This is no surprise, because the “elect me and the world will love us” rhetoric from 2008 was an illusion from the start, but some may be surprised to learn that not only is US popularity in most Arab countries plummeting, but it’s actually falling lower than when Bush was president:

With the 2008 election of Barack Obama, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. more than doubled in many Arab countries. But in the two years since his famous “Cairo speech,” ratings for both the U.S. and the President have spiraled downwards. The President is seen overwhelmingly as failing to meet the expectations set during his speech, and the vast majority of those surveyed disagree with U.S policies.
[...]
After improving with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, U.S. favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran’s favorable ratings (except in Saudi Arabia).

Soon to be spotted somewhere in the Middle East:

The poll also found that the killing of Osama bin Laden drove down US favorability in much of the Middle East, so next time it might be wise for certain voters to ask what kind of countries their candidate has made it a goal to befriend before assuming it’s a good thing for America.

(h/t Newsmax)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Gee, when it’s something that might make me angry, I’m told that freedom of expression is the cornerstone of our great nation and to just put up with it, but some cornerstones obviously carry more weight than others:

“Non Sequitur” is a popular comic that runs daily in about 800 newspapers, including this one. But the “Non Sequitur” cartoon that appeared in last Sunday’s Post was not the one creator Wiley Miller drew for that day.

Editors at The Post and many other papers pulled the cartoon and replaced it with one that had appeared previously. They were concerned it might offend and provoke some Post readers, especially Muslims.
[...]
Still, Style editor Ned Martel said he decided to yank it, after conferring with others, including Executive Editor Marcus W. Brauchli, because “it seemed a deliberate provocation without a clear message.” He added that “the point of the joke was not immediately clear” and that readers might think that Muhammad was somewhere in the drawing.

Miller is fuming. The award-winning cartoonist, who lives in Maine, told me the cartoon was meant to satirize “the insanity of an entire group of people rioting and putting out a hit list over cartoons,” as well as “media cowering in fear of printing any cartoon that contains the word ‘Muhammad.’”

Here’s the cartoon — oh the horror:

Do you think the Post knows that they did nothing but help make the point? Wiley seems to understand that. The WaPo suits are probably still hunched over this cartoon trying to find Muhammad though.

If Wiley Miller wants to make sure the WaPo allows his cartoons to run in the future, he should start making light of disabled soldiers and Christianity more and never again mention the name… well… you know who.

(h/t ZIP)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Assimilation. Freedom. Religious freedom. Tolerance.

Mohsen Namvar had been arrested in 2007 for baptising Muslim converting to Christianity. He was tortured with electric shocks to his back which left him unable to walk. After his release, he had surgery to his back. Although he is now able to walk, prolonged sitting or standing causes him pain.

Here’s more from the Mission News Network, including some speculation on why such a crackdown occurred:

Why the focus on believers? Nettleton says, “The church is growing at an absolutely phenomenal rate in Iran. Muslims are coming to know Christ; they’re getting involved with these house church groups. That is what has caused the concern of the government. That’s why these arrests are happening.”

I honestly had no idea there was a clandestine house-church network operating in Iran. Though I can’t say I’m surprised.

Your prayers for Mohsen Namvar (and his fellow prisoners of conscience) are requested and if you wish to do more, there is contact information for the Iranian government at the Amnesty link above, with a recommendation for the content of a letter.

Let me remind you that despite the strong temptation to…extemporize when addressing the government of Iran, this is not a good occasion to give the Mullahs a piece of your mind and that doing so will not help Mr. Namvar win his freedom nor save his life.

_________

{Post by See-Dubya; hat tip to Batesline and Baylyblog}

Fatuma Hassan has just enough rice in her near-empty cupboards to make it through the month. The anger she felt when she lost her job in May has given way to a dull, nagging hunger.

Yet this soft-spoken 22-year-old became an unlikely hero within the Somali community when she and five of her Muslim co-workers were dismissed last month from the Mission Foods tortilla factory in New Brighton, Minn., for refusing to wear a new company uniform — a shirt and pants — they consider a violation of their Islamic beliefs.

“For me, wearing pants is the same as being naked,” Hassan said, noting the prophet Mohammed taught that men and women should not dress alike. “My culture, my religious beliefs, are more important than a uniform.”

There’s actually quite a litigious Somali subculture in Minnesota, as we’ve observed with the Minneapolis airport taxi-driver disputes. And then there was that TIZA thing last month. True to form, CAIR has picked this up, and will sue Mission foods on their behalf.

So Mission can either continue to ban unsafe, loose-fitting, but culturally sensitive clothing and be sued and slandered by CAIR, or they can give in and take a hit from a personal-injury lawyer when a burqa-clad employee gets tangled up in an industrial tortilla press. Tough decision.

The article goes on to discuss issues of immigration and assimilation, and the pressure Somalis feel to avoid the latter. Don’t become Americanized, they are told at home.

It looks like the indoctrination’s working, and with CAIR’s help they’re trying to Somalize Minnesota instead.

Meanwhile you’ll be relieved to know that California’s governmental code specifically memorializes workers’ rights to wear pants to work, regardless of their sex.

_______________

{Post by See-Dubya. Pants by J. Press.}

That’s from a PS civic group’s e-mail that was forwarded to me. Let’s see…who’s sponsoring this? Married in Palm Springs…are they like Focus on the Family or something? Let me click over to their site:

Wait a minute…

Seriously, though, nothing says “gay marriage is an important and meaningful commitment” like a commercialized mass Moonie-style wedding in a silly resort town. Presided over by a figure of no less august authority than comedian Shann Carr!

If your “wedding” is emceed by a comedian, you might forgive me for thinking the whole thing’s a joke.

UPDATE: Because it’s all about the dignity.

__________________
{Post by See-Dubya. h/t to Biggles.}

A huge car bomb exploded outside the Danish Embassy in the Pakistani capital on Monday, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more, officials and witnesses said.

The blast echoed through Islamabad and left a crater over a meter deep in the road in front of the main gate to the embassy. Glass, fallen masonry and dozens of wrecked vehicles littered the area. People, some bloodied, ran helter-skelter in a state of panic.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri recently called for attacks on Danish targets in response to the publication of caricatures in Danish newspapers depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

In related news: “Muslim hard-liners intolerant of tolerance rally.”

slamic hard-liners broke up a religious-tolerance rally Sunday in Indonesia, beating demonstrators with bamboo sticks and calling for the deaths of members of a Muslim sect they consider heretical, witnesses said.

About 200 Christians, moderate Muslims and members of Ahmadiyah – an Islamic group the government is considering banning – gathered at the national monument in the nation’s capital of Jakarta to celebrate the country’s tradition of pluralism, said Gunawan Mohamad, a prominent magazine publisher who took part in the rally.

At least 12 people were injured after members of the Islamic Defenders Front rushed the square, waving flags and swinging sticks, organizer Anick Tohari said.

“Repent or die,” shouted men dressed in green and white Islamic outfits as they punched and kicked bleeding protesters, video footage showed.

Denmark responds. No submission:

Per Stig Møller, the foreign minister, blamed the attack on ‘dark forces that want to destroy Pakistan’s relationship with others’.

‘We will not give them that victory,’ he said at a press conference in Copenhagen. He that the relationship between the Danish and Pakistani governments is as strong as ever, saying that the bombing ‘is also an attack against Pakistan’s government and their security people’.

The minister said that both governments are working together to find out who is behind the attack.

Other embassies in relevant countries have been put on alert and their security is being reviewed as a result of today’s event, he said.

Police in Halifax are investigating a complaint about a political cartoon that some members of a local Islamic group claim is a hate crime.

The cartoon, published April 18 in the Chronicle Herald newspaper, depicts a woman in a burka holding a sign that reads, “I want millions,” and she says, “I can put it towards my husband’s next training camp.”

The cartoon by Bruce MacKinnon is a reference to Cheryfa MacAulay Jamal, a woman from Nova Scotia whose husband was arrested in 2006 in an anti-terrorism raid. Qayyum Abdul Jamal was released from jail after charges against him were stayed on April 15.

Zia Khan, director of the Centre for Islamic Development in Halifax, said the cartoon goes beyond what can be considered free speech.

“You would not put a native American Indian with feathers and say I need money in order to cull white people’s heads. You wouldn’t do that. This would be libelous,” he said. Khan’s group called police on April 21. He said the group also filed a complaint with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission.

Under the Criminal Code of Canada, a hate crime is committed to intimidate, harm or terrify an entire group of people to which the victim belongs. The victims are targeted for who they are, not because of anything they have done. Dan Leger, the Herald’s director of news content, said the cartoon does not take aim at all Muslims.

“The whole purpose of that cartoon was to comment on the outrageous demands of this individual for compensation long before any hearing into her case had ever been held,” he said.

In an interview with the Herald before the cartoon ran, Jamal said she wanted to sue the federal government for what her family has gone through and told the reporter, “I want millions,” Leger noted. “[MacKinnon] depicted her exactly the way she looks and used her own words, and that’s the genius of cartooning that you’re able to do that,” he said.

Indeed, the cartoonist is depicting Jamal exactly how she looks. Not as some bigoted steretype, but as an exact representation.

The cartoon (click on pic for full-size):

The real thing, via Robert Jago:

An accurate depiction of a jihadi shakedown artist?

Off with your head!

#2: Due process for wives.

In Malaysia, Islamic Sharia law allows men to divorce their wives with a triple talaq text message.

Coming to the US?

Well, here’s a small dose of sanity–surprising, I know–from Maryland’s Supreme Court, which refused to recognize Islamic divorce. Yes, you can resist sharia creep:

Saying “I divorce thee” three times, as men in Muslim countries have been able to do for centuries when leaving their wives, is not enough if you’re a resident of Maryland, the state’s highest court ruled yesterday.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man’s argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband’s say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.

The justices affirmed a lower court’s decision overturning a divorce decree obtained in Pakistan by Irfan Aleem, a World Bank economist who moved from London to Maryland with his wife, Farah Aleem, in 1985.

Both of their children were born in the United States.

In 2003, Aleem’s wife filed for divorce in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

When he filed a counterclaim, he did not object to the court’s jurisdiction over the case, according to the ruling. But before the legal process could be completed – and without telling his wife – Aleem went to the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and invoked the talaq, in effect attempting to turn jurisdiction of the case over to a Pakistani court that later granted him a divorce.

When they were married in Karachi in 1980, Farah Aleem was 18 and had just graduated from high school. Irfan Aleem was 29, a doctoral candidate at Oxford University in England. As is customary, the couple signed a marriage contract. It obligated Aleem to give his wife the equivalent of $2,500 in the event of their divorce. When they split, he did so, and claimed he owed her nothing more.

Maryland’s highest court disagreed.

“If we were to affirm the use of talaq, controlled as it is by the husband, a wife, a resident of this state, would never be able to consummate a divorce action filed by her in which she seeks a division of marital property,” the judges wrote in their decision.

They said the talaq “directly deprives the wife of the due process she is entitled to when she initiates divorce litigation.”

Now, as you all well know, the reason it’s acceptable to poke fun at “white people” is that no one is going to riot, burn things, or slice any heads off for mocking yuppie love of Toyota Priuses and Public Radio and Microbreweries.

Which got me to musing about a new feature: Stuff Muslims Don’t Like.

Of course, Stuff Muslims Don’t Like doesn’t purport to characterize the entire Muslim population anymore than Stuff White People Like purports to characterize the entire population of white people. It’s a look at predictable predilictions, proclivities, and trends.

I’ve already documented tons of items already that have set off the Religion of Perpetual Outrage. And Amboy Times has compiled a handy list of things that offend Muslims. But I think it’ll be a worthwhile exercise from here on out to start keeping a running blog list, a la Stuff White People Like.

Ask yourself this: Would the big chain bookstores carry a book about Stuff Muslims Don’t Like next to the Stuff White People Like book?

It would be an interesting test, no?

To kick things off, the first SMDL entry comes from Birmingham, England this week, where Muslims are outraged over billboard posters of women in bikinis–and outraged over advertising in general:

Matalan posters outrage Muslims
Apr 30 2008 By Paul Suart

A COUNCILLOR today called for more control over advertising posters in “culturally sensitive” areas of Birmingham.
Coun Talib Hussain made his plea after a billboard on the corner of Sydenham Road and Golden Hillock Road, in predominantly Muslim Sparkbrook, was defaced.

The hoarding, close to mosques in Anderton Road and Golden Hillock Road and visible to parents and children walking to Montgomery Primary School, promotes Matalan’s new swimwear range and features three scantily-clad models.

The models have been covered in thick white paint to conceal bare flesh.

Coun Talib Hussain (Ind, Sparkbrook) criticised the vandalism but said it was a result of the lack of action from city council bosses. He said: “I condemn the people that did this but at the same time it’s wrong for companies to put that kind of advert in sensitive wards.

“I have received complaints on a number of occasions not to put adverts like that in Sparkbrook. “The city council should not give permission to advertising like that in these wards. “Having families seeing naked pictures does not bring the community together, it provokes things.”

The vandalism is similar to a spate of attacks in 2005 and 2006 by a group called Muslims Against Advertising.

Criticism of over-the-top, pornified advertising is certainly welcome. But the targeted swimwear firm in this case, Matalan, is not some Victoria’s Secret-style retailer. It’s a family clothing company. The photos were not “naked pictures.” (Blogger Methodist Preacher has the advertising photo.) And unlike those who object to the Abercrombie and Fitch-i-fication of advertising, the Muslim critics of the innocuous bikini ads in Birmingham are driven not merely by an interest in protecting “cultural sensitivities”–but by an Islamic imperative that won’t rest until we’ve all traded in our bikinis for those stifling
burquinis.

Out: Two-piece swimsuits.

In: Sharia chic.

***

Uh-oh. Make sure the anti-bikini vandals don’t get a hold of the latest issue of Fitness!