The Happy Carpenter

Go and get your Steyn -- It's the demography, stupid!

Long, and not funny, but important.  A must-read.

No, really.  You have to read it.

Biblical proportions

A preacher was telling his congregation that anything they could think of, old or new, was discussed somewhere in the Bible and that the entirety of the human experience could be found there.  After the service, he was approached by a woman who said, "Preacher, I don't believe the Bible mentions PMS."

The preacher replied that he was sure it must be there somewhere and that he would look for it.

The following week after the service, the preacher called the woman aside and showed her a passage which read,...

"...And Mary rode Joseph's ass all the way to Bethlehem."

Porph speaks about Project Sisyphus -- that's just how I feel

You might have noticed a bit of slacking off here at The Happy Carpenter lately.  That's because I feel exactly like my ol' blog buddy Porph does:

This is one of the things that has contributed to my lack of blogging recently. By no means the only reason I haven't blogged, but a significant one. Repeatedly having to rebut "BUSH LIED"! and all the other bogus distractions that act as a substitute for intelligent civic discourse is not my idea of the best use of time. I know it has to be done, and I can link to all the things, be they on WMD, intelligence, ties to terrorism (see below) and the like which refutes the litany, have done it before and likely will do it again, but this Sisyphean task grows wearisome.

Indeed.  Plus, it's August.  Go with it.  Even though, down here in Florida, the kinder are back in school, it's still the summer doldrums.  It's 93 degrees and 93% humidity, and the damn boat is sinking, so I've got to go.

Still better than the Scientologists

I wish Mike would absorb this

Arrogance, denial, habit.  How else do I explain MTLJBIL's leftyism?

From the Jersalem Post: 

Britain's Association of University Teachers (AUT) rushed through and approved two motions calling for boycotts of two Israeli universities on Friday, in a blitz procedure timed, on the eve of Pessah, to exclude Jewish members from the conference.

The move has been furiously condemned by Israel and Jewish groups. Jewish AUT members have now begun to secede from the union, and calls for mass resignations have been issued.

An executive union meeting heard unanswered orations against Israel by Sue Blackwell and Shereen Benjamin, both lecturers at Birmingham University.

They labeled Israel a "colonial apartheid state, more insidious than South Africa," called for the "removal of this regime" and depicted Israeli universities as "repressing" academic freedom.

The speeches were met with applause before AUT executive president Angela Roger cut short the session and moved to deny a right of reply to opponents of the motions. "Lack of time" was cited as the reason preventing challenges to the motions from being heard.

The executive passed separate motions adopting boycotts against the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University by sizable majorities.

John has this to say about that:

If there are any leftish Jews reading this, and you are tempted to imagine that this is just a move of sympathy for Palestinians, answer a couple of questions. Like, "How come these people never have "sympathy" when the Palestinians are oppressed or mistreated by other Arabs? And how come they never notice the plight of any other oppressed groups in the Middle East?

The whole Palestinian question is, for Western leftists, a chance for some Jew-bashing without being, ha ha ha, "anti-semitic." And those poor stupidest of saps, the Jewish lefties, have to just slide along with this, or make weak protests about how everyone should be willing to "just get along, and talk to each other."

Bloody Euros.  They never learn.  Can American Jews?

And to think I started out Presbyterian

Give me a stinkin' break:

(Washington Post via Judicious Asininity (who's on quite the roll))  Jewish and Protestant leaders clashed over Israel yesterday as the heads of several major U.S. Jewish organizations condemned the Presbyterian Church's decision to begin selective divestiture in companies operating in Israel....

Jewish-Presbyterian relations have been in turmoil since the 2.4 million-member Presbyterian Church's General Assembly voted 431 to 62 in July to "initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel" and also decided to continue funding messianic congregations that target Jews for proselytizing.

The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the stated clerk, or highest elected official, of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), said the church does not plan a "blanket divestment" of its $7 billion in investment funds from companies operating in Israel. Rather, he said, it will target businesses that it believes bear particular responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians and will give them a chance to change their behavior before selling their shares.

Presbyterian officials cited one possible example: Caterpillar Inc., which manufactures bulldozers used by Israel to demolish Palestinian homes that are built without permits or belong to families of suicide bombers....

Hey you stupid PC morons in my (former) church:  Bulldozers don't knock down walls, people do! 

Words fail me.

Don't fall for it.

Budweiser Select is crap. 

It's from the marketing department, not the brewers.  Save your money, lads.  It tastes just like Bud.  Which is a good thing, whereas paying more for a scribbly crown logo is not.

Weekend Pundit has a point *OR* You say harabah, I say jihadi

At first I stood corrected, but the more I thought about it...  Anyway, it went like this:

Jihad, A Misused Term

I have to make an apology, as do many in the media and the blogosphere. It appears that for quite a few years now we have been using the incorrect term for Islamofascist pinheads, which includes the members of Al Qaeda and the Wahabi cultists: jihadis. But the type of war they are fighting has nothing to do with jihad. Instead we should be using the term harabah. If I recall correctly it basically means war against innocents or war against society. Harabah is considered blasphemy by Muslims and can mean those committing harabah are condemned to hell. Jihad is supposed to be a positive force, not one used to murder, commit barbarous acts, or to commit suicide in order to kill 'infidels'.

But what is the term we should use for these evil bastards? (Jihadis are to jihad as _________ are to harabah.) This is something I'm going to need some help with, though for the moment I'm going to use harabahis.

One of the ways to shut these evil morally twisted Islamofascists is to show the rest of the Muslim world that they aren't what they profess to be and that their leaders aren't what they purport to be. Osama Bin Laden has issued fatwas calling for jihad, including the torture, mutilation, and murder of innocents. But Bin Laden can't issue fatwas. He can't declare jihad. As Aziz Poonwalla writes:

A fatwa is a religious pronouncement, a call to religious duty. By its very definition, therefore, it can only be invoked by a religious authority. Osama bin Laden has no such authority, and in fact usually fatwas are issued by councils of clerics (in the Sunni tradition) or by religious imam (in the Shi'a). Bin Laden's family may have built many masajid, but it is certainly doubtful he ever led prayers, or ever acted in a religious advisory capacity. If anything, Bin Laden is a pretender to religious authority. The notion that his pronouncements can be labeled fatwas is intrinsically ludicrous. Even the ruling Saudi family dares not lay claim to the authority to issue fatwas (though in their case, they just let their Wahabi symbiotes do it).

Bin Laden's ignorance about Islam and the laughability of his claim to religious authority is well-illustrated by his own words:

The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies--civilians and military--is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God, "and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together," and "fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God." . . .

The very first statement asserts that "killing Americans and their allies" is an "individual duty". The Qur'an does in fact support violence if in defense against attack, but here Bin Laden explicitly describes the targets as "civilians and military." Note that if you make the argument that there is no such thing as a civilian, then that qualification is unnecessary. Presumably then Bin Laden does make such a distinction, and thus he is knowingly calling for the murder of innocents.

This makes Bin Laden one of the harabahi, one of the blasphemers. He is not a jihadi for he does not fight jihad. Nor can he declare jihad for he doesn't have the religious authority to do so.

So let us change the designation of those willing to kill everybody “in the name of Allah” from the mis- and overused term jihadi to harabahi - from holy warrior to fascist murderer.

The author of that post, Chan Eddy, was kind enough to leave this comment on this site:

The term we should be using for the militant mutants calling themselves jihadi is harabahi. They are no more fighting jihad than Michael Moore is the next Steven Spielberg.

To understand what is meant by harabah check out this link:

http://weekendpundit.blogmosis.com/lastweekend/027303.html

To which I responded in my usual mild-mannered way:

I take your point, and I bow to your superior knowlege. For the proper word to describe the people who commit harabah may I suggest "Muslim." The vast majority, you know, like all those nice peace loving people who were dancing in the streets on 9-11, need to feel the sting of our condemnation, our calumny, our contempt. They must ultimately be the ones who clean up their act -- even the 3rd ID and the Marine Corps can only do so much.
"Oh, but wait! Most Muslims are peaceful decent people, etc etc yada yada yada." Oh really? Ever had a conversation with a Muslim - a real one, not a confused African-American - in which Israel came up? Did the Muslim begin and end the conversation expressing his contempt for and opposition to the Palestinian terrorists killing innocent Jews who have a perfect right to live in peace? Yes? Then that was a nice Muslim. I have never met him, however, but I've met plenty of his jihadi/harahbi cousins. I think nice Muslims are a lot scarcer than Black Republicans, and for practical purposes we can mostly treat them as a class. A 2nd class, that is, of medieval murderers who don't even remember how to make Damascus steel with which to cut the heads off Jews & westerners & Sunnis (if they're Shiite) & Shiites (if they're Sunnis) and Russian school children & ....
Quite a resume, isn't it?
So "jihadists" is as nice as I'm willing to be until I see mostly universal condemnation of terrorism by Muslims.
Sorry, but respect must be earned; if you try to give it away for nothing in deference to political correctness respect turns into the quiet racism of low expectations.

I'd like to expand on that a little.  It's tempting to give most Muslims a pass here and just blame Arabs.  After all, most of the problems we've had come from Arabs, right?  But then, Iranians are not Arabs.  Afghans aren't either.  Neither are Pakistanis, you know, the ones with the discount nuclear weapons bazarre, not the Indonesians -- they're the ones who don't want any tsunami help from our military people.  Remember Beslam and the slaughtered Russian kids?  That was Chechen, and they're not Arabs either.  So it looks to me that

Terrorist = Muslim

As for Muslim = Terrorist?  I'm not sure.  That definition is up to them, and the next few years in Iraq will be quite informative.  The jury is still out on that one.

The heartless killer not only slit Sylvia's throat, but also sliced a huge gash in her chest and stabbed her in the wrist, where she had a tattoo of a Coptic cross.

Peace be unto you.  More news of the religion of peace, praise be and so forth:

Jihad Watch informs us:

Was this family brutally murdered because they provoked Muslims in a chatroom? Were they slain because of the Islamic legal imperative to kill those who are deemed blasphemers? Note also that Sylvia's throat was slit, in line with Qur'an 47:4. "'Islamic Hate' Eyed in Slays," from the New York Post, with thanks to decknxf:

Hossam Armanious, 47, who along with his wife and two daughters was found stabbed to death in his Jersey City home early Friday, would regularly debate religion in a Middle Eastern chat room, one source said.

Armanious, an Egyptian Christian, was well known for expressing his Coptic beliefs and engaging in fiery back-and-forth with Muslims on the Web site paltalk.com.

I know some Egyptian Christians (slightly) and know they have little patience with their Muslim brethren.  I think it's funny how the cops are so reluctant to label this a hate crime, but then how could it be when the insulted parties are from the religion of peace.

Osama Hassan, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, described the relationship between Copts and Muslims as cooperative if not friendly.

"I think there might be people that can get into physical fights, but not to the point of murder," Hassan said.

Both the deacon and uncle poured cold water on the theory that the family were the victims of a robbery gone wrong.

"This is not a robbery, Ayed said. "We found all of the jewelry in the house. They didn't take anything."

And you thought political correctness couldn't get any worse. From the other side of the bay that brought us "ebonics", Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the San Francisco School Board!

Reuters:

A California teacher has been barred by his school from giving students documents from American history that refer to God -- including the Declaration of Independence.

Steven Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek School in the San Francisco Bay area suburb of Cupertino, sued for discrimination on Monday, claiming he had been singled out for censorship by principal Patricia Vidmar because he is a Christian.

"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful," said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson.

Williams asserts in the lawsuit that since May he has been required to submit all of his lesson plans and supplemental handouts to Vidmar for approval, and that the principal will not permit him to use any that contain references to God or Christianity.

Among the materials she has rejected, according to Williams, are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, George Washington's journal, John Adams' diary, Samuel Adams' "The Rights of the Colonists" and William Penn's "The Frame of Government of Pennsylvania."

Keep it up, Vidmar, keep it up.  That's exactly the kind of crap that but President Bush into office not once, but twice.  Any bets on how the local appellate court will rule on this one?