Hate the unbeliever - What your Medina sheik learnt in Arabia and teach in Maldives

What do the Dhivehi students who go to Medina learn?
Here, for example, is a multiple-choice question from a recent edition of a Saudi fourth-grade textbook, "Monotheism and Jurisprudence," in a section that attempts to teach children to distinguish between "true" and "false" belief in God:

Q. "Is belief true in the following instances:

(a) A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
(b) A man professes that there is no deity other than God but loves the unbelievers.
(c) A man worships God alone, loves the believers, and hates the unbelievers."

The correct answer, of course, is (c): According to the Wahhabi imams who wrote this textbook, it isn't enough to simply worship God or just to love other believers; it is important to hate unbelievers, too.
By the same token, (b) is wrong as well: Even a man who worships God cannot be said to have "true belief" if he also loves unbelievers.

"Unbelievers," in this context, are Christians and Jews. In fact, any child who attends Saudi schools until ninth grade will eventually be taught outright that "Jews and Christians are enemies of believers." They will also be taught that Jews conspire to "gain sole control over the world," that the Christian crusades never ended, and that on Judgment Day "the rocks or the trees" will call out to Muslims to kill Jews.
These passages, it should be noted, are from new, "revised" Saudi textbooks, designed to be less harsh on the infidels.

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Normally, the contents of another country's textbooks would be of no interest, and, indeed, I'm sure that there are plenty of American textbooks that contain insane, incorrect or otherwise unacceptable information. Saudi schoolbooks, however, are a special case. They are written and produced by the Saudi government and are distributed, free, to Saudi-sponsored Muslim schools as far afield as Lagos and Buenos Aires. This doesn't mean every child who reads them will hate non-Muslims, but Americans are not the only ones who worry about the influence of these books: In Britain, a small political storm broke out last year when Saudi books calling on Muslims to kill all apostates were found in mosques there.

To read complete article, please visit the Washinton Post

Islam and the great Turkish headscarf war

...the head is the site of our brains, our faces, our individuality. To cover it in public implies sublimation, a need to be hidden, disregarded, subordinate to male authority under the guise of religious observance. The degree to which women are covered in any Muslim country is a reliable index of their oppression.
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To read the complete article visit The Times Online

64-year-old Muslim man says he will wait 6 years to consummate marriage with 10-year-old child

...in this central Saudi city, a 64-year-old man has announced that he would wait five years to consummate his marriage with his 10-year-old bride.
According to local newspapers yesterday, the man — who has already paid a SR100,000 dowry to the father of the girl and signed the marriage contract — now says he would wait until the girl is 15 to complete the marriage.
Explaining the circumstances that led to the marriage, the man’s son said his father never had a second wife. He said the girl’s father taunted his father saying he was willing to marry his daughter to him if he paid SR100,000 in dowry. “My father accepted the challenge, paid the money and became the husband of the young woman,” the son was quoted as saying.
Following reports of child marriages in the local media, religious scholars and human rights activists in the Kingdom have demanded legislation to set a statutory minimum age for marriage.
According to the Shariah, maturity is associated with puberty, which could start at the age of nine for girls and at the age of 11 for boys.

With thanks to Arab News

Almost half of Egyptian women harassed daily

Almost half of Egyptian women are sexually harassed on a daily basis with more than half of Egyptian men admitting lewd behaviour, the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights said on Thursday.
The group polled 2,020 people -- including men and foreign women -- in Cairo, and the centre's director, Nihad Abul Qomsan, said that the figures showed harassment was on the rise.
Of those surveyed, 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women said they had been harassed at some point, while 46 percent of Egyptian women and 52 percent of foreign women said they were harassed daily.
Most women said they were harassed in the street or on public transport, with harassment defined as "any unwelcome behaviour of a sexual nature which makes women feel uneasy and gives them a feeling of insecurity."
Abul Qomsan said that almost two-thirds of Egyptian men -- 62 percent -- admitted harassing women, including those wearing Islamic headscarves.
"This shows that the belief that harassment is linked to women who wear indecent clothing is false," she said, condemning the fact that in the deeply religious country women often feel responsible despite being victims.
The centre said that last year only 12 percent of women went to the police with a harassment complaint.
In 2006, women's rights activists angrily spoke out against what they called the authorities' acceptance of sexual harassment against women, after a mob of men openly molested women in central Cairo.
The interior ministry said it did not receive any formal complaints and has never admitted any mass harassment occurred despite the incident being widely reported in the press and some bloggers posting footage on the Internet.

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