Algeria's radical Muslims in scandal and disarray. Much of the problem seems to come from the harshness of Islamic law itself, which sees "sexual assault" as the inevitable consequence of the simple presence of a man and a woman alone in a house. From Arab News, with thanks to Ali Dashti:
Led by Abdallah Jaballah, Islah is the second political bloc in the Algerian Parliament. Last April it fielded Jaballah as its candidate in the presidential election, which the incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika won in a landslide. Jaballah came in third.Scandals surrounding the party broke out earlier this week when a member of the leadership, who must remain anonymous for legal reasons, filed a lawsuit claiming that his wife had been “sexually assaulted” by Sadiq Sulayemah, another party leader.
The plaintiff has accused the party’s leadership of trying to cover up the incident along with other instances of “illegitimate sexual activity” at the highest levels.
Sulayemah, a well-known poet, and a life-long friend of Jaballah, has denied the charge, explaining his presence in the plaintiff’s house as an accident.
Party sources said yesterday that the poet had met Jaballah and “confessed to his sins” and asked for pardon. Jaballah is reported to have asked the poet to keep the incident a secret so as not to harm the party.
“It is hard to know what happened at the house,” says Abdul-Ghafour Saadi, the party’s deputy leader. “There were no witnesses to see what our comrade and the lady did.”
Sulayemah has published an ode lampooning unnamed party leaders for their obsessions with adultery and sexual deviation. The scandals come as a blow to a party that has built its platform on the claim that the Algerian society has become corrupted by Western influence.
Last year the party presented a bill to make Algeria alcohol-free by banning the sale of drinks in public places. The bill failed to get enough support for inclusion in the parliamentary agenda. The party has also campaigned to make polygamy legal again, and opposed reforms presented by President Bouteflika to improve the condition of women.
Juhaid Yunesi, the party’s number-three and one of those who have resigned, yesterday blamed Jaballah for “creating a dictatorship to cover immorality with an Islamic vocabulary.”
Another prominent party leader to resign is Miloud Qadiri who led Islah’s group in the National Assembly.
“We cannot invite people to Islam when our party is sinking in immorality,” Qadiri said.
Jaballah first made his name in 1993 when he was named as one of the nine men to form a Majlis Al-Shuyukh (Council of Seniors) at a Pan-Islamist conference held in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital under the chairmanship of Hassan Turabi. Among the council members was Osama Bin Laden.
Below is another reason why Islam is perceived as antisemitic and condones hatred
towards Israelis.
The recent re-broadcast of a show where the President of the Canadian Islamic Congress stated in public that all Israelis over 18 are valid targets for suicide bombers to murder.
The CIC appears to claim wide support for Dr.Elmasry and they won't be asking him to steo down due to people that misunderstood his opinion to kill Jews in Israel that are over 18 becasue of the Military service system there.
Now that the CIC shows a large support by Muslims in Canada the claim of denouncing any violence or hate speech is just another hollow bit of the usual tripe by those fearing to be critical of other Muslims.
27/2004 7:12:00 PM]
-- "ONE UNINTENTIONAL MISTAKE" DOES NOT WIPE OUT EXEMPLARY 30 YEAR RECORD
In an emergency meeting held yesterday, the Canadian Islamic Congress accepted an apology offered by its national president, Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, and rejected his offered resignation.
"I sincerely apologize for the way I expressed myself last week on The Michael Coren Show and I offer my resignation," Dr. Elmasry said in his statement to the CIC Board. "I also offer my apology for the distress I caused to my family, to the University of Waterloo, to the CIC Board, members and friends. I apologize for any public remarks I made which offended Canada's Muslim, Jewish, Palestinian, and Arab communities and Canadians at large."
"It has always been a core belief of mine that killing civilians -- any civilians, for any cause -- is an immoral act of the worst kind and I will never change in this conviction.
Failing to articulate my beliefs clearly, completely, and forcefully on that occasion, was the biggest mistake in my 30 years of public life."
During an in-camera meeting, the Board deliberated on the matter and moved to accept Dr. Elmasry's apology but not to accept his resignation.
In its statement of response, the CIC Board said:
"Dr. Elmasry's track record for the past 30 years is exemplary. He has spoken out on social justice issues in Canada, including senior citizens' rights, the elimination of child poverty, the crisis of homelessness, right of access to free universal health care and education, and for basic human rights. He worked for civil rights issues nationally and internationally and has been vocal and proactive in anti-hate and anti-discrimination campaigns. We also all recall his tireless efforts to achieve the noble goal of world peace with justice.
"Dr. Elmasry is one of Canada's most respected and prolific Muslim writers addressing religious, national and international issues. He has served our community for more than three decades, teaching and preaching tolerance, moderation and equality.
"He is a founding member of several Canadian Muslim organizations, through which he has made valuable and enduring contributions, both to our community and to Canada's multifaith community. One unintentional mistake does not wipe out an exemplary record of more than 30 years."
The Board was overwhelmed by the calls, emails and letters from many Canadians including those from the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Arab communities who expressed their support and solidarity for the work that CIC and Dr. Elmasry have been doing for peace and justice.
Blah blah,blah blah,blah blah blah blah
Here's how to contact the CIC to show your disdain for the Muslims that support Dr.Elmasry's free speech rights and statement to murder Israelis over the age of 18.
http://www.canadianislamiccongress.org/
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry,
(519) 888-4567 Ext. 3753 (O),
(519)746-7928 (H),
(519) 577-2267 (Cell),
e-mail: np@canadianislamiccongress.com
BTW
Take note on how Elmasry insists he's against killing civilians,his claim on public TV was that Israelis over 18 aren't civilian but really part of the Military that's out of uniform.
Al Capone ran a soup kitchen to gain favor among the poor and Elmasry speaks out in public against poverty and injustice to appease the moderate Muslims but seems to be a closet bigot that got caught spewing one of his hateful tirades he reserves for private oration to Arabs and Muslims.
Question: What constitutes sexual assault and sexual immorality in Islam?
Answer:
Unrelated men and women alone in the same room. Unrealted men and women speaking together.
Unrelated men and women THINKING about each other.
How do we police and prevent thought? Islam has created a system in which Muslims MUST consider each an every action and thought as Islamic or un-Islamic, spending every waking moment in persuit of Islam, praying upon awakening and several other times during the day, consulting with each other and with the imam whether or not each and every thought and action is Islamic or non-Islamic.
Do we see the pattern here. Islam is not compatible in the West because it STIFLES free thought.
Islah would knock Algeria back centuries if it ever gained power. Okay so Algeria is a very violent country, but only because of the religious nuts who would rather have a Taliban style mullahcracy running things than a more western style parliament.
The Algerian government needs to keep things as they are even if that means rigging every election, anything is better than having a country governed by Sharia.
So Islah, the second largest party in Algeria has decided to fight against the "corruption of Westen Influence" by ..... legalising Polygamy and refusing to improve the treatment of women.
Although this is fully permissable under Shariah Law, it may still be worth pointing out to the policy makers for Islah that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights endorsed by the United Nations, of which Algeria is a member states that all people should be treated equally, regardless of race, sex or religion. As Islah clearly does not wish to follow this decree with regards to women, are they therefore also going to withdraw their membership from the United Nations to further protect Algeria from "Western corruption"?
Obviously not, as Algeria would then be unable to continue it's moral crusade in the world with notable acts such as abstaining in the voting regarding the United Nations proposals to end the massacres in Sudan, then would it?
Unbelieveable- an entire religion based on and totally consumed by SEX.
See MEMRI.org for an interesting post today of an article by an Israeli Arab author and poet, Salman Mashala, who finds that the ills in Arab society are the result of the low status accorded to Arab women and comes to this conclusion by observing that what is common to highly developed peoples is the high status accorded to women.
As an Israeli Arab, Mashala would be well positioned to know. Except for the minority who adhere to Orthodox Judiasm, Israeli women enjoy a very high degree of equality. What is also stunning in this article, and appropos, in an indirect way to the discourse between Robert Spencer and Stephen Schwartz, is the author's assertion that Islam has brought nothing new to society:
"Just as Islam introduced nothing new from the religious standpoint, it introduced nothing new from the social standpoint, and changed nothing among the Arab nomads..."
From 1830 to 1962 the French ruled in Algeria. They introduced modern agriculture. They allowed the humiliated and degraded Jews, through the loi Cremieux, to become French citizens and hence free from Muslim laws, humiliation, and degradation. There were universities -- real universities. Some of the best French Orientalists lived in Algeria, and published their works in Algeria -- Emile Fagnan comes to mind.
What is Algeria like today? The last Christian religious exercising their vocation of charity, never attmepting to be missionaries, both Italian and French monks, all had their throats slit.
When Chirac visited Algeria, mobs besieged him chanting: "Visa, visa." Yes indeed. Who, in his right mind, would if he could, not live in France rather than Algeria, no longer Algerie francaise as the car horns of its defenders used to toot in French cities, during the days of General Salan, and that assassination attempt in Clamart, and the harkis, and Pontecorvo's absurd movie, a favorite of campuses, about the wonderful fight of the FLN against the bad bad French. See, if you can find, what the eminent anthropologist of Mexico, who worked for the French government in France, Jacques Soustelle, has written of that period.
Well, the "winds of change" blew through Algeria all right. The line of succession, from FLN to corrupt army leaders, continues to rule. And as always, the vehicle for extreme protest in any Muslim country will always be -- Islam. Nothing but Islam.
If Algeria did not have gas and oil deposits, it would sink into nothing. For even as one of the beneficiaries of the largest transfer of wealth in human history (5-6 trillion dollars to the Muslim oil states since 1973), Algeria, like Iran, like Saudi Arabia, like the sheikhdoms, is amazing not for what it has achieved with all that money, the result of no effort on the part of its people, but how little it has achieved.
It took a kind of genius in reverse to make a mess with all that money. But the Muslim states proved equal to the task. If you seek Islam's monument, look at Iran, look at "Saudi" Arabia, look especially at the once-civilized place that is now called Algeria.
Hugh:
One small oversight: the number of Algerian Jews who fled their homes in the last 150 years or so in various waves in response to the violence they experienced at the hands of their Muslim neighbours. I'd hazard a guess that we're talking 50,000+.
At least. And in North Africa during the war, few Arabs appeared displeased at the condition of the local Jews under Vichy, and some took advantage of the situation. The main point of the posting was to discuss the brief period of French, i.e. non-Muslim rule, fashionably maligned but not malignant, and far better than what it followed, or preceded.
In this regard I recommend A. J. Liebling's report from North Africa, entitled "Molly" -- it has just been reprinted along with other things he wrote about the war. Had I discussed not only the treatment of Jews, but of harkis, or of non-French colons, or others, it might have gone on and on. A mere hint of the violence comes out in Alastair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace," but he is too kind to the FLN.
However, having returned to repply, perhaps I can add one correction to the original posting: not Clamart, but Petit Clamart, is where the assassination attempt on De Gaulle took place. Clamart, next door, was a center of the Russian emigration, and is where the Russian philosopher Berdyaev lived, and died, as an emigre. It was in Berdyaev's house that I once attended a panikhida in Pushkin's honor. Gospodi pomilui, how time flies.
To pick up on Hugh's comments I just watched "The Battle of Algiers" which was recently released on dvd. The film was supposely screened at the Pentagon prior to the war in Iraq.The film is well made but clearly propaganda portraying the FLN as heroic freedom frighters against the "bad" French."The Battle of Algiers" was released in the 1960s but it gives insight into is the terrorist tactics used by Arab/Muslims.The cell structure of the FLN is discussed in detail in the film. You see Muslim women removing their veils and disguising themselves as French women while planting bombs in discos and cafes.One woman used her young child as cover to enter the French section to plant a bomb.You also see the terrorist tactic of machine gunning civilians from ambulances.The film shows FLN members shooting policemen in the back but in reality they shot and killed unarmed French civilians. The French did defeat the terrorist FLN by using "ruthless tactics" as they were willing to do whatever was necessary to protect French civilians from terrorist attacks.To that end the French adopted a stance that every interrogation should yield information and they used torture and summary execution to destroy the FLN. Back then the French took the murder and rape of innocent French women and children seriously.
What's interesting in watching "The Battle of Algiers is seeing that Algeria under the French was at one time a thriving country with a vibrant European community and cosmopolitan areas.Some sections of the city resembled areas of Europe. After defeating the FLN the French eventually decided to leave Algeria which has since deteroriated into a third world hell hole thanks to Islamic rule. As Hugh mentioned Algerians are now desperate to leave Algeria and immigrate to France.
Edmond, not Emile, Fagnan, was the author of "Le Djihad" published in 1908 in Algiers.
It should be noted that the beginning of large-scale Muslim immigration to France came from those Muslims who fought against the FLN on the side of France.
Also, the revolt against France was possible because the modern medicine and other benefits France brought to Algeria both raised the native birthrate and attracted Muslim immigration from elsewhere.