Shakeyer Stupidity

Sheikh Abdullah Al-Sheikh is what passes for an intellectual in Saudi Arabia, and he holds the position of 'Grand Mufti'. I tell you all this, not because you care very much, but more as background and context.

Chess Games Can Be A Matter Of Life And Death .....

 

This year he passed a Fatwa I.e.. He made a 'religious judgement' on something being permissible or not in Islam. Nothing new there, he will have passed hundreds, if not thousands of these judgements over the decades .... anything from death sentences, to restrictions in the marital home, or advice on prayers.

 

When 'Arabic' Isn't A Language Anymore

It shows how discontented the young people are with the state, when they prefer to speak a foreign tongue, and I don't mean immigrant kids who may do so for all sorts of reasons, including alienation, I mean the educated young (the future leaders in normal societies, but not in many Arab lands, where criminals or religious thugs are the rulers).

The reasons why mainstream Arabic is spoken less amongst the younger educated of many in the Arab world is two fold.

1. There are no jobs (outside of corrupt state patronage) in the Arabic world, and English is the worlds lingua franca
2. The state education system is at best 'basic to non existent', with 'religious education' the only option for many i.e. reciting from the Koran, and only with 'lessons' that don't contradict its teachings e.g. any history or philosophy which is pre Islam.

So it's no wonder that despite the mullahs and the mosque mobs who often fuel the worlds perception of Arabs, and who are the foot soldiers of any Islamist revolutions (or counter revolutions), the educated middle classes are trying to teach their kids to live with Western languages .....

A fact which makes it all the more of a condemnation of the educated Western based Muslims, who recite and recycle the fundamentalist Islamist ideals, and who take no heed of what's really the opinion of many in the Arab world ..... i.e. they fail to learn from those who are forced to live in the Arab Muslim world, and would do just about anything to leave it ...."Allah Akbar" is not the answer to a failure to develop.

Ironically, the English speakers often have very strange ideas of what the West would want from would be Muslim immigrants ..... the girl Parvaneh, a student, living in Qom and Tehran in Iran on this BBC interview thinks that her husband being a Muslim religious student in one of the most fundamentalist states in the world  i.e. a would be Muslim Shiite cleric, would guarantee them the right to emigrate to the US.

"We moved to Qom because my husband is studying Islam here ...... when my husband's course is finished, we will emigrate to the US."

It's this idea, that being taught the Koran (often by rote in a non critical manner), somehow makes you a 'scholar' in anyway like the Jewish or Christian tradition, and therefore useful in some way in the West, is why the education system in the Arab world lets so many down.

Islamic Science: Women Responsible For Earthquakes

Promiscuous women are responsible for earthquakes, a senior Iranian cleric has said.

Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi told worshippers in Tehran last Friday, that they had to stick to strict codes of modesty to protect themselves.

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he said.

These guys like to call themselves 'scholars' but are just plain ignorant.