Today's Cool News

Advice from Uncle Binnie

Current affairs got you down?  Tired of hearing the same old tired opinions from the blowhard pundits about Obama's preacher or Geraldine Ferraro or Eliot Spitzer or any of the other names in the news these days?

Well you're in luck because soon we will be enjoying the wit and wisdom of Uncle Binnie.  Not sure if we'll be saying "Hey Man, Ayman"... but this is a message you'll want to see and not hear whateverthefuck that means.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is expected to release a new message within the next two days, the U.S.-based terrorism monitoring service SITE Institute said on Wednesday.

The message is entitled, "The Response Will Be What You See, Not What You Hear," SITE said in a release.

It said an announcement of the pending message was posted on Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, by the administrator of the al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Ekhlaas Internet forum.

       

This is more exciting than getting a sneak peak at John Hagee's next rant.

Whatever happened to Ayman's offer to answer our questions?  It seems he doesn't want to be rushed.

But Can She See the Road Through the Veil?

We're not sure if Mohammed allowed his womenfolk to ride on camels, but women these days still can't drive in Saudi Arabia.  That could soon be changing thanks to rulings from two of the kingdom's top clerics.

From Arab News:

A well-regarded Saudi religious scholar said that there is nothing in Islamic law that bans women from driving and that the fatwas issued in this regard are based on individual judgments.

“In principle women driving is permitted in Islam,” said Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, a member of the Kingdom’s Council of Senior Islamic Scholars.

(snip)

He said if certain issues are resolved, such as the problem of men’s behavior and traffic safety, then he sees no religiously motivated conflict with women driving.

Sheikh Mehsin Al-Awaji, another prominent religious scholar in the Kingdom, agreed. “No religious scholar is going to tell you differently,” he said. “But (the issue of) women driving comes as a ‘package’ and we need to fix the ‘package’ before making the decision (to allow women to drive).”

Expanding on the idea that allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia comes with a “package” of issues, Al-Awaji said there needs to be Saudi women working as police officers, mechanics and other positions. The sheikh diminished the significance of women driving, saying that myriad social reforms have higher priority, even in the realm of empowering women or encouraging public participation in important social challenges.

To me this is at the heart of what's wrong with the cultural aspects of Islam. (We'll leave the spiritual aspects for another time.)  Women are deprived of rights not because they're doing something wrong but because it's easier to restrict women's rights than it is to train men to behave decently when they see a woman's face or a woman driver or anything else that shocks their sensibilities.

Islam seems to me to be based on the principle of men are so wild an unable to control our passions that the only two possibilities are sexual mayhem or complete enforced control of behavior.

What's Worse in Saudi Arabia? Getting Raped or Complaining About It?

What could possibly be worse than being repeatedly gang-raped?  Being repeatedly gang-raped in Saudi Arabia, of course.

From the Arab News:

The General Court in Qatif yesterday doubled the number of lashes for a rape victim as well as jail terms for her assaulters. In its verdict, the court also suspended the victim’s lawyer from defending her.

The case was referred back to the General Court by the Appeals Court judges last summer after Abdul Rahman Al-Lahem, the victim’s lawyer, successfully contested against the initial verdict saying it too lenient for the rapists and unjust for the victim.

A year-and-a-half ago in the Eastern Province town of Qatif, a seven men gang-raped a 19-year-old girl 14 times. Three judges from the Qatif General Court sentenced the rape victim to 90 lashes for being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape. The sentences for the seven rapists ranged from 10 months to five years in prison.

The Appeals Court sentenced the victim to 200 lashes and six months in prison. The seven rapists had their sentences increased to between two and nine years. The verdict came in as a shock to everybody.

A source at the Qatif General Court said that the judges had informed the rape victim that the reason behind doubling her punishment was “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.”