Backlash

Andrew Breitbart:

Unless the gay community polices itself better and registers its displeasure against these pitiful and selective acts of political retribution, many tolerant Americans who hold the same beliefs on marriage as Mr. Obama and the Dalai Lama are going to begin to register their displeasure at the voting booth and through consumer boycotts against those who employ or support the thuggish tactics of Perez Hilton and his ilk.

I'm already there (too bad I don't matter, eh?). The tipping point was the hatred spewed against Christians, "breeders", and old people, in celebration of the Iowa Supreme Court ruling. I refuse to tolerate bigotry and toddlerific tantrums.

Oh, and "Islam is a religion of mercy." Note the hermaphrodite being abused by police is wearing a cross necklace. I find that interesting.

Irony...

The Daily Kos has noticed that the Sadr militia--I assume the same Sadr militia that Kos support in their effort to liberate Iraq from evil imperialist soldiers from that hellhole of Christofascist gay oppression, the U.S., but please tell me if there is more than one Sadr militia--are torturing and killing gay men in Iraq.

Unsurprisingly, they are willfully clueless about the "why." Apparently it's W's fault, because everyone loved gay men when Saddam Hussein was in power. *blink*

Interesting, not in a good way.

Can't say I'm surprised. Gays sentenced to death in Iraq for crime of homosexuality. I'm not sure why people expected differently; even if the government was completely secular, the people voting for its members aren't. Not that UK Gay News will note there's a reason homosexuality is a crime in the region...or maybe in the UK they legally can't.

(And of course, the commenters can't seem to figure out which religion it is that wants to kill them.)

Phyllis Chesler on Honor Killings

In the Spring 2009 issue of The Middle East Quarterly, available online. Her main point is that honor killings are significantly different from Western-style domestic violence--in intent, ferocity, celebration, and victim selection--and should not be treated as such.

In both North America and Europe, family members conducted honor killings with excessive violence—repeatedly stabbing, raping, setting aflame, and bludgeoning—in more than half the cases. Only in serial-killing-type scenarios are Western women targeted with similar violence; in these cases, the perpetrators are seldom family members, and their victims are often strangers. Despite the obfuscation of Muslim advocacy groups, these case studies show that honor killings are quite distinct from domestic violence.

She is quite detailed and presents the data she used with her conclusions, which I will keep in mind the next time I rant at "feminists."

But I would still appreciate the organizations that purport to care about women noticing the existance of honor killings.

Yoo-hoo! Feminists!

When you get done celebrating your own va-jay-jays, try making yourselves useful:

The American media is wholly uninterested in beheaded wives.

And on V-Day.

Go forth! Fight violence against all women for a damn change, and not just the ones abused by white men.

Silence! I KEEEL YOU!

Achmad the Dead Terrorist deemed "offensive to Muslims" by South African government, no longer allowed on TV.

I wonder if he'll be allowed under the new regime here.

(H/T Chele)

Obsession

Apparently you do miss stuff when you don't buy the local fishwrap (besides Racing Sausage collectibles).

The last dead-tree issue of National Review had a copy of the Obsession DVD, which has already aired on cable. I admit I haven't watched it yet--sheer laziness--but I think I've read enough LFG links to MEMRI over the past two years to not be surprised.

The one I want to get my hands on is the one the BBC's Channel 4 did where they secretly taped the British imams inciting hatred of the very society paying their room and board...

If anyone else who refuses to spend their hard-earned money on the J-S is curious and wants to borrow the DVD, let me know. It's on my TV next to the four-hour black-and-white German films from Netflix. *sheepish*

Attention "pro-choice feminists"

Got a project for you.

Stop bleating about "hegemony" and "cultural imperialism" and go do something useful on behalf of women other than yourselves.

COEXIST!

Another charming tale of CELEBRATE DIVERSITY! for my friends who still believe it's morally superior to accept and validate any non-Western culture that practices gross violations of basic human rights than to say, "You know, that's not right." I don't know how you live with yourselves.

But I'm kind of amused that multiculturalists can proclaim the beauty and strength and legitimacy of--and necessity of surrendering to--religions that condemn diversity to death.

I wonder when Mark Steyn comes off hiatus.

COEXIST!

My "there's nothing wrong with that, it's just their culture, we shouldn't judge them" friends are going to be annoyed with me today when I prick their self-righteous bubble of multiculturist smug...(via FFOF, via DhimmiWatch, which I should be reading more than I have been lately)

10-year-old bride gets beaten, raped; family pays husband $200 to compensate him for divorcing her.

CNN cheerfully ignores her religion until way at the end; I'm surprised they bother to report this sort of thing at all.

So, dear friends with COEXIST! bumperstickers who believe we shouldn't impose our way of thinking on other people, please explain to me why you support cultures that see nothing wrong with raping 10-year-old girls, and how they are equivalent to (or better than!) cultures which condemn child rape. Please explain to me how holding in contempt religions that advocate old men have sex with 9-year-old girls is worse than old men having sex with 9-year-old girls.

I will continue to mock you until you get it right.

Happy Easter!

A little good news, related to the Good News:

Italy's most prominent Muslim commentator [Magdi Allam] converted to Roman Catholicism on Saturday during the Vatican's Easter vigil service presided over by the pope.

I always feel weak when I read about people who face torture and death for converting to Christianity. The worst thing that happens when I admit to believing in Jesus is name-calling and ostracization (from people who refuse to consider Fred Phelps doesn't speak for all Christians and all Christians don't dream of uniting the planet in a Grand Fundamentalist Caliphate, so it doesn't hurt much to be uninvited to their parties, heh).

Allam also explained his decision to entitle a recent book "Viva Israel" or "Long Live Israel," saying he wrote it after he received death threats from Hamas.

"Having been condemned to death, I have reflected a long time on the value of life. And I discovered that behind the origin of the ideology of hatred, violence and death is the discrimination against Israel. Everyone has the right to exist except for the Jewish state and its inhabitants," he said. "Today, Israel is the paradigm of the right to life."

Good thing he already has bodyguards. He doesn't just have to worry about radical Islam, he has to worry about the European left, too.

There's more at JihadWatch.

Woman artist gets death threats over gay Muslim photos

She's an Iranian exile herself, so I'm willing to believe she knows something about the culture she's critiquing with her work, as well as the risks she took in having it displayed.

She said that by photographing gay Iranian exiles in masks of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and Ali, his son-in-law, she had wanted to expose a “hypocritical” attitude towards homosexuality in countries such as Iran, where men can be hanged for homosexual conduct.

I can see where people could think the masks were unnecessary, that she could have taken more traditional portraits of the men, but I've seen some of the photographs in ARTNews and the masks are not gratuitous. Without the reference to Muhammad, there's no distinction between them and other photographs she has made of Dutch gays, and certainly no illumination of the social phenomenon she set out to illustrate in the first place. Similar to depictions of Barack Obama as Jesus that comment on an attitude toward his campaign; not at all similar to defecating on a religious icon, which doesn't illustrate anything except an artist's lack of wit (you're supposed to grow out of poop jokes by the time you're old enough for art school...).

Overlooked by both art critics and those who believe in free speech: it's obvious that if the men's faces were visible, she would have put THEM at risk of being killed by family, neighbors, or activists who see the work (in contrast, the models in the infamous "Sex Toy Last Supper" go about their business with no worries). The artist chose to exercise her right to comment freely on a society, and she did it in a responsible manner.

The museum that was to originally display the work didn't even wait for a "request" from Muslims before it censored them--the masked men could not be included in the forthcoming exhibition because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive”. Even still-lifes of FLOWERS are going to offend SOMEONE. No one refuses to display scat-on-Christianity art because it's offensive (I wouldn't--I'd refuse because it's lousy art). If you're afraid of losing your building or other artwork to homemade explosives, come out and say so!

Wouter Bos, the deputy prime minister, seemed to take a stand for freedom of speech, saying: “In a democracy, we do not recognise the right not to be insulted.” The left wing de Volkskrant newspaper, by contrast, praised the museum for its “great professionalism” in excising the images.

Another museum has agreed to display her photographs; we'll see what happens.

(Aside: I have an urge to propose an installation I'll call "art that offends no one." It will be an empty room with blank white walls. Someone will be offended by my use of the color white.)