Bad Manners?

"Besides being accused of blasphemy, I have been accused of bad manners. But good manners should not be confused with free speech. Having good manners means that when I meet a closet Islamist like the Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan, I don't pour my glass of water on his head and call him names. Exercising free speech means that I can call his book, In the Footsteps of the Prophet, a badly written piece of proselytism and say that he doesn't deserve the title of professor or a university chair from which to propagate his program of medieval brainwashing. All this will no doubt offend Ramadan, but you cannot subject Karl Marx to scrutiny and give the Prophet Muhammad a free ride. Free speech is the bedrock of liberty and a free society. And yes, it includes the right to blaspheme and offend." - Ibid.

The Culture Wars Have Already Been Won

"Here is something I have learned the hard way, but which a lot of well-meaning people in the West have a hard time accepting: All human beings are equal, but all cultures and religions are not. A culture that celebrates femininity and considers women to be the masters of their own lives is better than a culture that mutilates girls' genitals and confines them behind walls and veils or flogs or stones them for falling in love. A culture that protects women's rights by law is better than a culture in which a man can lawfully have four wives at once and women are denied alimony and half their inheritance. A culture that appoints women to its supreme court is better than a culture that declares that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man. It is part of Muslim culture to oppress women and part of all tribal cultures to institutionalize patronage, nepotism, and corruption. The culture of the Western Enlightenment is better. - Ibid.

Islam: The Religion of Violence

"Islam is not just a belief; it is a way of life, a violent way of life. Islam is imbued with violence, and it encourages violence. Muslim children all over the world are taught the way I was: taught with violence, taught to perpetrate violence, taught to wish for violence against the infidel, the Jew, the American Satan." - Ibid

Enemy [#1] of Islam

"It is not only the prohibition against criticizing the Quran and the Prophet that closes the Muslim mind, and not only the life-long socialization of learning by rote. It is also the continuous construction of conspiracy theories about enemies of Islam who are determined to destroy the one, true religion. The chief enemy is the Jew. ..." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

'Mystery Gum' by Wanna Piece [Aberdeen, WA]

I only got my [Zamplebox] box today so haven't tried Mystery Gum yet, but for now the REAL mystery is how come 10 of the eleven e-juices in my box come from 7 e-juice companies all based in Aberdeen, WA? Only ONE - poor little 'Flying Monkey' by Possum Trot - is the "out-of-towner', that's from Olathe, KS.

Sick Culture II

"Controlling women's sexuality and limiting men's access to sex with women are the central focus of the code of honor and shame. Muslim women are chattel, and every Muslim girl must be a virgin at marriage. Once wed [with or without her consent], she must be faithful to her husband, who, in traditional societies, she will never refer to by his first name but only has rajel, my lord. In case of divorce or widowhood, the job of monitoring her sexual activities is assumed by her new guardians: her sons, if they are adults, or her husband's father and his male bloodline. These men may select a new husband for her. Few Muslim women are ever free to choose whom they will have sex with. An element as powerful and potent as a Muslim girl's virginity also has great commodity value, which means that virginity is above all a man's business. Daughters are bait for attracting alliances, or they can be reserved for the highest bidder. Power, wealth, and the solidifying of clan relations may hinge on marriage alliances, so raising daughters of quality who are modest and docile is important. Using violence to ensure obedience and to warn them against straying is a perfectly legitimate reminder of the law in a system of values in which women have only a little more free will than livestock. There must be blood on the wedding night from her broken hymen or she will be condemned as a slut." - ibid.

Sick Culture :P

"A man's honor within a clan society - and these societies are, largely, about men - resides in his authority. Men must be warriors; shame consists in being seen as weak. Women are the breeders of men, and women's honor lies in their purity, their submission, their obedience. Their shame is to be sexually impure, and it is the worst shame of all, because a woman's sexual disobedience defiles herself, her sisters, and her mother, as well as the male relatives whose duty it is to control her. No Muslim man has any standing in society if he does not have honor. And no matter how much honor he builds up through wise decisions and good deeds, it is destroyed if his daughter or his sister is sexually defiled. This can happen if she loses her virginity before she's married, or if she engages in sexual intercourse outside of the marriage - and that includes rape. Even the rumor that she may have had sex is reason enough to label her "defiled" and lead to loss of honor for her whole family. A father who cannot control his daughters, a brother who cannot control his sisters, is disgraced. He is bankrupt socially and even economically. His family is ruined. The girl will not fetch a bride-price, and neither will her sisters or her cousins, because the mere suspicion of independent feeling and female action in their family taints them too. Such a man suffers a social death, exclusion from the mutual assistance and respect of the clan - the worst possible fate that could befall a person, whether child or adult, male or female." - ibid.

Submissiveness, Collectivism vs. Individualism, Libertarianism

"Can you be a Muslim and an American patriot? You can if you don't care very much about being a Muslim. If you squint and look away, you can avoid thinking about the very basic clashes between the submissive, collectivist values of Islam and the individualist, libertarian values of the democratic West." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

Muslim Schools

from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

Islamic Genital Mutilation

"Whenever I spoke, American listeners gasped in indignant surprise at the very concepts of child marriage, honor killing, and female excision. Rarely, if ever, did it occur to these audiences that many women and girls suffer precisely these kinds of oppression in houses and apartment buildings all over the United States. "Roughly 130 million women around the world have had their genitals cut. The operation is inflicted on an estimated six thousand little girls every day. If 98 percent of Somali women are cut, 95 percent of women from Mali, and 90 percent of Sudanese, how many women does that make in every subway car in New York, on every freeway in Colorado and Kansas? If 97 percent of Egyptian girls are genitally mutilated, what percentage of Egyptian girls born in the United States are cut? None? I don't think so.* But my audiences couldn't believe that." - from'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010] * All figures come from Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective/Violence Against Women (2003), Report of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, Radhika Coomaraswamy, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2002/52/.

Love Sick

Nasty 'P' of 'S' Allah :P

"In the hell described in the Quran, flames lick the flesh of the sinful; burning embers will be placed under their feet, their scalps will be scalded and their brains boiled. These tortures are endless, for as their skin is burned it is replaced and burned again. In the suffering of my father on his deathbed, my mother believed, Allah and his angels were giving him a taste of the punishments to come for his wrongdoings." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [the 'My Mother' chapter] If true, Allah is a NASTY FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.

Islamic Polygamy

"We who are born into Islam don't talk much about the pain, the tensions and ambiguities of polygamy. (Polygamy, of course, predates Islam, but the Prophet Muhammad elevated it and sanctioned it into law, just as he did child marriage.) It is in fact very difficult for all the wives and children of one man to pretend to live happily, in union. Polygamy creates a context of uncertainty, distrust, envy, and jealousy. There are plots. How much is the other wife getting? Who is the favored child? Who will he marry next, and how can we manipulate him most efficiently? Rival wives and their children plot and are often said to cast spells on each other. If security, safety, and predictability are the recipe for a healthy and happy family, then polygamy is everything a happy family is not. It is about conflict, uncertainty, and the constant struggle for power." - from 'Nomad' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali [2010]

Salaam and Squawk [Five Times a Day]

"By God! Don't you see that all these Ousamas Bin Ladens consider themselves authorized to kill you and your children because you drink alcohol, because you don't grow the long beard and refuse the chador or the burkah, because you go to the theater and to the movies, because you love music and to sing a song, because you dance and watch television, because you wear the miniskirt or the shorts, because on the beach and by the swimming pool you sunbathe almost naked or naked, because you make love when you want and with whom you want, or because you don't believe in God?!? I am an atheist, thank God. And I have no intention of being punished for this by retrograde bigots who, instead of contributing to the improvement of humanity, salaam and squawk prayers five times a day." - Oriana Fallaci - 'the Rage and the Pride'