Quick Roundup of Things That International Political Islam Has Accomplished Today
(1)There's a new terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, and you may have heard of them before:
A group calling itself al-Qaida in Palestine posted a Web video Wednesday denouncing those who "work in the service of the Jews." The 5-minute video contains previously-aired clips of Osama bin Laden and slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as footage of a masked man sitting alongside an automatic weapon and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "My speech is directed against... those who announce blasphemy against Islam and who are allied with enemies of God and religion, and work in the service of the Jews and the Christians," the man said. It was unclear how large or sophisticated the group was, or whether it was indeed linked to al-Qaida. It has never claimed responsibility for any attacks.
We love it when Palestinian terrorists pull this trick. You take a group of regular old terrorists. You give them some weapons that are leaning against the wall, some second-hand uniforms, and a new name. Suddenly, Western journalists are running around talking about this new, scary, "previously unknown terrorist group". Every time it happens, it's like a little mind puzzle: did the seed money come from the EU or UN?
(2) Giggle, giggle:
Deliberate masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has ruled. Khameini, who is Iran's most powerful political and religious figure, was asked on his website : "If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?" "If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a ḥaram (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a ḥaram intentional breaking fasting," the Iranian leader said, posting the reply on his website.
There's a serious side, of course. This is the essence of totalitarianism - government power exercised on the body, with efficient guilt-induced enforcement provided directly by the citizen. This concern with hygiene and proper maintenance of the body is also, in its obsession with bodily fluids, definitionally perverse. For the two or three of you that this will make sense to, you should also consider this brilliant but predictable irony: Michel Foucault famously supported the Islamist Khomeinist Revolution as a form of anti-Western and anti-Enlightenment political action.
A group calling itself al-Qaida in Palestine posted a Web video Wednesday denouncing those who "work in the service of the Jews." The 5-minute video contains previously-aired clips of Osama bin Laden and slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as footage of a masked man sitting alongside an automatic weapon and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "My speech is directed against... those who announce blasphemy against Islam and who are allied with enemies of God and religion, and work in the service of the Jews and the Christians," the man said. It was unclear how large or sophisticated the group was, or whether it was indeed linked to al-Qaida. It has never claimed responsibility for any attacks.
We love it when Palestinian terrorists pull this trick. You take a group of regular old terrorists. You give them some weapons that are leaning against the wall, some second-hand uniforms, and a new name. Suddenly, Western journalists are running around talking about this new, scary, "previously unknown terrorist group". Every time it happens, it's like a little mind puzzle: did the seed money come from the EU or UN?
(2) Giggle, giggle:
Deliberate masturbation during the month of Ramadan renders a fast invalid, Iranian Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khameini has ruled. Khameini, who is Iran's most powerful political and religious figure, was asked on his website : "If somebody masturbates during the month of Ramadan but without any discharge, is his fasting invalidated?" "If he do not intend masturbation and discharging semen and nothing is discharged, his fasting is correct even though he has done a ḥaram (forbidden) act. But, if he intends masturbation or he knows that he usually discharges semen by this process and semen really comes out, it is a ḥaram intentional breaking fasting," the Iranian leader said, posting the reply on his website.
There's a serious side, of course. This is the essence of totalitarianism - government power exercised on the body, with efficient guilt-induced enforcement provided directly by the citizen. This concern with hygiene and proper maintenance of the body is also, in its obsession with bodily fluids, definitionally perverse. For the two or three of you that this will make sense to, you should also consider this brilliant but predictable irony: Michel Foucault famously supported the Islamist Khomeinist Revolution as a form of anti-Western and anti-Enlightenment political action.
