlapping in many ways with the whole apostasy laws controversy.
Allaah knows best.
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thabet
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thabet
US-Saudi Arabia in $60bn arms deal:
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, was also in talks with the Saudis about naval and missile-defence upgrades that could be worth tens of billions of dollars more.
Under the deal, the US also to expand Saudi Arabia’s ballistic-missile defences “to reduce the threat from Iranian rockets”, US officials were reported to have said. They also said that it was unclear how much that package would be worth, but it could be similar to one in the United Arab Emirates.
The Obama administration sees the sale as part of a broader policy aimed at supporting “Arab allies against Iran,” and is expected to notify the US congress about these plans in the upcoming weeks, the report said.
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Lawrence of Arabia
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thabet
Fair point. The Saudis just stock up on loads of military hardware purchased from big American, British and French companies, let them rust in the desert (occasionally deploying them against ‘lesser’ people in their own estimation), and then buy some more a decade later.
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thabet
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is ‘to be whipped despite The Times apologising for using the picture of another person’.
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thabet
Backed by US and European cash, Palestinian Authority Minister Mahmoud Habbash said Palestinians must reject ‘outside influences’ in striving for statehood.
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shams
until the US and Israel treat with Hamas, peace efforts are doomed.
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thabet
Fully agreed. This is the point Ali Abunimah made in his recent op-ed in the NYT (he cited the IRA/Northern Ireland, which upset the Israelis because of the implications: joint-rule brought about peace in NI…).
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shams
The Israelis are stupid, and slow learners. The well of holocaust guilt runs dry.
If they got a single state solution, eventually they would be south africa’d.
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Lawrence of Arabia
Of course, we saw a couple of weeks ago that the Americans are not the only ones interested in playing this game.
Jo is discussing. 
thabet, and 
Arwi are discussing. 
aziz are discussing. 
abunoor is discussing. 
BK is discussing. 
Shams al-Nahar, 
MikeLyons, and 
thabet are discussing. 
Jo 4:36 pm on May 14, 2012 Permalink |
Lets hope so