A Voice Of Reason In Iraq's Parliament

Give a listen to this video from MEMRI; it's about 12 minutes in length, but it's worth it if you want to hear an Iraqi Shi'ite political leader who is strongly religious defend flexibility and freedom in government.

The clip is of Iraqi MP Iyad Jamal al-Din, a Shi'ite who has survived four assassination attempts, being interviewed by Al-Arabiya TV, a Saudi/Dubai station. In other words, an elected Shi'ite interviewed on Sunni TV.

Al-Din is a secularist who has caught the attention of others as diverse as Spike and Dr. Sanity for his reformist positions.

In the clip, al-Din supports the concept of Sharia Law, but also says that following leaders who demand the sort of allegiance Muslims give only to Muhammed is wrong. Al-Din supports making bars legal, for example, because while he does not drink out of respect for his religion's laws, he does not see a non-Sharia government as a source of authority capable of demanding certain behaviors from Muslims.

He also says that he respects a woman who does not cover her head out of religious principle more than a woman who covers her head because she doesn't want to make waves.

As for the current government in Iraq, al-Din sees it as a blessing, but a mixed one:

President Bush and America should be thanked for saving us from that idol [Saddam Hussein] that wanted to be worshiped like Allah. If you were to go to Iraq in the days of Saddam Hussein, it was Saddam who (decided) everything from A to Z. Saddam gave life and took life and decided if people would be rich or poor.

Interviewer: Don't the new politicians have many, if not all, of Saddam's qualities?

Undoubtedly. We've gotten rid of Saddam, but not all the mini-Saddams. Even before the war, I said that I was worried that the democracy that we have longed for would turn into a Latin American-style democracy, a banana republic, relying on an economic mafia and a political mafia.

This is a complex man whose beliefs may well be mainstream demographically, but are hardly mainstream politically in conservative Muslim society. They are the sorts of beliefs that got Benazir Bhutto killed, so there's little surprise that al-Din been the targets of assassins. (He implies that the attacks on him were carried out by more dogmatic Shi'ites, not al-Qaeda because "al-Qaeda does not fail.")

Listening to a man like this gives one appreciation or the complexity of the task of establishing democracies in Islamic nations, but also clearly shows that there are some leaders who understand the benefits and see the process as possible, even under Islam.

Will The Girl of Qatif Reform Saudi Justice?

The Girl of Qatif -- the Saudi gang-rape victim who was sentence to jail and 200 lashes by Saudi Arabia's Islamic Sharia courts -- may bring about some liberalization of the nation's judicial system. (This photo reportedly shows what 50 lashes looks like after 20 days.)

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, speaking to AP in Annapolis, said the case would be reviewed by the Saudi judiciary before it moves on to the nation's highest court, in what may be a challenge to the Wahhabi judiciary.

Saudi writer Sultan al-Qahtani said Saud's comment might be the "strongest message yet" from the kingdom's leadership that the judiciary must reform. The international pressure over the case could provide momentum to legal reform efforts pushed by Saudi King Abdullah.

"The controversy over the Girl of Qatif sentence might lead to a strong push for the government, which is inclined toward reform, to confront the other elements that insist the kingdom maintain its extreme religiosity," he wrote this week on liberal Saudi Web Site Elaph.

Liberal Saudi Web site? Hmmm. Oxymoronic, eh?

The AP story did include something I hadn't seen before: The perps didn't just rape the woman, they raped the man, as well! For this, they got between two and nine years in prison -- in a country that previously has beheaded gays with gay abandon.

This underscores the arbitrariness of the Saudi judicial system, where there is no code of justice, just the individual interpretation of Wahhabi clerics. Here are some examples cited by AP:

In recent cases, ... three teenagers were beheaded for attacking a gas station and injuring a worker while a government employee who received thousands of riyals as a bribe was only sentenced eight months in prison. A group of men received 12 years in prison for sexual harassment, compared to the shorter sentences for the Girl of Qatif rapists.

This is the Sharia system Islamic activists are so enamored with; the system the many Muslims would love to impose on Europe and America. Of course, that's a simple proposition to deal with: Over our dead bodies, Mohammed.

The Religion of Peace, Anger, Intolerance And Racism

Name a teddy bear Jesus and get 40 lashes? I don't think so. But then Christianity is a much more fun-loving religion than Islam, where teddy bear names can indeed lead to really big owies:

A British teacher is facing 40 lashes in a Sudanese jail if convicted of insulting Islam's prophet by letting children name a teddy bear Mohammed.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was arrested on suspicion of blasphemy on Sunday.

Ms Gibbons allowed her class of seven-year-olds at the Unity High School in Khartoum to name a teddy bear Mohammed as part of a lesson about animals' habitats.

Apparently Mohammed does not s*** in the woods.

Mohammed is sacred to Islamic philosophy and the penalty for blasphemy is 40 lashes, a large fine or a jail term. The British Embassy in Khartoum confirmed the arrest.

A source close to the school said one teacher was angered by the naming of the teddy bear and complained to the headmistress. (Sky News)

If you ask me, the Khartoum Krazies are being way too lenient. Sure, give Gibbons her lashes, but lash those pesky seven-year-olds, too. They're the ones who named the bear, for cryin' out loud (which, one gathers, they would if held to the same standard as Gibbons).

All this fanaticism over images of Mohammed are based on nothing more than this, from chapter 42, verse 11 of The Book That Shall Not Be Flushed: "[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth... [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him." For that, embassies are burned, teachers are lashed and the cultural norms of most of the world are spit on by angry and intolerant Muslims.

They are more than angry and intolerant, though. Sky News quotes Hassan Aberdeen, a researcher at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies:

"This could be more to do with who is saying it than what is being said. It might not have been an issue if this was a Sudanese person. The fact that this was a European teacher is highly likely to be one of the key causes."

Nice, huh? Add racist to Islam's ills.