Islamism & Islamophobia Abroad - News & Analysis

[Prem]

How old was Mohammed when he married Zaynab, he was 54 when Aisha was 6, and 57 when Aisha was 9 and he consummated his marriage with her. At 57 he also married Safiya whose family (includes Father, Husband, Brother) he beheaded the same day. Obviosuly according to Islamists Safiya fell in love with Mohammeds' charms the very day he executed her whole family, friends etc and his eyes fell on her and hers on his. This stuff jolts every sane nerve and neuron that a human possesses.

How did he excite her that Raat? It must be hell of a job.

[arun]

If adherents of Mohammaddenism claim that theirs is “the religion of peace” then how come a Mohammadden Cleric who it is presumed is well versed in the tenets of that faith, can support the attack on the Westgate Mall in Narobi by Mohammadden Terrorists ?

Muslim cleric says Nairobi mall attack 'right thing to do'

[member_19686]

Lone wolf Indian jihadi planned terror strikes in France
Last updated on: October 01, 2013 17:49 IST

A French court recently sentenced Mohammad Niaz Abdul Rasheed, an Indian national, to eight years in prison for criminal conspiracy.

Rasheed, a resident of Trichy in Tamil Nadu, is a mechanical engineer. Intelligence agencies believe that he joined the Students Islamic Movement of India at the age of 21.

Rasheed decided to carry out terror strikes in France as he believed that French authorities were targeting Islam with steps like banning the burqa.
Rasheed is part of the lone wolf terror club -- self-trained and self-motivated terrorists who launch attacks on their own.

He reportedly spent a lot of time downloading jihadi literature and even possessed a manual on assembling a bomb. He was inspired by speeches made by Taliban leaders and often aired his views on social media. But he never belonged to any terror outfit.

Rasheed wanted to carry out a series of blasts in France and send a strong message to the authorities.

During his interactions on social media, he tried to create a platform where several similarly disgruntled youth could come together. 'Don’t just think or speak, join the fight', he often exhorted these young men.

Indian security agencies have had Rasheed on their radar for some time. They had issued an alert after he left the country though they could not find any links with any terror organisation. The agencies were also trying to find a possible money trail between Rasheed and his contacts in Kerala.

Rasheed had even recruited two French men for his terror mission and sent them to Pakistan to receive training. French authorities, with the help of inputs from Indian investigators, had finally arrested Rasheed at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris in May 2011.

They have since found that he was in touch with Umar Patek, the terrorist behind the Bali bombings, as he wanted to form a nucleus of jihadis. Rasheed, however, was never in touch with any terror operative in India.

Rasheed joins the list of lone wolf terrorists such as Kafeel Ahmed and Dhiren Barot alias Abu Musa.

Kafeel Ahmed, who hailed from Bangalore, had carried out the suicidal Glasgow bombing. Dhiren Barot, who was born in Vadodara, was arrested for plotting a series of bombings at the New York Stock Exchange.

http://www.rediff.com/news/report/lone- ... 131001.htm

[vishvak]

There is selective silence of pseudo secular individuals on this facet of secularism where some secular people are caught in terrorist plots and even executing terrorism activities outside.

This is height of secularism. Gods of secularism must be confused.

[RamaY]

There is selective silence of pseudo secular individuals on this facet of secularism where some secular people are caught in terrorist plots and even executing terrorism activities outside.

This is height of secularism. Gods of secularism must be confused.

Unless... unless, secularism is nothing but ++++++ in Burkha. Welcome to Secularism thread.

[Lilo]

X-post

Posting the article in full for archival purpose as original 2004 article has all but disappeared form Boston Globe site and has quotable quotes in it.

Open Secrets

Miranda Kennedy who is a journalist and a Contributing Editor of The Old Town Review. She reports frequently for National Public Radio(NPR) from across South Asia.

LAHORE -- The first time Aziz, a lean, dark-haired 20-year-old in this bustling cultural capital, had sex with a man, he was a pretty, illiterate boy of 16. A family friend took him to his house, put on a Pakistani-made soft-***** video, and raped him . Now, says Aziz (who gives only his first name), he is "addicted" to sex with men, so he hangs around Lahore's red-light districts, getting paid a few rupees for sex. At night, he goes home to his parents and prays to Allah to forgive him.

In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, homosexuality is not only illegal, it is a crime punishable by whipping, imprisonment, or even death. But across all classes and social groups, men have sex with men. In villages throughout the country, young boys are often forcibly "taken" by older men, starting a cycle of abuse and revenge that social activists and observers say is the common pattern of homosexual sex in Pakistan. Often these boys move to the cities and become prostitutes. Most people know it happens -- from the police to the wives of the men involved.

In some areas, homosexual sex is even tacitly accepted -- though still officially illegal -- as long as it doesn't threaten traditional marriage. In the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), which shares many tribal and cultural links with neighboring Afghanistan, the ethnic Pashtun men who dominate the region are renowned for taking young boys as lovers. No one has been executed for sodomy in Pakistan's recent history, but across the border in Afghanistan, the Taliban (who are also overwhelmingly Pashtun) executed three men for sodomy in 1998 by bulldozing a brick wall over them, burying two of them alive. (The third survived, which meant, according to Taliban law, that he was innocent, so he was taken to a hospital for treatment.)

Among Pakistan's urban elite, there is a growing community of men who identify as gay, some of whom even come out to their friends. Men meet on Internet bulletin boards, or at private pool parties with lots of rented boys and heavy security. But they are a tiny, terrified minority, living in cities such as Lahore, Karachi, or Islamabad, where the cultural elite has carved out a niche for itself. In a country where alcohol is forbidden except to Christians, dancing is banned, and the Koran guides many aspects of criminal law, such men rarely step outside of their protected world. (Because women in Pakistan inhabit, for the most part, a strictly private realm, it is difficult to say with any certainty how common lesbian relationships may be.)

Homosexuals in Pakistan walk a fine line between harsh legal and cultural prohibition and some form of unspoken social acceptance. "Islamic tradition frowns on but acknowledges male-male sex, and this plays a role in permitting clandestine sex so long as it is not allowed to interfere with family life, which is of paramount importance," the San Francisco-based sociologist Stephen O. Murray writes in "Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality: A Multi-Nation Comparison," a collection of scholarly essays published in 1997. Further complicating matters, the most common form of male homosexuality in Pakistan, according to Murray, is pederasty, where an older man entices or coerces (sometimes forcibly) a younger boy into sex.

Among the many obstacles facing men who have sex with men in Pakistan is this close association, in the eyes of many Pakistanis, between homosexuality and exploitation. But they face their own psychological barriers as well. Of the dozens of men interviewed for this article, almost none who admitted to having homosexual sex identified themselves as "gay." (All would give only their first names, which could not be verified, or would speak only anonymously.) Most do not even believe that homosexuality should be legal.

Aziz says he now enjoys sex with other men, but he believes that's only because he isn't able to have sex with women, who are largely inaccessible -- even in red-light districts, where there are many more men than women for rent. And like most Pakistani men who have homosexual sex, Aziz believes it is wrong. "The Verses of the Koran do not allow it," he says. "That's the only thing that matters."
. . .
According to the Koran, when the prophet Lot saw that his people had been engaged in sodomy and debauchery, he said, "Come ye to men, instead of women, lustfully? Ye are indeed a people given to excess." When they refused to repent their sins, Allah destroyed them: "And we rained a rain upon them: and see what was the end of the wicked!"

The lines don't seem to leave much room for interpretation. But Faisal Alam, founder of the Al-Fatiha Foundation, a Washington-based organization for gay and lesbian Muslims, argues that Lot's people were killed not because they had homosexual sex, but because they were forcing sex on each other. That interpretation is unlikely to hold much weight with Pakistan's religious leaders. The matter is not open for debate here -- not among mullahs, academics, or even activists.

Like many Pakistani men who have sex with men, Aziz believes he is plagued by a "satan," or demon, that makes him desire men. Veteran human rights lawyer Hina Jilani, who lives in Lahore and specializes in women's rights cases, says the inconsistent application of Sharia (Islamic law) and Pakistani criminal law has blurred the line between abuse and gay sex, and the emphasis on Islamic values has imbued the very word "homosexuality" with a moral color.

"Here we have two totally different issues: exploited boys and sex workers versus consensual sex," Jilani says. "But the majority of people will think of them as the same. Even people like myself who do understand this issue haven't been able to take it up, except in the context of violence against people on basis of sex orientation."Jilani says there are innumerable cases of young boys -- some sex workers, some not -- charged under Pakistan's sodomy law, even if they have been enticed into sex.

Page 3 of 5 -- Jilani, who has defended dozens of children accused under the law, says they spend long years in jail awaiting trial; their families are stigmatized and often forced to disown them. In most parts of Pakistan, it's easier to lure a boy into sex than it is to catch a glimpse of a woman's legs. Sometimes it doesn't take more than the promise of a new cricket bat.

A 16-year-old who identifies himself only as Khurram knows all about that. Born in Dina, a small city in central Pakistan, his father died when he was young, and by the time he was 8 he was sent out to support his family. He says his employer sexually assaulted him, and he eventually realized that if he let it happen, he would make more money than he would serving chai. So he moved to the big city. Now he lives beside the bus stand in Rawalpindi, sleeping during the day and emerging at dusk to wait for work. For less than a dollar, he'll let a man have sex with him on a string bed behind a tobacco shop. "I don't like what I do," he says sorrowfully. "I am doing it so my sister can go to school."
. . .

There are no discernible red-light districts in the Northwest Frontier Province. In Peshawar, the provincial capital, women billow through the dusty streets in white "shuttlecock" burkas, named for the netted veil over the face. Many of the city's movie theaters have been shut down, and playing music in local buses is banned.

Ruled by an alliance of six Islamic parties who recently declared Sharia to be supreme over Pakistani national law, the NWFP is one of the most religiously conservative regions of Pakistan. This is the province that helped give rise to the Taliban, and where Al Qaeda leaders -- including Osama bin Laden -- continue to seek refuge, according to the Pakistani government.

Yet this is also the region of Pakistan where homosexuality is most tolerated -- however quietly. Among the Pashtun majority, having a young, attractive boyfriend is a symbol of prestige and wealth for affluent middle-aged men. Indeed, Pashtun men often keep a young boy in their hujra, the male room of the house that the wife rarely enters. The practice is so common that there are various slang terms for the boyfriends in different regional languages: larke (boy), warkai, alec.

According to many people interviewed in Peshawar, there's a strict code of behavior in these relationships. The boy is always the passive partner in sex and has often been coerced into the relationship; he is given food and clothes by his partner, and is in may cases forbidden to leave the relationship or marry. (In theory, the boys could marry when they're grown, but they are generally considered damaged, and end up wandering the streets as outcasts.)

Sayed Mudassir Shah, a human rights activist based in Peshawar, believes this goes on in part because of the extreme austerity of the traditional culture. Even after marriage, women are kept separate from men (except at night), and a strict interpretation of Islam discourages sports, music, and TV. Indeed, says Sayed, the practice is deeply embedded in the local culture. "It is so common to take boy lovers, that it is part of our Pashtun folklore," Sayed says. "One story tells of a wife crying to her husband that he has made her jealous, because he is spending so much time in the hujra with his boyfriend. This is folklore, but it is similar in life."

Sex between men is also commonplace in Pakistan's gender-segregated madrassas, or religious schools, where students and mullahs will go for months without setting eyes on a woman. Here, more than anywhere else in Pakistan, the situation resembles that found among prison inmates, where sex is mostly about availability and dominance rather than preference. In many cases, families take their sons to madrassas because they cannot afford to raise them themselves. A researcher with the AIDS Prevention Association of Pakistan (who asked that her name not be used) cited a saying such parents have for the teachers when they bring them their sons: "His flesh is yours, but his bones are ours."
. . .
A spirited, self-confident young man of 25 who lives in Islamabad, the nation's capital, and identifies himself only as Sajat, tells me that he first had sex with a man at a religious school in a central Pakistani village. But unlike most madrassa students and the boys in the red-light districts, Sajat's first sexual encounter with a man was by choice. Now a well-paid government servant in Islamabad, he hoots with laughter when he describes his preference for young, "hot-blooded, fighting soldier men," and happily recounts his regular trawls for boys through Islamabad's parks.

But Sajat's irreverent, openly gay self abruptly disappears when marriage comes up. He admits that he is engaged to a match of his parents' choosing, and will marry in the next two years. "Nature has made females for males, so after I get married, I will stop having sex with men," he intones, as though dutifully.

Indeed, gay men in Pakistan usually succumb to family pressure to marry, and those who are brave or rich enough to refuse to marry live under constant threat. Human rights workers say that the dearth of Pakistani gay-rights or community groups heightens the isolation and fear of those who identify -- and live -- as homosexuals. There are groups working against the spread of AIDS in Pakistan, but their work is often impeded by the cultural disapproval of homosexual sex. Continued...

Haji Muhammad Hanif, the general secretary of the AIDS Prevention Association of Pakistan, says that when he talks to male sex workers in the red-light districts of Lahore, he first asks them, "Do you know that gay sex is a heinous crime?" According to Pakistan's official figures, there were only some 2,000 cases of AIDS in Pakistan as of June 2003, but data collection is limited by social taboos. Estimates by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS put the 2002 figure at 78,000.

[Karan M]

A spirited, self-confident young man of 25 who lives in Islamabad, the nation's capital, and identifies himself only as Sajat, ... Now a well-paid government servant in Islamabad, he hoots with laughter when he describes his preference for young, "hot-blooded, fighting soldier men," and happily recounts his regular trawls for boys through Islamabad's parks.

Pakistan Army zindabad!!

[Haresh]

Many years ago I was involved with a pakistani girl who was a pathan.
She would constantly tell me that she doesn't do 4nal !!!
When I asked her why she always said this to me, her reply was "you don't know what paki men are like"
My reply was "I am not a paki"
She explained to me that the men would involve themselves in gay relationships and then when they got married would want the same from their wives!!!

I turned down her very kind offer to convert and be a member of such a dysfunctional society

[darshhan]

X-post

Posting the article in full for archival purpose as original 2004 article has all but disappeared form Boston Globe site and has quotable quotes in it.

Open Secrets

Miranda Kennedy who is a journalist and a Contributing Editor of The Old Town Review. She reports frequently for National Public Radio(NPR) from across South Asia.

LAHORE -- The first time Aziz, a lean, dark-haired 20-year-old in this bustling cultural capital, had sex with a man, he was a pretty, illiterate boy of 16. A family friend took him to his house, put on a Pakistani-made soft-***** video, and raped him . Now, says Aziz (who gives only his first name), he is "addicted" to sex with men, so he hangs around Lahore's red-light districts, getting paid a few rupees for sex. At night, he goes home to his parents and prays to Allah to forgive him.


..............

Haji Muhammad Hanif, the general secretary of the AIDS Prevention Association of Pakistan, says that when he talks to male sex workers in the red-light districts of Lahore, he first asks them, "Do you know that gay sex is a heinous crime?" According to Pakistan's official figures, there were only some 2,000 cases of AIDS in Pakistan as of June 2003, but data collection is limited by social taboos. Estimates by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS put the 2002 figure at 78,000.

What a super fukked up place?

[harbans]

KIll all Hindu's and Buddhists: Australian Secular

[member_22872]

I protest, Christians are Kafurs too, why kill only Hindu-Buddhist kafurs? It's racism, death should be the same for all kafurs.

This pucker is being careful in Australia, lest white Christians bang his two nuts and he cannot do anything with his 72 virgins....clever mullah.

[Jarita]

X-post

Posting the article in full for archival purpose as original 2004 article has all but disappeared form Boston Globe site and has quotable quotes in it.

Open Secrets

Miranda Kennedy who is a journalist and a Contributing Editor of The Old Town Review. She reports frequently for National Public Radio(NPR) from across South Asia.

LAHORE -- The first time Aziz, a lean, dark-haired 20-year-old in this bustling cultural capital, had sex with a man, he was a pretty, illiterate boy of 16. A family friend took him to his house, put on a Pakistani-made soft-***** video, and raped him . Now, says Aziz (who gives only his first name), he is "addicted" to sex with men, so he hangs around Lahore's red-light districts, getting paid a few rupees for sex. At night, he goes home to his parents and prays to Allah to forgive him.

In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, homosexuality is not only illegal, it is a crime punishable by whipping, imprisonment, or even death. But across all classes and social groups, men have sex with men. In villages throughout the country, young boys are often forcibly "taken" by older men, starting a cycle of abuse and revenge that social activists and observers say is the common pattern of homosexual sex in Pakistan. Often these boys move to the cities and become prostitutes. Most people know it happens -- from the police to the wives of the men involved.

In some areas, homosexual sex is even tacitly accepted -- though still officially illegal -- as long as it doesn't threaten traditional marriage. In the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), which shares many tribal and cultural links with neighboring Afghanistan, the ethnic Pashtun men who dominate the region are renowned for taking young boys as lovers. No one has been executed for sodomy in Pakistan's recent history, but across the border in Afghanistan, the Taliban (who are also overwhelmingly Pashtun) executed three men for sodomy in 1998 by bulldozing a brick wall over them, burying two of them alive. (The third survived, which meant, according to Taliban law, that he was innocent, so he was taken to a hospital for treatment.)

Among Pakistan's urban elite, there is a growing community of men who identify as gay, some of whom even come out to their friends. Men meet on Internet bulletin boards, or at private pool parties with lots of rented boys and heavy security. But they are a tiny, terrified minority, living in cities such as Lahore, Karachi, or Islamabad, where the cultural elite has carved out a niche for itself. In a country where alcohol is forbidden except to Christians, dancing is banned, and the Koran guides many aspects of criminal law, such men rarely step outside of their protected world. (Because women in Pakistan inhabit, for the most part, a strictly private realm, it is difficult to say with any certainty how common lesbian relationships may be.)

Homosexuals in Pakistan walk a fine line between harsh legal and cultural prohibition and some form of unspoken social acceptance. "Islamic tradition frowns on but acknowledges male-male sex, and this plays a role in permitting clandestine sex so long as it is not allowed to interfere with family life, which is of paramount importance," the San Francisco-based sociologist Stephen O. Murray writes in "Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality: A Multi-Nation Comparison," a collection of scholarly essays published in 1997. Further complicating matters, the most common form of male homosexuality in Pakistan, according to Murray, is pederasty, where an older man entices or coerces (sometimes forcibly) a younger boy into sex.

Among the many obstacles facing men who have sex with men in Pakistan is this close association, in the eyes of many Pakistanis, between homosexuality and exploitation. But they face their own psychological barriers as well. Of the dozens of men interviewed for this article, almost none who admitted to having homosexual sex identified themselves as "gay." (All would give only their first names, which could not be verified, or would speak only anonymously.) Most do not even believe that homosexuality should be legal.

Aziz says he now enjoys sex with other men, but he believes that's only because he isn't able to have sex with women, who are largely inaccessible -- even in red-light districts, where there are many more men than women for rent. And like most Pakistani men who have homosexual sex, Aziz believes it is wrong. "The Verses of the Koran do not allow it," he says. "That's the only thing that matters."
. . .
According to the Koran, when the prophet Lot saw that his people had been engaged in sodomy and debauchery, he said, "Come ye to men, instead of women, lustfully? Ye are indeed a people given to excess." When they refused to repent their sins, Allah destroyed them: "And we rained a rain upon them: and see what was the end of the wicked!"

The lines don't seem to leave much room for interpretation. But Faisal Alam, founder of the Al-Fatiha Foundation, a Washington-based organization for gay and lesbian Muslims, argues that Lot's people were killed not because they had homosexual sex, but because they were forcing sex on each other. That interpretation is unlikely to hold much weight with Pakistan's religious leaders. The matter is not open for debate here -- not among mullahs, academics, or even activists.

Like many Pakistani men who have sex with men, Aziz believes he is plagued by a "satan," or demon, that makes him desire men. Veteran human rights lawyer Hina Jilani, who lives in Lahore and specializes in women's rights cases, says the inconsistent application of Sharia (Islamic law) and Pakistani criminal law has blurred the line between abuse and gay sex, and the emphasis on Islamic values has imbued the very word "homosexuality" with a moral color.

"Here we have two totally different issues: exploited boys and sex workers versus consensual sex," Jilani says. "But the majority of people will think of them as the same. Even people like myself who do understand this issue haven't been able to take it up, except in the context of violence against people on basis of sex orientation."Jilani says there are innumerable cases of young boys -- some sex workers, some not -- charged under Pakistan's sodomy law, even if they have been enticed into sex.

Page 3 of 5 -- Jilani, who has defended dozens of children accused under the law, says they spend long years in jail awaiting trial; their families are stigmatized and often forced to disown them. In most parts of Pakistan, it's easier to lure a boy into sex than it is to catch a glimpse of a woman's legs. Sometimes it doesn't take more than the promise of a new cricket bat.

A 16-year-old who identifies himself only as Khurram knows all about that. Born in Dina, a small city in central Pakistan, his father died when he was young, and by the time he was 8 he was sent out to support his family. He says his employer sexually assaulted him, and he eventually realized that if he let it happen, he would make more money than he would serving chai. So he moved to the big city. Now he lives beside the bus stand in Rawalpindi, sleeping during the day and emerging at dusk to wait for work. For less than a dollar, he'll let a man have sex with him on a string bed behind a tobacco shop. "I don't like what I do," he says sorrowfully. "I am doing it so my sister can go to school."
. . .

There are no discernible red-light districts in the Northwest Frontier Province. In Peshawar, the provincial capital, women billow through the dusty streets in white "shuttlecock" burkas, named for the netted veil over the face. Many of the city's movie theaters have been shut down, and playing music in local buses is banned.

Ruled by an alliance of six Islamic parties who recently declared Sharia to be supreme over Pakistani national law, the NWFP is one of the most religiously conservative regions of Pakistan. This is the province that helped give rise to the Taliban, and where Al Qaeda leaders -- including Osama bin Laden -- continue to seek refuge, according to the Pakistani government.

Yet this is also the region of Pakistan where homosexuality is most tolerated -- however quietly. Among the Pashtun majority, having a young, attractive boyfriend is a symbol of prestige and wealth for affluent middle-aged men. Indeed, Pashtun men often keep a young boy in their hujra, the male room of the house that the wife rarely enters. The practice is so common that there are various slang terms for the boyfriends in different regional languages: larke (boy), warkai, alec.

According to many people interviewed in Peshawar, there's a strict code of behavior in these relationships. The boy is always the passive partner in sex and has often been coerced into the relationship; he is given food and clothes by his partner, and is in may cases forbidden to leave the relationship or marry. (In theory, the boys could marry when they're grown, but they are generally considered damaged, and end up wandering the streets as outcasts.)

Sayed Mudassir Shah, a human rights activist based in Peshawar, believes this goes on in part because of the extreme austerity of the traditional culture. Even after marriage, women are kept separate from men (except at night), and a strict interpretation of Islam discourages sports, music, and TV. Indeed, says Sayed, the practice is deeply embedded in the local culture. "It is so common to take boy lovers, that it is part of our Pashtun folklore," Sayed says. "One story tells of a wife crying to her husband that he has made her jealous, because he is spending so much time in the hujra with his boyfriend. This is folklore, but it is similar in life."

Sex between men is also commonplace in Pakistan's gender-segregated madrassas, or religious schools, where students and mullahs will go for months without setting eyes on a woman. Here, more than anywhere else in Pakistan, the situation resembles that found among prison inmates, where sex is mostly about availability and dominance rather than preference. In many cases, families take their sons to madrassas because they cannot afford to raise them themselves. A researcher with the AIDS Prevention Association of Pakistan (who asked that her name not be used) cited a saying such parents have for the teachers when they bring them their sons: "His flesh is yours, but his bones are ours."
. . .
A spirited, self-confident young man of 25 who lives in Islamabad, the nation's capital, and identifies himself only as Sajat, tells me that he first had sex with a man at a religious school in a central Pakistani village. But unlike most madrassa students and the boys in the red-light districts, Sajat's first sexual encounter with a man was by choice. Now a well-paid government servant in Islamabad, he hoots with laughter when he describes his preference for young, "hot-blooded, fighting soldier men," and happily recounts his regular trawls for boys through Islamabad's parks.

But Sajat's irreverent, openly gay self abruptly disappears when marriage comes up. He admits that he is engaged to a match of his parents' choosing, and will marry in the next two years. "Nature has made females for males, so after I get married, I will stop having sex with men," he intones, as though dutifully.

Indeed, gay men in Pakistan usually succumb to family pressure to marry, and those who are brave or rich enough to refuse to marry live under constant threat. Human rights workers say that the dearth of Pakistani gay-rights or community groups heightens the isolation and fear of those who identify -- and live -- as homosexuals. There are groups working against the spread of AIDS in Pakistan, but their work is often impeded by the cultural disapproval of homosexual sex. Continued...

Haji Muhammad Hanif, the general secretary of the AIDS Prevention Association of Pakistan, says that when he talks to male sex workers in the red-light districts of Lahore, he first asks them, "Do you know that gay sex is a heinous crime?" According to Pakistan's official figures, there were only some 2,000 cases of AIDS in Pakistan as of June 2003, but data collection is limited by social taboos. Estimates by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS put the 2002 figure at 78,000.

The author is mixed up because of how politically correct the west is regarding homosexuality. Is this article about pedophilia and rape or is it about gay rights. Terrible writer who is actually doing a disservice to gays by talking about pedophilia and rape in the same breath and gays.
The fact of the matter is that no one is spared when available in these hyper repressed ego maniacal societies - little girls, boys, donkeys, sheep you name it. And a mullah taping kids has littl to do with gay rights.

[RamaY]

I protest, Christians are Kafurs too, why kill only Hindu-Buddhist kafurs? It's racism, death should be the same for all kafurs.

This pucker is being careful in Australia, lest white Christians bang his two nuts and he cannot do anything with his 72 virgins....clever mullah.

There are children of the book and there are kufrs.

[Lilo]

The author is mixed up because of how politically correct the west is regarding homosexuality. Is this article about pedophilia and rape or is it about gay rights. Terrible writer who is actually doing a disservice to gays by talking about pedophilia and rape in the same breath and gays.
The fact of the matter is that no one is spared when available in these hyper repressed ego maniacal societies - little girls, boys, donkeys, sheep you name it. And a mullah taping kids has littl to do with gay rights.

Jarita ji,
Even if its a sexually repressed society,
The order of preference even in those who have access to excess is telling on the underlying cultural influence isn't it ?
Why does a warlord/mullah/local strong man having say four wives and having Allah's sanction as said in koran to have as many right hand possession s as he wants - still gets his hots from preying on young boys ?

The culture encourages it .

The paedophile and gay issues may be disjoint in the West but in Pakistan , Arapia etc they are the result as well as the cause for such sexually dysfunctional societies.

Let me quote an example-
Newly married resettled ex-talibs are beating and abusing their wives as they are not be begetting them sons after "Sex". So NATO guys inquire. They find out that they were doing it wrong as they were doing it as they have been doing it with their male friends/partners/lovers since they were young.

So troops now distribute flyers on the correct way to beget "sons". Now every one is happy.

How does one categorize above case - is it a paedophile issue because all these men since they were kids have been sexually abused or is it a homosexual issue as they are now grown up and "prefer" homosexual relations( may or maynot involve pedophilia) to heterosexual relations ?

So no. Your argument against blurring of gay and paedophilia issues as given in other societies are hardly applicable in societies where sex is a most often a weapon of domination - and has been ruthlessly used since childhood to mold his sexual preferences in adulthood fuelling a never ending vicious cycle.

[harbans]

The objections against Muslim rituals became especially vocal when some of the believers began slaughtering sheep for the holiday right in the street near apartment blocks or, sometimes, in the bathrooms or on the balconies of apartments.

Moscow warns Muslims against Id slaughter in Capital

[arun]

Bangladesh demonstrates the inevitability of being oppressed if one has the misfortune of being a Non Mohammadden Kaafir Dhimmi living in a Mohammadden majority country:

Hindu idols vandalised in Bangladesh

Islamists stop Bangladeshi Hindus from honouring 1971 martyrs

[arun]

Green on Green Intra Mohammadden religion inspired sectarian violence claims 51 lives in Iraq:

Iraq violence: Attack kills dozens of Shia pilgrims

[harbans]

Baan Ga Doh (Thailand) (AFP) - Guarded by Thai soldiers from rebel attacks, an 81-year-old grandmother -- the last Buddhist in a Muslim village -- refuses to abandon her home, defying a wider split between insurgency-plagued communities.

Since violence erupted in the Muslim-dominated Thai deep south in 2004, Jiaw Pongthawil has seen her Buddhist neighbours flee Baan Ga Doh, a remote village in a security "red zone" in Narathiwat province.

She is now the only Buddhist among 1,200 Malay Muslims.

"I'm afraid. I have been attacked many times... but I have nowhere else to go. This is my property. This is my land," she says, her voice faltering.

It is a demographic shift playing out across the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, where a festering rebellion against Bangkok's rule has killed more than 5,700 people.

Estimates suggest half of the region's 400,000 Thai Buddhists have fled in the nine years of war, wearied by near-daily attacks against state representatives and their perceived supporters, including many Muslims.

That decline -- among a local population of around 1.8 million -- may shape tentative peace talks with rebels, according to experts who say nervous Thai Buddhists are pressing Bangkok to secure their future.

http://news.yahoo.com/lone-buddhist-wid ... UAL63QtDMD

[harbans]

A post by 'Iqbal' from a tribune article Terrorists Can't be Muslims :

The author is conveniently ignoring facts. UK government releases prison statistics on annual basis. Prison statistics between 2000 and 2011 can be viewed on page 20 of this report:
http://www.gutsandgore.co.uk/wp-content ... ics-UK.pdf
and the latest returns are for 2012 on page 11 of this report:
http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn04334.pdf‎
Readers will note that Muslims in UK prisons have increased every year since 2000 when it was 6.6% and for 2012 it is 13.1% which has actually doubled although UK’s Muslim population is 4%. Hindus have remained almost constant at 0.4% of jail population in 2000 and 0.5% in 2012. Their population in UK is 1%.
The author should perhaps highlight this because it originates from a country where neither are in majority and are equal in the eyes of the law. In case he is poor in Maths it means that Muslims are more than three times likely to commit a crime but Hindus are less then half likely to break the law.

Muslims are 6.5 times more likely to be convicted than Hindu's in Britain.
In USA hindu's are the least likely to be convicted of crime as percentage of the population. Adherents.com

[harbans]

Tough Saudi Law for 5 year olds Rapist and Killer dad: 8 years in Jail

Ghamdi was convicted of "raping and killing his five-year-old daughter Lama," he added.

The girl was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, activists said. She died several months later.

Ghamdi, a regular guest on Muslim television networks despite not being an authorized cleric in Saudi Arabia, had confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, human rights activists said earlier this year.

Randa al-Kaleeb, a social worker from the hospital where Lama was admitted, said the girl's back was broken and that she had been raped "everywhere".

Reportedly, Ghamdi had tortured and raped his daughter after he had doubted her virginity.

[harbans]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SClmL43dTo#t=962

Malala Speech in UN. Calls Mohammed a Messenger of Peace. She is being propped up.

[harbans]

Buddhist common sense vs Western nonsense

[Lilo]

Re:Malala recurrently delving into - "PBUH is a messenger of peace"

So now a child "activist" who started out being projected as a progressive liberal by the West has now queued up as yet another member in the global jihad to set right the prevalent "mis"perception of "Islam and its role" in the non Muslim world hain ji?

Remember that Im the dim khan too traveled the same road from being projected as a liberal by the West to one who has now become yet another "allah ke naam vote dede" types as seen in his current efforts in projecting Taleban as just another political party (albeit one "representing" terrorists of papistan)

[KLNMurthy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SClmL43dTo#t=962

Malala Speech in UN. Calls Mohammed a Messenger of Peace. She is being propped up.

She expressed an interest in becoming a politician.

[anupmisra]

Malala Speech in UN. Calls Mohammed a Messenger of Peace. She is being propped up.

That's a Trojan horse, if I ever saw one. The west is falling for it hook, line and sinker.

[Peregrine]

Posting in Full :

China arrests 139 in Xinjiang for urging militancy: Media

BEIJING : China has arrested 139 people in Xinjiang for allegedly spreading militancy, state-run media said Wednesday, as it warns of growing religious extremism in the far western region, home to Muslim Uighurs.

Another 256 people had been “punished” for spreading online rumours, the Global Times said citing local authorities, without specifying the measures taken.

Beijing has pointed to violent incidents to indicate a rising militant threat among the ethnic minority, but information in the vast region is tightly controlled and Uighur organisations complain of cultural and religious repression.

Police in Xinjiang have “handled an increasing number of cases in which individuals have posted or searched for religious extremist content on the Internet”, the China Daily said, citing an unnamed source in the Xinjiang Daily.

In the two months to the end of August, 139 people were arrested for “spreading religious extremism”, it said.

Also citing the Xinjiang Daily, the Global Times said a farmer in Hotan was detained after he uploaded 2GB of e-books about secessionism which were read 30,000 times.

“Overseas hostile forces have never stopped infiltrating and inciting residents to take up extreme religious ideas through the Internet and the online spreading has become a great threat to ethnic unity and social stability,” the Global Times said, citing police.

Dilshat Rexit, a spokesman for the overseas-based World Uyghur Congress, which Beijing calls a separatist group, said the claims were a “total distortion of the truth” aimed at blocking Uighurs from going online.

Those detained had “expressed discontent with Chinese rule and systematic repression in the area”, he said.

China’s goal “is to suppress Uighurs’ use of the Internet to obtain information and express different points of view”, he added.

News of the detentions comes just ahead of the start of the Muslim Hajj, when almost 12,000 Chinese pilgrims are expected in Makkah according to reports.

China’s state-run media have previously reported that Uighurs have fought in Syria’s civil war against the regime, then returned home to put their militant experience into practice.

Members of a gang behind what China called a “terrorist attack” in Lukqun in June that left 35 people dead watched extremist videos beforehand, the China Daily said, citing police.

A court sentenced three people to death and one person to 25 years in jail in September over the attack, saying they had taken part in a “terrorist organisation”, the official news agency Xinhua reported at the time.

The clash was Xinjiang’s deadliest since 2009, when riots between Uighurs and China’s ethnic majority Han left 200 people dead.

Xinjiang’s population is 46 percent Uighur and 39 percent Han, according to official statistics, but the latter largely dominate the economy and form a majority in the regional capital Urumqi.

Cheers

[Anindya]

No prizes for guessing why this list if here....
Top 10 terrorists

[Rajagopal]

Mu'slime'(pun intended) apologists have always pointed to Malaysia as an example of secularism in the Islamic world.

Over the years, Radical Islam has been gaining pace rapidly. The latest court ruling clearly confirms that Malaysia is looking to drive away or discourage other religions. The ruling bans non-Muslimes from using the word Allah. The next step would be "Blasphemy" ordinance where one cannot criticize Islam in any way or form.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24516181

I look forward to seeing Malaysia go the Pakistan way. Let the Islamic world be stripped away off the last remaining fig leaf and expose its nakedness to the world.

[KJo]

If adherents of Mohammaddenism claim that theirs is “the religion of peace” then how come a Mohammadden Cleric who it is presumed is well versed in the tenets of that faith, can support the attack on the Westgate Mall in Narobi by Mohammadden Terrorists ?

Muslim cleric says Nairobi mall attack 'right thing to do'

Most of these guys have an alternate version of peace. Their peace is not your peace. Their peace is when all kafirs are dead, and Muslims rule the world. Of course, then Muslims will begin fighting one another, but they are blind to that.

[NRao]

OK, BRiets, you are on notice:

Non-Muslims cannot use 'Allah': Malaysian court

[sanjaykumar]

Ya Allah.

[Anindya]

Afghanistan says Taliban executed two children as spies

Afghan authorities accused the Taliban of executing two young children between the ages of 8 and 10 as government spies.

The governor of Kunar province said the children were accused of espionage on behalf of the Afghan government and put to death Saturday night in the Wataput district of Kunar, Khaama Press reported Sunday.

[Anindya]

Russia may have a problem - street takeovers on Fridays?

[arun]

X Posted from the “Pakistani Role In Global Terrorism” thread.

British national with origins in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is arrested in London for plotting a “Mumbai Style” act of Mohammadden Terrorism along with three other Mohammadden Terrorist accomplices with origins in Azerbaijan, Turkey and Algeria.

The involvement of individuals with origins in Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Algeria demonstrates the widespread appeal of Mohammadden terrorism among the adherents of Mohammaddenism in the world:

Police foil 'Mumbai-style' terrorist plot in London, say security sources

[Anindya]

Danes: We are too tolerant of Muslims

According to a new survey by market researcher TNS Gallup, carried out for Berlingske newspaper, every third non-Muslim Dane is under the impression that Denmark is too tolerant of its Muslim minority population....

“If I had a Pakistani neighbour, I might think that their kids were noisy, that it smelled of curry and that their shoes on the step-landing were bloody annoying," Duch told Berlingske. "But if I get to know them and the wife offers to buy me a cola while I’m sick with the flu, I would suddenly become more tolerant of the other things.”

[arun]

The onset of the Mohammadden holy month of Ramadan aka Ramzan is marred by violence perpetrated by Mohammaddens targeting both co-religionists and also “Kaafir” followers of other religions. A Religion induced festive spirit of peace distinctly seems to be in short supply .

Thailand:

Pre-Ramadan bomb wounds 8 soldiers

Lebanon:

Beirut: Ramadan Car Bomb Targets Hezbollah’s Shiite Stronghold

Somalia:

At least one killed by Shebab Mogadishu market bomb

Apparent case of Green on Green Intra-Mohammadden violence in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan on the first day of the Mohammadden holy month of Ramadan / Ramazan / Ramzan sees the demonstration of the IEDology of Pakistan targeting a Mosque:

Remote-controlled blast: Explosion outside mosque kills two in Kohat

The body count of Green on Green Intra Mohammadden violence during the month of ramadan aka ramazan aka ramzan which followers of Mohammaddenism consider holy, piles up.

On Friday, also the day of the Mohammadden Sabbath, in Kirkuk:

Bomb attack in Iraq kills at least 31

On Saturday in Baghdad:

13 killed in bomb blast at Sunni mosque in Baghdad

X Posted from the “Oppression of minorities in Pakistan” thread.

The month of Ramadan aka Ramazan aka Ramadan which Mohammaddens consider holy was not enough to stave off yet another bout of Green on Green religion inspired sectarian Intra-Mohammadden killings. In the present case, members of the minority Shia sect of Mohammaddenism are murdered by co-religionists of the Sunni sect ironically in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a country that claims it was formed as a “safe haven” for the Mohammaddens of the Indian Sub-Continent:

‘Sectarian attack’: Four Hazara traders shot dead in Quetta

Just is in the case of the Mohammadden holy month of Ramada aka Ramazan, the Mohammadden festival of Eid Ul Adha aka: Bakrid does not engender enough “brotherly” feeling to put on hold Green on Green Intra-Mohammadden violence, at least for the day of the festival.

In Afghanistan, Intra-Mohammadden violence sees a Mohammadden place of worship bombed while prayers for the Mohammadden festival of Eid Ul Adha were being carried out killing the Provincial Governor:

Afghan bomb kills Logar governor Jamal in mosque

In Pakistan Intra Mohammadden violence sees a demonstration of the IED Mubarak variant of the IEDology of Pakistan killing the Provincial Law Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa:

KP law minister among eight killed in DI Khan suicide attack

It is inexplicable why adherents of the Mohammadden religion who describe theirs as “The Religion of Peace” not infrequently get incited to commit acts of violence on days that the religion considers holy.

[RCase]

http://dawn.com/news/1049954/pilgrims-s ... haj-ritual

MINA, Oct 15: Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims converged on Mina on Tuesday for the symbolic stoning of the devil, the final stage of the Haj.

The occasion coincides with the first day of Eidul Azha.

Although the numbers this year are down to less than half from last year’s 3.2 million, the crowds of faithful managed to transform the Mina valley, just outside Makkah, into a vast sea of white as they flocked from all directions towards the place of stoning.

An endless torrent of pilgrims, dressed in the ihram, a two-piece seamless white garment, cried “Allahu Akbar” as they hurled pebbles they had collected overnight at nearby Muzdalifah at concrete pillars representing the devil.

Question for the knowing - aren't those 'idols' to represent the devil? So I guess idolatory is permissible.

[Bharath.Subramanyam]

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/rollb ... /1180076/0

Rollback nations
Khaled Ahmed : Wed Oct 09 2013, 00:42 hrs

The modern Islamic state continues to be a besieged idea.
After the Taliban killed a major-general and blew up 80 Christians in Peshawar, Pakistan is busy rationalising the situation in favour of "peace talks" with them. As if wheedling himself into their good books, a judge in Peshawar questioned: "Why is modern banking still allowed in Pakistan?" He was within his rights because the Shariat Appellate Bench of Pakistan's Supreme Court has indeed banned it. Banking, as we know it today, is banned in Islam, so is insurance and state lottery, but Pakistan is still carrying on with them. Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri condemns Pakistan for not banning modern banking.

The religious parties, not able to win elections, draw their strength, not from the elected assemblies, but from al-Qaeda and the Taliban, as the latter kill in the name of Islam. (The exceptions among religious groups are the Shi'ites and Barelvi Sunnis, who are routinely butchered by the Taliban as deviants from the faith.) In unison, they are defending dialogue with the killers, who don't want to be distracted from terrorism as they prepare for talks with the Nawaz Sharif government, fortified by an all-party consensus on peace talks instead of "war against terrorism". The National University of Science and Technology (NUST) at Islamabad has prophylactically started fining girl students who wear jeans on campus.

The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), constitutionally mandated to "guide" the legislature, has refused to award death to those who make wrongful accusations under the blasphemy law, which gives death as minimum punishment to those who insult the Holy Prophet. It has also piously deemed DNA evidence as secondary, not primary, proof in cases of rape, where the perpetrator simply cannot be punished because of the conditionality of four eyewitnesses to the forcible sexual assault. It recommends that earlier legislation under "hudood" (Quranic punishments), correcting this legal irrationality, be rolled back.

Muslims produce their best men when they are not ruling the state they live in. The most gifted intellectuals, like Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Abduh, survived only under the British empire because their works were too "groundbreaking". When Muslims acquire a state they go into a kind of recidivist trance: give us utopia or nothing. They make noises about the "modern Islamic" state but the moment such a state is created, they start squabbling over it. Despite their denial of "theology", this is all they have when thinking of the state. They deny the presence of a clergy in Islam but their society is crawling with it, and despite avowals to the contrary, they slavishly follow their frozen-in-time medieval doctrines, savagely discriminatory to women and non-Muslims.

The other thing that has Muslims in a tizzy is education. If you want to educate yourself, never ask a Muslim what to do. He will accept modern education, saying the Quran is for all times, including modern times, and therefore allows modern education. But the moment you say "secular" education, he baulks. The age of reason, which gave us modern education, is not his cup of tea because what he understands by "reason" is "deductive logic". He accepts the discipline of economics while ideologically rejecting the concepts of banking and savings. He is "literalist", therefore he can be a banker without accepting the institution he serves.

In physics too, Pakistan's most gifted, UK-educated nuclear scientist, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, enriched uranium till it became good for a bomb while believing in the existence of djinns. He actually read a paper to General Zia, which said he could produce electricity for all of Pakistan from one "tamed" djinn. The most abominated nuclear physicist in Pakistan, Pervez Hoodbhoy, says Muslims avoid soiling their faith by staying away from the theory of science and learn it as mere "technology". They "steal" science to make nuclear weapons in Pakistan and Iran. When Hoodbhoy condemned a Muslim "scientist" running his car on water as a crook, no one really believed him.

The world thinks Muslims are poor and crazy because their states have abysmal records in education. If you think you can improve a Muslim through education, then take a look at the curricula in Pakistan. Any attempt to tone down references to war as a way of life by the provincial authority is attacked by the clergy, after which the media starts growling, sending the education minister scurrying back to texts mandating jihad for all Muslims. This is a state that has defamed itself through proxy wars it used to call jihad.

Any change in the ideological content of textbooks is criticised, amid naked threats, till the removed lessons are reinstated, as happened in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, as if in preparation for the rule of the Taliban. The Muslim youth are not iconoclastic because they are born in modern times; their aggression is regressive because they are iconoclastic of modern times. "Radical" in Islam is the act of going back; the same goes for "revolution". In Arabic, "modern" ("jadeed") is derived from "jadd" meaning "grandfather". The more educated a Muslim is, the more dangerous he is for his country and the rest of the world.

My favourite Western writer on Islam is France's Olivier Roy, because he is less dismissive of Muslims as they come to grips with the modern state and its current system of governance, democracy. He says Islamists are no longer able to brush aside the democratic process simply because it is not a caliphate as they envisage it. Looking at the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, he says they have to accept the premier institution of democracy, the elections, to retain support among the people. He mentions the Ikhwan in Egypt, the Ennahda in Tunisia and the Islah in Yemen. He thinks the acceptance of democracy by Islamists is a new phenomenon which should inspire hope.

But the Egyptians got scared of the elected Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, and his sharia and, as Marxist scholar Aijaz Ahmed has written, staged the biggest rally in human history against him to force the army to intervene. In Turkey, the modern Kemalist state is being rolled back because Prime Minister Erdogan is keener than even Fethullah Gulen, the expat genius whose shadow presides over Turkey's retrogression, to enforce sharia. Iran has democracy if elections denote democracy; and it is now 30 years since the clerical rule started making the people think they are hardly living under a democracy. And sharia keeps getting more stringent: Pakistan's sharia may soon be beefed up by the Taliban.

For now, in Olivier Roy's words, Muslims are busy creating chaos. Presumably, after this chaos ends, there will be an order that gives the Muslim common man a life that he can live. What we have now is described by Abu Bakr Naji, the founding philosopher of the al-Qaeda-linked group, al-Shabab, in the title of his book, The Management of Savagery. Pakistan is in the grip of this "management of savagery", pulling the "modern" state down through the killing of innocent people — with the Muslim population indoctrinated in favour of savagery by the "defective" (in the eyes of the Taliban) sharia currently in force.

Bangladesh was created "secular" in reaction to Pakistan, but soon enough the military decided to listen to the "genius" of Bengali Muslims and make it Islamic. Shockingly for Muslims of the world, not long ago, the supreme court of Bangladesh rejected the Islamic amendments and reverted the constitution to its secular shape. But the government of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, with its three-fourths majority in parliament, might not like to legislate accordingly for fear of polarising the state and inviting mujahideen from all over the Islamic world to "set things right".

The writer is a consulting editor with 'Newsweek Pakistan'

[Agnimitra]

^^^ That's a candid admission of many facts by Khalid Ahmed.

The more educated a Muslim is, the more dangerous he is for his country and the rest of the world.

[sanjaykumar]

Welll it is self-evident that India has better quality Muslims than Pakistan.

Is it ethnicity, west Panjab culture that is the root of the wasted humanity in Pakistan? Or is it that Muslims in India do not need to deal with the hypothetical nature of any Islamic state in India. Which frees them to provide remarkable works and deeds. Instead of being engaged in some medieval depravity or other that masquerades under various names, in many guises. One can call it tradition to be charitable.