You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Muslims’ tag.
Saudi blogger Raif Badawi gets a thousand lashes and 10 years
A Saudi court has jailed blogger Raif Badawi for ten years for “insulting Islam” and setting up a liberal internet forum, local media report.
He was additionally sentenced to 1,000 lashes and ordered to pay a fine of one million riyals ($266,000; £133,000).
Amnesty International called the decision “outrageous” and urged the authorities to quash the verdict.
Mr Badawi, the co-founder of an internet site known as the Liberal Saudi Network, was arrested in 2012.
A Saudi newspaper near the goverment reported thathe had lost his appeal against an earlier, more lenient sentence of seven years and three months in jail and 600 lashes.
Last year he was cleared of apostasy, that could have carried a death sentence.
Mr Badawi had previously called for 7 May to be a “day for Saudi liberals”. The website he set up has since been closed.
“Ruthless campaign”
Amnesty International describes him as a “prisoner of conscience” and has called for his release.
“Raif Badawi is the latest victim to fall prey to the ruthless campaign to silence peaceful activists in Saudi Arabia,” it said in a statement.
Last October a Saudi journalist was freed after spending a year and a half in prison for writing insulting tweets about the Prophet Muhammad.
Hamza Kashgari fled Saudi Arabia for Malaysia in 2012 but was extradited just days later. He was released last year after making a public apology.
Iran launch campaign against ‘immodest’ dress
Iranian women grabed by the morality police
The FRANCE 24 iranian journalist, Ershad Alijani, reports that: “Every year, as the weather warms up, the Iranian morality police come out in full force to patrol the streets and stop women they judge as being dressed too seductively. Despite a new, more moderate president, our Iranian Observers expect this summer’s crackdown to be even harsher than in previous years, because the country’s hardliners have launched a massive campaign to denounce examples of “immodest” dress.”
Over the past few weeks, hardliner-affiliated websites and media outlets have published strange photographs of women in a variety of situations considered improper. Moreover, numerous banners in the street and in hardliner media are exhorting women to wear modest clothing as a protective measure, comparing them to pistachios without their shells, or expensive cars without their covers.
The woman wearing a headscard that covers her hair is compared to a precious car that needs a cover to preserve it. The woman wearing a headscarf low on the back of her head is compared to an inexpensive car.
On Monday, the Interior ministry, which oversees the morality police, announced that it had come up with a special plan to combat improper clothing this summer, without giving any further details. There are no specific guidelines as to what constitutes improper clothing, but morality police have been known to take offence to such things as tight coats, short pants, leggings, sandals, nail polish, and headscarves worn low on the back of the head.
“Change in government is going to make any difference”
As Mahboubeh, 32 years old Iranian, voted for Rohani said:
We all know that the morality police have nothing to do with the civil administration, so we shouldn’t be nagging the government about it. It’s been like this for decades and people who voted for Rohani thinking they would get more lax dress laws were surely hallucinating. I think the hardliners are pushing this campaign to try cause Rohani to lose support among those who voted for him. The hardliners may not be very numerous, but they concentrate a lot of power and own many media outlets, so this is an unwinnable battle.
Iran is part of a minorities of countries that force women to wear Hijab in public, claiming that is mandatory in Islam (which is not true)
If you want to learn more about Hijab in Islam check the following article:
Hijab is NOT a compulsion of Islam
“…a distinction betweenGod and what one sees deep inside his heart and knows there is a god. Indeed, it would be difficult to know that our god is really God.”
by Natalia Laskowska
Something to think about:
It happened only once that this question came from my mouth, yet still the mere thought of uttering it makes me feel quite uncomfortable. “Do you believe in God?”. The person who had to hear it from me is one of the dearest beings that live on this planet, so back then I was just very gently made aware that the question was wrong. It is the last week that I sensed on my skin not only how wrong but also how intellectually boorish it was.
During somemore academic session on religion, one lady asked me “So do you really believe in God?”.I was baffled. Feeling uncomfortable to hear such question from a person whom I never met before, I changed the subject. But she came back with it requesting an answer with flat yes or no. I replied with question: “Do you have orgasm?”.
It was impolite, yet the two questions had something in common – answering them was disturbing, and both related to experience which only the person asked would know if it is there or not. And even supposing it is there one cannot be really certain it is.
Mark Johnston in Saving God (2009) makes a distinction between God and what one sees deep inside his heart and knows there is a god. Indeed, it would be difficult to know that our god is really God. Professor Johnston points three conditions we can determine by looking into our hearts: that we believe there is God; that we believe our god is God; and that we believe in our god. Yet do we actually believe in God then? We believe that we believe…This is already most personal and intimate.
We can see a difference between asking whether God exists or not, and whether a person believes in God or not. The latter one is like forcing somebody into our own patterns of believing: if we believe – into how we believe, if we do not believe – into how we think other people believe. And this is quite low, for somehow our concepts may be too shallow and conventional to fit other person’s subtle thought. Saying “yes” the person would accept the frame structured in our possibly very much limited brains. But maybe he or she would not really want to be reduced to it?
This is where answering “yes” becomes so odd and disturbing, it could be that the person would say “yes” to what is inside his heart, but he does not feel like saying “yes” to what is inside our hearts or brains. Saying “no” is equally uncomfortable. It could mean that the person clearly refuses to accept our idea of god which is already included in “Do you believe in God?” question. And this means the end ofdiscussion as well.
I am back, this time I bring a video.
Do you get it now?
Islamic Myths 