Blogging for a free world

I wrote some days ago about a social movement, very little at first but growing, taking place in Yemen against the practice to marry children, specially little girls. DJKonservo comments about an Islamic scholar’s post on the subject, who seems to think that this is in no way related to Islam:

The three reasons given in the study are (i) fear of poverty, (ii) cultural attribution of a young bride as being the most malleable and therefore desirable, and (iii) fear that the daughter will be kidnapped and forced to marry someone else.

(i) is obviously not related to the shari’a, clearly fear of poverty is an economic issue, I don’t want to be poor is not a statement derived from doctrine. (ii) is clearly not doctrinal either–you could argue that Islam requires women to be obedient to their husbands, but even then the conclusion that a nine year old is going to provide that level of obedience is a cultural one or at most a sociological one, not a religious one.

As for (iii) it’s a pretty gross violation of the shari’a. While you can say that a woman’s consent to marriage is not sufficiently respected in Islam, while that argument can be made, the idea that a father’s consent is not respected is under pure doctrine (whatever that is) just plain stupid. It’s all about the father, even when he cannot force the marriage, he can stop it, the shari’a almost never allows a woman to contract a marriage without the father’s consent, all Shi’a and Sunni schools I think accept this (at least for a woman never previously married, that is). So the idea that strangers can just walk in, kidnap the daughter, marry her to someone else and not have that marriage immediately declared invalid (fasid) without the father’s consent is well beyond what doctrine has to say.

Well, that piece about kidnapping the daughters is not as rare as this man says. It’s even used to convert Coptic girls in Egypt. And they don’t ask for the girls’ parents’s consent. So technically their marriage is invalid.

Technorati Tags: Children’s+marriage, sharia, Islam, Yemen, women+in+Islam, women’s+rights, minors

The deal to create a radar station southwest of Prague was marred by a failure to seal a corresponding pact with Poland, where Washington wants to put 10 interceptor rockets that would be guided by the Czech site. Talks with Warsaw have run into a snag over Warsaw’s demands for billions of dollars to modernize its army and air defenses.

Washington says the shield would defend it and its European allies against missile attacks from a foe such as Iran, and points to intelligence suggesting Tehran could develop a long-range missile capable of striking its soil by 2015.

“We face with the Iranians, and so do our allies and friends, a growing missile threat that is getting ever longer and ever deeper, and where the Iranian appetite for nuclear technology … is still unchecked,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Prague.

Moscow has already warned US about the consequences of this agreement… that is, Russia has menaced both US and Czech Republic about the “consequences if they deploy the missile shield.

Technorati Tags: Czech+Republic, USA, nuclear+deal, missile+shield, Russia,

NYTimes (free subscription):

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian police transferred nine terrorism suspects, bound and wearing black hoods, to the capital, Jakarta, on Thursday after their arrest in southern Sumatra.

According to the police, a raid on Wednesday in the Sumatran port city of Palembang by an elite Indonesian counterterrorism team turned up more than a dozen homemade bombs and a cache of ammunition. A police spokesman refused to give further details, saying that the prisoners were being interrogated about the nature of their plan and their roles within the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network.

Indonesian news outlets quoted an antiterrorism official as saying that the men were planning an attack on Westerners in Jakarta, but no details were given.

Jemaah Islamiyah is believed to have a vast network throughout the island of Sumatra.

The police confirmed that at least one of the suspects was Singaporean, but experts dismissed rumors that he might be Mas Selamat Kastari, who is suspected of being the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah. He escaped from a Singapore prison in March.

Technorati Tags: Sumatra, Jakarta, Indonesia, Islamism, Terrorism, Jemaah+Islamiya, violence

From SC&A:

Venezuelans pride themselves on living in an ethnic and religious melting pot. Their homeland, unlike its neighbors Argentina, Paraguay, and Chile, has no history of having harbored Nazi fugitives. Before Chávez came to power, members of the Jewish community reported little animosity from either the government or the populace, and sharply anti-Zionist rhetoric was relatively uncommon. Nor did Venezuela’s fifteen synagogues (all but one of them Orthodox) experience much of the anti-Semitic vandalism common in other Latin American countries with tiny Jewish populations. The Hebraica center—its building functions as a lavish social hub, elementary school, country club, sports facility, and gathering place for Caracas Jewry—was largely left in peace.

No longer. Since Chávez took the oath of office at the beginning of 1999, there has been an unprecedented surge in anti-Semitism throughout Venezuela. Government-owned media outlets have published anti-Semitic tracts with increasing frequency. Pro-Chávez groups have publicly disseminated copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the early-20th-century czarist forgery outlining an alleged worldwide Jewish conspiracy to seize control of the world. Prominent Jewish figures have been publicly denounced for supposed disloyalty to the “Bolívarian” cause, and “Semitic banks” have been accused of plotting against the regime. Citing suspicions of such plots, Chávez’s government has gone so far as to stage raids on Jewish elementary schools and other places of meeting. The anti-Zionism expressed by the government is steadily spilling over into street-level anti-Semitism, in which synagogues are vandalized with a frequency and viciousness never before seen in the country.

Read it all. A very interesting post about the relationship between Chávez and antisemitism to understand better what the Bolivarian Revolution has brought to Venezuela.

Technorati Tags: Venezuela, anti-Semitism, Hugo+Chávez, Venezuelan+Jewish+community

Faith Central from Times:

A bizarre case of identity fraud has surfaced in the Vatican: the Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, reports that a fake priest was caught in St Peter’s Basilica attempting to enter the confessional box. The 30-year-old man was subsequently sentenced in a special Vatican court. And, according to this morning’s papers, the sentencing judge discovered he was a serial offender. Gianluigi Marrone, one a handful of judges employed at the court, explained: “He had priest’s robes on but to the expert eye of our security staff he raised suspicions, He was acting strangely and so he was stopped and checked. He had an identity card which said he was a priest but a quick check established it was bogus. Investigations revealed that he had done the same in churches on Italian territory and so he was charged with usurping an ecclesiastical title.”

Funny, isn’t it? Surely he wanted to know what sins the people wanted to confess about.

Technorati Tags: Vatican, Catholic+Church, odd+news, fake+priest, Osservatore+Romano

The people who demand constantly respect normally are not working to own it from the rest of the world. And a clear example of this are Gay Parades: I don’t see how someone can consider that they increase the respect for homosexuals by behaving like this.

BCF has sent me the last of them:

B’nai Brith Canada has contacted the organizers of Toronto’s Pride Parade to protest the inclusion of an Israel Apartheid banner promoting hatred against the Jewish State. The Jewish human rights organization has also called on organizers to reject this hate-filled messaging by taking concrete steps to ensure that such banners do not form part and parcel of next year’s parade.

In Spain, the banner was against the President of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference, Cardinal Rouco Varela, amid several other banners asking to put an end to the Monarchy or against right-wingers or priests:

The banner goes “The Inquisition’s boss in the XXIth century. We demand respect“, while at the same time Mr. Rouco appears as if he was been burned.

Lastly, the most striking ones, from San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, courtesy of Bookworm Room. Caution: these photos can be considered pornographic by some people. I just consider them of very bad taste. As BR writes:

As for me, I think I would be very much more sympathetic to the Gay rights and Gay pride movement if it would observe a “less is more” philosophy.  When one adds to the fact that I’ve always been a bit of a prude the fact that I’m now a mother, I see in myself less and less sense of fellowship with a group that’s gone from being downtrodden to being a group that flaunts its often extreme sexuality in the very streets on which my little ones walk.  A gay lawyer is someone with whom I can identify.  A gay genital binder who uses a social/political parade to demonstrate his sexual preferences just offends me.

I’m also a supporter of “less is more” phylosophy. And in this case, I’m also a supporter of “if you want me to respect you, just dress and behave accordingly to the respect you want me to have”.

Technorati Tags: Gay+Pride, Gay+Pride+Parade, Toronto, Canada, Madrid, Spain, San+Francisco, USA, homosexuality, homosexualism

The Times:

Untold numbers of women, old and young, have been raped during weeks of state-orchestrated terror in Zimbabwe, but shame and stigma has prevented most from speaking out.

Several female activists from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change have been dragged from their homes and gang-raped; still more common has been the sexual assault of women abducted in place of their politically active menfolk.

But perhaps the least known and most numerous groups are the young girls forced to join the ruling party’s own militia, who are systematically raped to cow them into submission and forced to carry out acts of violence against their own neighbours or face more brutality themselves.

Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, reaching a new low.

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe, rape, Mugabe, Movement+for+Democratic+Change, rape+as+political+weapon