a conspiracy of cartographers

This is inane.

SPEAKERS at a Doha conference on Mecca's importance said that the holy city, not Greenwich, should become the reference point for world time, reigniting an old controversy that started some four decades ago.

A group of Islamic scholars presented on Saturday “scientific evidence” to prove that Mecca was the core of that the zero longitude passes through the holy city and not through Greenwich in the UK.

Greenwich in England has been the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) since 1884. GMT is sometimes called Greenwich Meridian Time because it is measured from the Greenwich Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Greenwich is the place from where all time zones are measured.

The phrase scientific evidence has scare quotes around it for good reason. For one thing, they argue that Mecca has perfect alignment of geographic north to magnetic north. All well and good, but magnetic north drifts over time. The claim is false anyway, the true perfect alignment is somewhere around Kandahar.

Possibly the most hilarious aspect of this is their solution: reject the maps!

The participants recommended the unification of the time in the Arab world to the time in Mecca instead of Greenwich. They also called the Arab governments to abandon the new world maps “because they are forged to serve Western interests.”

yes, western interests like global trade, or navigation of oil tankers?

As I've said elsewhere, attempts like this to assert Islamic superiority in the arena of science by pseudoscience fatwa betray a deep-seated insecurity about faith more than anything else.

electronic intifada

At Nation-Building, I look at how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has opened a new front - on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Tariq Nelson promises to return, with a jihad on his agenda.

traitor

former US navy sailor has been convicted of spying and supplying a pro-al-Qaeda website with information on American warship movements.

Hassan Abujihaad, 32, was found guilty of providing material support to terrorists and disclosing secret national defence information.

He was arrested last year in Phoenix, Arizona.

Abujihaad, a Muslim convert previously known as Paul Hall, faces 25 years in jail when he is sentenced on 23 May.

He showed no emotion as he was convicted of passing classified details of US navy ships to Azzam.com by a jury at the US District Court in New Haven, Connecticut.

Azzam was an Islamist website that prosecutors said had actively supported terrorists but has now closed.

Only 25 years in prison? He endangered American lives. This is about as clear-cut a case of "aid and comfort" to our literal enemies as it gets. I'm not in favor of executing traitors any more than I am of chopping the hands off of thieves, those are archaic and barbaric extremes. But this tool should at least spend the rest of his life in prison. He dishonors his uniform, his family, his nation, and his fellow citizens.

I don't think he dishonored Islam however - as far as Islam goes, he is as irrelevant as the jihadis he colluded with.

one stupidstorm was not enough! we must have more!

I confess to not caring about what the Danes do:

Danish newspapers have reprinted one of several caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad which sparked violent protests across the Muslim world two years ago.

They say they wanted to show their commitment to freedom of speech after an alleged plot to kill one of the cartoonists behind the drawings.

Three suspects were held in Denmark on Tuesday "to prevent a murder linked to terrorism", officials said.

The cartoons were originally published by Jyllands-Posten in September 2005.

Danish embassies were attacked around the world and dozens died in riots that followed.

Jyllands-Posten and many other major newspapers - including Politiken and Berlingske Tidende - reprinted the caricature in their Wednesday editions.

The cartoon depicts Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

They have every right to republish the cartoons, but that doesn't absolve them of their role in any violence that may result. Provocation is not cost-free. With rights, come responsibilities. This is analogous to yelling Fire in a crowded theater and while I certainly hope that nothing ill comes of it, I am not going to gnash my teeth about my faith if some louts decide to accept the invitation and bait from Jyllands-Posten et al. It's not my concern, and I wash my hands of it.

UPDATE: Indscribe weighs in:

The caricature is not just offensive because Islam forbids pictorial depiction of Prophet, but also because the 'bomb-shaped turban' in the caricature is a fascistic attempt and such hatespeak is unimaginable in a continent where the mention of Holocaust and doubts on its veracity can land a person in jail.

Clearly, when it comes to Islam, things are different. Hurting sentiments no longer remains an issue. Given the kind of furore the cartoon controversy had generated in the past, the irresponsible reprinting can severely hurt the process of reconciliation between Muslim countries and Europe.

That's the central point - that the supposed "free speech" that the Danes purport to hold sacred does not in fact exist. To claim then that there is soe higher purpose to their provocation and deliberate insult - to muslims, not to Islam - is a lie.

The vast majority of muslims will look at Denmark and see something rotten indeed. That denmark is revealed to be a third-world country in terms of attitude, despite its first-world status in geography, is the ultimate consequence of their actions. That is the true consequence of this supposed fight for free speech to which they pretend to aspire.

I'm sick of being on the retarded team

just great:

An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.

I wish we had a religious equivalent of Australia. We could ship the loons there and then their descendants would create an enlightened civilization with cool slang and wicked senses of humor.

I suppose I should mention again that there is no insult to Islam whatsoever in depicting the Prophet SAW. In fact, Muslims have depicted the Prophet SAW throughout history. Here's one example (via sepoy), entitled "Muhammad and his companions" circa 17th century:



And non-muslims have also done so, not solely to offend but also to pay sincere homage, such as on the frieze of the United States Supreme Court honoring Muhammad SAW as a lawgiver:



so, frak off, you loons.

teddy bears are haram

The entire concept of "an insult to Islam" is itself the closest thing to an insult that can exist, if an eternal divine revelation can be insulted (which in my view, it can not). Case in point:

The Sudanese police arrested a British schoolteacher and accused her of insulting Islam after she allowed her 7-year-old pupils to name a class teddy bear Muhammad, Sudanese officials said today.
[...]
According to BBC, Ms. Gibbons, 54, asked a seven-year-old girl to bring in a teddy bear and for her classmates to pick a name for it.

“They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Muhammed,” Mr. Boulos said.

When it came time to vote, 20 out of 23 children choose Muhammad, one of the most common names in the Muslim word.

The article notes that if convicted of this "crime", Mrs. Gibbons faces punishment including lashes. The article also gets to the nub of the matter, somewhat unintentionally:

In Islam, insulting the Prophet Muhammad is considered a grave offense, and the law of northern Sudan, where Khartoum is located, makes this a crime.

Where is it written that "insulting the Prophet" is a "grave offense" ? Is it in the Qur'an? Hadith? Upon what jurisprudence is the law of Sudan based? Far from this law being based in Islam, it's actually invented without a single source of Islamic law to justify as source. The law of Sudan is, in effect, bida'a.

That is all beside the point, however. No rational person can consider naming a teddy bear "Mohammed" to be an insult. Especially given that Mohammed is the single most common name in the muslim world.

Facebook and free speech

Some of Facebook's resident jafis create a group called "F$%k Islam". What is the correct response?

A. Join the group and engage them in respectful debate
B. Ignore them, because what they crave is publicity
C. Create your own group called "F$%k Facebook" and demand that the other group be censored immediately.

In related news, I have coined a new term: MALI. It stands for Muslims Acting Like Islamophobes.

I am tempted to create a group called "muslims who demand that Facebook delete the groups F^&K Israel and F%^K Christianity" just as a social experiment. However, I have enough jihads on my plate right now.

There is no insult to Islam

I'd like to see, just once, someone in the Islamic World who has a real soapbox and access to the media stand up and say,

"Islam is infinite. They can burn the Qur'an, or insult the Prophet SAW, or outlaw the hijab. But they can never erase the delicate calligraphy of Deen upon the muslim's soul. Our religion is infinitely greater than the sum of their scorn, and as such we have no opinion on their insults as they matter, in the end, not even the tinest whit."

Well, I have a soapbox here, but it's probably too small to make much of a difference. Tawakatullah.

Related: Great discussion at Mahmoud's Den on the topic, if you're looking for where the rational muslim majority is sheltering from the idiocy storm.

Also, sepoy at Chapati Mystery points out that the Prophet SAW has been depicted before, by muslims. There's even an example of the Prophet SAW looking all "Jesus-y". If the so-called defenders of free speech and Arab democracy had used that one as their protest, or maybe the respectful depiction of Muhmmad SAW on the Supreme Court freize as one of the great lawgivers of history, rather than the vile and crude cartoons that equate my faith to terrorism, they'd be on far stronger ground.

I have reproduced those examples of depiction, not because I personally believethat such depictions are compatible with Islam, but because I believe them to be non-offensive expressions that are done without malice (as the depictions that spurred the present controversy certainly were). I am not offended by these depictions I have reprinted here even though I would not sanction them. (astaghfirullah).




And finally, I of course completely agree with Dean. If you don't understand how freedom of speech is the guarantee of religion's pursuit, then you're an ignorant fool and you'll never have my support or brotherhood, even if you do claim to follow the true Deen.