You’d think a town in Somalia would have more important things to deal with than the explosive sexual danger of inter-gender handshakes…apparently not:

Men and women have been banned from shaking hands in a district of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab. Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public.

It is the first time such social restrictions have been introduced.

The al-Shabab administration said those who disobeyed the new rules would be punished according to Sharia law. The BBC’s Mohamed Moalimuu in Mogadishu says the penalty would probably be a public flogging.

There’s an interesting Cracked article entitled “5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam“, and while I thought it fair to point out religion hasn’t always been a gigantic problem for this world, it fundamentally glosses over the fact in many parts of the world, the dangerous combination of faith and tradition leads to the suppression, torture and murder of women. It’s true Christianity, on a whole, has been more cruel and oppressive than Islam in the past. But abuse, scandal and the maltreatment of minorities and females is something inherent to most religions. It’s part of their very “DNA”.

What frightens people about Islam is the West seems to have no affect on modernizing Muslim’s attitudes about women and their right to choose how to live their own lives. Take Afshan Azad, a sexy 22 year old actress who appeared in the Harry Potter movies: when it was discovered by her family she was dating a Hindu man, she was beaten and called a prostitute until finally being threatened with death for the “crime” of shaming her family.

The reason for the assault, apparently her association with a Hindu young man, that apparently being disapproved of by her family who are Muslim.
‘Specifically she spoke not only of assault but also threats to kill, made jointly by her father and brother.’

Afshan and her family are British citizens, but seems not to matter to her brother and father, who feel compelled by their tradition to murder a girl who has chosen to date outside of her family’s faith. And while it can be argued that this tradition is far older than Islam, the fact it maintains itself is a direct consequence of the extreme conservative nature of Islam. It doesn’t matter at one time Muslim scholars were the most educated and progressive in the world: that time has passed, and the religion has never transitioned into the modern world. I think the guys over at Cracked should have watched this debate before writing their article.

A couple working in The United Arab Emirates were sentenced in a Sharia Court to 100 lashes for having “unlawful sex“. Because these two lovebirds were on a work visa, both will also eventually be deported for their crime. The man, a Bangladeshi Muslim, faces an extra year in jail for the offense of having sex with someone he liked outside of wedlock. Fun times.

How bad is 100 lashes? Well, it could have been a lot worse, considering the fact that the crime of “fornication” (called “Zina” in Arabic) can often mean a death sentence to women having sexual encounters, even if they are raped.

This reminds me of the ridiculous article I read in HuffPo where a Muslim woman was defending Sharia Law, claiming any abuse was actually the result of politics rather than religion. Yeah, cuz you know, the two are very distinct in the Middle East, am I right?

We often joke about the “big brotherism” of Facebook and other social media, but it’s no laughing matter when these websites are used to track down apostates of Islam whose only “crime” is speaking their damn minds. Walid Husayin, a 26 year old barber in the West Bank, has been arrested and faces life imprisonment for insulting Muhammad. His friends and family are shocked he led a double life online, where thanks to his perceived anonymity, he blogged about his frustration over the terrible religion that is Islam.

Husayin used a fake name on his English and Arabic-language blogs and Facebook pages. After his mother discovered articles on atheism on his computer, she canceled his Internet connection in hopes that he would change his mind.

Instead, he began going to an Internet cafe — a move that turned out to be a costly mistake. The owner, Ahmed Abu-Asal, said the blogger aroused suspicion by spending up to seven hours a day in a corner booth. After several months, a café worker supplied captured snapshots of his Facebook pages to Palestinian intelligence officials.

Authorities used Facebook to uncover his identity, and now the local ignorant townsfolk want him “burned to death”. Yes, truly this is a religion of peace, a fucking beacon of tolerance!

What’s hilarious is while Muslims feel as though their faith is being attacked by the West, in truth the barbarism, intolerance to criticism and violent rhetoric of Islam is merely being exposed as a real threat to the civilized world. The problem is Islam cannot stand criticism, no matter how justified it is. It isn’t just fundamentalists who wish to murder apostates (or anyone for that matter who speaks ill of their founder); a significant portion of believers have a murderous commitment to their faith. They are like a petulant child carrying a loaded gun, and their dangerous outrage has no place in the modern world. Despite jailing or obliterating anyone who speaks ill of their religion, this pathetic faith continues to argue that they are a religion of peace. The proof is in the pudding, and they’re serving up Blutwurst, people.

You have to love how crazy Iran is sometimes. In 2006 they arrested a woman by the name of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani for having “illicit relationships” with two men after her husband’s death. She was then judiciously tortured, and made to confess she had also been adulterous. This conviction under Sharia Law meant she was to be executed via stoning, although recently it was changed to hanging after all the bad press stoning has been getting recently.

Iran is playing aloof, claiming that Ashtiani will not be executed, but France’s Foreign Minister isn’t convinced. He says her sentence could be carried out any day now.

While I was reading this article on the rag that is the Huffington Post, I noticed an article by a Muslim apologist claiming Sharia Law is compatible with the Bill of Rights, and sensationalism was being used to tarnish it.

The Center for Security Policy wants Americans to think that stoning and amputations are around the corner, but the report can’t quite explain why stonings are so rare and the streets of Saudi Arabia and Iran are not filled with one-armed thieves.

The Qur’an never mentions stoning as a punishment and there are conflicting interpretations of the Prophet’s involvement in implementing it. The most common interpretation is of a woman consumed with guilt over an adulterous affair that resulted in a child. She pestered the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) literally for years for him to wash away her sins with a death sentence. He refused, but when he could no longer find an excuse to send her away, he reluctantly agreed to punish her. What non-Muslim Sharia “experts” fail to mention is that stoning a person who commits adultery requires four eyewitnesses to the actual act of sexual intercourse. This fantastical burden of proof is almost impossible to fulfill. And rightly so. It’s designed as prevention, not an actual punishment.

So I guess this burden of proof was fulfilled in the case of Ashtiani, right? So much for “impossible to fulfill”. This is what angers me about moderate Muslims; they are in complete denial over the fact Sharia Law is actually killing and dismembering people on a regular basis. As far as they are concerned, these are just the actions of rogue Muslims who don’t represent the majority. What the fuck are we supposed to believe here? The author of this article claims Ashtiani’s conviction is in fact not Sharia, but rather simply politics. How are you supposed to make that distinction, lady?

Should we really be surprised moderate Muslims are in denial over the reality of their barbaric religious traditions? Denial of reality is their specialty, people!

(Update: Her sentence was eventually commuted after a 9 year sentence)

In most Muslim countries, it’s impossibly hard to be a woman. For starters, men have all the power, relegating women to the role of caretakers and not much else. Men also absolve themselves from any crime or misdeeds; if a husband beats his wife, she is to blame for not having been servile enough or not having been mindful enough of his moods.

It’s so nutty that when a rich Egyptian real estate tycoon paid $2 million to have his former lover killed, public opinion was still on his side. Suzanne Tamim was a Lebanese pop star who caught the attention of Hisham Talaat Moustafa, and when she decided to leave him, he had her killed. For many Egyptian women, her story is a cautionary tale of what happens when you defy the will of a husband:

She made him kill her, and she deserves it,” said Sherine Moustafa, a 39-year-old Egyptian corporate lawyer, an opinion that was echoed by every woman of dozens interviewed. “If he killed her, this means she’s done something outrageous to drive him to it,” reasoned Ms. Moustafa, who has no relation to the convicted businessman. Both her sister and mother, who sat next to her, agreed.

It obviously doesn’t help that Tamim dressed less than modestly and had taken a career most conservative women would disapprove of. Still, this level of callousness is shocking to our Western sensibilities, mostly because we can’t imagine feeling sympathy for the murderer rather than the victim. This is the power and control men have in the Middle East, and it’s not something that will change overnight. Considering how much Iran fears human rights and women’s studies (because these are supposedly “western” ideas that are incompatible with Islam), we can’t expect the situation to change in that part of the world for a long time to come. Fun, isn’t it?