Tag Archives: Afghanistan

A glimmer of sanity from Afghanistan

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Humour is a wonderful gift from God. It can be used to puncture the pomposity of self-righteous bombasts and it is particularly satisfying to see it wielded against that most perfect paradigm of pretentious self-righteousness, the Islamist Mullah.

From here:

After a council of Afghan clerics issued restrictive guidelines for women, later embraced by President Hamid Karzai, young Afghans streamed to social media sites to lampoon the rulings, reports BBC Persian’s Tahir Qadiry.

“It’s outrageous,” wrote one young Afghan on his Facebook page.

“The next thing they’ll be saying is that Afghanistan needs to be divided up in two – one half for men and the other half for women.”

This was just one of thousands of comments posted on social media sites by young Afghans this week, after their country’s top religious council said that men and women should not mix at school, work or in other everyday situations.

[…..]

“Ladies, you should not surface on Facebook without a male partner,” wrote Mahnaz Afzal, an Afghan woman currently working in London.

“We have asked the Facebook administrators to create separate profiles for women. You are not allowed to ‘like’ or ‘poke’ someone on Facebook or you will be cursed.”

“Could I please ask the Afghan girls not to comment on my posts unless they have permission from their fathers or husbands or the Ulema council?” one man tweeted.

“Girls are only allowed to access Facebook if they are wearing their burkas!” tweeted another.

On Koran burning

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Burning Korans is never out of the news for very long. Most recently, rioters in Afghanistan killed 12 people after four Korans were burned by the U.S. military because imprisoned terrorists were using them to exchange clandestine messages. That’s three people per Koran. Before that, Pastor Terry Jones decided to burn a Koran for reasons never satisfactorily explained and we have enjoyed a few Burn the Koran days since then.

The Koran is Islam’s “holy book”. What does that mean? Islam’s claim is that the words of the Koran are Allah’s words: it is holy – sublime and pure – because it contains God’s words. Of course, if it doesn’t contain God’s words, it isn’t holy at all: it is a vile deception which contrives to lead those who read it into confusion and perdition – burning is too good for it. As a Christian, I am inclined to the latter view. There may be a middle ground between these extremes, but I suspect not.

We are frequently enjoined to respect Islam; as a Christian, I feel beholden to respect Muslims since they, like everyone else, are made in God’s image. I can’t see much reason to respect the transparently arrant nonsense that is Islam, though.

So, if Islam is not true and the Koran is not holy, there is no more reason to avoid burning it than to avoid burning the Tropic of Cancer and Muslims really should grow up and stop being so over-sensitive. Many won’t, though and that’s why most people would prefer to stick a firecracker up a bull’s nose than burn a Koran.

Nevertheless, occasionally Korans are burned; why?

Sometimes it is accidental; that was probably the case for the latest conflagration in Afghanistan. Its being an accident didn’t lessen the fury of those who were waiting patiently for an excuse – any excuse – to riot, shoot guns in the air, scream, burn flags and murder people.

Sometimes it is an expression of contempt for Islam. That appears to be the case for both Terry Jones and the Burn the Koran crowd. Since Christians are supposed to draw people to Christ through their words and example, it’s difficult to see why a Christian would view burning the Koran as anything but counter-productive to his primary calling. Even burning the Origin of Species to irritate an atheist, although tempting, is something Christians should avoid. Especially during Lent.

A secularist burning a Koran to demonstrate his contempt for all it represents doesn’t seem to me to be such a bad way to exercise freedom of expression, especially since the pyromaniac would be demonstrating the virtue of bravery (or possibly the vice of stupidity) by doing it in the full knowledge that his days of incendiary exploits were likely to be summarily curtailed by those he seeks to enlighten.

To come back to Afghanistan: the latest incidents have persuaded me that, worthy though the attempt to introduce civilisation to barbarism may be, the West no longer has the stomach to exert the force necessary to bring the effort to fruition. Without that, it’s all a tragic waste.

Muslims kill U.N. staff because of Koran Flambé

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The difference between a nutty Christian and a nutty Muslim is that when the nutty Christian loses his head, everyone else gets to keep theirs; with Muslims it’s the reverse.

From here:

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — Stirred up by a trio of angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.

The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — five Nepalese guards and two Europeans, one of them a woman. None were Americans. Early reports, later denied by Afghan officials, said that at least two of the dead had been beheaded.

The attack was the deadliest for the United Nations in Afghanistan since 11 people were killed in 2009, when Taliban suicide bombers invaded a guesthouse in Kabul. It also underscored the latent hostility toward the nine-year foreign presence here, even in a city long considered to be among the safest in Afghanistan — so safe that American troops no longer patrol here in any numbers.

Unable to find Americans on whom to vent their anger, the mob turned instead on the next-best symbol of Western intrusion — the nearby United Nations headquarters. “Some of our colleagues were just hunted down,” said a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, Kieran Dwyer, confirming the attack.

Pastor promotes “Burn the Koran Day”

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Rev. Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Centre, Gainsville, Florida, is celebrating the ninth anniversary of 9/11 by having a “burn the Koran day”:

An American church has been urged to call off a plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks.

Muslim and Christian groups have condemned the protest saying it will only escalate tensions between the two faiths.

But despite death threats to its members, the Florida-based Dove World Outreach Centre has refused to back down.

The controversial church even claims they have received thousands of messages  of support for their stand against what they call an ‘evil religion’.

The church’s pastor Terry Jones has called on other religious groups to join in his ‘International Burn a Koran Day’ on the ninth anniversary of the terror attack on New York city and Washington DC.

‘Islam and Sharia law was responsible for 9/11,’ said Jones.

Unfortunately, even if Rev Jones is correct and Islam is an “evil religion”, his burning of a Koran is more of a political statement – one he has every right to make – than a Christian one: there are no accounts of St. Paul running around burning idols are there? Rev. Jones seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum to social gospel liberals who concentrate their energy on leftist social programs instead of the Gospel; both have made the Gospel subservient to politics.

Meanwhile, General Petraeus is bleating that Rev. Jones is ruining the war effort – although, since war is usually about killing one’s enemies, I can’t quite see how; perhaps he means the appeasement effort:

KABUL—The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.

Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.

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Afghans are responding by burning effigies of Rev. Jones. So far, General Petraeus has not warned the Afghans that any more effigy burning and Rev. Jones will be driven to burning more Korans – my guess is he won’t.

After reading something like this, I am left with the conclusion that Rev. Jones, while his methods may be counter-productive, has his fundamental premise correct:

Afghanistan’s dirty little secret

Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy’s father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to “touch and fondle them,” military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. “The soldiers didn’t understand.”

All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, “Pashtun Sexuality,” startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked – and repulsed.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.

So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia?

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can’t even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

“How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face,” 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. “We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful.”