On July 22, 2011 Anders Behring Breivik, the nice-looking young Norwegian pictured above, detonated a bomb in the center of Oslo, killing eight people. Then, while the capital was in horror and dismay, he sailed to the nearby island of Utoya, where Norwegian socialists organized a youth camp. Dressed as a policeman and heavily armed, he shot in cold blood at the defenceless, mainly young people, killing 69 people. The youngest victim was a girl named Sharidyn Svebakk-Boehn who had just turned 14. She had a blog where the last entry is dated July 20, 2011 - two days before her death.
Breivik was motivated by his Islamophobic and anti-multiculturalist views. For me, it meant that the perpetrator of a most horrific mass murder had views very similar to mine. I admit it created an eerie and uneasy feeling in me, and inevitably led to some soul-searching. I discussed my thoughts on Rose-Anne's post The Look of Crazy. It was not very suitable for this purpose because verbal abuse was guaranteed, but I simply wished to discuss it, and Rose-Anne was the only blogger known to me who wrote a meaningful post on the subject.
Two months later, the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 attacks overshadowed this more recent massacre. And now - sad to say but true - the Norway victims seem all but forgotten. Most people seem to think that in the current situation, we'll have some Breiviks and we have to accept this, period. Just hope that you and your loved ones won't be around a Breivik when he detonates, because, as Rose-Anne correctly stated, usually there is no way to recognize such a psychopath before he has exposed his lethality.
What about his views? I think the observations of Breivik and his description of the current situation in Western Europe are quite true. What is wrong is his proposed solution, his choice of action. And we must admit that every time when we confront a danger associated with human beings, some of us may wish to solve the problem by exterminating these human beings. In the 1970s, some people fought communism by rounding up thousands of suspected communists to a stadium, torturing and killing many of them. In the 1940s, some sought to defeat Nazism and prevent its relapse by ethnically cleansing millions of Germans, sending mothers with babies out at Celsium -20 just because they happened to be German. And in the 17th century, other people tried to fight plague by locking victims inside their houses. All this is inhumane and utterly unacceptable, yet it does not mean that communism or nazism are acceptable, either, or that plague adds beautiful diversity to human population and so should be embraced despite its tendency to kill people here and there. I'd also point out to anyone else worried by the similarity of his views to Breivik's that we are actually comparing our sincere, unmoderated views to a highly moderated version of Breivik's views, because he took much care not to look as right-wing extremist in order not to attract attention by authorities.
From the moment when I heard that Breivik was captured alive, I was worried by the inadequacy of the punishment he could receive under Norwegian law. The maximum prison term in Norway is 21 years, and the treatment of prisoners is reportedly quite benign. The idea is that the criminal is not a source of evil but a poor person who needs help to reform and become a good member of society, rather than punishment. Like every system of morality and justice centered not on actual and potential victims but on the perpetrator, this shows its charlatanism to full degree when confronting a murderous psychopath like Breivik. During the discussion at Rose-Anne's blog, I wrote, "I may be barbarian... but I am glad that Bin Laden was shot dead, and I wish the same had happened to Breivik. We already have more of his oratory than any reasonable person would want. Now, he will have a due process in a country having humane prisons and no death penalty. He will smile from the bar in the faces of victims' parents, adding insult to injury. Yes, it is a principle that everyone is entitled to a fair trial... but he gave no fair trial - no trial of any kind - to the kids he murdered."
People, however, have found a way around this problem. In late November, Breivik was psychiatrically evaluated and declared insane. Factually, this is 100% wrong. Breivik is a very intelligent person who planned his actions with great deliberation and self-possession. He bought a farm for the sole purpose to be able to buy nitrate fertilizer needed for the bomb without arousing suspicions. (Other wannabe terrorists who hadn't the resources or far-sightedness to pose as farmers have been arrested soon after buying fertilizer, e.g. two young men of Arab Muslim origin detained in Berlin on Sept. 8, 2011.) However, from a not-so-formal point of view I think the psychiatrists did the right thing. No trial to be used as a tribune by Breivik, no smiling in the faces of victims' mothers, no release (I hope) after a decade or two. The very tissue of what we call our life depends on putting thick walls between ourselves and creatures like this murderer, although we can do it only after it is too late.
This year, Nov. 16 was Eid al-Adha (Kurban bayryam) - the Festival of Sacrifice, one of the most imp0rtant Muslim holidays. Celebrations often last for a week. Right now, I had to have a practical with a group of students from Turkey, but we agreed to postpone it, because all of them wanted to be home with Mommy and Daddy. So I have some extra free time, for which I shall of course pay later. I decided to spend it updating my link pages and deleting some of the Islamophobic links, undoubtedly a good way for an infidel to mark Eid. I wish to state immediately that nobody has pressed me to do this. My anti-Islamic writings and links have not drawn any offline hostile action, which I attribute partly to the (still) very weak position of radical Islam in Bulgaria, and partly to the fact that nobody reads my blog :-). My opinion about Islam and Islamists has not changed, either. Why, then, have I decided to present (slightly) less Islamophobia? It was Esther, author of the Islam in Europe blog, who persuaded me. On Feb. 22, she wrote a post titled Opinion: Why don't the Jews join us. Let me give a part of it:
"An orthodox Jewish reader once asked me why Islam-critics criticize EVERYTHING about Islam. Why do they criticize the religious aspects and don't just focus on violent Islamic ideology? Keep this question in mind as you read this. A recent article in The Daily Telegraph brings a story which is repeated in various ways across Europe. Malmö, Sweden, is the city with one of the highest proportion of Muslim residents, and its small Jewish community is fleeing an increase in Muslim antisemitic attacks.Various anti-Islam, Islam-critical, counter-Jihad etc blogs and activists expect Jews to stand with them against the Muslims. But Jews don't always do so, and, sometimes, for good reason. I do not deny the threat of Muslim antisemitism. But why put the Jews on the spot? When anti-Islam protesters wave Israeli flags, they might want to show that they're not antisemitic. They might want to make the Muslims mad. But what they're actually doing is focusing the hatred at the Jews. The Jews are a tiny minority in Europe, and one which has been through quite a lot. Why put them on the spot more than anybody else, and certainly more than any other endangered minority?"
I have never made it a secret that a great part of my Islamophobia is due to the anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli attitudes and actions of too many Muslims. (I have been occasionally blamed by hostile readers that I have sold myself to "my Jewish masters", and privately asked by friendly readers whether I am a Jew myself.) And now, Esther is asking those who really take the plight of Jews to heart not to be too Islamophobic. I am not sure whether she is right here, but I think she has considered this problem thoroughly and understands it much better than me, and I prefer to trust her. So I deleted from my blogroll the links to two old posts: My Westerner's demands to Muslims and An opinion poll for Arab readers (the latter was useless anyway, because Arab readers were not giving their opinions). I also opened from my Control Panel the Favourite Sites pages of my Web site (here in English, here in Bulgarian) and successfully changed them - the first change I am introducing myself to my brand new domain. If you are learning to create and edit Web pages and struggling with HTML the way a pig struggles with a pumpkin, what would you begin with? The easiest thing, of course. And what is the easiest type of change? Correctly, deletion. So I removed the link to FrontPage Magazine (it still remains in my blogroll), plus two links to sites with images of Prophet Mohamed: Zombietime's Mohammed Image Archive and the site muhammadcartoons dot com. These links, plus the entire "Favourite Sites" page, were created in early 2006, in the midst of Danish cartoon crisis. Back then, it seemed to us that the very pillars of our civilization were collapsing. I am still far from sure that it is safe, but I think time is ripe for more long-term strategy and less impulsive actions. A nice example of impulsive action is the domain muhammadcartoons dot com, registered at the same time. Initially, the 12 cartoons were uploaded there. However, after the hot moment was gone, apparently nobody wished to devote his time and money to the tedious job of keeping a Web site. So the domain name expired and was released back to the ecosystem. Somebody snatched it and turned it into what I hope is a dating site, but may as well be a human trafficking tool. For that reason, I am not linking to it here, just showing enough of it to allow you check yourself. (Here, Muslim readers are allowed to gloat :-).) You see that it is a bad idea to register a domain, draw traffic to it and then leave it orphan - this can only benefit some shadowy and not too pretty figure. People should be more serious about the Web and not create and abandon sites at every whim. If you want to see the (in)famous cartoons, I recommend the above linked Zombietime page, plus this American Daughter forum where Danish psychologists discuss the images. I was first directed to the former page by Freedom for Egyptians. I am sorry that she has stopped blogging; hopefully everything is OK with her.
(The expression in the title borrowed from Atlas Shrugsblog.) First, I am copy-pasting below most of the article Plan for mosque near World Trade Center site moves ahead, by Joe Jackson & Bill Hutchinson, published earlier this month in NY Daily News, but for the moment just follow the link and read.
"A proposal to build a mosque steps from Ground Zero received the support of a downtown committee despite some loved ones of 9/11 victims finding it offensive. The 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center was unanimously endorsed by the 12-member Community Board 1's financial district committee. The $100 million project, called the Cordoba House, is proposed for the old Burlington Coat Factory... just two blocks from the World Trade Center site. "I think it will be a wonderful asset to the community," said committee Chairman Ro Sheffe. Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, who helped found the Cordoba Initiative following the 9/11 attacks, said the project is intended to foster better relations between the West and Muslims... Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and Cordoba Initiative board member, said the project has received little opposition. "Whatever concerns anybody has, we have to make sure to educate them that we are an asset to the community," Khan said. Khan said her group hopes construction on the project will begin by the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Once built, 1,000 to 2,000 Muslims are expected to pray at the mosque every Friday, she said. No one at last night's meeting protested the project. But some 9/11 families said they found the proposal offensive because the terrorists who launched the attacks were Muslim. "I realize it's not all of them, but I don't want to have to go down to a memorial where my son died on 9/11 and look at a mosque," said retired FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches - whose son Jim, a firefighter, was killed on 9/11. "If you ask me, it's a religion of hate," said Riches, who did not attend last night's meeting. Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, L.I., whose son, Firefighter George Cain, 35, was killed in the 2001 attacks, called the project a "slap in the face." "I think it's despicable. That's sacred ground," said Cain, who also did not attend the meeting. "How could anybody give them permission to build a mosque there? It tarnishes the area."
Frankly, I find it unbelievable. After some Muslims sacrificed their lives in order to destroy the Twin Towers together with the people inside, now other Muslims are keen to build a giant mosque almost on the cleared spot. As I wrote in my post about Samir Kuntar two years ago, "if we remove the fragile frame of civilization, what remains from the human? A Darwinian creature who will happily kill other people's children in order to make more space for his own progeny." I am only slightly surprised that Muslims have come with such an idea. It is just the umpteenth piece of evidence about the nature of Islam. I am, however, surprised that the city is giving green light to this insanity. The same NY Daily News page offers an opinion poll:
"Do you think it is appropriate to construct a mosque near Ground Zero? - Yes, it will encourage tolerance. - No, if the 9/11 victims' families are opposed. - I'm not sure."
I cannot take part in such an opinion poll; I can just wonder at its authors' dhimmitude and stupidity. The first symptom of these is their priority of problems - regarding the intolerance to Islam as a more important problem than the deaths and suffering caused by Islam at Ground Zero and elsewhere. Following the same logic, we should build Nazi and Communist propaganda centers near the former extermination camps in order to encourage tolerance to these doctrines. Second, I find it wrong beyond description that opposition to the plan is justified not with the need to regard Islam as the doctrine of supremacy, oppression and genocide it is, but with political correctness - not to hurt the feelings of 9/11 victims' families. So, if the Islamists had killed the whole families, there would be no problem at all, right? I am outraged because the grieving relatives, instead of being allowed to devote themselves to the memory of their loved ones and the challenges of life, are now forced to fight against the trivialization of their loss and the planned building of an actual memorial to the murderers. We have observed the same in Bulgaria and other former Communist countries - the pressure put on the surviving victims of the regime, and on the relatives of dead ones, to put their hard feelings aside and embrace the Communists for the sake of "peace" and "reconciliation". It was wrong here, and it is wrong in New York now. Another similarity is that Communists filled East-European cities with their landmarks and actively struggled for their preservation, because they knew the importance of architectural environment for shaping the collective mind. Russia successfully pressed Bulgaria to preserve the numerous memorials to Soviet occupiers. When a landmark of evil is standing, growing young people walk in its shadow and think, "How powerful they are - to kill so many of us, to do us so much evil and still to make us keep their monuments. We must always give them what they want, then they probably will leave us alive." The same is planned to happen in New York. Disclaimer: I do not advocate any action against Muslims. I am against Islam, not against Muslims, as I am against AIDS, not against AIDS-infected people. And I do not like the fact that I feel obliged to include such a disclaimer. When I write against Nazism or Communism, I do not feel obliged to disclaim that I do not advocate any action against individual supporters of these doctrines.
Update from May 27: I voted with "no" in the above mentioned opinion poll, mainly to see the results. They are: 68% "yes", 31% "no", 2% "not sure".
One of the best known and beloved Bulgarian folk songs is Rufinka bolna legnala (Rufinka was lying ill), originated some 150-200 years ago in the Rhodopa mountain (although, similarly to other Rhodopean songs, it is very difficult to sing). It was created by Bulgarian Muslims and, as far as I know, is the only element of their culture incorporated in mainstream Bulgarian culture. Once I read an article about the background of the song. According to it, Rufie (informally Rufinka) was a real person, a girl from a well-to-do family. About age 20 and before getting married, she succumbed to a progressive fatal disease, probably tuberculosis. Before her death, she was asked what she was more sorry for - her wedding dress or the world. The historical Rufie reportedly answered, "For the dress, because I shall never put it on." However, the character of the song gives a different answer - see below.
The lyrics in Bulgarian (in the original dialect) can be found e.g. at this forum. The participant supplying the text writes, "This is perhaps the only folk song I truly admire and when I listen to it, everything in me bristles up." My opinion is similar. This song in a very simple way gives you the tragedy of being human, of having a self-aware spirit longing for existence but trapped within a mortal body. It is felt even more clearly because of the mentioned abundance of life in spring, and because Rufinka despite her religion does not seem to believe in afterlife.
Here is my (quite rude) attempt of translation:
RUFINKA WAS LYING ILL
Rufinka was lying ill / there in the high mountain.
No one was by her side / only her old mother.
She was telling Rufinka, / "Rufinka my dear daughter,
Are you sorry for your wedding dress, / your dress and your beloved?"
"My dear, my dear mother, / I am not sorry for my dress,
I am sorry for the world, / because spring has come now,
Everything's coming out of earth, / and I shall go into earth.
Mother, call Mizho's Fatma, / let her come, and I'll tell her
The above videos are from the documentary The Bulgarian Guanatanamo, by Bulgarian journalist Ivan Kulekov. It was aired on Jan. 5, 2009 during the Slavi's Show on BTV Channel. I learned about the documentary and these videos from Svetla Encheva's post The Bulgarian Guantanamo - the silence of media and bloggers. If you are a person concerned with human rights in the EU, I strongly advise you to watch the videos. The documentary highlights the arbitrary detenion of foreigners, and human rights problems in Bulgaria are solved either by strong outside pressure or not at all. Most of what is said is not in English, so for readers who speak no Bulgarian, and also for those whose connection does not allow watching videos on the Web, I am providing below a sort of a transcript.
In the beginning of the first video, the caption "Slavi's Show" appears. The host of this TV show, Slavi Trifonov (bald, with glasses, in a suit), introduces Ivan Kulekov (with grey hair, in black jacket and black T-shirt). Kulekov talks about documentary he has made: "In a beautifully-looking from outside building in the Busmanci district of Sofia, people are kept imprisoned on an order by the secret services. These are people whose visas and identity documents are lost or expired, or who are in Bulgaria illegally, or are concerned a threat to national security. In this facility, the laws valid for Bulgarian citizens are not valid."
Then the documentary begins. A label appears, "Ministry of Interior, Immigration Directorate". The camera moves backwards and shows a tall fence with barbed wire on top. Kulekov's voice-over clarifies that this is the so-called Home for temporary accommodation of foreigners (Bulg. Dom za vremenno nastanyavane na chuzhdentsi) in the district of Busmanci.
We see a room overcrowded with men. One of them complains that the room is kept locked all night, then is unlocked at 7 AM, but only for a short time. The inmates want to urinate and defecate, they are told to urinate in a bottle. The strain leads to quarrels and even fights.
The camera shows a grey-haired man in a suit - Yotko Andreev, the director of the home. He says that there are foreigners from many countries in the home and the personnel tries to distribute them in rooms in a way minimizing the strain between them, but these efforts are not always successful.
A young black-haired inmate, Javed Nuri, says, "I have seen many poor countries, poor not economically but legally, yet I have nowhere else experienced such a poor law - to be imprisoned together with people who have served sentences for murder, and with sick people."
The camera shows a room overcrowded with men. Andreev admits that in the corresponding institutions in Belgium there are 2-4 people in a room and it is supplied with running water and toilet, while in his Home there are 10-18 people in a room with no water and toilet.
An old woman with glasses says in Russian that she has been caught at the airport with a false Lithuanian passport. Kulekov asks her whether she had known it was false and she answers, "Yes, I bought it". The camera shows two younger women flanking her, each hugging a child; one of them is wearing a headscarf. The Russian woman complains that there are no conditions in the Home. Asked what conditions she had expected, she answers, "(I wish) at least that they give people toilet paper!"
The camera shows a dark-haired woman - Valeria Ilareva, a lawyer. She says, "These are people who are de facto banned from work, who cannot even leave our country. There are many persons from the former Soviet Union who now have nowhere to return - no country would accept them. There is a man who have been kept in Busmanci for 3 years and has now been detained there for a second time. They have nowhere to deport him to, he has no country to return. He has come to Bulgaria back in the days when there was Soviet Union."
Andreev says, "Another group of foreigners who are sent to the Home are those who have served prison sentences but owe money to Bulgarian government. Until their cases are clarified, we keep them in the Home."
A black, bald man says in English, "Even if we have offended and maybe we have no documents to be in the country, at least they could listen to us and consider us. Now, we are here for almost one year. I came legally with a visa but the visa expired, so I cannot go back to my country. That is why I am here, and most of people are here."
A man from Syria (I think, the same who complained from the locked room) says, "I am here because my passport expired." Asked for how long he has lived in Bulgaria, he answers, "For 15 years. Married, with four children."
The camera shows him behind a window with bars, holding two of the children - boys who look about 3 and 1 year old, the younger one holding a rattle. Then we see four children in a room. I am not sure whether they are all his children - they seem too close in age to be from one family. They are three boys and a girl, all look younger than 5. There are matresses and toys scattered on the floor. A toddler is playing with a large cardbox, going into and out of it.
Then a headscarved woman talkes, with a 5-6-year old boy by her side. I cannot say whether she is the Syrian man's wife, and whether she is the same whom we saw earlier next to the Russian woman. She says in English, "No, I don't know how much I will stay here. Why we are here... We have children here. They want to help us, I see. They make a room for the children, they ask "What do you want?", they give clothes now. But I don't know. May be (to) live here (is) nice, the best for our (children?), I don't know." A toddler waves his rattle to the camera.
A middle-aged man - Dr. Ibrahim Dogmush, asks, "What is the fault of this child, the one you have photographed, to be in prison?"
The camera shows Nuri again. Kulekov's voice over, "Motivated by desparation and as a sign of protest against his arbitrary detention by the secret services, on Aug. 24, 2006 Javed Nuri covered himself in bedsheets and set himself on fire."
Nuri continues the tale himself, "I decided that death is better than living in such suffering. The deputy director of Busmanci came and said, "We cannot forget (?) people who have set themselves on fire." And then they threw me into the isolator. I was injured, my legs were black. It was called Three days had passed from my surgery and they threw me into that room without a bed, without bedsheets. To throw there an ill person - this doesn't happen even at Guantanamo."
The camera shows a man behind bars; his name is Tariq Adilsami. He talks in English.
"Where do you come from?", Kulekov asks.
"Palestine."
"Why are you here?"
"Because I don't have documents... I do not know why they brought me here. I have (made) no problems, I do not have any problems here. They keep me here for more than a month. Why?"
"Why did you choose to come to Bulgaria?"
"Somebody told me Bulgaria is a country in Europe."
Here, the first video ends and the second one begins.
"For how long will you stay here?"
"I don't know. People don't give me how long time I'll spend here, don't speak with me... I want my rights here, in Bulgaria. I want my rights, but they don't give me my rights."
"Have you a lawyer?"
"I speak with somebody for a lawyer, but I'm waiting now for months and no one comes to see me."
Andreev: "The idea is not to keep the person long in this building, but to achieve the (authorities's) goals, to talk with the foreigner in the meantime (while he is detained) so that he realizes he has made a mistake."
Ilareva: "In countries that have rule of law, it provides efficient guarantees against abuse of power. Decisions are not left to the discretion of those who hold power, but must be inside clear frames given by the law."
Andreev: "The case with Sid Kazdoev, who identifies himself as a Chechen, is very sensitive for our Home. He has been kept at Block No. 3 (presumably a punitive isolator - M.M.) for a long period. I have been Director of this Home for 3 months (and I cannot be responsible for what has happened before). The reason to keep Kazdoev in this block for so long is that my predecessor has decided so. He thought it was best for security of other inmates and of Kazdoev himself to hold him there for a longer time. (Kulekov asks for how long.) More than 7 months.
Ilareva reminds that the maximum length of isolation as a disciplinary measure in prisons is 14 days.
A young black man with glasses in an orange jacket, whose name is Oladotun Ibitui, says, "They say it is not a prison, but unfortunately it is a prison. I was ready for everything, even to die there. Because they do not tell you for how long they will keep you there."
Ilareva: "In Spain, illegal immigrants cannot be detained for more than 40 days."
A middle-aged black man with a blue hat named Qassim Usi Machanoh, in a very muserable shelter: "I have been in Busmanci for 2 years and 5 months... as a prisoner, and worse than a prisoner. I have been here for a year and a half. I have no right to work, no right at anything... No help from anywhere. Should I become a thief? (Asked whether he believes) I used to believe, I don't know anymore... I lose my faith... I was born Muslim but I realized that everybody has the right to choose his religion. I don't know anymore whether I am a Muslim or a Christian. I go to churches, I go everywhere, people pray to one and the same God..."
Ibitui again: "I was there for 1 year and 4 months. The authorities only waited until I turned 18 to say that I was illegal, have no right to live in Bulgaria and must go back to the monkeys in Africa. "We will send you back to Africa where the monkeys are." In my country - Nigeria, there are 1500 Bulgarians."
Nuri: "If somebody is a threat for national security, he must be charged. Evidence must be presented, and he must be tried. And then go to prison, not to a Home for temporary accommodation of foreigners."
Ibitui: "My father - what happened to him? A healthy man, never had any problems, never complained of anything. They kept him detained for 7 months. Then the doctor measured high blood pressure. They did not want him to die at their hands, so they released him. They released him at the 8th month, and he died at the 9th month. One month later, a Syrian man died at their hands."
Andreev (apparently commenting the Syrian's death): "It was the result of (stomach) ulcer hemorrhage - a natural death."
A bearded man named Ahmed Bethaush talking from behind bars in English, "I am here because I am ill. This is a hospital. I have been here for 4 months, because I don't have money to go to my country..."
"Have you made any offence?"
"No, I have done nothing, just don't have any documents."
"For how long will you stay in Busmanci?"
"One year, two years..."
"Why did you escape from Algeria?"
"I need to go to Algeria. I like Algeria. I speak to the boss that I need to go to Algeria. But they say there is no plane or no money, I don't know... This is a problem of Busmanci."
Ilareva: "It is not about the Arabs at all. It is about basic human rights to which every human beings is entitled just because of the fact of being human. Regardless of whether he has documents or not, to what religion or nationality he belongs... If we allow foreigners to be detained withour court, maybe in the near future the same will happen to Bulgarian citizens."
Nuri: "The word "dom" (home) is a nice word, everybody wants to be at home, but for me it now means things so terrible that I do not want to remember them, so I would wish never to hear this word again."
The last footage from the Busmanci institution is the face of a toddler looking close at the camera.
Closing words of Kulekov: "Dear viewers, it turns out it is legal to imprison somebody just because he has contracted tuberculosis. Everything happening at Busmanci is legal. It is legal to send a person behind bars just because one or two secret service officers have suggested so, and to keep him imprisoned for years. It is legal to keep immigrants and refugees for 15-20 years without permit to work and study because buraucrats have not solved their cases. Bulgaria is the only European country without provision for amnesty of immigrants, but this is legal here. There are such antihuman laws in action."
Update Feb. 20: Svetla Encheva reports that the inmates in Busmanci are now protesting, at least 25 of them are on hunger strike. Her Feb. 19 post includes a video showing the protest from outside. Allegations of corruptions are discussed - foreigners claim to have been told that they must give bribes to obtain favourable decision on their status, identical cases are solved differently and nobody explains why.
"Studies show that women are 14 times more likely to die in natural disasters. One heart-rending study of a Bangladesh flash flood found that 90 percent of casualties were female. Many factors contributed to this high casualty rate which were all avoidable. A woman's role in this Southeast Asian nation, as in most of the Middle East and parts of Africa, is one of dependency - so of course, these Bangladeshi women were not taught to swim. But perhaps the most important factor was that they lived and died in a culture where women are so rigidly controlled that they aren't permitted to leave their homes without being accompanied by a male family member. When the flash flood occurred, they sadly stayed and drowned."
The late Marwa El-Sherbini with her husband and son. Photo copied from Europe-Turkmen Friendships, original source unknown.
This post is a tribute to an opponent - a Muslim woman killed in Germany. Different sources give slight variations in the details of the case. The large quote below is from Wikipedia:
"Marwa Ali El-Sherbini (October 7, 1977 – July 1, 2009) was an Egyptian pharmacist... She was killed during a hearing at a court of law in Dresden, Germany, by a man against whom she had testified after being insulted for wearing an Islamic headscarf.
El-Sherbini was... daughter of chemists... In 1995 she graduated from the El Nasr Girls' College, where she also acted as a student speaker. She was a member of the Egyptian national handball team from 1992 to 1999. From 2000 to 2005 she studied pharmacy at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Alexandria University, obtaining a bachelor's degree.
In 2005, El-Sherbini moved with her husband to Bremen in Germany. In 2008, the couple and their two year old son moved to Dresden, where her husband Elwi Ali-Okaz, a lecturer at Minufiya University, obtained a doctoral research position at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. At the same time, El-Sherbini worked at the University Hospital Dresden and at a local pharmacy, as a part of an accreditation scheme to practice pharmacy in Germany. Together with others, El-Sherbini founded an association (Eingetragener Verein) with the aim to establish an Islamic cultural and education centre in Dresden. At the time of her death El-Sherbini was three months pregnant with her second child.
In August 2008, Alex W. (a German citizen, born in Perm, Russia of German ethnic origin) shouted abuse at El-Sherbini in a public playground for children in Dresden, in a quarrel over the use of a swing by his niece and El-Sherbini's son. El-Sherbini, wearing an Islamic headscarf, was called an "Islamist", "terrorist" and "slut". Others present tried to intervene, but Alex W. continued the verbal abuse for several minutes until the police arrived at the scene...
Alex W. was charged with defamation, pressed by El-Sherbini, and found guilty by the district court of Dresden, issuing a fine of 780 Euro. During the trial Alex W. claimed mitigating circumstances for the act of insulting El-Sherbini, suggesting that "people like her" were not real humans and therefore cannot be insulted. The Public Prosecutor successfully appealed the verdict to achieve a higher conviction due to the openly xenophobic character of the incident.
At the appeal hearing at the regional court in Dresden, 1 July 2009, eight persons were present in the courtroom: a panel of one professional and two lay judges, the prosecutor, Alex W. as the defendant, his defence counsel, El-Sherbini as witness for the prosecution, and her husband and son as members of the public. No security personnel was present and no security searches of individuals and their possessions were carried out, common in cases without anticipated security concerns and with no persons under arrest present.
After El-Sherbini had testified, Alex W. strode across the courtroom and attacked her with a knife, by stabbing her 18 times while allegedly shouting "You don't deserve to live!". El-Sherbini's husband, Elwi Ali-Okaz, attempting to protect his wife was stabbed to the lung and hip area. A police officer, who was in the court building testifying in an unrelated case was called to the scene to intervene, but mistook Elwi Ali-Okaz for the attacker and shot him in the leg. Elwi Ali-Okaz... was in a coma for two days... El-Sherbini died on the scene... Alex W. is currently held... on suspicion of murder of Marwa El-Sherbini and attempted murder of Elwi Ali Okaz...
The killing was reported on 1 July 2009 in German radio and television and in print media on the following day. In line with common media practice regarding crime victims, due to stringent privacy laws in Germany, El-Sherbini was in the initial media reports only referred to as "a 32-year old witness". The Minister of Justice for Saxony... who had visited the crime scene on the same day, publicly expressed condolence to the "young woman and her family"... The Association of Judges in Saxony (Sächsischer Richterbund) demanded a review of security procedures in court buildings. According to the British media, the German media initially reported on the case at "the back page", and only in the light of the vociferous protests by thousands of Egyptians in Cairo against an apparent "Islamophobia", the German federal government, which had kept silent for nearly a week, issued words of sorrow...
On 6 July 2009, at El-Sherbini's funeral, in Alexandria, mourners referred to her as a "martyr of the head scarf"... Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the German goverment for El-Sherbini's murder and called for international condemnation of Germany.In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded firm action against Germany and stated that "there is a strong view that the crime was a pre-planned attempt engineered by the judicial system and security forces"."
Now, my thoughts about the case.
In line with the good tradition not to criticize the dead (especially if they have suffered a horrible and violent death), I won't comment on Ms. El-Sherbini - not in this post at least. However, while I may disapprove the victim's behaviour, I am utterly disgusted by the murderer. (May I omit the mandatory "alleged"? Thank you.) Not only because he is a murderer, and motivated by hate, but also because he is a narcissistic psychopath feeling entitled to decide who deserves to live and who doesn't. And what disgusts me even more (though I may show sexism here) is that he is a man and he chose a woman as his victim. I strongly hope and expect him to receive the maximum sentence existing in German law.
From the reactions to the murder, most impressive is the grotesque cynicism of the Iranian regime and its leader Ahmadinejad. Apart from the above mentioned official letter to the UN, Iranian authorities allowed and encouraged (if not ordered) public events to commemorate El-Sherbini and progest against Germany. You can see e.g. a photo of a symbolic funeral of Marwa El-Sherbini in Tehran on a post by German immigrant blogger Rose-Anne Clermont. In other words, anti-government protests are banned, but if you folk still feel like protesting, you are welcome to rally in front of the German embassy... I wonder, do Ahmadinejad's thugs really think that if they shed crocodile tears about Marwa, this will make their people forget Neda and all other innocent, freedom-loving Iranian women and men murdered by the regime? I fully agree with Azarmehr that this is hypocrisy beyond belief.
Most of the reactions in Egypt were also, to my opinion, far-fetched (to say the least). However, I prefer not to report them here. I hope that Egyptian people were just venting their shock, grief and anger in words without contemplating any actions. And as days are passing and we aren't hearing of any revenge against Germans, this explanations seems more and more probable. I hope also that I won't have to correct myself here.
Briefly, the weird accusations and conspiracy theories rotate around two facts - that nobody stopped Alex W. from stabbing Marwa 18 times and that the policeman shot Marwa's husband instead of the attacker. I would ask Muslims and their Western leftist friends (e.g. at the Guardian) to lighten up a little and call their common sense. Few are the heroes who, seeing an armed homicidal maniac in action, would rush to stop him and risk becoming his next victim. And it is so natural for police to make mistakes in disastrous, split-second situations. I have heard of quite a few hostage release operations where police have shot bystanders and hostages instead of the kidnappers.
However, there is a point where I fully agree with my Muslim opponents and wish to give them a shoulder. This is the way the crime was initially reported - at the back pages of newspapers, with headlines that didn't mention a word that it was a hate crime and the victim was a Muslim. I borrowed such a headline from Die Welt, Accused stabs witness to death in courtroom, as a title for this post. Doesn't it sound absurd? I found it in a post by a blogger trying to prove that German media did report the case timely and properly. If you are defending the wrong opinion, the usual result is that the more you put "arguments" for it, the more its wrongness is exposed.
Muslims and Leftists were quick to say that the murder of a Westerner by a Muslim would receive far more publicity, and cited the case of Theo van Gogh. To me, this example is irrelevant because van Gogh was already a celebrity when he was murdered. When the Western or "Western wannabe" victim has been an ordinary person, I have observed absolutely the same pattern of ignoring the case and its hate motivation, sweeping it under the carpet and reporting it in the back pages with the smallest font available. Just remember Kriss Donald, Ilan Halimi and Aqsa Parvez. In fact, the headline from Die Welt immediately brought to my memory the (in)famous Washington Post headline about Aqsa Parvez's murder: Canadian teen dies; father is charged.
Hate crimes are an important thing, especially during a global war. And they must be reported. At least I think so. One can say that straight reporting of hate crimes may perpetuate the hard feelings, trigger revenge actions or make some people emulate the culprit. All this may be true, but still I think that sweeping such cases under the carpet does more harm. And I would appeal to all my opponents to defend free speech and honest reporting. Because you never know when you will be the person needing it.
After two weeks of large-scale protests, events in Iran took a sad if predictable turn. The regime performed a crackdown against the demonstrators, arrested hundreds if not thousands of them and set up special courts to try them. Nevertheless, sporadic small-scale protests still continue, and it seems that things will never be quite the same again. Meanwhile, in China, "The CCP distracted people’s anger under its tyrannical rule by provoking racial hatred between Han Chinese (the dominant ethnic group in China - M.M.) and Uighur (a Muslim minority - M.M.). The CCP produced another Massacre in Urumqi immediately after it incited bloody incident against Uighur in Guangdong" (quote from Shao Jiang's blog). The regime has admitted to 184 victims, mostly Han allegedly killed by the rioting Uighurs. In Western media, these events are largely neglected or reported with poorly disguised sympathy to official China - see this AP report for example. Below, I am copying almost all of Azarmehr's July 7 post China Protests:
"More than 150 Uighur ethnic people have been killed by Chinese riot guards... The pictures of the Chinese riot guards in their uniforms wielding their batons are similar to their colleagues in the Islamic Republic, the indiscriminate shooting at the crowds, the widespread arrests and terror are all similar to what we see in Iran, but thats not where the similarities end. The Chinese government like their friends in Ahmadienjad's junta fear information. They too blocked all access to mobile phones and the internet. In theory the atheist Chinese Communist Party should be the furthest possible from a Shiite theocracy junta but the truth is, ideology is always just an excuse and a tool with totalitarian regimes. None of them believe in the ideologies with which they justify all human rights abuses they carry out. In practice only one thing matters to them, survival in power and in this they behave the same, help each other, stand united and support each other despite their ideological differences. And in the same way the 'useful idiots' behave the same, they care not about people, they have their own hidden agendas. Are the Muslims in UK marching in support of their Chinese brothers? Are they gathering outside the Chinese embassy? Did 'stop the war' activists care about 10% of the Chechen population killed by the Russians? Did they care about Chechnya being flattened by massive Russian bombing? No of course not. They pick and choose their issues according to their agendas which has nothing to do with human rights or people suffering."
Photo: Protesters in Tehran on June 17 (copied from Sandmonkey's blog, original source unknown).
After a fake election, Iranian people have taken to the street to protest, to stand for their votes and probably for something much more fundamental. Many have already been murdered by the regime's security forces; still, ther is hope that a change for better will come against all odds.
Below, I am trying to translate a part of The Blind Shephards' Herd, by Valeri Stankov. It is one of the most popular modern Bulgarian poems and was written in the near past when Bulgaria was not that different from today's Iran.
"Blind shephards pasture us for many ages.
They push us upward, make us climb forever
Where only dry and sticky weeds await us
With roots pulled out of earth by stormy weather.
We hardly see grass even after rainfall,
Though we are promised green and juicy meadows.
And if one steps aside to leave this main goal,
Then lurking wolves attack him from the shadows.
The shephards' voices all are hoarse from shouting,
Nicky Reilly (photo copied from the Guardian, original source PA.)
I first blogged about Nicky Reilly on June 26, 2008. These days, I googled his name to check for any news on him and saw that he was tried and convicted in January. Below, I am quoting most of a Jan. 31 report from the Times:
Those who know me will confirm that I am definitely not a fan of Islamic extremism - or, for that matter, of any thing Islamic. However, the harshness of the sentence raises my outrage. 18 years! I know of many Palestinian failed suicide bombers who were non-disabled and nevertheless were treated much more leniently by Israeli courts. Justice must be driven by more serious considerations than the knee-jerk feelings of people concerned for their own safety. Reilly has mental disabilities, which in any civilized country should mean not to hold him responsible the way a typical person would be held after doing the same thing. I also think that some disability advocacy and self-advocacy movements may be doing a disservice in such cases. In recent times, they often make efforts to portray people with mental disabilities as identical to non-disabled people in all respects except in the need of some extra services. As the Self-Advocates Becoming Empowered stated, "Our mission is to ensure that people with disabilities (a) are treated as equals, (b) are given the same decisions, choices, rights, responsibilities and chances to speak up to empower themselves, and (c) are given opportunities to learn from mistakes, as everyone else". However, in real life there are too many mistakes that can be made only once. I understand that nobody wishes to be stereotyped as a person with decreased ability to tell right from wrong, but I fear that the demand "Give us all the rights and responsibilities of the non-disabled" is leaving people like Nicky Reilly behind.
To end this post (in fact, as an instant update to it), I am quoting a comment to Fresco's report in the Times: "Prison? Secure hospital accommodation surely, and all since the support he needed earlier in life was absent or inadequate. I fear the real terrorists were the first people to accept him and warmly (but falsely) welcome him in. Tempting, for a depressed outsider. (adult with Asperger's) Chris , Launceston, UK"
Image: a cartoon of Prophet Mohamed, by Kurt Westergaard, downloaded from the Mohammed Image Archive, originally published in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. It is inserted in this post as blog action against Islamism. I intended to abstain from publishing Mohamed cartoons out of respect to Anglo-Libyan, but an event of these days became the straw breaking the camel's back.
"Danish Prime Minister elected secretary-general By Brian Brady, Sunday, 5 April 2009
One of the most troubling disagreements of the two-day summit was finally resolved towards the end of the gathering, when the Danish Prime Minister overcame Turkish opposition to become Nato's new secretary-general. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (pictured) was heavily backed by the biggest European powers, but his campaign to succeed Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was threatened when Turkey objected over his failure to ban Denmark-based Roj-TV, seen as the mouthpiece of the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also complained that Mr Rasmussen had failed to sanction those responsible for a Danish newspaper's publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed in 2005 (emphasis mine - M.M.). However, Turkish officials said Ankara dropped its objection after the US President Barack Obama answered Mr Erdogan's "objections" during a private meeting. Mr Erdogan told Turkish television that he had received "guarantees" from Mr Obama that one of Mr Rasmussen's deputies would be a Turk – and that Turkish commanders would be present at the alliance's command."
Daniel Pipes is more open about the concessions: "The Dane won the job only after engaging in intensive negotiations with Turkish president Abdullah Gül hosted by Barack Obama. Fogh Rasmussen promised to appoint at least two Turks and publicly to address Muslim concerns about his response to the cartoons. More broadly, Erdogan announced. Obama "gave us guarantees" concerning Turkish reservations about Fogh Rasmussen. The hoops that Fogh Rasmussen had to jump through to win Ankara's support can be inferred from his cringe-inducing, dhimmi-like remarks on winning the appointment: "As secretary general of NATO, I will make a very clear outreach to the Muslim world to ensure cooperation and intensify dialogue with the Muslim world. I consider Turkey a very important ally and strategic partner and I will cooperate with them in our endeavors to ensure the best cooperation with Muslim world." "
So much about the "secular", "civilized", "model", "democratic", "Westernized" etc. Turkey - as soon as you get down to real business, you find yourself confronting the ugly face of Islamism.
Nizo once commented on my blog that what is important is not the type of the dominating religion but the separation of religious institutions from the state, which has been achieved in the West but not yet in most Muslim countries. This is a serious opinion, but I think recent events prove it wrong and show that as long as you have Islamic background, you can separate as much as you wish and still, when the moment of truth comes, it will be to no avail.
When I ask what the hell is the benefit of having Turkey in NATO, people keep telling me that "it has the 2nd largest army in the alliance (after USA)". In my humble opinion, this is nonsense. What is the use of an army, big or small, if you aren't sure whether it is with you or with the enemy?
Now, what to do with NATO? Change its decision-making process from consensus to majority? Good idea, but it is exactly Turkey that would oppose and prevent it from happening. Dismantle it altogether? Maybe we'll have to, who knows... My sympathy to the people of Denmark, and also to the decent people of Turkey.
In recent years, there has been a trend among Bulgarian ethnic Turkish and Muslim women and girls to wear headscarves (I've mentioned this in one of my earliest posts, Headscarves in the lecture room). Media report that Islamic foundations support in different ways headscarved women and their families and organize summer schools to teach girls why a good Muslima must wear a headscarf; and the local people, unaware or unwilling to believe that the only free lunch in this world is the cheese in the mousetrap, happily bite the bait. Right now, emotions are surging because of the elections scheduled for June. While headscarves definitely aren't my favourite sight, my personal opinion is that they must be allowed in mainstream secondary schools. The reason is that it is most likely the parents who insist on the headscarves, not the girls themselves. And if we forbid a schoolkid to attend public school with her head wrapped, we are likely to infuriate the pious Muslim dad and, as the Bulgarian proverb says, to pick out eyes instead of putting makeup on eyebrows (i.e. to cause harm instead of good). It is quite likely that the father will force his daughter to drop out of school as soon as this is allowed (under Bulgarian law, this means at age 16) or even earlier. Hence, the efforts of government to give students counterweight to their fundamentalist families are likely to have the opposite effect, making the young women even more powerless by depriving them of high school diploma. It is also possible that the father will transfer his daughter to a Muslim school where headscarves are allowed. There, we expect less science and math and more Islam to be taught. Is this what we want? On March 30, Lyd (who tries her best to see Islam as good) wrote a post titled Religious symbols at school. Her thesis is that banning these symbols is pointless because religion is so deeply ingrained in culture and history that many schools are even named after saints. Commenter Klei then wrote something that I find worth being translated and posted here, though it differs from my own opinion:
"Suppose that headscarves are banned not because they are a religious symbol but because they are a type of hat. Here, we are touching a thing called "discipline" which, to my opinion, is among the most useful forgotten inventions of ancient people. The school has the task to prepare children for life outside school, and not only by giving them knowledge but also by training social interaction types "equal to equal" and "small unimportant student to big important teacher". The ability to protect ourselves from bigger boys who mock us is much more important for later life than, say, the information in which regions of Bulgaria apricots are grown. Hats are not allowed at school, period. Children must learn that RULES exist. In this case, it doesn't matter how important the rules are, how useful they are and whether there is some deep reasoning underlying them. This is _school_. It has two functions - forcing you to use your brain and at the same time putting you into the socially acceptable frames. If somebody insists on wearing a headscarf despite the ban on wearing hats, he shows that for him the artificial pointless limits imposed by religion are more important than the artificial pointless limits imposed by his society. THIS is dangerous, and not only for the individual in question. I value freedom much, but it must be deserved. And it is deserved by accepting the values of the society you are forced to live in - or by moving to another society which has values closer to your heart. If somebody insists on keeping his wife at home, hiding her from the world and stoning her, and if she doesn't mind it - let them go to a suitable country. THIS one here is a secular one. If you are religious, be religious only within the norms allowed by society. And stop crying and demanding these norms to be expanded."
On Friday, I read in Trud daily about a Moroccan soccer player currently engaged in one of the leading Bulgarian teams. The report wasn't about his performance on the field but about his driving with 0.12% alcohol in blood, crashing the car into a fence (happily, nobody was injured) and spending several hours in police custody. That wasn't his first offence of this sort. Bulgarians can read about the incident e.g. here. Upon his release, the player was "greeted" by a pack of reporters, as any celebrity in his situation could expect. Some of their questions to him and his answers (when any) are published here. However, the Trud report listed also another question, which in various forms is repeated by various Web commenters: "Why do you drink, after your religion bans alcohol?" Eh well, I also hate drunken driving (though some of my best friends have been punished for it), I particularly dislike sport star drunken drivers after figure skater Maxim Staviski killed a man and left a girl in coma, I don't see any use of professional sport, I am outraged by the giant salaries of sport stars compared to the offendingly low salaries of people like me, and I don't wish in my country any guest workers from North Africa (for my new readers, I am an Islamophobe). BUT. You may not, you just cannot look a survivor of Islam in the face and tell him that because he has had the poor luck to be born exactly in this religion, he is obliged to live by the rules of Sharia whenever this suits you. I think this petty xenophobia reveals the spiritual vacuum of today's Europe that may eventually be the true reason for its demise.
As the end of the year is approaching, time comes for various analyses and generalizations. An unescapable subject, esp. in a US election year, is the development of current global war (usually referred to by the misnomer "war on terror" while I prefer to call it "war against the West"). Does either side seem to win so far? The US election results seem to indicate a loss, or at least a perception of loss. Of course Barack Obama may turn out to be a good President after all. This is unlikely but by no means impossible - history knows much stranger things. However, nothing can ever erase the fact that he was elected with the promise of "change", which, to my opinion, inevitably implied that USA had been going in the wrong direction. This, in turn, matched 100% the claims of America's enemies. To sum up, on Nov. 4 US voters agreed with US enemies that America was bad as it was and needed a change. Of course I may be wrong and I'll be thankful to each opponent who points to me some more benign logic behind the "change" slogan; however, my overall impression is that logic had only a marginal (if any) role on Nov. 4. On the other side, our enemies are also facing problems. There haven't been major successful terror acts on Western soil since 2005. And the increasing recruitment of people with mental retardation and other mental disabilities as suicide bombers, apart from demonstrating the unlimited evil of the recruiters to anyone who had doubted it, also shows that they may be running short of neurologically typical volunteers to blow themselves up. More than two months ago, Highlander wrote a post titled US 2008 elections: a cloning apparatus. It was followed by an interesting discussion not only about the (then upcoming) event but also about Israel, Palestine, Arabs, nationalism, citizenship etc. One of the participants was LouLou, a young lady living in the UAE but officially a Moroccan because of her father's Moroccan origin. She said many interesting things and here I want to cite one of them: "It reminds me of a speech by Al Zawahri soon after Sept. 11 in which he was saying something to the effect that Al Qaeda carried out Sept. 11 to energize and mobilize 'the ummah' to join their jihad and how disappointed he was that 'the ummah' failed to respond and support the Mujahideen. He was clearly expecting some kind of mass universal Islamic suicide-bombing spree. It didn't happen because reality is 'the ummah' is not and has never been an ideological/cultural/political monolith capable of a single, unified response in the manner he dreams about... When this tide of Islamism has receded in the same manner that Arabism receded in the 70's, we will be left with a few Islamist intellectuals and writers here and there lamenting the failure of their grand scheme and attributing it to external conspiracies and 'perceived betrayal' by millions of people whose loyalty was never actually pledged to said scheme." (For those who are as blissfully ignorant about the term "ummah" as I was in 2001 - it designates the global Muslim community.) After Sept. 11, I hoped and almost expected that ordinary Muslims would start a powerful movement to reform Islam and many would leave it altogether. (I mentioned this once, again on Highlander's blog, but don't remember on which post.) When this didn't happen, I was disappointed. I realize now that my expectations and demands on Muslims have been, and maybe still are, too high. Human beings cannot en masse acquire superhuman qualities. If we discuss people like Ali Sina, Ayan Hirsi Ali and Nonie Darwish, we can say about them whatever we like (depending on the viewpoint) except that they are typical individuals and everybody can do what they have done. Most people just cannot and therefore the process of defanging Islam, if happens at all, will take generations. LouLou and I have many differences in our views (and little affinity to each other's personalities), but despite this I find what she says noteworthy. I hope she is right in her rather optimistic prediction. And I owe her thanks for picking and translating those words of Al-Zawahiri. It is good that whenever Islamists say something in a non-English language for limited circulation, there is always a kind soul to translate and post. Now I know that after Sept. 11 al-Zawahiri was disappointed like me, possibly even more. I can only wish him more disappointments with each coming year.
My blog generally isn't intended for mentally retarded people. In fact, if I have such readers, they are likely to find some my posts very offensive. But today I'll make an exception. We are living in a global war and people who should be 100% civilians get involved. Lynndie England had been oxygen-deprived at birth and apparently had borderline mental retardation. Nevertheless, she was allowed to join the US army, sent to Iraq and after taking part in Abu Ghraib prison abuse, was sentenced to jail. But at least she wasn't taken advantage of and sent to a suicide mission, as the enemy did with Nicky Reilly. I learned Reilly's story not from the news but from a disability forum. In fact, it was reported by some major media, but not on their front pages. They really care not to make Islam look bad, so they stress on Islamist terror only when it is lethally successful. Thank Heaven, in this case it wasn't. On May 22, Nicky Reilly (22) tried to set off a suicide bomb in a crowded restaurant in Exeter, England. The bomb misfired and Mr. Reilly was the only one injured. He was autistic, had the mental capacity of a typical 10-year-old and was coming from a troubled family. The consensus opinion of his neighbours was that he had been brainwashed by Islamists. After converting to Islam several years ago, Nicky Reilly changed his name to Mohammed Rasheed, started to hate his family and to call them infidels. Significantly, he "had a screensaver of the Twin Towers in flames from the 9/11 attacks on his home computer and would often watch a video of the atrocity" (source: Inside bizarre world of the Big Friendly Giant, by Jamie Doward on The Observer). Before detonating his device, Reilly "had been sent a text message of encouragement". Reilly's story would be troubling enough if it was isolated, but it isn't. Doward quotes Haras Rafiq, executive director of the (British) Sufi Muslim Council: ''Many converts to Islam have a sound spiritual reason, but there are also some who get brainwashed by extremists because they don't have the mental foundations to counter their arguments." Rafiq also "said the grooming of vulnerable people for suicide missions was well documented in the Middle East and claimed that there had been cases of terrorist organisations hacking patient health records to identify the vulnerable." In the Newsweek article Al Qaeda's New Recruits, authors Isikoff and Hosenball write: "U.S. officials acknowledged that the Reilly case points up a general concern they have about efforts by extremists to prey on the mentally handicapped... Earlier this year, two markets in Baghdad were attacked by women suicide bombers who allegedly had been targeted for recruitment by Al Qaeda because they were mentally handicapped... A British counterterrorism expert, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive matters, said that the Palestinian militant group Hamas also had a history of recruiting mentally handicapped or emotionally vulnerable people to carry out suicide missions."
So let me offer some tips that could help people like Reilly survive the current war. 1. If you have mental retardation, don't become a combatant of either side. Don't repeat the mistakes of Lynndie England and Nicky Reilly. If there must be war, let other people fight it. 2. Do not change your religion. This will only isolate you from your family and community. Even if some religions are truly better than others, God is unlikely to be so touchy about the exact way people worship Him. Specifically, do not convert to Islam. This may make some unscrupulous people try to use you as a tool for their goals. 3. If you are born in Islam or have already converted to it, practise your religion modestly and piecefully. Remember Tip No. 1 and do not ever consider to join jihad. Disabled Muslims are exempted from jihad (see the Koran, Sura 4, Verse 95) and you are disabled. 4. Do not listen to people who persuade you to convert to Islam or, if you are already a Muslim, to join jihad. Do not participate in arguments with them. They will use their faster, sharper minds to take advantage of you. If such people try to argue with you, just repeat, "These things are too complex for me, I cannot understand, I have mental retardation." Pretend that you do not understand anything at all. This isn't the moment to prove that you also can reason. Leave the other person as soon as you can. Inform about the incident your parents or other trusted people. 5. Do not let anybody convince you that your life is insignificant and you must make some self-sacrifice to add value to it. Your life is valuable as it is. Enjoy it. 6. Do not let anybody convince you that someone else deserves death. How would you feel if the same is said about you? The Nazis did say that mentally retarded people do not deserve to live, and killed thousands. Now, some people say that "infidels" do not deserve to live. I wonder how they can be so pompous to judge who is to live and who is to die. Do not listen to them. Live your life and let other people live theirs.
On May 15, another Bulgarian blogger wrote that religious denominations are unimportant for her, so the attempts of us her commenters to "convert her to anti-Islam" were to no avail. On the same day, I replied with a post on my Bulgarian blog where I asked what more had Muslims to do in the name of Islam in order to "convert her to anti-Islam", and wrote what Muslims, on the other hand, had to do in order to make me renounce my Islamophobia. Now, I am translating those demands to English and publishing them here. This is blog action against Islamism as a reaction to the June 2 suicide attack against the Danish embassy in Pakistan which killed 8 people.
To renounce my Islamophobia, I demand from Muslims to recognize the right of existence of: - Israel; - former Muslims; - critics of Islam; - Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and all other people not belonging to any Abrahamian faith; - homosexuals; - clitores.
They must also recognize the equal rights of: - non-Muslims; - women.
I'd wish to add something about separation of religion from state, de-criminalizing food, alcohol and sex... but let's not be maximalistic. The above listed demands are absolute, non-negotiable, and I think that no Westerner should ever consider any compromise regarding them. I reserve the right to make additions to the list if something appropriate comes to mind.
There is a site that periodically announces "blog action day", i.e. appeals to bloggers to write posts devoted to a particular subject on a particular day. However, I think we don't really need special days and a special site or another authority to call us to blog action. Any ordinary blogger can do the job as well. So I use the opportunity to appeal for blog action against Islamism. My idea is to react to every major action of Islamists by numerous anti-Islamist texts, images, videos, music and whatever else comes to mind. While some of the anti-Islamist and anti-Islamic propaganda could, in isolated cases, change the views of our opponents, this is not what I am pursuing and certainly not what I am hoping for. The core of my idea is to try behaviour modification on Islamists. Behaviour modification means influencing another person's actions by rewarding him for wanted behaviour and/or punishing him for unwanted behaviour. It is widely used in animal training, upbringing and education of children, and virtually all aspects of adult life. Islamists use it on us all the time, while we most of the time unduly abstain from using it on them. Let's change things. They don't want anti-Islamist and anti-Islamic stuff in public space? Let's guarantee that when they resort to coercion or terror, they'll get more of what they don't want. As said Christopher Hitchens in his must-read essay God-fearing people: Why are we so scared of offending Muslims?, "It is often said that resistance to jihadism only increases the recruitment to it. For all I know, this commonplace observation could be true. But, if so, it must cut both ways... And the advocates and apologists of bigotry and censorship and suicide-assassination cannot be permitted to take shelter any longer under the umbrella of a pluralism that they openly seek to destroy."
Proposed rules for Blog Action against Islamism: 1) Write explicitly that your post is participation in blog action and specify to which event you are reacting. That is, make it clear that without the particular undue Islamist action your anti-Islamist or anti-Islamic post would never appear on your blog. This is especially important for blogs that are Islamophobic all the time. 2) Try not to write things you may regret later when you calm down. We claim to stand not only for our interests but also for universal principles. So we regard all people as humans with rights, no matter how malicious their views may be. Besides, it's good to remember that were we born in a Muslim community, we would most likely be quite like the people whose behaviour we condemn now. 3) It isn't necessary for the published material to be new and created by you. However, if you are using another person's work, cite properly the original author, unless he prefers to stay anonymous. While it isn't practical to ask specific permission from the author, you should consider whether he would mind his work republished on your blog and proceed only if you think he wouldn't. This rule has an exception - Islamists wouldn't want their words to be cited in such context, but still I think it is OK to do so.
Of course traditional media can also participate in such action, which they actually are already doing. In 2006, after Denmark became target of Islamists because of the famous cartoons, a number of European newspapers republished them. Earlier this year, a group of Danish newspaper republished the cartoons again as a reaction to an Islamist plot to assassinate one of the cartoonists. However, most people cannot publish in media other than blogs, therefore I am writing specifically about blog action.
On Feb. 1, I wrote that quacks want freedom of speech for themselves but deny it to opponents. Now, we have a fresh example of this phenomenon. Kathleen Seidel who blogs against the vaccines-cause-autism quackery reported on Apr. 3 that she was subpoenated by Clifford Shoemaker, a lawyer representing Rev. Lisa Sykes and Seth Sykes in their $20,000,000 personal injury lawsuit against Bayer company. The Sykes think that vaccines have caused their son's autism and want big money from vaccine manufacturer Bayer as compensation. (The vaccines-cause-autism urban legend is discussed in my Jan. 14 post.) I am surprised that the event described above happened in the USA. You expect such things in places described by the broad term "east of Belgrade", e.g. here in Bulgaria. In fact, the story reminded me of Bulgarian blogger Michel who was subpoenated and warned by police last summer because of his writings about the Strandja protests (see my July 19, 2007 post). I guess, US legislature allows laywers to directly subpoenate people thought to have information useful for their clients' cases. However, Kathleen Seidel had no such information; in fact, she had more than once written against the Sykes' claims. So the only explanation is that Mr. Shoemaker abused his right to subpoenate in order to harass and intimidate Kathleen. In fact, the subpoena came shortly after Kathleen's post The Commerce in Causation, describing how Mr. Shoemaker uses the disproved vaccines-cause-autism theory to nicely fill his pockets via never-ending litigations. So it clearly looks like a revenge: you blog against me - I intrude into your life by a subpoena. Although not compatible to a lawsuit, a subpoena such as this one is, to say the least, unpleasant for those on the receiving end. Bulgarian blogger Michel reported the experience to be traumatizing. One of the absurd aspects of the overall absurd subpoena is the demand that Kathleen should provide copies of "all her communications with... religious groups (Muslim or otherwise), or individuals with religious affiliations". Kathleen has written Serving the Guest, a cookbook with essays and anecdotes about the role of food in Sufism. I do not know whether she has actually converted to Islam, but even if she has, whose damn business is this? Has Mr. Shoemaker ever heard about freedom of religion? It is important to defend rights and freedoms of everybody, including our opponents and even enemies. A Russian writer once said that freedom isn't like a blanket - take it from your neighbour and you'll have more of it. It is rather like air - take it from anybody and there will be less of it for everyone, including you. In this respect, I (like many others) was delighted and surprised to see that two distinguished quackery-promoting journalists have expressed their support for Kathleen Seidel. Let me now say a few words about Mr. Shoemaker's clients (who are unlikely to be unaware about their lawyer's methods) and particularly about Rev. Lisa Sykes. For those who don't know what "Rev." (abbr. from reverend) means, it is a title of a clergy member (Bulg. prepodoben). Generally, religious people earn my respect by their attitude to disabled children. They think that there must be a reason for God to send children with disabilities to this world, so their parents must feel honoured and meet their extra responsibilities with dignity and compassion. This is e.g. the view of Jenny, mother of 3 children (2 with special needs) and, let me remind, seller of a wonderful home in the city of Anniston. However, Rev. Sykes (shown here with her son) has a different attitude. She apparently thinks than nothing can be "wrong" with her or her husband's genes, and that God couldn't be so cruel or stupid to dump a non-perfect child on such a wonderful person as her. So she blames vaccines for her son's autism, sues a pharma company to rob it of its honestly earned money and, by her own admission, does on her son a quack "treatment" which castrates him chemically. I ask, why is this pompous person, greedy gold digger and abusive mother still a pastor? What is the human resources policy (if any) of today's churches and what do they think they are doing by employing people such as Lisa Sykes, Jeremiah Wright and Rowan Williams, to name just a few? Thank God I am an atheist :-). Read also the excellent Janna's post on this subject.
On March 19, a month after Kosovo declared independence, Bulgaria recognized it together with Croatia and Hungary. The reaction of mainstream Bulgarian media is shown e.g. in this editorial of Standart daily: title We surrendered, subtitle We stabbed Serbia because of Brussels, the neigbours (Serbs - M.M.) slam the door in our face. The widespread warm feelings of Bulgarians to their Serbian "brothers" is strange, considering the fact that Serbia is a historical enemy of Bulgaria and has never missed an opportunity to "stab" it. You also see that Bulgarian journalists still cannot learn to separate reporting events from commenting them. However, Bulgarians aren't alone in expressing hostile reactions to the newborn state. People located at a safe distance from the Balkans and expected to keep their heads calm are calling Kosovo Islamism's New Beachhead and First Step For Islam's Balkanization of the World. Well, I am also not very happy about the emergence of another Muslim state. And I know that Kosovars, as people, aren't any nicer than Serbs. When NATO in 1999 first gave them the opportunity to be masters in their own house, what did they do? They started genocidal attacks against their Serb minority. If a person in a crowd of Kosovo Albanians was suspected to be a Serb, he would be encircled and killed. A Bulgarian working for the UN became victim of such lynching. Somebody asked him in the street in Serbian what time it was. After our man replied in the same language, he was murdered on the spot. I also remember the words of the widow of a prominent Kosovar killed by the Serbs: "What makes me particularly sad is that he was buried by Gypsies." You cannot hear such a phrase in a civilized country, can you? We may rightly hate political correctness, but this is because we have too much of it; having too little is equally bad. However, the question isn't what sort of people Kosovars are. The question is what sort of people we are. Are we people who stand for a civilization based on universal moral principles, beginning with the Golden Rule? Or are we people of hypocrisy and double standards? You who are against the independence of Kosovo, would you ever agree to live under Serbian rule? Honestly? And if you wouldn't, why do you say that Kosovars should? Do we believe and stand for human rights, or just for rights of people whom we like and who resemble us? If we deny rights to people because they are different from us and likely to be a threat to us, aren't we guilty of the same sins in which we accuse our Muslim opponents - supremacy, tribalism and us-versus-them mentality? How can we appeal to Muslims to join our civilization, if we renounce its principles ourselves at the very moment when this seems convenient? Are we ready to defend our society and culture against Islamism, or we consider this a troublesome and dirty job we'd better leave to Serbian war criminals? And while putting on our special hats for thinking in order to answer the above "difficult" questions, let's give Kosovars our congratulations and best wishes for the future of their state. It doesn't matter if this is only in lip service. As I said, political correctness isn't 100% bad.
