Collective Punishment

I want to direct this conversation towards the issue of “Collective Punishment” of people’s.

One recent example is that of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. As you know, I have spoken about the good, bad and ugly of both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

I think this is a hot topic and thus should be put here in the Cage section. Please mind the rules of discussion for this section.

I read today, and it is heart breaking, about the recent Israeli action in Gaza which has caused a humanitarian nightmare that amounts to collective punishment in the viewpoints of many people. I think it serves as a good discussion example (though is not the only example) for us:

(CNN) — Israeli airstrikes pounding Gaza are deepening the humanitarian crisis in an area that was already in deep distress, according to a United Nations aid official.

A man carries a wounded Palestinian boy into a hospital in Gaza City on Sunday.

“The situation is absolutely disastrous,” U.N. official Christopher Gunness told CNN on Sunday, as a second day of aerial attacks brought the death toll in Gaza close to 300. Hundreds more people have been injured.

Israel has said the airstrikes are a necessary self-defense measure after repeated rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel by Hamas militants. Israeli leaders say they are trying to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.

Here are some questions:

What is meant by “collective punishment”?
How can it be avoided?
How should the folks on the receiving end be expected to deal with being punished as a people for the crimes of a faction among them?
What should we do (Muslims, Christians, Jews, whoever) to help when we see conflicts evolve into this?
Should blood be thicker than water and we all side with one side or the other on the basis of religion or nationality, etc?

Give also your opinions and concerns.

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40 Acres and a Mule

So, now that we have a ‘black’ President all of the Black spokespeople and media pundits are having a frenzy. On Larry King they had a number of them to include Dr Martin Luther Kings youngest son.

How many of you think that Obama will finally give each black man his 40 acres and a mule (reparations for slavery mandated by law)?

Do you think Obama will promote the black agenda that Jesse Jackon and Al Sharpton are salivating over?

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Joe Wurzelbacher

It began not long after the video surfaced showing Joe Wurzelbacher question Sen. Barack Obama on his tax and spend schemes to which Obama responded that he wanted to share and spread the wealth – clear indications of his socialist intentions.

The media and the leftists online began a concerted attempt to try and destroy the man who outed Obama on the most important issue of the day – economics.

Now, the story isn’t about Obama’s socialism, but whether Joe is a licensed plumber, whether he’s paid his taxes, say that it’s not his real name (he’s going by his middle name), question whether he’s registered to vote (he is), and it all points to how anyone can dare question Obama’s intentions or expose that he’s a socialist in word and deed.

Joe is now being vetted by the media in…  (More at the link below)

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Undercover Mosque – The Return (Video)

Undercover Mosque – The Return (Video)

Dispatches Program 2008 Report. A continuing report on extremism in UK Mosques building on the 2007 report.

To watch and post discussion or debate: Undercover Mosque – The Return

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Mosque Torture

Chain wrapped around ‘old man’s body’ found in mosque

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — “There are the bloodstains on the wall, and here it is dried on the floor,” Abu Muhanad said as he walked through a torture chamber in a Baghdad mosque where more than two dozen bodies have been found.

“And here, a woman’s shoes. She was a victim of the militia. We found her corpse in the grave.” Chunks of hair waft lazily across the floor in the hot Baghdad breeze.

“This was the torture room,” said Muhanad, the leader of a U.S.-backed armed group that now controls the mosque.

“This is what they used for hanging,” he said, pointing to a cord dangling from the ceiling. “Here is a chain we found tied to an old man’s body.”

The horrific scene at this southwestern Baghdad mosque is what officials say was the work of a Shiite militia known as the Mehdi Army. Residents who live near the mosque say they could hear the victims’ screams.

The militia had been in control of the mosque, called Adib al-Jumaili, from at least January 2007 until May of this year. Residents say coalition forces weren’t in the region and the torture and killings went unchecked.

Some of the victims were accused of being spies for U.S. forces. Other family members don’t know why their loved ones disappeared. The family members at the mosque who spoke to CNN were all Shiite, the same branch of Islam as the Mehdi militia. But, they say, some of the victims were Sunni as well.

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FBI Most Wanted

I read the FBI Most Wanted woman thread with interest and had some thoughts I wanted to post but that killjoy Admin closed the thread whilst I was getting my ducks in a row.

I have no idea if this Siddiqui woman is innocent or guilty. I think she stands a better chance of a fair trial in the US, despite its heightened paranoia than if she had ommitted a crime and been tried in say Afghanistan. However, the US stance of holding endlessly without representation and trial is reprehehnsible and a step backwards in terms of civilisation. in the abc news report there is no mention of her being detained and tortured although other articles suggest she was….we can only hope the truth will out and there will be justice rather than another case of wrong place, wrong time, oh I’ve ended up in Gitmo. I feel sorry for her kids as her young son is being held too. Note however news articles suggest that she as arrested by Afghan police and then handed over – does that make her arrest legitimate?

So I have a question. Having narrowly escaped being a vicitim of the 7/7 london bombings myself by about 15 minutes, I have very little sympathy, well none, for the brothers who wear strap ons. Misguided, stupid and murderous, whether they quote passages from the quran or not. If I had known about it beforehand, if I had known about 9/11 i would definitely have shopped those guys and tried to prevent it.

If I found out something was being planned anywhere I would definitely report it but it appears that preventing an act of murder because its being done in the name of Islam would earn me the enmnity of my fellow muslims. Does it make a difference if its being done in the West, in the land of the so called kuffars even though some of them may sympathise with your viewpoint and the cosmopolitan nature of many of the cities means fellow muslims will certainly be victims. Does it matter? What about attacks in muslim countries, take Pakistan and Iraq for example where muslim victims far outweigh the foreign soldiers (in Pakistan, they are all Pakistani victims). If you knew about it, what would you do?

I was extremely dismayed by the viciousness and hate spewed by some supposedly well educated posters in the previous thread – where have all the sane bros gone??

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Voting for Ralph Nader?

Is anyone planning on or thinking about voting for Nader? I can’t say the idea hasn’t floated in my head.

I’m a registered Democrat and I voted for Obama in the primaries but I don’t know–I’m just not enthusiastic about him anymore. I can’t say that there aren’t any differences between him and McCain but I just don’t know how different he is from other Democrats and frankly, I don’t find the Democrats all too appealing anymore. Yet I feel I would be wasting my vote to vote for Nader. I dunno. What do you all think?

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The Wahhabisation of Pakistan

Extremist ideology, as we have learned in the last 8 years, is just as prone to attract highly-educated members of the professional class as unemployed, frustrated youth. We have to delve deeper into Pakistan’s recent past if we are to understand the crisis it faces at the present. Sub-continental history is dotted with intermittent mass movement of people – usually triggered by famine, war or worse – replete with attendant tales of distress and misery. In my reckoning, the early 1970s saw the another key migration that has so far received little analysis. It involved vast numbers of men from the rural and semi-urban parts of Pakistan moving to the emerging oil-based oligarchies in the Gulf.

Just as significant was the religiosity that came back with the workers. Historically speaking, the Wahhabi reading of Islam had found little purchase on the subcontinent. Mainly because Wahhabi ideology is at odds with practices in Pakistani culture, which cherished its sufi saints. However, this migration allowed a vast population to unlearn their “decadent” and “deviant” practices from the “pure practitioners” in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the Emirates.

In the southern valleys and northern mountains dupattas were replaced with burkas and sufi shrines with madrasas. This cultural turn dovetailed with Zia ul-Haq’s policies of Sunnification and the selling of jihad as a necessary commodity to the Pakistani people.

Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir became the de-facto topics at every Friday sermon from Doha and Riyadh to Dera Ghazi Khan and Rawalpindi. However, this Wahhabisation, which included a stricter, more literal interpretation of Qur’an, the demonisation of non-believers, antisemitic rhetoric, racism, the desire to “fund” jihads and so on, was never a straightforward process of important. Its progress was gradual and organic in a way that slowly de-legitimised established practices while distorting others: the spiritual guide was transformed into one who cast, or fought, black magic.

It is hard to find a household, a conversation, in current day Pakistan that is free of such concerns. The practitioners combine the zeal of the Wahhabi imam with the bank-teller’s command of charges due: $10 for the destruction of a marriage, $20 for an incantation for a ruined libido. All wrapped in literal reading of Qur’anic text.

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U.S. soldier uses Quran for target practice; military apologizes

I think that this type of action is long overdue and that the Military (at least some battle groups) need special education on the who is the enemy. Seems to me that far too many soldiers look at this just like the extremists, that it is a religious war or war against Islam. It is not. It makes me wonder just what propoganda exactly is the military feeding them before they put them out on the battle front?

The occupation of Iraq had little to do with terrorism itself, although it has now become the terrorist training grounds of the world thanks to Pres. Bush.

Soldiers need to understand that they are fighting an insurgency (low level guerilla war) not a religion or a monolithic group of religious zealot terrorist thugs. There are about 26 known terror and insurgent groups in Iraq alone since the invasion and dismantling of the Iraqi army. Some are riding the coat tails of religion and many more are political dissidents and insurgent fighters (formerly Iraqi military).

Shooting up a Quran is like me putting up a Bible and using it for target practice. Its very symbolic of underlying intentions (be it an individual or campaign).

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Let My People Leave

Avraham and I are both Orthodox Jews. He thinks that soldiers who feel they cannot participate in the evacuation of Israeli settlements should follow the dictates of their conscience. I believe that the military duty to follow orders should in this instance take precedence over their opposition to the withdrawal policy-just as I followed orders for many years to protect Israeli settlements in the West Bank, although I thought that it was wrong for Israel to have built them.

How can this be, if we both follow the same creed and we both live in accordance with its precepts? After all, Orthodox Jews believe that God made a gift of the Holy Land to the Jewish people. Therefore, Orthodox Jews must oppose handing over any part of that land to foreigners not as a practical matter of policy but as a matter of religious principle. And they must oppose removing Jews from their homes in these God-given territories. That is, indeed, the logic of a large majority of Orthodox Jews today. So on what basis can I argue that Avraham, and most of my fellow believers, are wrong?

To understand why the settlers and their religious supporters see disengagement as a violation of God’s precepts, one must understand their theology. Any modern Jewish theology must address the significance of the Jewish state in Zion. The Jews have returned to their land-and have established their rule over it-after two millennia of exile. To many believing Jews, it seems obvious that this fulfillment of prophecy and of age-long yearning must have religious meaning.

The lion’s share of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip identify themselves as part of a larger group of observant Jews who call themselves “religious Zionists” and “modern Orthodox.” Religious Zionism embraces a spectrum of religious approaches and philosophies. But in the 1960s and 1970s a large portion of the community’s younger generation was attracted to a particular religious Zionist philosophy associated with the teachings of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook and his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook. These two men developed a comprehensive theology that viewed the Jewish return to Israel as part of a divine process that would lead inevitably to the arrival of the Messiah.

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