Radical Islam is not only bad for your health but also

The fanatics (radical Muslims/Islamic fundamentalists) are dangerous to your life, health and wellbeing because no matter how nice they appear to you initially, eventually they will turn vicious, if you still refuse to be convinced by their smart/stupid arguments/reasoning. Just like other human emotions, it’s very hard to control or curb it. When someone loses it, they tend to go overboard.

Recently, we have seen images of ISIS/ISIL destroying historical artifacts from ancient Iraqi cities.

On Friday, the group razed 3,000-year old Nimrud and on Saturday, they bulldozed 2,000-year old Hatra – both UNESCO world heritage sites. Isil currently controls about a third of Iraq and Syria. The Sunni extremist group has been campaigning to purge ancient relics they say promote idolatry that violates their fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.

I generally don’t buy into this idea that as soon as you see a sculpture or painting or a strange looking historical artifacts, you will immediately start worshiping it. That’s purely a dumb speculation. What's even dumber is to think that a 4000 year old monuments or artifacts are even being used for any religious purposes when the ancient civilization no longer exists.

We are not only facing problems with people who subscribe to very extreme interpretation of Islam but even regular folks can't get away from many of Islam's small contradictions about which gods can be worship and which gods/goddesses cannot be worship.

According to Islam, Jesus son of God, and also god incarnate and his mother, Mary wife of God and mother of God, can be worship. So you can build your churches and put their images/pictures/idols or sculptures on altars and do whatever you see fit. Christianity is not the only religion that is protected under Islamic theology. Judaism, Zoroastrians, Sabeans, Mandeans and a few other ancient religions (which have not been named or clearly defined in literatures) have also earned the status of being a protected faith. Again, the status confers on these faiths are extremely arbitrary. It’s not based on deep analyses of religious dogma or anything of that nature. I’ve read some of the reasons and found them to be utterly unconvincing. I have posts on this here.


Reference

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11458343/Third-ancient-site-of-Khorsabad-attacked-by-Isil-as-coalition-strike-on-Syria-oil-refinery-kills-30.html

Jihadi John

Most of the news media based in the UK and also elsewhere are covering stories about Jihadi John, the Internet personality associated with the ISIS/ISIL terror group. Jihadi John wearing a face-covering appeared in a series of high quality videos (with audio) showing him beheading, burning alive and cutting the throats of his victims (mostly made up of hostages) for fun or for whatever imaginary reasons he thinks people across the globe should be punished for.

Recently, the real identity of this personality has been uncovered by Washington Post and then BBC. Those who knew him or have worked with him are interviewed. Based on some of the glowing responses from the people who describe him as gentle, hard worker, honest, someone who keeps to himself and away from trouble, Jihadi John has been very busy throughout the years, building a common man persona.

Most people are a very bad judge of human character. Even when a psychopath like Jihadi John are revealed to them, they still, in the state of complete denial, cling to their level of comfort – of what they know about someone/something as opposed to seeing the reality that is right in front of them.

Not getting a job because of hijab/headscarf

I'm following this news about a woman who was not offered a job at a big organization in US (Abercrombie & Fitch) because she was wearing a headscarf.

Of course the lawyer, to defend his client (the organization), said that their so-called look policy is religion-neutral policy and that the company didn't discriminate the woman because of her religion.

Why is this case so interesting?

The government believes that the burden should be on the employer, because the employer here — to take the first step in a job interview, because the employer has superior knowledge, knows the work rules. And if the employer senses, perceives, understands or knows that there could be a religious issue, the employer should just bring it up and start what Congress intended, a dialogue with the job applicant, to see if there was a religious issue, and is there a need for an accommodation? Otherwise, if you put the burden on the employee or job applicant, as the lower court here did, they’re reluctant to bring religion up in a job interview.

I also agree with the following opinion that the employers should be the first party to open the discussion over something that can be considered sensitive/private/very personal to the candidate

he really simplified this and said, look, why can’t an employer just say — for one of the hypotheticals, you have somebody wearing a beard in front of you, why can’t an employer just say during the interview, we have a work policy that excludes beards? Do you have a problem with that? It doesn’t draw religion into it right away. But it gives — then the onus shifts to the job applicant to say if he or she does have a problem with it.

What the following person describe is so very true at least in western countries. We have strong anti-discriminatory laws to give equal opportunity to folks in the matter of employment, but still so many good candidates don't get the same level of consideration for the job.

An employer’s responsibility is not to bury their head in the stand when they are on notice that a potential employee will need a reasonable accommodation from them to work for them. So, for example, in this case, there were supervisors, employees who recognized the young woman’s head scarf as a hijab, and that a hijab is a religious garment. Instead of engaging in a dialogue with her at all, or asking her, do you think you’re going to have any problems doing this job, here is our look policy, they basically decided to avoid the issue altogether and not to extend her a job offer, even though otherwise she seemed to be a good candidate.

Reference
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/supreme-court-weighs-religious-freedom-affects-business-dress-codes

Yemen is Crumbling

Yemen has been a Zaydi strong hold for centuries. A lot of interesting Islamic ideas have been developed from here but unfortunately they didn't really become mainstream, mainly because most Muslims (in the past) seems to think and believe that Zaydis have been on the wrong side of the history. Zaydis were never able to achieve mass support from the people for a prolong period of time. Their ideology(Zaydism) was considered very militant at one time but of course that's very subjective now with the new wave of global jihad and terrorism of the 21st century using modern warfare techniques and propagation of extreme Sunni belief, even in Yemen.


I'm reading this news on why Yemen as a country was not able to progress much. Not surprising the main cause has to do with corrupt politicians.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh is alleged to have amassed assets worth between $32 billion and $60 billion, most believed to have been transferred abroad under other names, U.N. experts said in a report circulated Wednesday.

The experts, who monitor U.N. sanctions ordering all countries to freeze the assets of Saleh and two Houthi rebel leaders, said the ex-president's assets are believed to include property, cash, shares, gold and other valuable commodities in at least 20 countries.

"The origin of the funds used to generate Ali Abdullah Saleh's wealth is believed to be partly from his corrupt practices as president of Yemen, particularly relating to gas and oil contracts where he reportedly asked for money in exchange for granting companies exclusive rights to prospect for gas and oil in Yemen," the experts said.

The panel of experts said in the report to the U.N. Security Council that Saleh, his family and associates allegedly stole money from a fuel subsidy program which uses up to 10 percent of Yemen's gross domestic product, as well as other ventures involving extortion, embezzlement and abuse of power.

The report noted that Saleh had many years to hide his alleged assets — especially after the possibility of sanctions against him was raised nearly a year ago — using front companies or individuals acting on his behalf. The panel said five prominent Yemeni businessmen are believed to have helped him.

The experts said they are continuing their investigation into connections with these five people and other individuals believed to be assisting the Saleh family to remove funds from banks in Yemen and deposit them overseas. The panel said it is also conducting investigations into a number of private and publicly listed companies inside and outside Yemen where it is believed Saleh "may be the beneficial owner of investments."

Reference

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/feb/25/un-experts-yemen-ex-president-amassed-up-to-60/

Three school girls joining the Islamic Radical group

I'm following the news of the three school girls (two of them are 15 and one is 16 years of age) from UK who has travelled to Turkey and then onward to Syria to join the Islamic Terror group called ISIS/ISIL. [1]

These girls are believed to be influenced by social media and Internet personalities who are very supportive of the core message of ISIL. Most of us, who are sane, recognize ISIS/ ISIL as a terror group who has committed unimaginable horror acts indiscriminately in Syria and Iraq. However, many Muslims from various part of the world support this group by claiming that ISIS/ISIL are waging a Jihad or Holy War in Syria/Iraq and their activities are completely legal under Islam.

I was watching and reading news about pleas from the members of the families [2] who want these girls found and brought home. The girls' family didn't divulge a lot of private information about the girls. They just want them back. I'm certain that there's more to this story than what we have been told so far, but we won’t know much because generally Muslim families have a tendency to hide a lot of secrets and not talk about anything that may potentially bring the family a bad name or shame. If everything was going so well at home or school then these girls are running away for no reason whatsover? That’s very hard to believe.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, from the East London Mosque and a former teacher at Bethnal Green Academy, said all the parents "were shocked". "Children running away from home or disappearing is every parent's nightmare," he told BBC Breakfast. He said the girls were "talented and dynamic" but "impressionable" and that they could end up "with the most vile and dangerous group on earth" was "heartbreaking" for the parents.

Some folks are also pointing fingers at the authority for not doing enough to stop these girls from being contacted by those who are preying on young impressionable girls.

"Security services have been criticised after it emerged that - before leaving the UK - Shamima sent a Twitter message to Aqsa Mahmood, who left Glasgow for Syria in 2013 to marry an Islamic State fighter." "According to a lawyer for Ms Mahmood's family, her Twitter account has been "monitored" by police since she left Britain - and he said authorities should have seen Shamima's message and taken action before she and her two friends followed."

I'm generally supportive of authorities who are investigating extremists who are known to use violent means to achieve their objectives. Extremists can be from any religious background and from any segment of society. But it is completely unrealistic to demand and expect that the authority watch and monitor each and every twitter messages or Facebook posts so they can be analyzed in-depth. No one can babysit your children or teenagers for you, especially silly teenage girls who are looking for 'Islamic' husbands on Internet.

You would think that it would be very hard to enter a war-torn-area controlled by Islamic Extremists, but it’s actually ridiculously simple based on this news report[3].

intelligence sources in Turkey said Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, appeared to have travelled by car to the border on Friday, from where they crossed into the Isil-controlled town of Tal Abyad. They were travelling with a Syrian male in a private car. They were using Syrian identity cards. “We understand that after arriving in Istanbul the girls met an Isil member who is charged with helping foreigners who want to join the group.” The source said the girls stayed in Istanbul for two days before travelling to the border.There is someone co-ordinating with them. A smuggler. They can’t move by themselves.”

References

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31575908

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31589762

[3] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11427505/Schoolgirls-have-already-crossed-Syrian-border-say-sources.html