Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I notice a news item on page 68 of today's Adelaide Advertiser headed "Unwed lashed".  It is reported that a man and a woman each received 100 lashes after their child was born out of wedlock in Timbuktu, Mali.

The Islamist group Ansar Dine (elsewhere in the article called "the rebels") had taken control of the town and imposed sharia law forbidding non-marital relationships.  The report said that the child was conceived before the rebels took over.

There is no need to express one's own option on this.  It speaks for itself.  It happened within Islam, it could only have happened withing Islam, is happened in a characteristically Islamic context.  It shouts to all of the essential nature of Islam.  There are more backward places in the world than Timbuktu where such a thing could never happen.  It happened because of Islam.

Whether it is good or bad that it happened, whether Islam is good or bad, can be left to the reader to decide.

One can say, however, at least, I say, that the latter can be accurately inferred from the former.  I think it would be bizarre to propose the contrary.

Incidentally, for non-Islamists: the couple are being treated in hospital.

The conservatives just got in, I'd imagine the next step will be  a big media campaign in Greece to gull the public into compliance.

Living in Adelaide, we know all too well about selective press/media. 

Hi Margo, luscious to see you about. 

Would love to comment further at mo, but my head is stale and must get some shopping in for the weekend, rained like cats and dogs, have to stock up (if only it finally stops.

The more serious reason I won't comment further is because I need time to think about above. My own impressions of press/media, at this very second, would only make for more depressing reading. 

A social problem we now have is that Islam's low moral values and legitimization of violence and murder are for some members of our society not repulsive but attractive.

The conversion of a bikie gang member to Islam is very different from such a man's conversion to Christianity, the "born again" experience of becoming aware of one's sin, repenting of it, and embracing beliefs that were not invented to serve one man's agenda, but which totally transform his life.  The conversion of the gang member to Isam serves to legitimize his fantasies of being a warrior.  Not a conversion, but the enlistment of a religion to his advantage, now adding a new fantasy of legitimacy to his lifestyle.  That the exploitation of women is legitimized as the same time is no doubt an added attraction.

Recently there was a funeral of a murdered bikie gang member with an Italian surname.  You would expect that it would be conducted in a Roman Catholic church, but the newpaper reports carried photos of the enrobed Muslim cleric who presided over the funeral at the mosque.

I couldn't find the supposed criticism of Islam by the person who many times "wrote lovingly" of that religion.

But all you have to do is refer to known facts and quote from the Koran.  You don't need to express your own views.  The essential nature of Islam speaks for itself.

That an Ayatollah calls for the murder of Salman Rushdie speaks for itself.

That the god of Islam expressly authorizes a man to prostitute his slavegirl for his monetary profit and without her consent speaks for itself.

That Dawood uses the word "slavegirl" and another translator, "more nuanced", uses the word "maid" cuts no ice.

That the god seemingly provides that if the slavegirl is a virgin her consent must be obtained also cuts no ice, when in another place Mohammed claims that the god gives the man the right to "plow" the women he owns, that  they are his flelds and he has a right to plow them.  So the slavegirl has no say as to whether or not she is a virgin, the god has gratuitously announced the unconditional right of the man to prostitute the woman for money.

It is gratuitous, if you look at the context, a total change of subject from what went before.  Just something Mohammed needed the god to say, coming from nowhere.

Up to that point I didn't use the word "duplicitous" to refer to the language of the Koran in seeming to but not really qualify the right of the man to prostitute the girl.  That's my own view.  But if you simply refer to facts, and there are hundreds of others that expose the moral quality of Islam, what Islam is of its essence, they speak for themselves.  There are dozens in the Koran itself.  It's not something you said, it's what Mohammed claimed to have heard or what the Ayatollah said which instead of being universally condemned enlisted a thousand would-be murderers.

The very sentence, "There is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet" is coercive in its origins and of its essence, aimed an Arabian Jews who suddenly had a prophet imposed on them by force, who supposedly were now committing an offence against their own god (who would have to have been an unspeakably treacherous one to spring this on them)  if they did not become disciples of Mohammed.

And rather than "more nuanced" translations, be aware that "more deceptive" fits as well.

I'm very uncertain of the genuineness of the sentiments expressed here by Solomon Wakeling.

I did withdraw that request Richard within a day or so of having made it..

Email sent 1 March 2012. 

Don't despair . Do drop by for a chat. All welcome and unmoderated. Well ... sort of ... you know ...

Geoffff's Joint, Bar and Grill

Where freedom of expression is not just a dirty word.

Richard:  Unmoderated? Ok cards on the table then.  Geoff IAt the time it happened I let Justin know about your (complied with) demands that we remove Justin's posts that you didn't like.  In light of this some folk might find your words above a tad hypocritical?