Here is just a taste of it:

According to [Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History], a Palestinian Christian and disciple of the late Columbia professor Edward Said, the case for gay rights in the Middle East is an elaborate scheme hatched by activists in the West. Massad posited this thesis in a 2002 article, “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,” for the academic journal Public Culture, and he has expanded it into a book, Desiring Arabs, published this year by the University of Chicago Press. In it, he writes that such activists constitute the “Gay International” whose “discourse … produces homosexuals as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist.” The “missionary tasks” of this worldwide conspiracy are part of a broader attempt to legitimize American and Israeli global conquest by undermining the very moral basis of Muslim societies, as the “Orientalist impulse … continues to guide all branches of the human rights community.” Massad’s intellectual project is a not-so-tacit apology for the oppression of people who identify openly as homosexual. In so doing, he sides with Islamist regimes over Islamic liberals.

That really is the core of the argument that is outlined in the article, but he goes on and on about how people who are fighting against different injustices against GLBT individuals in the Middle East are “anti-Arab” or “anti-Islam” and other such stupidity. He even calls Arab gays “so-called ‘gays.’”

Academic freedom aside, this is plain and simple homophobia. I have not read the entire Massad article, but I can’t imagine it is much better than the long excerpts from TRN. While Massad does call upon the theory that gayness is a social construct and if a particular society does not utilize a certain set of values, this construct will not exist. Outside of that theory being dismissed years and years ago, we currently live in a global world where our societies are exposed to more than ever before, including different social constructs from different cultures.

This guy is up for tenure and if he is turned down, articles like these will be the cause. However he will blame the Israelis and Jew lobby for his rejection. Cross Posted at POLJ

It seems that while there was a small but stable community of Mandeans before the US invasion of Iraq now there are fewer than 5,000 of these individuals left in the world.

This is bad. Will most of us ever meet a Mandean? Most likely no. Will our lives be noticeably different in the 20 years it will take for these people to die off? Most likely no. Will our world be changed due to our indifference? Yes.

We could take the responsibility to fix this little thing that we helped destroy. Take a few minutes over the next few days to learn about this people and perhaps give a call to your law makers and ask them to grant asylum to this small ethnic group in your country (if it will be a better place for them to live…)

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (an agency of the Justice Department) is limiting the number of and what books in US Prisons. The New York Times Reports that “chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.”

Why you ask? It is because the BOP doesn’t want American prisons to become breading grounds for radical religious extremists (read Muslims). Now I am not an expert but I can safely say that prisons are violent places and most religious texts (at some point) advocate for peace and learning. To pose a question to the BOP, if you take out the actual books and replace them with very upset violent criminals who will continue to seek religion and preach it to others, won’t you just get radical religious extremists with nothing read?

But outside of this particular question, we must ask ourselves what is the point of prison? I feel and have since I got involved in the political world, that jail should be used for three things: rehabilitation, punishment and isolation. This is a very difficult triangle of issues but without the rehabilitation, prisons become a revolving door. Religion is a powerful tool to change a life. President Bush is a prime example of this and says so all the time. So why take out the learning?

Judaism teaches us that we are never done learning. I can only assume that other religions have similar kinds of teachings about Bible study etc. Why would society take away books from people who want to learn about ways to change their life if society has deemed their lives unacceptable? There shouldn’t be violent teachings in these books, but over all religious books should be made available to people in jail.

Religion isn’t something to be feared. It should be embraced and understood in the appropriate location; a prison chapel library is a prime example of an appropriate place to learn about faith. Just like any other ideology, making it illegal only makes it more radical. As people of faith we must do our work to insure that those seeking out holiness in the darkest places in society can find the light they need.

Call your member of congress to let them know that people of faith come in all different shapes, sizes and ideologies. Some are wealthy, some poor. Some in power and some in prison. We all are Americans and we all are responsible for the maintenance of the Constitution. We are strong for our liberties, especially those liberties in a places without freedom.

Please call the Bureau of Prisons at (202) 307-3198 or e-mail infor@bop.gov. Or send an old fashion note, feel free to quote your favorite book of faith: Federal Bureau of Prisons, 320 First St., NW, Washington, DC 20534

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Moslems
And everybody hates the Jews
BUT NOT ON NATIONAL BROTHERHOOD WEEK!

However this show seems to have it inversed; everyone hates everyone! Outside of the issues conflating all Jewish (rightwing or otherwise) radicals with Rightwing Settlers and lumping all Muslim fundamentalism together, from London to Lebanon, and from Afghanistan to America while saying Palestine and Israel is at the core of it all, this “ground breaking series” is nothing of the sort.

I got say that the point of 24 hour news stations is to get ratings and these pieces were very entertaining. If I was some Joe American I might even think that all Jews support everything that the Settlers do and every Muslim in America under the age of 40 supports suicide bombing. While both groups have their set of crazies, and it may even seem that according to CNN both have about the same amount of wackos, that religion is an evil and scary thing to be studied in a laboratory and kept far away from the safety of tolerance that is the West. (oh that is FUNNY!)

The thing that cooked my goat however was the Kuala Lumpur Amanpour repeated “God’s Jewish/Muslim Warriors” almost every three or four minutes. COME WOMAN! Expand that intelligently-accented lexicon and say something else! At the beginning and end of each of the shows I saw it was clear that she was reporting as a Westerner and a secularist, an outsider. She would say things like “Millions throughout the woooorld see life through a religious lens.” No kidding!

OF COURSE millions of people see the world through a religious lens! But just because they keep kosher or read the Koran doesn’t mean they are going blow some shit up! Get real!

I have the last episode taped at home for watching this weekend. It is on God’s Christian Warriors. I am excited to see how Kuala Lumpur Amanpour deals with the fact that Christian fundamentalist come from the West, fight in the West and blow shit up in the West.

This is Peter Jacob – CNN.

Masturbation, oral sex and foreplay are strictly taboo discussion topics in conservative Egyptian society. Yet with impressive comfort, Heba Kotb, dubbed Egypt’s “Dr. Ruth,” covers these issues in depth on her weekly satellite television program, “The Big Talk.” Kotb’s level of comfort sharply declines, however, when asked about her education: Kotb, 39, received a degree in clinical sexology from Maimonides University, a Jewish-affiliated institution in Florida.

It is a very interesting piece about sex, sexuality, repression and abuse. Worth the read.

In the News: Well now that is Forward!

Now I don’t care who or what group made these shirts, if anyone doesn’t think they have to do with a solidarity movement with Palestinians must have their head examined.

The kicker is that the principal of the new Arab charter school in the city said she supports the statement these shirts make only later to back down due to pressure from other groups (mostly Jews).

However I think this outrage is justified. Regardless of what you want to believe the Intifada is a violent uprising that has been stolen by radicals and terrorists. It may have started as a student revolt but now it is terrorism. This would be like having kids wearing shirts that said Meir Kahane was Right or White Power or Zig Heil.

People have the right to show whatever the hell they want on their shirts, freedom of speech is funny that way. But what we can’t ignore is what the message is that is being freely expressed. If a new and divisive school (which many are unjustly afraid will foster Islamisist tendencies in NYC) sees this going on with in the community, the leaders of this school should be careful about what they say in the media.

But really what are these shirts doing? Making money for Arab Women Active in Arts and Media or AWAAM (does that mean anything in Arabic?) It is only a profit move. I have very little respect for the devaluation of life and terminology only to turn a buck. Thousands of Palestinians and Israelis have been killed in the Intifadas. To print that on a shirt to make money for an organization that says it is committed to arts and society just doesn’t sit right with me.

And proud of it.

I for one think it is silly to consider this a good idea in the first place. What are these people thinking? Fine, the JNF was set up to help Jews buy up land for a state in Palestine. That worked. When they handed over the land to the government of Israel it wasn’t handing it over to the government of the Jews, but of the state of Israel. (In case we forgot there are non-Jews in Israel.) Now the land is Israeli not just Jewish.

Outside of all of these rational issues like the destruction of democracy, bad PR, racism and a few others, we also come to the problem of “who’s a Jew” with such a law. If some shmo with a Jewish mom want to go and buy up some land great. But if a non-Halachic Jew, who lives a Jewish life wants to get a home in the Holy Land, then he is out of luck. Crappy. This law stinks from head to toe. JNF stick to planting trees.

(cross posted at POLJ)