Reinterpretation of Islam in Turkey

Re: # 145

zeemax,

.... you might be saying the same thing when musharraf appoints aitizaz ahmed as the law minister and the droopy-eyed chief justice as the ambassador to kazakistan ..... the man is amazing ! .... that's why i am not prepared to count him out ... yet

Re: # 144

tahmed,

... those are fighting words! .... you can say whatever you want about musharraf, but sheikh rashid is a sacred icon and just because the people of pindi got mad at him this time doesn't mean that we don't love him .... his loyalty is to his constituency - in pakistan the only way you can do something for your constituents is if you are in the government ......

musharrafs will come and go, sheikh rashid lives for ever

sheik rashid zindabad !

#143 Posted by tahmed32,

tahmed lemme tell you another interesting fact about this Ansar Burney. Both he and his father had been arrested by the SAME mutarraf in I think year 2000/2001 for trying to get Pakistan's carpet weaving industry banned for export to EU on grounds of child labor and distributing video documentaries in Europe. Now the SAME mutarraf has made him the Federal Minister for Human Rights !!!

#142 i am calling your uncle rashid and the pmlq lotas.

#138 zeemax: this is just another stupid mush gimmick at making himself the good guy..perhaps he would like to explain the crime the Chief Justice is charged with? For refusing to permit one man to toss aside the Pakistan Constitution?!!!

Re: # 140

tahmed,

.... are you calling the ppp (the majority party) musharraf lotas? ..... have you been listening to the way these people are talking out of both sides of their mouths since the elections ? ..... i hope you are right and musharraf goes away, but your hemmaroids have a better chance of disappering miraculously (islam is a tougher nut to crack)

.... by the way, sheikh rashid is thinking of forming his own party because he is pissed off at the chaudharies ....

sheikh rashid aavay ee aavay !

he will be back

#139 masadi says the same thing about the "evil elite".

#137 hamidm: You clutch at straws that PMLN (the political party that has made restoration of the Chief Justice the key issue) will be defeated by these musharraf's lotas. And when questioned, you say "of course i want musharraf to go away".

So - i dont think it is idiotic to assume that you are seriously challenged in your ability to tell wheat from chaff.

tahmed,

maybe this will explain my position in terms you might understand: musharraf is like islam and hemmaroids, you have to learn to live with them ...

Kashmir Singh to be released today ... expected to reach India tomorrow!

LAHORE: Kashmir Singh, an Indian national who has been languishing in prison for the last 35 years on espionage charges, will be released today from the Central Jail, Lahore, and is expected to leave for India the next day.

The Ministry of Interior had issued release orders of Kashmir Singh on Saturday. The release orders have also been sent to the Ansar Burney Trust which are expected to reach the Trust's acting chairman, Syed Fahad Burney, on Monday (today). The organisation is expecting to take Kashmir Singh to India by road on Tuesday through the Wagah border, said Fahad Burney on Sunday.

He said the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, Satyabrata Pal, spoke to Federal Minister for Human Rights Ansar Burney on Saturday and assured him that Singh's travel documents would be issued on Monday and he might return his home on Tuesday.

Paramjit Kaur, Singh's wife who has been struggling for his release since his arrest in 1973, will greet Singh at the Indian side of the Wagah border along with other family members and friends. The family members of Singh at the border will also receive Ansar Burney and staff of the Ansar Burney Trust.

Fahad Burney said many of Singh's excited old friends and well-wishers had started to gather at the border three days before his expected arrival there. He said Singh's release was being seen as a significant step towards improvement in Pakistani-Indian relations.

He said the trust was also working for the release of other Indian nationals, particularly Indian fishermen from the Pakistani prisons. He said the organisation was also searching for the Indian prisoners of war in Pakistani jails.

Singh was traced after 35 years by Ansar Burney during his visit to the Central Jail, Lahore. He had paid this visit as part of his work regarding prisoners' rights and prison reforms. A mercy petition, sent by the human rights minister, was accepted by President Musharraf and Singh was pardoned after 35 years. Ansar Burney thanked the President for his great humanitarian step and expressed hope for release of many other wrongfully imprisoned or forgotten sentenced prisoners in Pakistani prisons.

Ansar Burney has also moved a summary to the President for the creation of a national commission for human rights in Pakistan aimed at locating such prisoners, working for prisoners' rights, prison reforms and dealing with other human rights issues in Pakistan such as discrimination against minorities, human trafficking, slavery, women and children's rights.

This same Ansar Burney, Federal Minister for Human Rights, had proclaimed repeatedly on TV that Aitzaz Ahsan's detention was perfectly legal and did not violate his human rights!

What is this drama bazi?

Re: # 135

tahmed,

... you idiot! (i hope that gets your attention) ... how many times do i have to tell you that i do not support musharraf and i wish he would just go away ..... all i am saying is that you can't count him out that .... the way ppp and pml-n are behaving, i wouldn't be surprised if he is around for another five years ......

Re: # 134

chalta mian,

that's why i advocated the sterlization of the women of jamia hafsa - you have to kill the serpent in the egg .... unfortuntely, musharraf let them go and we now have more than 2000 women who will go on to produce thoudsands of suicide bombers .....

hamidm: The best your hero musharraf can do is keep the Chief Justice, his wife, and his children (including the daughter who was refused permission by the cowardly commando to even to step out to take her high school examinations) in jail for a little while longer. They will be out soon - and will be forever blessed for refusing to be intimidated by these tactics.

But seriously - I am appalled at your inability to tell the difference between wheat and chaff. 40,000 argentinians were "disappeared" by the military government there, and a similar number in chile. That is the direction this man had taken and it obviously means nothing to you!!

This worse than the suicide bombers (who are either mentally disabled or ) or their handlers (who make no bones about their willingness to kill innocent people as they seek to carve their little fiefdom out of Pakistan - you are an intelligent individual with no political ambitions. So what gives, bro? What is it that you know that I dont?

there is no hope

Worshippers of Death
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
March 3, 2008; Page A17

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women's magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya -- the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 -- Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: "if you're not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don't want you."


Zahra Maladan represents a dramatic shift in the way we must fight to protect our citizens against enemies who are sworn to kill them by killing themselves. The traditional paradigm was that mothers who love their children want them to live in peace, marry and produce grandchildren. Women in general, and mothers in particular, were seen as a counterweight to male belligerence. The picture of the mother weeping as her son is led off to battle -- even a just battle -- has been a constant and powerful image.

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women -- some married with infant children -- are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

"We are going to win, because they love life and we love death," said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: "[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah." Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death," explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: "We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid." Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: "It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion."

How should Western democracies fight against an enemy whose leaders preach a preference for death?

The two basic premises of conventional warfare have long been that soldiers and civilians prefer living to dying and can thus be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed; and that combatants (soldiers) can easily be distinguished from noncombatants (women, children, the elderly, the infirm and other ordinary citizens). These premises are being challenged by women like Zahra Maladan. Neither she nor her son -- if he listens to his mother -- can be deterred from killing by the fear of being killed. They must be prevented from succeeding in their ghoulish quest for martyrdom. Prevention, however, carries a high risk of error. The woman walking toward the group of soldiers or civilians might well be an innocent civilian. A moment's hesitation may cost innocent lives. But a failure to hesitate may also have a price.

Late last month, a young female bomber was shot as she approached some shops in central Baghdad. The Iraqi soldier who drew his gun hesitated as the bomber, hands raised, insisted that she wasn't armed. The soldier and a shop owner finally opened fire as she dashed for the stores; she was knocked to the ground but still managed to detonate the bomb, killing three and wounding eight. Had the soldier and other bystanders not called out a warning to others -- and had they not shot her before she could enter the shops -- the death toll certainly would have been higher. Had he not hesitated, it might have been lower.

As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at -- some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor." Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. As Golda Meir once put it: "We can perhaps someday forgive you for killing our children, but we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

Civilian casualties also increase when terrorists operate from within civilian enclaves and hide behind human shields. This relatively new phenomenon undercuts the second basic premise of conventional warfare: Combatants can easily be distinguished from noncombatants. Has Zahra Maladan become a combatant by urging her son to blow himself up? Have the religious leaders who preach a culture of death lost their status as noncombatants? What about "civilians" who willingly allow themselves to be used as human shields? Or their homes as launching pads for terrorist rockets?

The traditional sharp distinction between soldiers in uniform and civilians in nonmilitary garb has given way to a continuum. At the more civilian end are babies and true noncombatants; at the more military end are the religious leaders who incite mass murder; in the middle are ordinary citizens who facilitate, finance or encourage terrorism. There are no hard and fast lines of demarcation, and mistakes are inevitable -- as the terrorists well understand.

We need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous new realities. We cannot simply wait until the son of Zahra Maladan -- and the sons and daughters of hundreds of others like her -- decide to follow his mother's demand. We must stop them before they export their sick and dangerous culture of death to our shores.

Mr. Dershowitz teaches law at Harvard University and is the author of "Finding Jefferson" (Wiley, 2007).

See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on Opinion Journal.

Re: # 131

tahmed,

.... i am not a betting man, but it is 50/50 .... according to sheikh rashid this will be the shortest lived assembly in pakistan's history .... i sincerely hope he is wrong ..... it would be premature to count out musharraf yet ... i already hear the 'unwashed masses' grumbling about the futility of their vote ... as a frustrated ppp jiyala said, "ye sub khusray hain,; bb in mein say wahid mard thi!" .... unfortunately she is dead ....

here is what a pm front runner said yesterday:

LAHORE, March 2: Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, one of the four PPP hopefuls for the office of prime minister, indicated here on Sunday that his party could work with President Pervez Musharraf, in view of the current crisis-like situation.

“One must be able to work with everyone, be it a political party or the president,” Mr Mukhtar told Dawn.

He said at a time when the country was passing through a crisis-like situation, one should try to create harmony among all people, including the president.

Re: # 130

good morning,

.... unfortunately i didn't have time for a proper breakfast today - just a skim milk grande latte and a blueberry muffin from starbucks .....

.... i think islam has much bigger problems than what i have for breakfast - things like: is suicide bombing okay, are women half human, are ahmedis sub human, how long should a beard be, how old can a child be before you have sex with her, the length of shalwars, stones vs. toilet paper, jihad, islamic banking, beheading of apostates, stoning of adulterers, the use of utensils for eating, etc. etc.