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illary Clinton spoke yesterday at a luncheon hosted by Emily’s List, the powerful political action group dedicated to getting pro-abortion women elected to public office. Here’s a typical gushing feminist write-up of the event:

Yet thanks to to Ellen Malcolm (perhaps the political world’s most cheerful ball-buster), a roster of 2008′s biggest lady winners and a rousing speech by Hillary Clinton herself, the luncheon turned out to be a feel-good celebration. And even without much mention of the failed presidential march of the still-senator from New York, the event was yet another in a string of recent moments in which we got to see the new Hillary Rodham Clinton: Toughened, burnished and somehow fortified by her loss, she is taking on the role not only of secretary of state, but of a reanimated, reborn, rollicking feminist superhero.

Oh. Kay. The piece didn’t actually quote that much of Hillary’s speech, but what it did quote was very interesting, coming out of the mouth of Obama’s incoming secretary (can we say “secretary?”) of state:

When women are vulnerable to economic, political and social marginalization, the potential for advancing democracy, prosperity and security is also vulnerable.  … I believe it is essential in renewing America’s leadership around the world, that we renew America’s leadership on behalf of women and girls.”

I couldn’t agree more.  The horrible repression, the clitorectomies, the sex trade, the forced illiteracy. the “honor” killings … there is no room in our world any more for this sort of cruelty to half the human population – the sensitive, beautiful and richly, subtly powerful half.

Unfortunately, when Clinton starts trying to enforce this thinking on the world, she will come up against the Saudis, the Taliban, the Somalis and various other misogynistic Islamic factions who are quite content to use everything from Imam’s harangues to acid in the face to keep their women back.  And when that happens, Clinton will be feeding the jihad machine.

I’ll go along with her. Promoting freedom for Islam’s women may make the jihadists all the more crazy, but slamming 7th Century Islam with 21st century rights for females will win us friends with about half the population of Islam.  It’s not a bad strategy, but I’m not sure if Clinton sees it as a strategy against jihad and not just the right feminist thing to do.  Without the right vision going in, the right results can’t be expected to come out.

There’s one other side to this that has to be said.  As long as societies repress their women, we will be far superior to them economically and militarily.  American business has the benefit of women’s brains and power, and our military has been able to assimilate females without becoming feminized in the least.

Were Islam to decide it was time to dump the Koran and fully assimilate women (I know, I know), Muslim countries around the world would begin to have improved economies, and maybe even better governments.  That would make them more formidable foes, but the societies would be so tranformed in the process, they might not want to fight as much.

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hat hope have we of long-term peaceful coexistence with Islam if Islamist leaders use the Koran’s death sentence for apostates as rationale for killing a politician who dared to work with others for peace?  Not much.  Here’s the story, from BBC:

Relatives of Abdirahman Ahmed – also known as Waldiire – told the BBC he did not have a lawyer present during his trial in a Sharia court.

They say he was arrested about a week ago and they were informed of his death sentence on Thursday morning.

Sheikh Hassan Yakub – the spokesman for Kismayo’s Islamist administration – told the BBC’s Somali Service that Mr Ahmed had admitted during his interrogation that he worked with those backed by Ethiopia.

This, he said, was the basis for the court’s opinion that he had changed his religion.

The relatives said they had asked the authorities to allow Mr Ahmed to go into exile.

But he was executed after afternoon prayers on Thursday.

After the shooting, his brother pleaded to be able to bury his body, however, he was told the burial had already been done.

Done, no doubt, to cover signs of the horrific torture that proceeded Ahmed’s death.

Ahmed’s executors are the same folks who in November stoned a 12-year-old girl to death for adultery, even as family members pleaded that the poor girl had been raped.

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isa Valentine didn’t take her husband’s name – he’s Omar Hall. When confronted with a difficult situation, she swore at an officer of the court.

These are odd behaviors for a Muslim woman supposedly so devout that being ordered to remove her head scarf before entering court in Georgia made her feel “stripped of my civil, my human rights.” I thought Muslim women were supposed to be submissive, nearly invisible, even incapable of the rational thought required to talk and remember at the same time.

From the picture, you can see that this is no mere scarf.  Its a large and flamboyant affair that clearly qualifies as headgear, and the courts in Douglasville, GA have rules that headgear is not allowed.  Asking her to take off her hat may be a civil rights violation, but it does not strip her of human rights; those rights are on a decidedly higher plane.

Other religions have altered their religious requirement to not run afoul of U.S. laws.  Sikhs are required by their religion to carry a small sword, a kirpan, on their hip, but they have foregone this requirement in light of needed U.S. security measures and have worked with TSA on an education program for screeners who confront a Sikh who has forgotten to pack his kirpan in his suitcase.

Marijuana use is a part of the Rastafarian religion, but in America followers of the religion realize that they cannot pursue this aspect of their religious beliefs in public without counsequences, and they’ve modified their behavior in order to comply with the norms of the culture that they’ve chosen to live in.

Even Islam has bent its religious traditions to avoid trouble in America.  Animal sacrifice is a part of Islamic ceremony still, but after some run-ins with local authorities in the U.S. who were quick to slap animal cruelty charges of the offenders, the practice was either stopped or went underground.  (BTW, check out this picture of two Muslims getting a cow ready for sacrifice on the Eid-al-Adha holiday.  One is wearing traditional garb – like a hajib – and one is dressed in western clothes, and no one’s having a cow except the cow.)

Wearing a hajib is no more a mandatory requirement of Islam than is sacrificing animals; it is a custom that varies widely depending on the local culture (and degree of exploitation of women).  Yet pushy Muslims, who insist on forcing their culture onto ours, have made it a cause celebre, and CAIR was on Valentine’s case seemingly in minutes, getting her sprung quickly from her 10-day contempt of court sentence and urging federal civil rights authorities to investigate this and other cases in Georgia.

Frankly, it’s a bit of a tempest in a teapot.  If Valentine could get through the metal detector with her bad hair covered by headgear, she’s probably no threat.  What’s she going to do, use it as a garrote? If that’s our fear, neck scarves will have to be banned next.  But there are larger issues here – societal norms, respect for the courts, Muslim cultural intolerance – that are in play and put me on the court’s side, not Valentine’s.

Her civil rights may have been tweaked, but not her human rights.  She must recognize that she is a member of a minority religion that, because of its own massive problems and the considerable violence it perpetrates in the name of its god, is very unpopular here and in most of the non-Muslim world.  She needs to recognize that she’s going to suffer because she follows an unpopular religion, just as most evangelical Christians (myself included) have suffered because of their faith.

This is America and she’s free to fight for some perceived right to wear a hajib.  But we’re free to fight back, and I hope we do.

(source)

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h, what shall we do about the Somali pirates? What shall we do? Well, here’s a little suggestion that just might keep the buggers from hijacking the next ship that happens by:

Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty’s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave mistake of opening fire on two Royal Navy assault craft packed with commandos armed with machineguns and SA80 rifles.

In the ensuing gunfight, two Somali pirates in a Yemeni-registered fishing dhow were killed, and a third pirate, believed to be a Yemeni, suffered injuries and subsequently died. It was the first time the Royal Navy had been engaged in a fatal shoot-out on the high seas in living memory.

By the time the Royal Marines boarded the pirates’ vessel, the enemy had lost the will to fight and surrendered quietly. The Royal Navy described the boarding as “compliant”. (The Times)

If the price of pirating is quite possibly being ripped apart by machine guns and SA80 rifles, it should be a good deterrent, reminiscent of the bombardment of Algiers in 1816, which brought at least a temporary end to raids by Muslims to enslave Europeans.

Seizing European slaves in the 1800s … seizing Europeans ships in the 21st … what is it with these people?

Oh, that’s right. The religion of peace.

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ails in Orange County are considering dropping their bans on hijabs – the head scarves Muslim women wear – because of pressure from the ACLU, reports the OC Register.

The current jail policy bans all headwear, so allowing hijabs will turn Muslims into a special class with extra rights not granted other Americans or other religions.

It’s obvious to see why a hijab ban is needed, just as it’s obvious that belts must be prohibited in jail. The scarf could be used as a noose or a garotte. Find a handy rock and it could become a sling or a club. It also provides a nifty place to hide contraband or weapons. That’s why OC Register readers voted 77% to 12% in favor of continuing the ban, with 11% casting the Kumbayah vote, thinking some sort of compromise will be possible with Muslims so fixed in tradition they make this an issue.

The hijab is not required by the Qur’an; in fact, the word there is used merely to mean a separation between men and women to ensure privacy. In Turkey, the hijab was banned for years; now it is optional. In Afghanistan, the hajib was not nearly enough for the Taliban; a full burkha was required and any woman seen with just a hajib would have been in for some serious bodily harm. In short, there is no Islamic tradition requiring the hajib, and it is only since the 1970s that it has become a symbol of Islamic pride.

Islamic pride is not religious mandate, but for many Muslims that’s a moot point because in their hearts they see it as a mandate and that’s the funny thing about religion – if it’s in your heart, it’s real.

I prefer an outright ban, but I don’t like endless ACLU litigation and I see the possibility here to force some cultural assimilation onto the Muslims. I’m not proposing a compromise; I’m proposing a policy offered female Muslim prisoners; take it or leave it. And if you leave it, you’re left with a much less viable lawsuit.

Women who can show they are Muslim will be issued a jail hijab for their use while being held. It will be made of paper or flimsy cloth, with perforations that ensure it will fall into pieces if anyone tries to use it as a weapon. Women wearing the hijab will be subject to a hijab-search (by female guards, without male guards watching) whenever jail officials deem it necessary.

That should do it. If anyone wants to fight that, their fight isn’t about wearing hijabs.

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My recent post on the Cal. sanctity of marriage proposition, Prop 8, Gay Marriage and the Spread of Islamofascism, generated a rather different comment:

Hi; May I interject a real life situation. I’d like to hear your guidance on this. My mother was given a drug to take to lessen the chance of miscarriage and promote healthy babies — that’s what the doctor told her. The drug is Diethylstilbestrol, or DES. In male fetuses, it feminizes the brains of one in five of us ‘DES sons’.

I finally came to terms with this, and realized my choice was transition or die. So, I’m now a male-to-female transsexual who’s had ‘the operation.’ I’ve changed all my legal paperwork and although I still have a male body with XY chromosomes, it has been retrofitted to approximate female anatomy, which is good because if I ever end up in an accident, there will be no ’surprise’ for the first responders.

I ‘pass’ very well, thank you. Only rarely do strangers figure out I was not born this way. Most people have to be told, by me, or, more often, by someone else who just has to ‘drop the bomb.’ All my paperwork has been changed.  Legally, I’m female.  But I have to find an OB/GYN who can check my prostate during my yearly pelvic exam (yearly mammograms don’t need that level of disclosure.)

So my question to you is — knowing what you know now about me, and assuming for the moment you get absolute power to label me and make determinations on where I can and can’t go —

-Do I marry a man? Or do I marry a woman?

-Which restroom and changing facility do you feel I, a male-to-female transsexual, should use when in public spaces?

-Am I immoral?

-Am I a paedophile?

-Am I tearing down western society in support of a deviant agenda?

-Am I selfish?

I eagerly await your responses; Hazumu Osaragi

Obviously, there’s a bit of a set-up happening here, since my post wasn’t about trans-sexual issues at all.  Nevertheless, I took some time to give Hazumu a thoughtful answer.  I’d be interested in your thoughts …

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ou know the old saying, “Gays and Islamofascists don’t mix.”  Funny, yes, but there really is a nexus:  If California’s Prop 8 fails and gay marriage remains the law of the land here, look for the Golden State to become the address of choice for America’s Islamofascist population.

Islamofascists, or Islamists as I prefer to call them, don’t want to be bothered with Judeo-Christian laws and traditions that get in the way of their living the Koran in their daily lives.  That means more than just not wanting any toilets around that face toward Mecca; it means being able to live out their misogynistic “right” to polygamous marriage.

Muslims, and particularly Islamists, have a way of using local laws – laws they dislike for not being Sharia – to their advantage.  For example, Mark Steyn writes about some welfare law wrangling that’s gone on in the UK:

You can’t (for the moment) marry multiple wives within the United Kingdom, but if you contract a polygamous marriage in a jurisdiction where polygamy is legal, such as certain, ahem, Muslim countries, your better halves (or better eighths?) are now recognized as eligible for British welfare payments. Thus, the concept of “each additional spouse” has been accepted both de facto and de jure.

And elsewhere in Europe:

Thousands of polygamous marriages like Hadi’s have sprung up throughout Italy as a byproduct of a fast-paced and voluminous immigration by Muslims to this Roman Catholic country.

Despite the obvious culture clash, Italian authorities largely turn a blind eye, leaving women in a murky semi-clandestine world with few rights and no recourse when things go especially badly, as they did in Hadi’s case. …

Italy is one of several European nations faced with the issue of polygamy. In Britain and Spain, where large Muslim communities have also settled, some officials favor recognizing polygamous marriage as a way to ensure the wives’ access to pensions, medical care and other state benefits.

Steyn details at length in America Alone how Islamists and their hard to find but supposedly still around somewhere more moderate Muslim brethren have used Europe’s open society and namby-pamby multiculturalism to exploit laws protecting gay rights to make inroads toward the legalization of polygamous marriage.  After all, if a man can marry a man, why can’t a man marry three women?

Charles Krauthammer explained the logic in a 2006 WaPo column, Pandora and Polygamy:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

This line of argument makes gay activists furious. I can understand why they do not want to be in the same room as polygamists. But I’m not the one who put them there. Their argument does.

He concludes the piece with what I forsee as the rallying cry of CAIR as it begins to hurl petrodollars by the barrel at California legislators in the days that would follow the rejection of Prop 8:

[D]on’t tell me that we can make one radical change in the one-man, one-woman rule and not be open to the claim of others that their reformation be given equal respect.

Todd Zywicki, writing at Volokh, made a similar if more inscrutable point:

Here’s my thought–the definition of marriage as one man and one woman seems somewhat arbitrary, which is why it is difficult to justify. The primary justification I can see is a Hayekian one of prudential deference to tradition unless there is an extremely strong case for rejecting it. I would distinguish this from what I would understand as a Burkean objection, which I would read as tradition being prescriptive, rather than prudential. But whether this is an accurate distinction is probably a debate for a different day.

So the question is, if you get rid of the “man-woman” prong as largely arbitrary, why does this not lead to getting rid of the “one-one” prong as well? It seems like the new line is just as arbitrary as the old one.

Indeed.  And California is just the place for this to happen.

California has liberal courts and, with Massachusetts, the nation’s longest gay rights tradition.  It has a liberal legislature that is prone to writing state laws in the name of multiculturalism and inclusion.  One doesn’t have to be a gay rocket scientist to see that in the blink of an eye, gay marriage in California will lead to a very Sharia-like polygamous marriage in California.  And if that happens and you happen to be a jihad-hungry, woman-deriding Islamist living in Kansas or Kentucky, what state would you head for?

In a closing footnote, it’s interesting that you could take this argument entirely the other way: If Prop 8 passes, it will open the door to polygamous marriage. That’s a favorite red herring of  the No on 8 set, who argue that because the proposition calls for the enthroning in our state constitution of a definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman – instead of one man and one woman – it’s all just a Mormon conspiracy to turn California into Warren Jeffs‘ new hang-out.

Chilling. It looks like either way, the Islamists could win.

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‘m finally getting around to reading Mark Steyn’s America Alone, so as I read I check out from thinking about the election and start thinking again about Islam’s growth, its demand that we meet its intolerance with tolerance so that it can grow at our expense, and its commitment to jihad.

And so without further adieu, this shrine to what makes America great and, most definitely, non-Islamic:

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slam, the religion of peace, showed off itself today on the streets of Kabul when believers killed an infidel for no other reason than their intolerance.

Gayle Williams, a 34-year-old missionary with dual British-South African citizenship, was gunned down by Taliban assassins on a motorbike.  A Taliban spokesman later confirmed that Williams’ hit was ordered because she was spreading Christianity.

Here’s the AP story, complete with complaints from Afghan religious leaders about attempts to spread the Christian faith in their nation, and denials from the group sponsoring Williams that they engage in proselytizing.

What do Islamic leaders know about Christianity that has them too scared to allow it to reach the believers they hold in subjugation?  Could it be a simple path to salvation?  Could it be a God of love instead of Allah?  Could it be less money in their coffers?  Could it be plain old hatred?

Could it be all of the above?

Missionaries throughout the Islamic world live high-risk lives and know what they’re getting into before they leave for their posts.  They need our continuing prayer.

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riting on another subject entirely, a friend sent me this email today:

Overall, though, I think things are moving in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, 9/11 accelerated the process. Q: Is this what Osama wanted, to move the (self-inflicted) erosion of our freedoms along even faster? That has been suggested before; maybe that is part of what he wanted.

He was talking about the Patriot Act. Show me where that act has infringed on the rights of normal Joes … but that’s not my subject.  Rather, it’s something much more insidious and too much beyond our control: The pressure Islam is putting on our institutions, causing the foundations of our freedom to crumble.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Publisher Random House has pulled a novel about the Prophet Mohammed’s child bride, fearing it could “incite acts of violence.”

“The Jewel of Medina,” a debut novel by journalist Sherry Jones, 46, was due to be published on August 12 by Random House, a unit of Bertelsmann AG, and an eight-city publicity tour had been scheduled, Jones told Reuters on Thursday.

The novel traces the life of A’isha from her engagement to Mohammed, when she was six, until the prophet’s death. Jones said that she was shocked to learn in May, that publication would be postponed indefinitely.

“I have deliberately and consciously written respectfully about Islam and Mohammed … I envisioned that my book would be a bridge-builder,” said Jones.

Random House deputy publisher Thomas Perry said in a statement the company received “cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”

“In this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel,” Perry said.

America can be like Salman Rushdie and stand up to Islamic thuggery, or it can be like Random House and respond in a cowardly manner that not only encourages the growth of Islamic social cancers, but also shows the publisher’s blatant hypocrisy, and its overwhelming fear of Islamists.

Random House wasn’t so worried or sensitive to the feelings of others when it published Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, a work that is probably more offensive to Christians than Jones’ novel is to Muslims. Random House didn’t just publish The Golden Compass; it flogged it:

Collectively, the promotional partnerships will result in approximately $50 million worth of advertising support, one billion consumer impressions, and $120 million of media value worldwide. Additionally, New Line has over 75 licensed partners producing hundreds of Golden Compass-related products worldwide, in six different categories including retail, beverage/concessions, non-profit, publishing, home entertainment, and in-book and online.

Wow!  That kind of corporate commitment behind a movie that promotes a deliberately anti-Christian POV could be really dangerous … NOT.  Christians don’t issue fatwahs. Christians don’t burn down embassies … or publishing houses, for that matter. And Christians don’t shoot artists eight times and leave them dead.

Because Islam allows violent Islamists who carry out those acts and worse to thrive within the bounds of their religion, and because Random House won’t show an ounce of courage, we the people are being deprived of a book that sounds as if it would be fascinating and insightful.

Point and match, Osama. The game is still ours to lose.

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