The Orlando Shooter

was apparently gay himself.

Mateen worked as a security guard for G4S and had hoped to become a law enforcement officer, and former classmates at a police academy said he was socially awkward and apparently gay himself. “We went to a few gay bars with him, and I was not out at the time, so I declined his offer,” said one former classmate at Indian River Community College. “He just wanted to fit in and no one liked him,” the classmate said. “He was always socially awkward.” His father, Seddique Mir Mateen, has apologized for his son’s actions but said “God will punish those involved in homosexuality,” Mateen married a woman he met online about eight years ago, and the couple had a son, but they divorced because he allegedly became abusive. “He was not a stable person,” his ex-wife said.

But he continued going to gay bars and setting up profiles on gay dating apps — and was apparently a regular at Pulse. At least four regular customers have identified Mateen as a regular at the LGBT club, saying he often drank alone there but sometimes became loud and belligerent. Another customer said he exchanged messages with Mateen for about a year through the gay dating app Jack’d but never met him in person until he spotted him about 1 a.m. Sunday going into the club.

A loser, a closeted gay Muslim, an abuser, a crazy person and also an ISIS follower.

What made him go on a shooting rampage? Family that refused to accept his gay-side? Religion that promises the most harsh and the severest form of punishment? Muslim society that tends to ex-communicate and alienate any members of their community that is a little bit different than them?

Reference

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/orlando-killer-had-help-and-law-enforcement-plans-to-arrest-accomplice/

Inciting violence against homosexuals

I've been monitoring social media feeds for the past 24 hours. How do Muslims feel about the Orlando gay bar shooting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Orlando_nightclub_shooting)? A supposedly devout radical lone wolf Muslim of Afghan descent was the perpetrator.

The perpetrator was described as aggressive and slightly crazy by those who knows him.

Religion could be more accommodating towards homosexuals or asexual or folks who are very different from the rest of us. Unfortunately, Islam, just like any other religions, demands a complete conformity from you.

Muslim crowds on the social media were very sympathetic. They condemned the senseless violence. They re-posted and re-tweeted calls for blood donations to help the victims/survivors. The slogans for peace and greater understanding were everywhere. Right at this moment, the Muslim feeling for Gays/Homosexuals seem to be at the top. How long will this love last?

Also, don't forget to read my other post on this topic.

Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Orlando_nightclub_shooting
http://researchintoothersects.blogspot.com/2013/12/ancient-religions-apparent-contempt-and.html

To be critical

To be critical, you must always need to have these 7 ideas in your head. While the note was more towards history/sociology/psychology areas, you can always extend it to everything else, including religion.

Ibn Khaldun starts the Muqaddimah with a thorough criticism of the mistakes regularly committed by his fellow historians and the difficulties which await the historian in his work. He notes seven critical issues:

"All records, by their very nature, are liable to error...
1. ...Partisanship towards a creed or opinion...

2. ...Over-confidence in one's sources...

3. ...The failure to understand what is intended...

4. ...A mistaken belief in the truth...

5. ...The inability to place an event in its real context

6. ...The common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by praising them, by spreading their fame...

7. ...The most important is the ignorance of the laws governing the transformation of human society."

He really had a lot of interesting ideas that are worth exploring.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah

Wedding Night

You will not believe what they were doing ...

Read this [1]

Manama: A Saudi bride was divorced shortly after the marriage ceremony when she ignored her groom and kept chatting with her friends on her mobile.
“Following the marriage ceremony, the groom took his bride to the hotel where they had booked a room,” a relative said. “However, as soon as the bride was in the room, she kept using her mobile. Her groom tried to get closer with her and become more intimate, but he was shocked when she ignored him, not responding to his words and action. When he asked her about the reasons, she answered she was busy communicating with her friends who were congratulating her on her marriage on the mobile. The groom asked her to delay the messages, but she refused and became angry. When he asked her if her friends were more important than he was, the bride answered that they were,” the relative said, quoted by Saudi daily Al Watan on Tuesday.

As the argument between them became unexpectedly heated, the groom told his bride he was divorcing her and left the hotel. The relative said that a divorce case was filed and the court referred it to the reconciliation committee to assess if the newly-weds could be reconciled, the relative added. However, the groom, too hurt in his pride to forgive, refused to withdraw the case and insisted on the divorce.

Perhaps something more romantic than being married for a night? [2]

In what may rank as one of the least romantic wedding nights in history, a Chinese couple reportedly spent their first night of marital bliss transcribing the Communist party’s 17,000-word constitution as part of a campaign designed to shore up support for President Xi Jinping’s administration. Li Yunpeng and his bride, Chen Xuanchi, saw the task as a way of creating “beautiful memories” of their wedding night, their employer, the Nanchang railway bureau, wrote in an online message.
The state-run Global Times said last Sunday’s post-nuptial transcription session was part of a Beijing-backed campaign called Copy the Chinese Communist party constitution for 100 days.
Chinese internet users were quick to mock the Communist party for gatecrashing the couple’s honeymoon. “I have to say this must be the most ridiculous and hilarious thing the party has ever done,” one wrote on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter

What's wrong with the kids today?

References
[1] http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-bride-divorced-minutes-after-marriage-ceremony-1.1829174

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/18/chinese-couple-wedding-night-copying-communist-party-constitution?CMP=fb_gu

Single men are root of all evil?

In some places in the world, single men can be very dangerous. They try stupid stunts

A popular stunt among young drivers is "sidewall skiing," which entails driving on the two side wheels of the car only. To make the experience even more extreme, the driver may high-five a spectator on the curb, passengers ride outside the vehicle, barely hanging on to the windows or the chassis, and other thrill-seekers lie on the road as the car passes over them. [1]

They join murderous cult like ISIS so they can purchase wives and slaves on black markets.

Via a translator, the man says he has been in contact with a broker—a middleman used as a go-between from ISIS to grieving Yazidi families—who for a high fee will return his children after they were taken and sold as slaves among the jihadis just over a year ago in the ISIS blitz of northern Iraq. [2]

Muslim girls and women have to guard themselves from constant abuse and harassment by covering themselves from top to bottom, left to right. Covering doesn't really help or guard women against those who have a very low opinion of the female gender.

One member of a gang of youngsters who harassed two young women as they took a stroll along the corniche in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah has been arrested. The arrested individual gave out the names of some members of the group of adolescents who followed the two girls, one of whom was fully veiled and the other with only the upper half of her face showing, Saudi news site Sabq reported on Monday. The two women pleaded with the raucous teenagers to leave them alone, but their pleas seemed to fall on deaf ears. [3]

Enough is enough! Women should not be punish for the weakness of men. Qatar is doing something about this.

"No bachelors," the guard said. The newly-renovated park - its boating lake, miniature golf course and neatly manicured lawns - was off-limits to men unaccompanied by women or children, the guard said. "It's for families only." So-called "bachelor bans" that bar lone men from entering malls and parks on certain days of the week and from living in residential neighborhoods are a common, often loosely-enforced, practice in the conservative Muslim Gulf. Local authorities say the measure, enforced by businesses and municipalities, allows families and women who live in crowded and male-dominated cities space to enjoy public facilities.

Qatar's population stands at 2.6 million, 75 percent of whom are male, according to the country's ministry of planning. No one knows exactly how many Qatari citizens there are as the government refuses to release a total but estimates say there are between 200,000 to 250,000. "Bachelor workers are eroding the privacy and comfort of families," Rashed Al Fadeh, a Qatari journalist, wrote in a column for local Arabic-language daily al-Sharq last year, saying workers overrunning neighborhoods was damaging Qatar’s social fabric.

"Going shopping without being stared at, enjoying a park not crowded with men who may look at women and not respect traditions. Qatari families have the right to do these simple things," said Mohannadi. "Today if you go to Al Khor on the weekend you may not see one person wearing traditional dress, no Qataris ... You can feel like a stranger there now." Authorities have in recent months taken steps to further separate workers from locals: ministry of interior maps which highlight in stark green and yellow Doha’s “no-go” housing zones for migrant workers were plastered last month on billboards across the capital. In December, construction workers were turned away from a parade event along Doha's corniche marking Qatar’s national day celebrations.

after reading this article in its entirety, I'm thinking that the banning of the single men is applicable only to non-Qatari migrant workers and not to their own first-class citizen.

References
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-sidewall-skiing-2013-4
[2] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/03/the-isis-slave-girl-buyback-schemes.html
[3] http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/video-saudi-youth-held-for-harassing-women-1.1553231
[4] http://in.reuters.com/article/qatar-labour-bachelors-idINKCN0Y81JQ

Every day is mother's day?

Recently we celebrated mother's day. This is a fairly new and informal celebratory day, mostly good for businesses (restaurant, flowers, shopping, cards and other gifts, etc) and your ego but perhaps not very good for your purse/wallet.

On facebook, everyone had pictures of their mothers or some nice sweet messages. Some Muslim were heavily promoting and forwarding the slogan: “In Islam, everyday is mother's day” and some positive messages about women and Islam. It's all about trying to fit in with the modern life and sell your religion.

Realistic, in Islam, there's no mother's day. This is not really something you can find or trace anywhere in its teaching. Since I'm not a purist, I don't see any harm in celebrating mother's day but for consistency sake we also need to say that “In Islam, everyday could easily be Valentine day” since Islam is also not oppose to lovers.

Relevant link
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2

I'm still alive

I have not been active on the blog for a while. I became busy and lost interest in writing. Because of not doing anything with the blog, google thinks I'm dead. So I had a little trouble getting in my account.

I setup this blog using email system A and as a recovery method I used email system B. And I remember all my passwords for system A and system B.

When I logged to the blog with the correct password after being inactive for a long time, google thinks there's something fishy going on with my account. It sent me a recovery code to system B. I login to my email account on system B and find out that system B thinks something fishy is going on. System B sent a recovery code to system A to verify that this is the same person since I haven't log in to my account for a long time. So, I was trapped between system A and B sending recovery email to each other, despite me knowing all the passwords to my account. Annoying!