Sharia Alert from Free Democratic Iraq: "Pack up or die, street vendors told," from The Telegraph, with thanks to Robert:
As the purveyors of nothing spicier than the odd dash of hot chilli sauce, Baghdad's falafel vendors had never imagined their snacks might be deemed a threat to public morality.Now, though, their simple offerings of chickpeas fried in breadcrumbs have gone the same way as alcohol, pop music and foreign films - labelled theologically impure by the country's growing number of Islamic zealots.
In a bizarre example of Iraq's creeping "Talibanisation", militants visited falafel vendors a fortnight ago, telling them to pack up their stalls by today or be killed.
The ultimatum seemed so odd that, at first, most laughed it off - until two of them were shot dead as they plied their trade."They came telling us, 'You have 14 days to end this job' and I asked them what was the problem," said Abu Zeinab, 32, who was packing up his stall for good yesterday in the suburb of al Dora, a hardline Sunni neighbourhood.
"I said I was just feeding the people, but they said there were no falafels in Mohammed the prophet's time, so we shouldn't have them either.
"I felt like telling them there were no Kalashnikovs in Mohammed's time either, but I wanted to keep my life."...
It is, however, just one of many Islamic edicts to hit Baghdad in recent weeks, prohibiting everything from the growing of goatee beards to the sale of mayonnaise - because it is allegedly made in Israel.
Even the Arab addiction to cigarettes is being challenged, with insurgents declaring smoking bans in at least one Sunni district....
Another group of traders to have felt the Islamists' unexpected wrath is Baghdad's ice merchants, who sell large chunks of ice for storing food and chilling drinks. In a city facing constant power cuts and summer temperatures of up to 50C (122F), the service they provide is little short of essential.
Yet in recent weeks, they too have fallen foul of the claim that their product was not a feature of life during Mohammed's time.
Akram al Zidawi, 19, an ice seller from al Dora, thought the threats were too ludicrous to be true - until it was too late. "Two weeks ago he came back home saying that he had been threatened by the terrorists," said his brother Gassan, 32.
"My mother begged him to quit the job, but he laughed, he thought it was impossible they would kill him. But they came back two days later and shot him dead, along with three other ice sellers nearby."
Meanwhile, barbers have been inundated with young men anxious to shave off their goatee beards. Last month, Mustapha Jawad, 17, was allegedly killed for wearing one, which Islamists deemed a Jewish facial hairstyle.
"After Mustapha's death I received 20 to 30 young men every day, all wanting me to shave off their goatee," said a barber, Sinan al Rubai. "Maybe one day the mujahedeen will insist on shaving all the head - then I will be rich."
unbelievable. God help us. And falafel is my favourite food too. What next? chocolate?
One does not need to be a Muslim to know that chocolate is the work of the devil.
Speaking as someone who doesn't like mayonnaise, I still think this sort of thing is ridiculous. I cannot understand why Muqtada al-Sadr wasn't taken into protectivie custody or something like it when the USA had a chance to do so.
Someone remind me why coalition troops are dying in this God-forsaken place. Was it to enable such moronic fanaticism to have free rein?
I've just about had it with arguments for the war from so-called "conservative" commentators like Mark Steyn. If Mark can see a national interest here, he's got better eyesight than me. And as for Iraq's being a flypaper for jihadists and potential jihadists around the globe, as he has also argued, I just don't think that's true. So far as I can see, there are enough to go around everywhere where there is a Muslim population: a dozen for a start arrested in Canada just yesterday and perhaps 10 or 100 or 1000 - who knows? - times that who haven't been arrested.
Just a bit more imagination needed.
Ice leads to escapades... and falafel will make you feel awful.
They are correct to outlaw these unspeakable items. And Allah Ta'ala knows the best! (and he's coming to a town near you if you've got Muslims)
Murdering chickpea vendors?!? Haven't they heard that Islam is a religion of peas?
As I read this article aloud at breakfast this morning ,
Yet in recent weeks, they too have fallen foul of the claim that their product was not a feature of life during Mohammed's time.
- my son reminded me of the legend where Salah ad-Din Yusuf, known as Saladin in the West had ice from the mountain tops brought down for chilling comfort
So much for Saladin's islamic virtues . . . eh?
when the iraqi's have had enough of this crap from their religion of peace, they will arm themsevles and get rid of their relgious leaders once and for all!
Here we have Islamic theologians creatively interpreting the Koran and Islam and attempting to apply it to the modern world. Just what is so desperately needed.
I've made a list of some other things I believe the Prophet wouldn't approve of:
garden elves
monogrammed clothing
shower massagers
soft furniture
velour
eating raw cookie dough
vibrating beds
shag carpeting
pants on lamb chps
fondue
blue toilet water
saxophones
ginseng rush soda
popping bubble paper
marshmallow fluff
Horribe though it is the falafel stands are targets, this is, over the very long term, good news. The Jihadis, and Islam in general, cannot offer a solution to any problems, save that of a non-dominated, unfearful populatin existing at all. Underneath the facade of Iran's clerical regime, threatening though it will be if it nuclearizes, is a popuation that is sick of Islam being shoved down their throats. If we step back and allow the Jihadis to take over Muslim nations, they will over time create their own undoing. It will take a long time, but it will come. The change that needs to happen will only come from inside. The best we infidels can do is speak truth to Islam. I am borrowing terminology from the left here, but it is quite apt. Nothing terrifies Islamic authorities more than criticism. All the wars together are not as dangerous to them.
I can't find an original source for this essay, but it's so magnificent I had to post it. There may be hope for Europeans yet!
_____________________________________
All European Life Died In Auschwitz
by Sebastian Vilar Rodriguez
I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth -- Europe died in Auschwitz.
We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.
The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world.
These are the people we burned.
And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.
They have turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Holed up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.
And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for hoping for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.
What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.
No IED's, no RPG's, no shaped charges, no backpacks filled with explosives, no jumbo jets to fly into buildings, no Kassam missiles to aim at Israel, and no nuclear weapon program back in Mohammad's time either, but those are different I guess.
Why are tasty little sandwiches seen as the enemy of their religion, and weaponry for murder and mayhem are seen as synchronous, even essential, for practicing their religion? Haven't these jihadists ever opened a Qur'an and read its words of peaceful wisdom? Aren't they as familiar with its message of peace as Bush, Rice, Blair, and other Islamic experts are?
Quijybo said
They haven't gotten sick of it after 1400 years, I doubt it'll happen because of a few falafel stands being shut down. Who is shoving Islam down their throats? Themselves. Again, this starts to sound like a "tiny minority of extremists" is holding the "vast majority of moderates" hostage against their will. If that is true, then where are the moderates? Why aren't they swarming in from all over the Islamic world to bring peace and freedom and falafel to Iraq? There are swarms coming, so why are they all coming to enforce the twisted, narrow misinterpretation of a small minority of extremists?
The best thing we can do is to protect ourselves from the danger of Islam to our own countries. If you mean "speak truth" within our own countries, I agree with you. If you include trying to convince the Iraqis that Islam is a suboptimal religion, then we're off into fantasy land.
The falafel fatwa will wound the Islamic Imperialists, but the tobacco bans will kill them.
The god Nicotiana will tame Allah, if they go are forced to go head to head.
May the hysterically anti-natural jihadists force more clashes between dismal dogma and human desire.
Anhedonia always loses out to the heart.
"This Sandwich has no Mayonnaise" is the title of one of the uncollected stories of Jerome D. Salinger, writer and supposed recluse of Cornish, New Hampshire, whose former wife Claire once lived on Elm Street in Norwich, Vermont, just a hundred yards beyond Hopson Road, and a mile from that celebrated emporium Dan and Whit's. Close to Claire Salinger, long ago, there lived a Russian puppeteer, and also the philosopher Rosenstock-Huessy (whom Auden admired), and a few other German refugees from the Nazis who had been public figures during the Weimar Republic.
Does this have anything to do with Islam?
No. But it's fun.
Hugh:
Kind of you to notice.
Yrs
Robert
Somebody had to.
Lest anyone through misplaced hand-wringing pity use the Muslim victims in these incidents as a basis for a salvageable Islam: pop psychology has its uses: keep in mind the useful categories of co-dependent, passive enablers and dysfunctional relationship.
Those who would defend a salvageable Islam would, by analogy, defend the oikonomia of a wife-beating marriage because, in the suffering of the repeatedly beaten wife, they somehow find hope. On the contrary, some things are just plain hopeless and morally untenable, and must be unceremoniously -- and ruthlessly if need be -- shut down.
According to a review of J.D. Salinger's daughter's book about her childhood with her father, Dream Catcher: A Memoir (2000):
During World War II [Salinger] was a counterintelligence agent assigned to the Twelfth Regiment of the Fourth Division, interrogating POW's.
He served in the most brutal campaigns of the European theater, including D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge. In 1945 in Germany he was hospitalized for "battle fatigue."
In one of the book's surprises, Ms. Salinger writes that her father arrested a young Nazi Party functionary, Sylvia, then married her. The marriage was brief, and forever after he referred to her as Saliva.
Hugh
http://www.vaics.org/vaics-norwich.html
Looks like you can buy nails (perhaps drywall screws?) by the pound at Dan and Whit's. No such luck here in Home Depot land (Florida)
JD Salinger was? Jewish or half so. Not that there's anything ......
) Bits of *The Catcher in the Rye* appeared first in 1945, as a short
story in *Colliers*, more in 1946 in *The New Yorker*.
ii) An early Salinger story, *This Sandwich has No Mayonnaise*, appeared
in *Esquire* in October 1945. In this story, Holden is already dead or
missing-in-action at nineteen. The story takes place after the end of
*TCITR* and in it Holden's brother remembers things that happened before
*TCITR*. Salinger developed his family sagas like this (cf the Glass
family/menagerie) with flashbacks and references to lives lived outside
the stories in which the characters actually appear.
iii) Salinger was writing chapters of a Holden Caulfield novel in early
1944, during the build-up to D-Day. There's another story from around
this time, *Last Day of the Last Furlough*, in which the hero Gladwaller
has a close friend called Caulfield, whose wild kid brother Holden has
been killed in action.
Re-reading *TCITR* as if Holden died during WW2 is strangely moving. Is
it chronologically consistent to do so?
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.usage.english/browse_thread/thread/c4fb4e662cec42e1/058d32155a106a02?lnk=st&q=%22This+sandwich+has+no+mayonnaise%22&rnum=2#058d32155a106a02
Why doesn't anybody in the MSM or Bush define what a terrorist or terrorism really is? I here phrases like "evil doer" ect, but it is very simple. Whether it is in the family or in top government
Terrorist - A Muslim politician.
Terrorism - Politics as usual for a Muslim.
Instead of defining "terrorism" -- which is not hard to do, and the late Senator Henry Jackson came up with a workable definition more than 20 years ago -- the Bush Administration shoudl define something else.
It should define "victory" in Iraq. It should tell us what would constitute, for America, and for other Infidels, "victory" in Iraq. Obviously such "victory" would have to create a sitatuin in which Islam has been in some way weakened, either in Iraq, or outside Iraq, or preferably both. If the schemes and dreams that the Adminisetration is forcing American officers and men to attempt to gain would not, if the goals that are to be achieved were achieved, in the end lead to a weakening of the camp of Islam, then those very goals are silly to strive for, and the expenditure of men's lives, money, and materiel a horrendous squandering of resources.
Define "victory" in Iraq. Go ahead, tell us what you, all the minions and supporters of the Administration, think "victory in Iraq" would look like.
In my opinion, such insanity should be ENCOURAGED, not deplored and condemned.
Why? Easy. Because the more insane Islamic societies become, the sooner they'll self-destruct.
'Why are tasty little sandwiches seen as the enemy of their religion, and weaponry for murder and mayhem are seen as synchronous, even essential, for practicing their religion?' - special_guest, above.
Perhaps because Mo wasn't a cook, he was a 7th century Arabic warlord...
"I felt like telling them there were no Kalashnikovs in Mohammed's time either, but I wanted to keep my life."...
Or automobiles for kidnapping, videos of beheadings... or, for that matter, showers, flush toilets, or even toilet paper.
It is clear that the US has freed the monster in Iraq and the situation is far worse than before Bush and Blair's little war to make Iraq an Islamic Republic.
But, it's not too late to reverse policy. There is one man that the US has at its disposal who has proven he can stop these Muslim fanatics. His name is Saddam Hussein.
The US should simply put him back in charge, give him all the weapons and nerve gas he needs and let him pacify Iraq.
"It is clear that the US has freed the monster in Iraq and the situation is far worse than before Bush and Blair's little war to make Iraq an Islamic Republic."
Posted by: Provoslavni at June 4, 2006 07:37 PM
Maybe we should free Saddam Hussein, apologize profusely, rearm him and let him loose with a request he not stop until he reaches the Arabian Sea.
not exactly belonging to the minions and supporters of the present administration I nevertheless have a definition what "victory" in Iraq should look like: whack them until they are totally and completely destroyed and any groupings of leftovers are subdued without mercy. (analogy Berlin 1945)
The allied forces did not counterattack Germany because they wanted to save the Jews (apparently did not even know about their plight-which is hard to believe thinking of 6 mio.people), but because they were dangerously attacked by the Germans and those Nazi plans did not exactly fit the great American Dream.
Now, Mr.Bush had to topple Saddam because he abused and strangled minorities in his country and of course, that story about the WMDs... that also did not fit the great American Dream.
We all know by now that this is a load of crap.
So look back at 1945: if there is war and you want victory then you fight relentlessly and without mercy until you´ve got the upper hand and eventually win. Only then can you install a system/structure that is very close to your own beliefs and does not threaten your own country any further, but supports the whole "dream"...(German economy 1946-present)
So, why do we have to care about falafels being sold or not, why do we listen to "human rights" critters who want to indict our soldiers because some civilians have been in a wrong place at the wrong time-but in their own country which is at war!
We must shoot Iraqi towns into rubble (Germany 1945)track down mercilessly those insane islamists to summarily execute them (Nuremberg, postwar Germany)
Are we at war? or do we have to win an election ?
If the Iraqi problem is not solved ironfisted and without mercy then we will definitely have an open prairie-fire WW III.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Koran written down and assembled after Mohammed's death? So that would mean the Koran in written form wasn't available in Mohammed's time. Therefore, they should burn all copies of the Koran. Plus the Sunnah and the Hadiths since they weren't available during Mohammed's life. Come to think it, why not include all Islamic fatwas since they weren't available during Mohammed's life?
I wonder how many here remember that one of the first things the US military did after sweeping in was disarm everyone.
Consequently, the US military and the fanatics are the only people in Iraq with weapons.
Thanx, Unka Slam.
non-redneck-
Mohammad, being illiterate, wrote nothing.
Thus, the Koran merely is what later people remember him saying, not exactly what he said (...what Gibreel said what Allah said...)
So, at best, it is a Collective Guess.
And they still want to kill infidels over it?
To Islam, I say:
Guess again.
Mike Schneider-
"I wonder how many here remember that one of the first things the US military did after sweeping in was disarm everyone."
You are misinformed. Iraq has the most wide open weapons market in the world. All Allah's chillen got guns and I mean AK-47s. You can buy them on the street in Baghdad.
Why this is so? Its too much for this poor little head to 'wrap itself around' to paraphrase Okrah Windbag.
Pu-leeze, let's not paraphrase the cow-eyed Okrah in these belighted pages.
If you do, she'll get pissed and produce another one of those tear jerker Palestinian victimhood shows.
"Mohammad, being illiterate, wrote nothing."
I think Muslims believe that Mohammed's hand -- like the stylus of a stenograph machine -- was directed by God to write the Qur'an.
So, I guess that the perennial argument about who invented falafel has now been won by the Israelis.
chsw
I think (but am not 100% certain) that there are various Muslim beliefs about the Koran. It depends on who you ask.
I've heard these beliefs about the Koran by Muslims :
- The Koran was assembled after Mohammed's death by his followers (from memory and some suras that people had written down in Mohammed's lifetime). It was standardized by one of Caliphs and competing versions were destroyed.
- Mohammed was directed by Allah to write the Koran (as Television mentioned above). This was supposed to be proof of its divine origins since Mohammed was illiterate.
- The Koran was literally written by Allah and presented to Mohammed in a book that came down from heaven after the final revelation. .
To anybody wiser in Islam than I, correct me if I'm wrong about my above assertions, because I'd like to get my facts straight.
make me want to pack up and move to an Islamic country, they really know how to parteee!
Mohammed is referred to as the "perfect human" in many places; how come he was illiterate then? As he spoke to allah (apparently) and was told to spread the "word" of allah wouldn't it have been wise for either a) allah to give him the power to read and write or b) allah to pick someone who COULD read and write?
IF you follow this line through then surely these people who go round killing ice vendors should also be killing anyone who can read the koran? After all, mohammed was illiterate so by learning to read and write aren't muslims going against mohammed?
The more I read about islam the more wacky it sounds. It really does not stand up to even the slightest questioning or scrutiny, which I guess, is why muslims (or anyone else for that matter) are not allowed to scrutinise or question it?
What is the party line on: 1.) air conditioning, 2.) modern plumbing ???
Let the "fundamentalists" first give up their cell phones, computers, microwaves, toilet paper, AK 47's, IED's, air conditioning, cars, planes, busses, tanks or anything that runs on gas or was invented after the 7th Century A.D. then, to include printed copies of their unholy quran. Let them live in a cave like their false prophet, Mohammed.
What about airliners? I have a copy of the koran and can find nothing in there about airliners.....or explosives for that matter. mmmmmmmmm, maybe I have the wrong version.
The article isn't clear which faction is doing this, though descriptive words like "militants" and "terrorists" makes me think they're not talking about the elected government or its representatives.
Anyway, since ice obviously existed in the time of Mohammed, this phenomenon has less to do with Islamism than it does with carrying out guerrilla warefare by making people's lives as miserable as possible with the least amount of resources expended.
I really wish the Islamists were stupid enough to throw away everything invented in the last 1500 years, I just don't think we're that lucky. If they were that stupid they'd quickly cease to be a problem.
These Islamic zealots should also do the world a favor and ban antibiotics and vaccines.
"What is the party line on: 1.) air conditioning, 2.) modern plumbing ???" - from MP
1.) Bullet holes in heads are nice.
2.) Bullets also can be used for this, but lower down.