December 23, 2010
Israel's Enemy is America's Enemy
The Grand Mufti, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini collaborated with Hitler, organized Muslim SS troops, and cheerfully toured death camps, promising to use the same genocidal model against the Jews in Israel. Terrorist leader Yassir Arrafat played kissy face with Saddam Hussein and then with Iran's Ayatollah Khomenei.
The most excellent Elder of Ziyon has, for a long time, argued that we must push back against the media savvy Jew-haters with powerful graphics that tell our story in one simple glance. All too often, our side relies on lengthy, well reasoned articles that few people have the time or inclination to read or absorb.
We live in the age of drive-by opinions and as such, we have to play on that field and cease relying on the old, tired models of public persuasion.
Elder of Ziyon has been taking his own advice and created several posters that push back against the jihadist narrative. This is his very best effort.
For Elder of Ziyon's original, please click here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:35 AM in Israel | Comments (0)
December 22, 2010
Harry Potter Actress Afshan Azad in Hiding
Actress Afshan Azad is in permanent hiding.
My colleagues in the film business absolutely a-dore causes.
They sport really cute AIDS and breast cancer ribbons at every opportunity. Global warming—rebranded as climate change—is, natch, the fashion forward cocktail shmooze of the moment. Park in any studio lot and you'll see a dozen “Free Tibet” bumper stickers, as if Tibet will ever be free from the mass murdering Chinese.
But talk to film people about the oppression of women in the Muslim world, specifically honor killings, and you'll be met with either blank stares or a stumbling explanation about the moral complexities of judging third world cultures.
In short, western liberals, most notably so-called feminists, have abandoned the human rights of Muslim women in the name of multicultural gibberish. It's okay to let women be slaughtered by their fanatic families because we, as depraved western oppressors, have no right to tell the natives how to live.
Which is a pretty good description of dhimmitude.
In fact, western liberals are the perfect dhimmis. Accepting and condoning the violence of Muslims is exactly what the Islamists want. Why do you think it's a hate crime to burn a Koran, but urinating on a statue of Jesus is considered art?
The reason liberals can moan about Tibet is because they really don't have to do anything. Just slap on the dopey bumper sticker and yadda-yadda about what a great guy is the Dalai Lama and your progressive credentials are totally up to date. You can go to your yoga class or faculty meeting and feel the love. Liberals are not going to go up against the ruthless and murderous Chinese who have turned Tibet into a killing field. They just want to feel good about themselves. It's the nirvana of self-righteousness liberals seek.
But to confront Islam, violent and fanatic, actually takes courage. Because, let's face it, Islamists are homicidal maniacs who take great pride in rioting, maiming, raping, torturing and beheading. Why else do you think they go to such lengths to broadcast their atrocities on You Tube?
And now that one of Hollywood's own, Afshan Azad, 22, a fine young actress, is in hiding because her father and brother are determined to murder her, well, I'm sure Hollywood will sigh with compassion, and then move on because the part can always be recast.
This moral nothingness perfectly compliments the barbarism of the Islamist world. One cannot survive without the other. They are, in clinical terms, enablers.
Phyllis Chesler, who bravely and tirelessly writes about honor killings, puts the horrifying Afshan Azad case in perspective.
Afshan Azad, 22, the high-profile Harry Potter actress remains in hiding after refusing to appear in a London court. Ms. Azad had been seeing a non-Muslim man, a Hindu. Her family, specifically her father, Abul Azad, 53, and her brother Ashraf, 28, called her a “prostitute” and tried to force her into an arranged marriage with a Muslim man. Her brother also beat and her father threatened to kill her in May of this year. She escaped her family home and has been in hiding ever since. According to the Telegraph, she refused to testify against her family, saying that doing so would endanger her further. Apparently the British police tried but failed to persuade Ms. Azad to testify.
Full article here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:46 AM in Honor Killings | Comments (11)
December 21, 2010
Harry Potter Actress Beaten and Branded a Prostitute by Her Family After Dating a Non-Muslim…
Harry Potter actress Afshan Azad
The only thing notable about this story is that it's being reported.
And the only reason it's being reported is because Ms. Azad is an actress in one of the most popular franchises in movie history.
In fact, all over the Muslim world, every day, every hour, every minute, women are raped, beaten, tortured and murdered all in the name of Islam.
The horrific abuses against women that are part and parcel of the Islamist world are, of course, ignored by the self-righteous guardians of human rights and so-called feminists.
The international left has become a perfect reflection of an Orwellian world where war is peace, hate is love, and good is evil. In fact, the dystopian Ministry of Truth has been institutionalized in that august body of the UN and the various so-called human rights groups that are nothing more than rubber stamps for Jew-hating regimes. The thoughtcrimes of which Orwell warned are now embodied by the leftist narrative. For what is “Islamophobia” but a fantasy invented by Islamists as a way of short-circuiting the means by which the west can articulate and defend itself against the juggernaut of transnational jihad.
The two minutes of hate that were reserved for Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984—it's no accident that Orwell chose a Jew as the symbolic enemy of the collectivist state—has morphed into a 24/7 blood libel against Israel and Judaism.
It's the fashion to attack the Jewish State as an abuser of human rights when in truth Israel is a model of decency and democracy surrounded by Muslim totalitarian states whose social and religious policies are the most oppressive and cruel on the face of the earth.
It's important to understand that the Islamist world and its leftist enablers—groups such as CAIR are fronts for the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas—always couch their arguments in the rhetoric of human rights. But we must vigorously push back and unmask the lies, cruelty and bigotry that are the bedrock of the Islamist movement.
What's happening to Ms. Azad is the norm in the Muslim world. To deny this fact is a crime against women and a crime against humanity.
A Harry Potter actress was beaten, called a ‘slag’ and threatened with death by members of her family after she met a young man who was not a Muslim, a court heard today.
Victim Afshan Azad, 22, played Padma Patil, a classmate of the teenage wizard, in the blockbuster Hollywood films based on the children’s books by JK Rowling.
She was assaulted and branded a ‘prostitute’ after meeting a young Hindu man, a relationship which brought anger from her father, Abul Azad, 53, and brother, Ashraf, 28, Manchester Crown Court heard.
The frightened star, who has featured in four of the popular films, later fled through her bedroom window after threats were made to kill her.
Full story here.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 10:43 AM in Honor Killings | Comments (10)
December 20, 2010
Jewish Witchcraft at Guantanamo
Sex crazed felines brought to you by the Jooz.
It's tempting to dismiss this story as just another lunatic fantasy from the Islamic world, but that would be a mistake.
A huge portion of the Muslim world is steeped in such delusions. And those who do not believe in them do nothing to discourage their propagation.
The Jew-hatred—and if you think it's simply anti-Zionism than you are either naive or in denial—that permeates the Arab Muslim world is simply the means by which a future genocide of the Jewish people can be justified, primarily through the destruction of the State of Israel.
And of course, every murder of a Jew by a Muslim is excused under the fashionable banner of a faux national identity—there has never been a Palestinian people, only a geographical designation invented by the Romans—when, in fact, the Arab Muslim terrorist war against the Jewish State is primarily a racist, religious war of elimination.
The Nazis pioneered this propaganda format wherein Jews are reduced to non-human status, yet at the same time, Jews are endowed with superhuman capabilities and held responsible for, well, everything: they are alternately capitalist, communist or parasite. And now, tailored to the modern yet medieval Islamist mind, witchcraft is thrown into the toxic brew. Don't try to make sense of these colliding ideas, to the Jew-hater it's all resolved in some grand conspiracy theory that no amount of rational thought can penetrate. Not surprisingly, this charge of witchcraft is just a new and novel update of the classic European Christian blood libel.
Note that this interview aired on Al-Jazeera, the, ahem, respectable CNN of the Arab Muslim world:
(MEMRI)- The following are excerpts from an interview with Walid Muhammad Hajj a Sudanese released from Guantanamo Prison, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on December 12, 2010:
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Yes. The most common method to wear down the brothers was witchcraft.
Interviewer: How did they do this?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: There were, of course, Jews among the [staff of] the Guantanamo Base, and they would set traps for the guys.
Interviewer: Give me an example of witchcraft.
Snip!
Walid Muhammad Hajj: I will tell you how the witchcraft affected the guys. A person would suddenly see his brothers and sisters naked before him.
Interviewer: And they weren’t really there?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Absolutely not. It was as if he was in a different world.
Snip!
Interviewer: Did they ever use witchcraft on you?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: There was one attempt.
Interviewer: How did they do it?
Walid Muhammad Hajj: Once, when I was sleeping—on the floor, not on a bed — I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again. I recited the kursi verse again and again until the cat left.
Go to MEMRI for the entire interview.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 08:48 AM in Jihad Watch | Comments (15)
December 17, 2010
Sabbath Lights
All week I look forward to Shabbat, the Sabbath.
Years ago, our son Ariel ZT'L, told me that it's a mitzvah for the husband to help his wife prepare for Shabbat.
Immediately, I took it upon myself to set the table and prepare the candles which, traditionally, the woman lights to usher in Shabbat.
But, I have to admit, I never enjoyed cleaning up the wax drippings.
Karen spotted Shabbat candles in our friends' homes that glowed from a wick immersed in a transparent liquid. The effect was elegant and pure. She inquired: “What are those?” “Where do you get them?” Each time they rattled off something like, “Oh, it's simple,” but never gave any specific information.
Karen was resolute that someday we would make the switch.
A few weeks ago Karen learned about a new product, Sabbath Lights.
These liquid paraffin lights are a perfect replacement for wax candles. They are easy to use and there is zero clean-up. There's a permanent fiber wick in the liquid glass, so you just light it up and there's no replacement necessary.
These are the Sabbath Lights glass reservoirs, which hold liquid paraffin. Just fill the reservoir about one quarter to the top and the wick burns for about 90 minutes. The light burns steadily, with no odor, and emits a lovely glow. Some people mix food color in the paraffin, but Karen and I prefer the clear, minimal look. And besides, food coloring is discouraged by the manufacturer, as it stains the bulbs. However, there is a special colored oil available from Sabbath Lights if you want the modern orthodox hippie vibe.
Just fill the Sabbath Lights reservoir with liquid paraffin and you're good to go. This amount burns for about 90 minutes. No mess, no clean-up.
We got so excited about this product, we tracked down the owners, Matt and Stefanie Diamond.
The orthodox Jewish world is small—a global shtetl.
Turns out the Diamonds live near Offspring #2.
So when Karen and I flew in for the birth of Lielle Meital, we dropped by to visit.
Explained Stefanie, a warm and articulate young woman, “Matt's grandparents came to America as penniless refugees who built up a successful business in Baltimore. Matt learned from an early age that the American dream is not a dream, but a reality. We believe in our product, we know the market and we're going to make it work.”
In the Obama age, where business and the free market are being demonized, Karen and I want to do all we can to encourage small businesses, the backbone of America.
Obviously, a business and product that helps Jews perform a miztvah is most dear to us.
As we prepare to kindle our Shabbat Lights, Karen and I wish all our friends and relatives a lovely and meaningful Shabbat.
Special Offer: As a thank you to Seraphic Secret readers, Sabbath Lights has set up a 10% off coupon code. At checkout, use the code "Seraphic" to receive your discount.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 11:38 AM in Friday Fotos | Comments (15)
December 14, 2010
Tolerance of the Intolerant
Warning: This video is graphic. It shows a woman being lashed by a Sudanese policeman. She begs for mercy, cries out for her mother. And the police laugh.
Welcome to Sudan where men are men and women are cattle.
Sudan is an Islamic state.
An Islamic state where sharia is the law of the land.
You know how we're always being lectured that we have to learn more about Islam and thus be more tolerant?
Personally, I don't get it. Are the streets of America running with the blood of innocent Muslims murdered by racist Americans?
Of course not. Even after 9-11, Americans have shown incredible tolerance towards a religion whose stated goal is to make sure that every non-Muslim converts to Islam.
I'm all for tolerance—when it makes sense.
But being tolerant of the intolerant makes no sense whatsoever.
It's not just dumb, it's suicidal.
I have a better idea, why don't we teach Islam to be more tolerant of, um, everybody else. Say: Jews, Christians, Hindus, Ba'hai, you name it, because as far as we can tell, Islam is the world's most intolerant political-religious ideology.
There is not one Muslim country on the face of the earth that shows tolerance for its non- Muslim minority. In almost every single of the 57 Muslim countries Jews have been expelled, or live under a form of house arrest. Christians are persecuted everywhere in the Arab Muslim world—this includes Gaza and the PA territories. And the Iranians oppress the Ba'hai with ferocious cruelty.
Homosexuals in the Muslim world are tortured and executed in the public square, usually by hanging, but beheading is also wildly popular. Women accused of who-knows-what are lashed or stoned to death in public, and at home, beaten senseless or murdered by husbands, brothers, cousins, uncles and fathers who cite sharia as religious justification.
I know what you're thinking: we can't police the Muslim world.
True enough.
But we can, at least, publicize and be honest about the Islamists who are in the vanguard of spreading a world-wide caliphate and imposing global sharia. And we can aggressively push against the oh-so-tolerant left who are advocating Islam in academia and in the public sphere, clearly demostrated by the noxious move to build a triumphal mosque—in the name of, duh, tolerance—at Ground Zero.
Again, I know what you're thinking, I'm totally psychic: This is America, it can't happen here.
To which I can tell you that that's exactly what my German ancestors said when the Nazis announced their plan to exterminate every single Jew on the face of the earth.
By the way, Israel, the Jewish State, has been a safe haven to more Sudanese refugees than any other country, including, shocker, Muslim states. In fact, Sudanese refugees risk life and limb for a safe harbor in the Jewish State.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at 06:54 AM in Sharia | Comments (17)
