[Al Ahram] Blogger and feminist Aliaa El-Mahdy has begun to face a backlash in Egyptian society after a nude photo she took of herself and posted online spreads and catches local and international media attention. Lawsuits against her have been filed.
A group of Islamic law graduates reported Aliaa El-Mahdy and her boyfriend, blogger Karim Amer, to the general prosecutor on Thursday, accusing them of spreading immorality and debauchery along with contempt of religion, demanding that they be punished according to Islamic law.
Another lawyer, Nafisa Abdel Fatah, reported El-Mahdy and Amer to the general prosecutor Friday, also accusing them of spreading immorality. Abdel Fatah told Youm7 website that El-Mahdy and Amer encouraged the spread of the nude photo, aside from being lovers outside of wedlock in defiance of religious and social traditions.
Liberal powers and parties in Egypt expressed their concern at the backlash, which comes shortly before parliamentary elections where liberal parties are facing stiff competition from Islamist parties.
Renowned liberal writer Siyad El-Qamni slammed what El-Mahdy had done, describing her as a mentally disturbed girl. El-Mahdy fired back at on her Twitter account, describing him as a "coward" who backed off from his liberal opinions when he received threats from radical Islamists.
El-Mahdy, a 20-year-old mass communications student at the American University in Cairo posted the nude photo on her personal blog, "A Rebel's Scream," last month. They caught attention when retweeted on the Twitter social network, creating intense debate among Egyptian and Arab Twitter users.
Not less than 2,500,000 have visited El-Mahdy's blog after the post was initially spread on Twitter.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/20/2011 00:00 ||
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#4
The young woman really hit a home run with that picture. It reminds the secularists that everything they enjoy in society is under threat from the Islamists, and it reminds women that if the Islamists win, their freedoms are gone and they are reduced to living like property, slaves, and farm animals again.
Under the heel of ignorant, peasant "Arabs", not the more elite, urbane and sophisticated Egyptians they imagine themselves to be.
The ugly secret of the Islamic world is that they are utterly obsessed with pr0nography, and are some of its biggest per capita consumers. Given that, the knee jerk reaction to her picture is the height of hypocrisy, and they know it is.
A leading South African newspaper has blacked out several columns in its latest issue, echoing censorship of the apartheid era, after being threatened with criminal prosecution by a presidential aide.
The weekly Mail & Guardian was forced to pull a front page story about Mac Maharaj's possible involvement in a shady arms deal. Maharaj, a former Robben Island prisoner who helped smuggle out Nelson Mandela's autobiography, is now spokesman for president Jacob Zuma. The newspaper said it received a legal letter from him just before its Thursday evening deadline, warning that its journalists could face prosecution, carrying up to 15 years in jail, if it published details of a police investigation into a mid-1990s arms deal that led to convictions of other government officials for bribery.
The dispute comes as South Africa's parliament debates a new law on state secrets that would see whistleblowers who divulge classified information, and journalists who publish such documents, facing possible imprisonment. Critics said the penalties were draconian and the bill aimed at intimidating media outlets trying to expose corruption. The Mail & Guardian described Maharaj's intervention as a "chilling forewarning of what may happen if the protection of state information bill is adopted in its current form."
The 30bn rand (£2.4bn, or $3.65bn) contracts to buy European military equipment has been described as the "original sin" of South Africa's young democracy. Zuma himself was implicated but not convicted.
#1
Muslim migratory patterns to non-Muslim nations are still too new to see if they fit the pattern of typical immigration.
First generation immigrants are typically "old world" in their traditions and behavior. They set the stage for the speed in which their group integrates, in that if they disperse, they integrate much faster than if they ghettoize.
Second generation immigrants are the most problematic to society, neither old world or new world yet, forming gangs, and feeling oppressed in their ghettos, which are starting to decay with the older, first generation running out of steam.
Third generation are far more integrated, and want to leave the ghetto for better opportunities. They know how the system works and no longer have more than a nostalgic connection with the old world.
Islam will invariably slow this process down, as it tries to retain and reinforce ghettoization, but it cannot truly compete with secularization and the advantages of integration, when confronted with a side-by-side comparison of what amounts to primitivism vs. modernity.
Of course, it will try, which is why Islamists are so desperate to try and force "Sharia enclaves", so they can coerce members to stay in the ghetto and not integrate, though they want to leave.
Right now, in much of the western world, it is at a particularly nasty stage, with families trying to enforce old world rules, such as "honor killing", which are seen as loathsome and intolerable by the rest of society. But such things can only exist and be effective if the government encourages, or at least tolerates them.
That is, the family might kill the eldest daughter, but they can't kill, or even control the younger daughters, if the murderous adults are all in prison for decades.
#2
Islam ... cannot truly compete with secularization and the advantages of integration
The problem in Europe is the "progressive" elites are not defending the larger culture. In fact, they are trying to destroy it. The Progressives have entered into a defacto alliance with the Islamists to destroy British society, with the expectation that they can then manipulate the Muslims into obediance. The assumption is that Muslims are stupid.
This is the same assumption that Christian Spaniards made in 711 when they invited Moorish troops in. It took them more than 700 years to get them out.
I believe the progresives are a greater threat to the West than the Muslims are. If the West had better leadership and more selfconfidednce, the Muslims would be integrating mush more successfully.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/20/2011 9:51 Comments ||
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#3
Western 'progressive' elites and jihadi Islamists have this in common: They exemplify the defects of their respective civilizations and have absurdly extended them. No future for either. That's why they are working together, because they have so much in common.
Time will tell.
#4
Christian Spaniards invited Moors in? First I've heard that version. I'd always understood the Sword of Islam swept across North Africa and swept through the Iberian peninsula until Charles Martel stopped them. Unfortunately Charles didn't roll them back so the Spanish fought for the next 700 years to free their peninsula bit by bit.
#3
Looks like metal plating covers the walls of the tunnels. I guess that is to protect occupants from concrete spalling / shrapnel due to shock waves.
#4
All the flanged circular segments bolted together make a pressure vessel. That is one hell of a bunker! After a nuclear hit, it would allow the occupants to survive, but they could also be entombed. A lot of effort went into that place. Amazing!
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/20/2011 16:59 Comments ||
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#5
It is interesting to see. These things are all over the world. The food goes bad. Then decay. While these things go on the people live on. Out of Siberia I have followed some folk protest singers. A group photo is in this video. The man to the right is in the video. The woman was found dead in a river from a blow to her head. They called it suicide. Now Russian Punk Rock:
Palestinian Arab Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former spy for the Shin Bet, is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founder of Hamas. Last week, he delivered an impassioned lecture to a Canadian audience about his bumpy journey from Hamas activist to defender of Israel and admirer of the Jewish people.
Given his notoriety, security was extremely tight. People who had bought tickets for the event were required to show photo IDs twice before being admitted.
Yousef said, "I was born as a son of a Hamas leader and dedicated myself to Islam. I have a very good understanding of what Islam is all about."
Asserting that Hamas is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood with the goal of destroying Israel and building an Islamic state on the rubble, Yousef said he developed a hatred for Israel after his fathers arrest when he was 10 years old.
Having himself been arrested and imprisoned by Israel, Yousef agreed to work for the Shin Bet. "I had a hidden agenda. I wanted to take revenge."
But in jail, he discovered that his fellow Hamas inmates were brutal, were quick to murder Palestinians deemed to be collaborators and did not care about sacrificing the lives of ordinary Palestinians to reach their objectives.
Introduced to Christianity by a British missionary in 1999, Yousef found himself and continued spying for Israel, getting a reputation as one of its most useful agents. He said, "I dont believe I did anything wrong working for Israel. You cant go wrong saving human lives."
Yousef suggested that Palestinians should be satisfied with self-rule, saying that a Palestinian state would not fit into the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "It would be like fitting an elephant into the eye of an eagle."
He claimed that the creation of a Palestinian state would bring war and destruction to the Middle East. "I want my people to recognize Israels right to this historic land," he declared, saying Palestinians should learn from "the Jewish nation" that life is more important than death or vengeance.
Yousef asserted that further that western civilization will fall if Israel fails, said that God will "protect" Israel, urged the international community to stop Irans nuclear program, denounced Hamas as a duplicitous organization and claimed that Arab culture is underpinned by shame, fear and intimidation.
#1
A few years ago the Dept of State was set to deport this guy to the West Bank (where he would have been killed).
Israel tried (per their comments) to tell the US privately not to do this but the Dept of State persisted. Then Shin Bet was forced to come out in public and describe the work he had done for them (which compromises some ongoing work).
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
11/20/2011 8:58 Comments ||
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#2
He spoke in Toronto. I get the impression he is still subject to deportation by the USA, correct me if I'm wrong. He's a marked man.
One of the recent popes issued a formal teaching that the Old Covenant is still in effect. From that point of view, the people of Israel will never fail but will persist until the end of the world. Regardless. Other Christians hold very similar ideas, from Genesis 12:3. I don't know about 'western civilization' though.
#1
The biggest dilemma is probably the anti-conversion laws that prohibit Muslims from becoming Christians. If some way can be devised to get around the repulsive blasphemy law, and the anti-conversion laws, Christian churches would probably become extremely popular to those who wanted out of Islam.
Such a situation exists in Africa, in the divide between Muslims and Christians, and Islam is just hemorrhaging followers. Some of the Anglican archbishops are almost like benevolent princes in power and stature.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
