Blogging Will Resume Sunday

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The original Mahound blog title picture

I generally do not like self-referential posts. You probably don't either. But bear with me for this exception.

I will be incommunicado for a few days, due to traveling. I will post again on Sunday.

Since Charlie Hebdo, I've posted once a day on average. I intend to hit 365 by the anniversary of the attacks.

Bearing witness, partly to those who were murdered is important. And contra Bishop Barron, bearing witness means more than just smiling idiotically over your turkey plate.

I hope I have done them justice.

As readers know, Mahound's Paradise is a mix of Islamophobic, Traditionalist Catholic and Jewish/Israeli topics.

Within that, I split roughly half and half between original material and links to news items of interest. It all depends on how inspired/lazy I am.

I'm pondering or have half-written these posts:

• Analysis of the recent French elections
• Post titled, "In Praise of Jack Chick" (yeah, I know that will really help me win friends and influence people)
• Post on the recent FrancisChurch "don't evangelize Jews" thing
• Should we lie to our kids about Santa?
• My general thoughts on immigration (I'm pro, sort of)

I was going to polish and upload the French election piece, but I'm too tired and the plane leaves too early. Plus, I have to do laundry.

Ah, the romantic life of a blog writer.

Thanks for reading! Have a blessed third week of Advent!

And don't let the haters get you down!

Pamela Geller on Vatican Treaty: "This is a Massive Betrayal of Israel and All Free People, and an Endorsement of the Genocidal 'Palestinian' Jihad Against the Jews"

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Munich, 1972: A Palestinian nation builder

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago (and for over a thousand years before that) the Catholic Church actually had a state. And it did more than just mint postage stamps. It had soldiers and courts and taxes and everything.

Now, that "state" is for most practical purposes non-existent. And it has been reduced to making treaties with other non-existent states.

Such as "Palestine".

The Vatican recently announced it would recognize and sign a treaty with the state of Palestine--a fictional entity that the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization would like to actualize.

How many Jews did you kill at the Munich Olympics, Johnny Palestine?

And I was worried about a kissing scandal.

Let's listen to Pamela Geller, one of the great heroines of our time:

This is a massive betrayal of Israel and all free people, and an endorsement of the genocidal “Palestinian” jihad against the Jews. A “State of Palestine” will no more bring peace than did the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza: just as with Gaza, a “State of Palestine” will just become another jihad base. The Vatican has every reason to know that. The “Palestinians” on their official media outlets make no secret of their goal of wiping out Israel and killing Jews wholesale. 

Now the Vatican has signed on to that.

The current leftist Pope is supposedly utterly opposed to the very real anti-semitism of a small segment of rightest traditionalists. "Interfaith" dialogues and prayers are held with Rabbis (and Imams) on consecrated Catholic grounds--including inviting Jewish priests (and Imams) to preside at the very alters that contain the relics of the Christian martyrs.

But the Vatican has just endorsed the cause of those who wish to destroy the Jewish state.

One might be forgiven for thinking that in practice, liberal Catholicism and the most right-wing Jewish conspiracy-obsessed SSPX offshoots now agree on one thing. It's a recurrently popular philosophical claim with a venerable pedigree:

Stick it to the Jews.

At least the SSPX offshoots are more honest about it.

Every Sunday and (when I am not lazy) on other days, I attend a Traditional Latin Mass that begins with these words from Psalm 42:

Priest: Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the unholy nation, deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man. 

Server: For Thou, O God, art my strength, why hast Thou cast me off? And why do I go about in sadness, while the enemy afflicts me? 

Priest: Send forth Thy light and Thy truth: they have conducted me and brought me unto Thy holy mount, and into Thy tabernacles. 

Server: And I will go unto the altar of God: to God, Who gives joy to my youth.

God chose to reveal Himself first to the Jews and the Jewish nation. How fitting that the current Church on Earth--which, while refusing to kneel to God, advocates kneeling to individual men--has chosen to betray His first chosen nation.

O God...distinguish my cause from the unholy nation, deliver me from the unjust and deceitful man.

He will, of course.

That should bring comfort to some. And (if they have eyes to see) trepidation to many more.

Stoning in Islam (and Judaism and Christianity), Part 1

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From The Stoning of Soraya M

Many people feel that the quintessential horrific punishment of Islamic law is death by stoning. Generally, it is reserved for sexual offenses--fornication, adultery and homosexual acts. Apologists for Islam would say it is a sort of exception or aberration, not sanctioned by the Koran, or else it is a holdover from Mosaic law that Jews and Christians are at least partly responsible for, if not merely a few hundred years away from.

I want to investigate this.

First, I want to make the discussion more real by citing an actual case. It occurred in Somalia in 2008. The text is taken from an article in The Independent:

'Don't kill me,' she screamed. Then they stoned her to death 

Outrage at execution of 13-year-old Somali rape victim for 'adultery' 

This was a death foretold. A Toyota pickup with a loudspeaker began an early-morning tour of the ruined neighbourhoods of Kismayo, a port in southern Somalia, announcing that there would be a killing. By 4pm a crowd of 1,000 people had gathered at the football stadium. A hole had been dug in the ground, and half an hour later a truck loaded with rocks arrived. 

A group of fighters from the Al-Shabab militia who control the city appeared, firing warning shots into the air to disperse a crush of people trying to reach the stones. 

A young girl was dragged into the stadium. She knew what was going to happen next, and witnesses saw her struggling and screaming. 

"What do you want from me?" she asked. Then she shouted "I'm not going, I'm not going. Don't kill me." 

But four men forced her into the hole and buried her up to her neck. Fifty men then set about stoning her to death. After 10 minutes she was dug up and two nurses checked to see if she was alive. She was. So they put her back in the ground and the stoning recommenced. 

Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow's crime was to be raped and then report it. After being attacked by three men her family went to the Al-Shabab Islamist militia to report the crime. She was detained and accused of adultery. No effort was made to identify or arrest the rapists.

Despite reports that she was 23 years old, Aisha was actually 13. "She hadn't even reached the age to be married," her distraught father said. 

People in Kismayo say they live in constant fear of the Al-Shabab, but not everyone was content to watch a "clearly distressed" girl being stoned to death. Some people tried to intervene. The gunmen fired shots; one man was wounded and an eight-year-old boy was shot dead. The militia later apologised for his killing. 

After the execution a man called Sheik Hayakalah told a radio station: "The evidence came from her side and she officially confirmed her guilt," he said. "She told us that she was happy with the punishment under Islamic law." Aisha's father said his daughter had begged for her life. It is illegal under Sharia to convict a 13-year-old of adultery. 

There are so many things to note about this account: The crowd that was so eager to pick up stones they had to be dispersed by gunfire. The terrified, screaming young woman, pleading for her life. The presence and actions of those "nurses". The fact that the "adultery" was almost certainly a gang-rape. The resistance and heroism of some (that 8 year old boy?) The technical question of the age requirement-when would stoning be permitted--14? 16? 18?

In the next post I want to answer a number of questions:

1. To what extent is the punishment of stoning present in the law codes of contemporary Muslim countries?
2. To what extent is it practiced by extra-legal means in Muslim countries?
3. Is it sanctioned by the Koran?
4. If not, is it sanctioned by other original Islamic sources?
5. Was stoning decreed and/or practiced under ancient Jewish or Christian law?
6. If so, when and why did it disappear?

These questions are not difficult to answer and in fact have relatively non-controversial answers. Or at least they do for all those that desire to approach the question without bias or prejudice.

In the meantime, I know that all readers would regard the above case and similar cases as acts of grave evil.

Please pray for Aisha Duhulow and all the other victims.