Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Men Get Blurring Glasses To Avoid Women

Priceless. $6.00 eye glasses that blur vision are being sold to Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jewish men so they won't be tempted by immodestly dressed females. Their married women, of course, are very modestly dressed- long skirts, long sleeved shirts, along with wigs and/or hats or kerchiefs- it's those other tarts out there that need to be "blurred" from view.

The ultra-Orthodox community’s unofficial “modesty patrols” are selling glasses with special blur-inducing stickers on their lenses. The glasses provide clear vision for up to a few meters so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that gets blurry -including women. It’s not known how many have been sold.

For men forced to venture outside their insular communities, hoods and shields that block peripheral vision are also being offered.

At least the men are imposing those restrictions upon themselves, as opposed to placing the burden on the woman, as with the Muslim faith- although the extreme Orthodox Jews are just as fanatical as some of the conservative Muslims when it comes to segregating women.

Maybe ultra-Orthodox Jewish and Muslim males should wear the burqas along with these glasses and leave the women alone.  If they have no self-control, then the burden should be on them.  It just demonstrates how the ultra religious males in both religions are very similar in their attitudes towards women.

Neturei Karta Leader Meir Hirsch More Muslim Than Jewish

Rabbi Meir Hirsch, the leader of the bizarre anti-Zionist, Orthodox Jewish fringe extremist sect Neturei Karta, was happy as a clam that anti-Semite, anti-Zionist pro-Palestinian activist Sheikh Raed Salah won't be deported from England. I'm sure Salah is elated about it too, considering the UK is a great place for radicals to live for free.  He's got lots of extremist buddies over there, like Anjem Choudhary and Rich Dart, that live very nicely (courtesy of the Brit taxpayer) all the while preaching hate.  That was the reason Salah was banned from entering Britain to begin with, because it was believed he might "incite racial hatred.

But Hirsch and the Neturei Karta have no problem with inciting racial hatred, since they do it themselves.  They claim Israel and the Jews have no right to rule the Holy Land, and in his speech Hirsch actually sounds more like a Muslim extremist than a Jew when he says that he prays to "Allah to remove the Zionist regime from the entire land of Palestine."

He goes on to say:

"We declare: End the Zionist terrorism! End the cruel occupation! We believe that the final and just solutin that will put an end to the cycle of blood, and will achieve peace and stability for Muslism and Jews, is to restore the rule to a single Palestine on the entire land, for all its residents, with Al-Quds as its capital. Prior to the Zionist occupation, Jews and Arabs lived in peace and security under Muslim rule for centuries. We pray toAllah that the triumph of our beloved sheik Raed Sallah will finally bring an end to the cruel Zionist takeover of Palestine, and will restore peace, calm, fraternity, compassion, justice, and integrity among all human beings, so that they will worship Allah together, side by side. Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar.  Inshallah (Allah willing)

I guess he has no problem with paying the jizya (tax for non-Muslims).

Note his use of the words "infidels" "Allah" "Allah Akbar" and "Inshallah" in the video below.  .

Obscene Mini-Skirts To Be Banned In Indonesia

While Indonesia is considered to be the most populous Muslim-dominated nation in the world it isn't an Islamic state, although it might as well be. 

Mini-skirts- that is, anything cut above the knee- will be banned as por nographic, if Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali has his way. In 2008 Indonesia established a pornography law, and has recently created an anti-porn task force to stem the proliferation of pornographic material in the country, and to determine what exactly should be considered pornography.

"We will arrange meetings with different stakeholders from the public to get input on how they understand pornography, and I'm sure that they will come up with different definitions [of pornography]. However, there must be a set of universal criteria to define something as pornographic, of which one will be when someone wears a skirt above the knee," Suryadharma, who was tapped by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to run the body on a daily basis, said on the sidelines of a hearing with the House of Representatives Commission VIII overseeing religious and social affairs on Wednesday.

And even though the constitution allows for freedom of religion, at least for the 5 other major religions besides Islam:Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, the mini-skirt ban will apply to everyone.

Banning the mini-skirt, and any other clothing that might be deemed risque or promiscuous, was already in the works for female MPs. According to  Marzuki Alie (house of representatives speaker), since men have no control, women are asking to be raped by wearing revealing outfits.

“We know there have been a lot of rape cases and other immoral acts recently, and this is because women aren’t wearing appropriate clothes,” house of representatives speaker Marzuki Alie said. “Women wearing inappropriate clothes arouse men, so it needs to be stopped.—AFP

Guess he believes that men are just animals who can't control their ever-present lust. That's not saying much for their religious piety.

Egyptian Women Beat Up Salafi Morality Police

"Give them a finger, and they'll take the whole hand" is an apt cliché for the ultra-conservative Islamists in Egypt.  For decades they were banned from forming a political party under the mostly secular Hosni Mubarak's regime.  But now that they've won a majority, with the Salafists garnering about 30% of the vote in recent elections, they're like caged animals who have suddenly been set free.  The Salafists (the most fundamentalist of them all) want to impose their skewed religious ideology on the rest of the Egyptian population, whether they want it or not.

Of course, those who will suffer the most under an Islamist majority government would be the women of Egypt.  But after decades of secular living and actively participating in the Arab Spring movement, I'm not sure they won't go down without a fight. At least the more secular ones won't. And they proved that in Benha, a town in north-eastern Egypt.

A group of ultra-conservative Salafis got more than they bargained for after bursting into a beauty salon in the Egyptian town of Benha in an attempt to enforce “God’s law” on the women inside reported the online newspaper, Bikya Masr.

The women were told to stop what they were doing or face physical punishment from the group.

But instead of complying out of fear, or calling for help, the women took matters into their own hands by striking back.

They beat and whipped the vigilante gang “with their own canes before kicking them out to the street in front of an astonished crowd of onlookers,” Egyptian online newspaper, Bikya Masr, reported

It looks like the Salafists are already trying to flex their religious muscles, and if Egyptian women don't nip it in the bud before it's too late, they're going to find themselves dressed in niqabs like their Saudi sisters.

Apparently the beauty salon incident wasn't the first of its kind. Salafis (like their Saudi brothers) have recently been conducting surprise inspection raids on other shops to make sure everyone (owner and customers alike) are in compliance with "God's Law". That means no more clean-shaven faces, and 'indecent' clothing is a no-no. And we all know that in Islam anything other than a niqab and abaya is considered indecent. And it's not just Muslim businesses they're targeting, they've also allegedly destroyed any Christmas decorations in area shops and malls because Christmas is for infidels and therefore forbidden.

Granted, this particular group of zealots was just created, fashioning itself after the similar Saudi 'Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice' (CPVPV), and even going so far as using the same name. But no-one wants to claim ownership of that group including Al-Azhar (Egypt's main mosque in Cairo) and the Salafi al-Nour Party, which denies any connection whatsoever to that group in spite of the CPVPV claiming they are.  In fact, in response to Al-Azhar's rejection they posted a statement to their Facebook page:

“The Committee, which millions of Egyptians have agreed to, and expressed their desire to see its members diligently apply God’s law, draws the attention of our brothers in Al-Azhar to what happened in the last elections when millions of citizens voted for Salafi parties.”

Trouble is brewing in Egypt, if even the Islamists can't control their ultra-conservatives. But hopefully the women will save the day. You go girls!

Pakistani Police Rescue 54 Chained Students Found In Madrassa

Acting on a tip, Pakistani police rescued 54 students from the Zakariya Madrassa (Islamic School) near Karachi, where they were kept like animals in the basement. Both the young and old students were chained, beaten and given very little food by those oh-so-pious clerics. Although the Telegraph says they ranged between the ages of 15 and 45, some of those kids looked much younger, and another news source claims some were as young as 7. The head cleric fled, but several others were arrested.

I wonder if those parents feel guilty, or if they even care. But since some of those madrassas provide free room and board and an education (if you can call learning Arabic, memorizing the Quran and studying Islam an education), I'm sure it's appealing to those who can't afford anything else. Not that everyone there was on a free ticket. One father sent his son to get help with the teen's behavioral problems and was paying $34.00 a month.

Although most of the younger kids were sent for religious education, some of the older 'students' were drug addicts brought there by relatives who saw it as a cheap drug rehab opportunity. Why they had the young kids living with the older druggies is unclear.

Since many of those madrassas are prime breeding ground for would-be-terrorists, police are investigating the possibility of a militant extremist connection.

Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism anyone?

Click here for video news report.

Was There Really A Muslim Fatwa Aimed At Women Against Bananas and Cucumbers?

There have been some pretty asinine fatwas issued over the years by Muslim imams who have never evolved out of 6th century-thinking.  I've made fun of them all, but I questioned the most recent one allegedly made by some European cleric who said women should stay away from cucumbers, bananas and any other phallic-shaped fruits or veggies, for the rather obvious reasons. Admittedly, I groaned at first even though the source was the mainstream though non-liberal Fox News, but they too had questions about its validity. As it turns out, after a little research, the veracity of the banana ban is questionable, at best. 

Muna Khan over at al Arabiya claims that the information regarding the origins of said fatwa is unverifiable. It seems it's a question of one news site referencing another, with no verifiable source.  According to Khan:

"Egyptian newspaper Bikya Masr on Thursday which was quoting the website El-Senousa in which an unnamed cleric in Europe said that women shouldn’t touch fruit/vegetables like bananas, cucumbers, carrots and courgettes because they resembled male genitalia.



The only way women could eat these fruit was if there presented to them by “a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their father or husband should cut the items into small pieces and serve it to them” the newspaper quotes the cleric as saying. "

The problem is, no-one knows who this bozo cleric is nor can they find the original article on El-Senousa that Bikya Masr used as its source. 

This kind of  nonsense isn't beyond the realm of believability, considering past religious fatwas, but until we get a definitive source behind the ban, I'll just thank someone for the good laugh. Although I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were true.

UPDATE:
I think this might be the source article on assawsana.com but it's in Arabic, and the bing translator doesn't clarify much.

Photo source: Banana Museum