This is an auto play thing. Watch each segment in order here. Well worth it.
Hat tip Jdamn
Category Archives: Apostacy
Video on persecution of Christians within Islamic lands.
DIana West: Islam today in Harvard yard.
Apr 15
Photo: Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser, ’96, who believes there is “great wisdom” in the death penalty for converting from Islam.
From the Internet to the media, slowly: Yesterday’s Harvard Crimson carried a story on the Harvard Islamic chaplain’s support for capital punishment for Muslims who leave Islam as revealed in an email the chaplain “allegedly” wrote. (We’re still at “allegedly”–although no one, including the chaplain, has disputed the authorship of the email.) I posted the story here on April 4. What caught my eye in this week’s Crimson story was the “clarification” flagged at the bottom of the following Crimson paragraph:
“I believe he doesn’t belong as the official chaplain,” said one Islamic student, who asked that he not be named to avoid conflicts with Muslim religious authorities. “If the Christian ministers said that people who converted from Christianity should be killed, don’t you think the University should do something?” [SEE CLARIFICATION BELOW]
Scrolling down, I found it:
CLARIFICATION: The April 14 article “Chaplain’s E-mail Sparks Controversy” included a quotation from a named Harvard student, who was later granted anonymity when he revealed that his words could bring him into serious conflict with Muslim religious authorities.
Got that? For opposing death for apostasy, for opposing the Islamic chaplain’s continued tenure based on said chaplain’s support for death for apostasy, a Harvard Muslim student felt compelled to call up the Crimson to seek post-publication anonymity to avoid coming into “serious conflict with Muslim religious authorities.”
This isn’t the Swat Valley. This isn’t Taliban-controlled Afghanistan–or, for that matter, Karzai-controlled Afghanistan. This isn’t Iran. This isnt Iraq. This is what sharia creep looks like in America…in Harvard Yard.
Egypt church issues first conversion certificate
There is no compulsion in Islam. Of course, if a Muslim wishes to change his or her religion, they will be compelled to go through the courts to do it.
CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church has for the first time issued a certificate of conversion to a Muslim-born Christian, his lawyer said, in a country where religious conversion is highly sensitive.Maher al-Gohari, who is seeking to change his religion on his official documents from Muslim to Christian was asked by a court to provide a conversion certificate from the Egyptian church.”He handed it in today,” Nabil Gabriel told AFP. “It is the first time the church provides this sort of certificate.”In Egypt, citizens are required to carry their personal ID cards at all times. Without an ID card, one has no access to basic services.It is only the second time that such a request has been formally made in a country where converting to Christianity, while not illegal, is practically impossible.Last year, a court rejected a request by a Christian convert from Islam, Mohammed Higazi, to have his new religion written on his identity card.Highlighting the sensitivity of the topic, the church would not comment on Gohari’s case specifically.”In general, the church cannot turn away anyone who reaches out to it, otherwise it would be abandoning one its role as a church.”Tensions often run high between Egypt’s Muslim and Christian communities in an increasingly religious society dominated by Sunni Muslims.Egypt’s Copts — the largest Christian community in the Middle East — account for an estimated six to 10 percent of the country’s 80 million inhabitants.
Is freedom subjective? This post verbatim from Gates of Vienna.
Is Freedom Subjective?
by Dymphna
On March 14th, Ehsan Jami, a politician in the Netherlands, was in Denmark to accept the Danish Free Press award. What follows below his is speech at that event.
Before you watch it, here’s some background on Mr. Jami. He is a former Muslim, a naturalized Dutch citizen, and the co-founder of the Central Committee for Ex-Muslims.
Ehsan Jami was born in Iran, to an upper-class family, in 1985. His father was a doctor and politically active, which forced the family out of the country. They landed in the Netherlands when Mr. Jami was nine years old.
It wasn’t until after 9/11 that he began to read the holy books of Islam. His father was nominally Muslim and his mother was a Christian. As he began to question the tenets of Islam, he says the greatest gift his family gave him was the freedom to ask questions and to choose. He found Islam unacceptable; at some point he identified himself as an atheist.
By 2007, having gone public with his denunciation of Islam, he was aggressive in his founding of the Committee for ex-Muslims.
In late 2008, Mr. Jami made the infamous film “An Interview with Mohammed”, which you can see here.
Predictably, he was beaten up, threatened with death, and lives in hiding. He quit school. Because of the large immigrant student population, Ehsan Jami is not safe, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders are not safe.
Here is his speech on March 14th, at the Danish Free Press Society’s award ceremony:
Ehsan Jami from Snaphanen on Vimeo.
Mr. Jami says many things you’ve heard before; perhaps sentiments you have expressed yourself. However, I trust you are not in hiding, or living in the presence of bodyguards because of saying these things.
I won’t go through the whole thing, but there were several points he made that struck me, coming as they do from someone who was born and raised in Mashhad, Iran. Next to Mecca, this is the holiest city of the Shi’ite Muslims. His has been a long path to Copenhagen.
Most of what I say will be paraphrases; I’m not fast at dictation so I took some short-cuts, some of which I had trouble deciphering afterwards. But I think I did get the gist of what Mr. Jami wanted to get across to his audience and to us.
These are the things he said which most stood out for me. They may not be what you find most memorable, but I’d like to hear from people about that: what stood out for you?
Before beginning his speech, he dedicated his award to his mother, expressing his gratitude to her for allowing him to decide his own religious path. After the government put him under security, it was she who came to visit him. You can hear how isolated he felt.
Continue Reading →
The actual UN resolution on ‘defamation of religion’
Below is a PDF of the actual UN resolution up for voting at the general assembly. Most of the language is innocuous and seemingly harmless. Much of it however states what the real goal is. I think when reading this, it’s important to realize that the Organization of Islamic councils, the 57 odd Islamic states that sponsored this resolution, have no intention, nor will they ever have any intention, of obeying it in the manner we would expect by its wording. That any attempt to remove incitement to genocide against the Jews for example in Saudi and other Islamic nation’s school text books would be seen as defamation of Islam as this is central dogma to Koran and the hadiths etc. In other words, while the west would have to be sure to criminalize any criticism of Islam, it’s followers or any action by Muslims in the name of Islam we may view as anti social or anti progressive, Muslim nations would be safe from these laws as they would in fact, be practicing Islam by breaking these same rules.
Classic Al Taqiyya. Nearly identical strategy to the peace deal signed by the Marines under Jefferson at Tripoli where the English one said one thing and the Arabic one said quite another.
human_rights_council_resolution <—- Here is the actual document as a .pdf
To be clear, this document if passed, would put pressure on all world governments to pass laws making any criticism of Islam, its actions and teachings as criminal, while it would make no difference in the Islamic world at all when it comes to tolerance of secularism, homosexuality apostasy or conversion from Islam to other faiths or tolerance of non Muslims within Muslim and ultimately any nation.
It is also no accident that this is in front of the UN general assembly as it warms up for the Superbowl of antisemitism, Durban II in April.
Please see the excellent Christopher Hitchens video on this matter as he appeared on US national TV as well as any of the dozen or so posts videos and articles on all points I refer to.
To quote the most excellent movie ‘Life of Brian’…
“Something is actually happening Reg”
Perhaps it might be worth noting that the enlightenment and all rights freedoms and even technology we have came about by the hard won right to question the authority of the irrational Catholic church. To see it all end by the newly minted authority of the umma through the UN and other institutions presumably designed to preserve and increase world wide freedom, would be a tragedy of unimaginable proportions.
Perhaps this is why so few seem to fight it. It is so huge, we resist seeing it for what it is.
Tariq Ramadan meets Chris Hitchens. Hitchens is consistent. Can’t say the same for Tariq
Islamism Goes Mainstream My evening with Tariq Ramadan.
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2007, at 1:29 PM ET
MANTUA, Italy—A literary festival in the ancient capital city of Lombardy is as good a place as any other to survey the question of whether there is such a thing as “Western civilization” and whether it is worth defending. Here the poet Virgil was born, and here you can see the frescoes of Andrea Mantegna, painted for his feudal patrons the Gonzagas. But the great sacking of the city, which left Mantegna’s work as almost the only surviving treasure, was undertaken by a Christian emperor. And it was here, in 1459, that Pope Pius II held a “diet” to proclaim yet another crusade—this time against the Turks.
I had come here to defend atheism and secularism in general but also to have a debate with Tariq Ramadan, an Islamist academic domiciled in Geneva, who has emerged as the most sinuous and dexterous of the “interpreters” of Muslim fundamentalism to the West. He eventually declined our original debate, but there was nothing to stop me from attending his event and trying to re-stage our canceled confrontation from the floor.
Osama Bin Laden may be softly “mainstreaming,” but someone forgot to tell the converts. Anne Applebaum praised Ayaan Hirsi Ali for her role in reconciling secular government with Islam. Lee Smith wondered if today’s moderate Muslim leaders were doing enough. Bin Laden isn’t the only one looking ridiculous trying to sell out to the American public: Bob Dylan was caught by Seth Stevenson in 2004.
French author Caroline Fourest has made an intensive study of Ramadan’s discrepant appearances in Europe and in the Muslim world, and has concluded that he speaks with a forked tongue and deliberately gives different impressions to different audiences. Having listened to him, I would say that the problem is not quite that. He possesses a command of postmodern and sociological jargon (of the sort that you may easily recognize by its repetitive use of the terms space and discourse to delineate the arena of thinkable debate), and he has a smooth way with euphemism.
Thus, he tells Egyptian television that the destruction of the Israeli state is for the moment “impossible” and in Mantua described the idea of stoning adulterous women as “unimplementable.” This is something less than a full condemnation, but he is quick to say that simple condemnation of such things would reduce his own “credibility” in the eyes of a Muslim audience that, or so he claims, he wants to modernize by stealth.
Escape from Hamas. video
[kaltura-widget wid=”bliyfz60ao” width=”410″ height=”364″ addpermission=”3″ editpermission=”3″ /]Fox TV special about the son of a leader of Hamas who converted to Christianity and now surfs the beaches of Los Angeles. Seems an easy choice to me. A C4 sweater or a life on a California beach. Anyway interesting video.
Egyptian police torture, rape convert to Christianity from Islam
Egyptian police torture, rape convert to Christianity from Islam
From DhimmiWatch
Recently in the Hate Mail bag I received a missive berating me for not acknowledging Egypt as a “moderate Muslim country.”
“Egyptian Convert to Christianity Tortured, Raped in Egypt,” from AINA, December 20 (thanks to Pamela):
(AINA) — Martha Samuel, an Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity 5 years ago, was arrested at Cairo airport on Wednesday as she and her husband and two sons (4 and 2) were leaving for Russia (AINA 12-17-2008). Her name was on the observation list of people prevented from leaving the country.The Egypt for Christ Ministry is reporting that Martha Samuel has been subjected to sexual assault by Egyptian police officers at El-Nozha police station as well as at the National Security office in Heliopolis. She has also been beaten and tortured in an attempt to force her to return to Islam. The police have promised to release her if she returns to Islam.
Martha Samuel and her children, who are also under arrest, is to be transferred from the National Security office in Heliopolis to Al-Qanater prison after seeing the “renewal judge.” The children are not being provided with food deliberately to pressure their mother to return to Islam. Fadl Thabet, Martha’s husband, has been taken to the National Security office in Alexandria (Somoha District).
Martha Samuel, whose former name is Zainab Said Abdel-Aziz, and her family were trying to travel to Russia using a passport of her Christian name, in order to escape from the continuous persecution by the Egyptian police and her own family, who have been trying to kill her for 5 years as a result of her conversion.
UK Conference of Ex Muslims with video. At last a bit of good news
This blog lists links to several organizations of ex Muslims. Its important to state and perhaps I do not do so often enough, we, the writers of Vlad stand against the ideas philosophy and teachings of Islam and its practice. Not anything inherent in the people born in the middle east the same as we hold no malice to Germans who are not currently Nazis or Russians who are not promoting a global communist agenda when that was an issue.
This conference should be celebrated and supported. A conference of people born to Islam and realizing the horrors of it left Islam. As you may know, they risk death according to Sharia law for leaving ‘the one true faith’.
At the end I posted one of the videos from this conference as well as a link to the rest.
I chose this one as Richard Dawkins is the single best writer on the subject of evolution. For those who do not know him, the book, ‘The Selfish Gene’ is a staggeringly good read on this subject.
Eeyore for Vlad
Free to think for themselves
At a gathering of courageous ex-Muslims, the value of rational thought and personal choice were triumphantly reaffirmed
I enjoyed a rare privilege last Friday, October 10 (which was world day against the death penalty), attending a gathering of brave and principled people to whom the death penalty might be applied in a number of countries around the world because of their beliefs or lack of them. This was the conference organised the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain to discuss apostasy – the “crime” of which all members of the Council are guilty – and associated questions about the place of religion and free thought in civil society.
The members of the Council of Ex-Muslims are people who, having thought things through for themselves, have put aside the religion they were made to accept as children – a common enough feature of the adult attainment of reason among many – but in this case the religion is Islam, which regards apostasy as punishable by death.
I wonder how many reading these words have sat in a gathering of people not a few of whom have received death threats because they think for themselves, and who have chosen a path not only personally dangerous but full of difficulty in relation to their families and communities – and who have done so because of reflectively chosen principle. It is a striking experience. In our relatively peaceful and tolerant western dispensations, disagreements of principle are rarely matters of murder; which is why some people find themselves incapable of grasping what last Friday’s gathering signified.
The symbolic import of the conference was great; the substance of the discussions was absorbing and important. It was about the nature of apostasy, the freedom to choose whether or not to have a religion, and to criticise religion whether or not one subscribes to it; the question whether there should be one and the same law for all or whether Britain’s Muslim minority should be allowed to apply sharia law to itself; and the question of faith schools, religious education and creationist doctrine. The themes all related to the place of the individual in civil society, and whether religious doctrine should be allowed to impose itself on those unwilling to be governed by it or – as with children – powerless to resist it.