RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2011/12/29/the_justice_departments_identity_problem/print

Is there, or should there ever be, a point when a state is no longer penalized for its discriminatory past?

Not according to the Department of Justice, which last Friday rejected a South Carolina law that would have required voters show a valid photo ID before casting their ballots.

Justice says the law discriminates against minorities. The Obama administration said, “South Carolina’s law didn’t meet the burden under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices preventing blacks from voting.” Why South Carolina? Because, the Justice Department contends, it’s tasked with approving voting changes in states that have failed in the past to protect the rights of blacks.

Are they serious?

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/12/29/republican_voters_choices/print

“There are no guarantees, no matter whom the Republicans vote for in the primaries. Why not vote for the candidate who has shown the best track record of accomplishments, both in office and in the debates? That is Newt Gingrich. With all his shortcomings, his record shows that he knows how to get the job done in Washington.”

No one seems to be really happy with this year’s field of Republican candidates for that party’s presidential nomination — except perhaps the Democrats.

The sudden rise, and equally sudden fall, of a succession of Republican front-runners is just one sign of the dissatisfaction of the Republican voters with this field of candidates.

In this, as in many other aspects of life, we can only make our choice among the options actually available. So Republican voters who want to be realistic need to understand that they are going to end up with qualms and nagging doubts about whomever they pick this time.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/28/shock-horror-saudi-textbooks-teach-islam/

Shock Horror: Saudi Textbooks Teach Islam!

Catherine Herridge of Fox News reported last week that “despite Saudi Arabia’s promises to clean up textbooks in the kingdom, recent editions continue to raise alarms in the West over jihadist language.” The story of the Saudis’ supposed duplicity has been circulating widely, but what is more surprising than the contents of the Saudi textbooks is that anyone would be surprised by them. The Saudi textbooks teach Islam. What else did anyone expect?

Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, correctly pointed out that “this is where terrorism starts, in the education system.” He stated, quite rightly, that “if you teach 6 million children in these important years of their lives, if you install that in their brain, no wonder we have so many Saudi suicide bombers.”

But there is nothing in the least unusual about what the Saudis are teaching given the fact that the official religion of the Kingdom is Islam. For example, Al-Ahmed explained that tenth-grade textbooks “show students how to cut [the] hand and the feet of a thief.”

Why not? The Qur’an says: “As for the thief, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is the reward of their own deeds, an exemplary punishment from Allah. Allah is Mighty, Wise” (5:38). Is the problem that tenth graders are too young to learn this sort of thing? But why should anyone be too young to learn the ins and outs of the eternal and perfect law designed by the supreme being for all human societies in all times and places?

Al-Ahmed also noted that a ninth-grade text called on Muslims to kill Jews in order to bring about the hour of judgment: “The hour [of judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. … There is a Jew behind me come and kill him.”

Here again, why is anyone surprised? The hadith collection that Muslims consider most reliable, Sahih Bukhari, quotes Muhammad saying this: “Allah’s Apostle said, The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him’” (4.52.177).

Should Saudi ninth graders not be learning about what they must do in order to bring about the blessed day and hour in which all things will be consummated and the golden age will dawn? Yes, it’s genocidal, anti-Semitic and monstrous, but then again, so is the original statement attributed to Muhammad. To condemn the Saudi textbooks is to condemn Muhammad and Islam. Yet the mainstream media stories that wrung their hands over the Saudi textbooks never pointed out that the noxious elements of those textbooks came straight from the Qur’an and the Islamic prophet.

Instead, the media reports pretended that the Saudis had cooked all this up themselves. That would certainly be a comforting thought, for then the problem could – at least theoretically – be isolated and contained, and one would hope that cooler heads would prevail in Riyadh and genuine reform ultimately undertaken. Reality is much less comforting, because of one central fact that no one wishes to acknowledge or consider in its implications: anywhere and everywhere Islam is taught, this kind of hatred and violence could be taught.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=251330 Because land on which most settlements are built is not agriculturally useful, Arabs did not claim ownership until recently. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s assertion that Jews would not be allowed to build on private Palestinian land is a long-standing policy endorsed by Israeli governments and the judicial system. The question, however, is what constitutes […]

All-American Muslim? Posted By Bruce Bawer

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/28/all-american-muslim-2/

The other day the New York Times invited a few contributors to answer the question “Is America’s religious freedom under threat?” The answer provided by Salam Al-Marayati, head of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), in an essay entitled “A Campaign Against Patriotic Muslims,” was a resounding yes – at least, that is, where his co-religionists are concerned. Among Al-Marayati’s assertions: “religious freedom for the Muslim American is under threat….Today’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is eerily similar to the pre-Nazi rhetoric against Jews….Hate against Muslim children in elementary and secondary schools is on the rise.” There is, insisted Al-Marayati, “an inquisition mentality toward America’s Muslims.”

People who have written books critical of Islam were described by Al-Marayati as “Muslim-haters” whose “work is reminiscent of the pre-Nazi propaganda…that regarded Judaism as a threat to Germany.” Al-Marayati railed about the controversy over the TLC reality show “All-American Muslim,” which, he sneered, “became a controversy because it did not include a terrorist.” America, he claimed, is being misled by those who, refusing to define American Islam by what he called its “mainstream,” insist rather on viewing it “through the lens of extremism.” “I love my faith and I love my country,” maintained Al-Marayati at the end of his piece. “The fact that some readers still question which country I am referring to indicates a serious level of distrust toward Muslim Americans.”

This isn’t the first time Al-Marayati has pleaded for American non-Muslims to reject “Muslim-haters” and recognize the compatibility of the Koran and the Constitution, Islamic law and Jeffersonian democracy. A couple of years ago he informed readers of the Huffington Post that “Islamic law has five goals accepted by all the scholars of Islam: securing and developing rights to life, expression, faith, family and property. That’s similar to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.” The concluding flourish of his Huff Po article was almost identical to that of his Times piece: “I am an American. I am a Muslim. I will work for a better future for all Americans and Muslims worldwide.”

Deconstructing the State Posted By David Solway

http://pjmedia.com/blog/deconstructing-the-state/

For the sensibility of the contemporary Left, the State (generally capitalized) assumes the aura of a sacred object, revered as idols were once worshiped in the pagan world. That what is meant by the State is merely a conceptual abstraction, a phenomenon that has no material existence as a locatable entity — in effect, a disembodied idol — does not register. This error of understanding, of course, is not confined exclusively to the mentality of the Left, but it is there that it gains most traction.

Francis Bacon in the Novum Organum [1] isolates the four chief causes of error in human thinking. He defines these as Idols of the Tribe (weakness of understanding in the whole human race), Idols of the Forum (faults of language in the communication of ideas), Idols of the Cave (individual prejudices and mental defects), and Idols of the Theater (faults arising from received systems of philosophy).

http://news.yahoo.com/palestinians-stake-claim-hebron-holy-044133477.html
THIS IS A BLOT ON THE LEGACY OF NETANYAHU WHO SURRENDERED HEBRON AT WYE PLANTATION….RSK

After his release from an Israeli jail, Barakeh Taha could finally marry and held the wedding at a disputed West Bank site holy to Muslims and Jews where tension once led to a massacre of unarmed Palestinians.

No random choice, Taha aimed to back a Palestinian campaign to claim heritage rights over an ancient burial cave in the heart of Hebron’s Old City.

Known to Muslims as the Ibrahami Mosque and to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs, the landmark is venerated in both religions as the gravesite of the Biblical patriarch Abraham and his family. It is long claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians.

http://news.yahoo.com/iranian-president-visit-venezuela-cuba-131516559.html

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to visit Venezuela and Cuba as part of a four-nation Latin America tour in the second week of January 2012, an official said Wednesday.

Ahmadinejad will also visit Nicaragua and Ecuador on the trip, his international affairs director, Mohammad Reza Forghani, told the official news agency IRNA.

All the countries are left-leaning and share an ideological antagonism towards Iran’s arch-foe, the United States.

“Mr Ahmadinejad will first go to Caracas to visit (Venezuelan President) Hugo Chavez,” Forghani said, confirming an announcement made Tuesday by Chavez.

“He will then go to the swearing-in ceremonies for Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has been re-elected,” he said.

Ahmadinejad will then travel to Cuba and to Ecuador, where he will hold talks with the respective leaders.

Iran has been seeking to boost its ties with sympathetic Latin American countries in recent years, to the concern of the United States.

The trip was announced ahead of new sanctions expected to be imposed by the United States and Europe on Iran’s oil and financial sectors in a bid to halt Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577010123241931862.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

If you want a good laugh, read the holiday card sent out by Saudi Ambassador to the United States and public relations genius Adel al-Jubeir. Citing a Quranic verse, he writes “Behold, the angels said: ‘O Mary, God giveth thee glad tidings of a Word from Him: his name will be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honour in this world and hereafter and of (the company of) those nearest to God.'”

Christmas greetings from an ambassador whose government prohibits Christians from worshiping publicly, building churches, wearing crosses or importing Bibles. Invoking the names of Mary and Jesus while representing a government that this year beheaded Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar and Abdul Hamid Al Fakki for “witchcraft.”

Saudi Arabia has perfected the art of cognitive dissonance—or, in plain English, hypocrisy. For example, Saudi Education Minister Faisal bin Abdullah bin Mohammed recently spoke at the Saudi-U.S. Business Opportunities Forum in Atlanta. The Saudi Embassy reported that “Prince Faisal characterized the educational system in the Kingdom as a model for the Middle East and North Africa.”

God help us if that’s true. An eighth-grade textbook currently published by the Saudi Education Ministry declares “The Apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews; and the Swine are the infidels of the communion of Jesus, the Christians.” A ninth-grade textbook echoes “The Jews and the Christians are enemies of the believers, and they cannot approve of Muslims.” Six million schoolchildren are indoctrinated with this every year in Saudi Arabia.

Had Jesus been born in Saudi Arabia today, he’d likely be imprisoned, flogged or beheaded.

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-okays-130-homes-east-jerusalem-005524067.html

Jerusalem municipality on Wednesday approved plans for another 130 housing units in Gilo, a settlement neighbourhood in the annexed eastern sector of the Holy City, a city councillor told AFP.

Pepe Alalu of the left-wing Meretz party said the district planning committee had given the green light to a project to build 130 homes in three 12-storey tower blocks on the eastern outskirts of Gilo which lies just a few kilometres (miles) north of Bethlehem.

“An agreement has been reached for construction of 130 apartments in three towers of 12 storeys each,” he told AFP, saying it was the second stage of approval meaning construction was likely to begin “in about three years.”

The Gilo project received initial approval in November last year, in a move which the Palestinians said was an attempt to further isolate Bethlehem from east Jerusalem.

On November 1, Israel’s inner cabinet decided to speed up construction of homes for Jews in Arab east Jerusalem and in other nearby settlements to punish the Palestinians for winning membership in the UN cultural agency, UNESCO.

Since then, Israel has issued announcements for 2,057 new homes in Arab east Jerusalem and 1,241 in the West Bank, official figures show.

Israel’s settlement building is one of the most intractable disputes of the conflict with the Palestinians and has frequently floored efforts to broker a peaceful solution.

Direct talks broke down in autumn 2010 after Israel failed to extended a temporary freeze on new West Bank construction with the Palestinians refusing to talk unless they renewed it and also extended the ban to east Jerusalem.

More than 310,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the number is constantly growing.

Another 200,000 live in a dozen settlement neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in 1967 and annexed in a move never recognised internationally.

The international community considers all settlements in territories occupied by Israel since June 1967 to be illegal, whether or not approved by its government.