There’s something to be said for comedy in these times. It can remove you from what is troubling, or it can make you reflect more, become more introspective with the issues surrounding your life. Jon Stewart fills the gap nicely for the latter, using his routines to provoke a stinging response to the plain idiocy of the world today.
Sometimes however you just find something that is off the charts; it neither makes you laugh nor think, but rather it’s so comically insane all you can do is shout out in anger over the absoluteness craziness of what the author most likely wants you to take seriously. This news story about al-Qaeda’s magazine for women falls into this category. It is something out of a Hollywood script
There are exclusive interviews with martyrs’ wives, who praise their husbands’ decisions to die in suicide attacks.
The slick, 31-page Al-Shamikha magazine – meaning The Majestic Woman – has advice for singletons on ‘marrying a mujahideen’.
Readers are told it is their duty to raise children to be mujahideen ready for jihad.
And the ‘beauty column’ instructs women to stay indoors with their faces covered to keep a ‘clear complexion’.
They should ‘not go out except when necessary’ and wear a niqab for ‘rewards by complying with the command of Allah Almighty’.
No doubt this is a government intelligence operated rag designed to gather as much information as it can from those who buy, read or write to it for future operations, so my advice to you is don’t even ‘go there’. Who’ve read here all that you need to know about it here which is, laugh, bellow or ignore it, but don’t touch it.
Meanwhile on a serious note, Lesley Hazelton continues to impress. We spotlighted her video here on the Quranic interpretation of Paradise, but now she weighs in on the matter of the Islamophobia insanity that’s gripping the world today, by equating it with anti-Semitism. To anyone who has felt the brunt of racist injustice, it is clear it’s the same…that is to say racism directed towards Jews is the same as the kind directed towards Arabs…a social injustice that must be eradicated.
I recognize that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the exact same coin: the stereotyping of millions of people by the actions of a few. That is, prejudice.So it’s particularly painful, let alone absurd and self-defeating and dumb, to see that some Islamophobes are Jewish. And equally painful – and absurd and self-defeating and dumb – to see that some Muslims are anti-Semitic.
“Islam” did not attack the US on 9/11; eighteen people with a particularly twisted and distorted idea of Islam did. “The Jews” do not shoot Palestinian farmers in the West Bank; Bible-spouting settlers with a particularly twisted and distorted idea of Judaism do.
The Quran is no more violent or misogynistic than the Bible. In fact it’s less so. If you insist, as Islamophobes do, on highlighting certain phrases, then you should turn around and do the same with the Bible, which you will find ten times worse, with repeated calls for the destruction of whole peoples. Only the dumbest, most literal, hate-filled fundamentalist, Jewish or Muslim, takes the rules of ancient warfare as a guide to 21st-century life.
Clarity, finally; there’s nothing about this pronouncement that’s funny. It’s short and sweet, to the point and really shames those who’ve given in to the dark side of human behavior and ascribe collective guilt on entire groups of people because of self-harbored hatred, distrust or dislike, and yes it is true every one can be racist if that is what they do.
Miscellany101's Weblog 