Whatever other version of this which you might listen to, listen to this. Note perfect – the orchestra isn't great, most aren't, but the voice is perfect!

"davem" has an interesting post at Harry's Place (with thanks to Alan):

When it comes to learning Arabic there’s one thing nobody ever warns you about, let alone prepares you for. If this subject does come up it’s immediately brushed under the carpet.

It is the simple fact that learning to speak Arabic is actually quite stressful.

Why should this be? It’s just a language, right? Yes and no.

It’s not like European languages, which are basically verbal ways to convey information on who did what, where, when, how and why. It appears to me that having developed in an environment that prohibits any sort of critical thought, especially in the fields of religion and politics, Arabic has become a means to avoid dealing with difficult issues.

In some Arabic-speaking countries, asking ‘how’ and ‘why’ can get you imprisoned. Therefore the more skilled you are at it, the better you are at avoidance by using ever bigger words and ever more flowery metaphors. In the end it just becomes one big exercise in denial.

Nothing can top the frustration I endured trying desperately but in vain, for a full year, to have a normal conversation with the locals in Assad’s Syria. Nothing else even comes close...

I was always told that as long as I avoided politics and religion, everything would be OK. But then what’s left? After all there are only so many conversations you can have about sand before it starts to get boring.

The only path left is learning via TV, at which point you’re like Alice In Wonderland, where facts, logic and analysis have absolutely no place. However conspiracies, unsubstantiated allegations, “group think”, paranoia, and denial become the common currency. If you don’t subscribe to them then you’re a “Jew” or a “spy”. What else could you be?

Understandably the Arab world likes to keep this sort of thing well away from the English-speaking world– which is probably why channels like Al Jazeera English do not broadcast the Arabic channel’s output.

(...)

Nick Cohen, in his book “What’s Left,” said that bad writing is indicative of somebody with something to hide. I showed that passage to my Kurdish friend in Syria, who told me: “That’s the single best description of Arabic ever written”.

Dallas Morning News:

About 2,900 religion-based charges were filed with the EEOC last year, a 13 percent increase from the previous year and double the number of cases in 1992.

The spurt of cases may actually stem from greater diversity in the workplace, said Dianna Johnston, assistant legal counsel for the EEOC. Employees are "much more open about their religion and make it part of their overall life," she said.

Ms. Johnston said the increasing demands of the workplace heighten the likelihood of conflict since prayer times can coincide with work hours. The most prevalent religious discrimination charges include time off for religious activities and wearing religious garb like a headscarf, she said.

Islamic prayer, which involves a specified cleansing and prayer routine, also causes confusion for those unfamiliar with the practice. Islam mandates five daily prayers in the direction of Mecca. Two of these prayers, early and late afternoon, often fall during work hours.

North Texas has up to 180,000 Muslims, the second largest population in Texas next to Houston and the seventh largest Muslim community in the United States. Many work in information technology and engineering jobs in Dallas and are now assuming management positions.

"Today you even have leadership and management training workshops associated with Muslims," said Mohamed Elibiary, president of the Freedom and Justice Foundation, based in Plano. "They are trying to climb the corporation into management whereas in the 1990s they were just happy to have a stable job."

Muslim backlash after 9/11 had a profound impact on the community, Mr. Elibiary said, and only now are Muslims becoming comfortable enough to showcase their faith again. He attributes it to American disenchantment with the Iraq war and the war on terror.

"As Americans started losing confidence, they stopped fearing their Muslim neighbor," he said.

Elbiary also says here: "Reading Rod [Dreher]'s piece, I finally grasped why [Sayyid] Qutb [founding member and main philosopher of the Muslim Brotherhood - father organization of Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Al-Qaeda] is so feared. It’s always easier to direct our fears at one focal point then face our challenge. ... Many Westerners who've read Qutb's and many others' work, see the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that's truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more. At that point, America will have a spiritual product that’s exportable and satisfactory to the spiritual marketplace’s demand. So I'd recommend everyone read Qutb, but read him with an eye to improving America not just to be jealous with malice in our hearts." Obviously, management-speak and Arabic have a lot in common.

Beyond a rising comfort level, more companies are taking a global approach to how they do business, said Dr. Khurshid Qureshi, president of the Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers.

"They want Muslims to work for their companies," he said. "The prayer rooms aren't mandatory, but they are fringe benefits."

Meditation spots still aren't commonplace. DiversityInc, a magazine that puts out an annual report on the Top 50 Companies for Diversity, found that 16 percent last year had special religious accommodations.

Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, estimates that less than half of the region's companies have prayer rooms. He said it's often something that doesn't occur to an employer until a Muslim employee mentions it....

And of course CAIR is there to suggest backing up that "mention" with filing a complaint with the Employment Equal Opportunity Commission.

If the British were like the French, we would not be able to scoff at them. This is the main reason for not imitating them, unless by imitation you mean singing bad pop music in a silly accent. Another reason is their insistence on rigid secularism. This is not, and should not be, our way.

The recent decision to allow a Welsh Sikh girl to wear a kara (steel bangle) at school was correct, in my opinion. Sunny Hundal writes in The Guardian on this; while it is not often I agree with Hundal or The Guardian, today I will make an exception on both counts:

The most interesting aspect to this whole case was the fact that the judge took advice on whether the kara was a central tenet to the Sikh faith (it is). And while some might find that potentially dangerous and bizarre, I believe this to be a good development. It means that while people do have some leeway on religious matters, they have to be in proportion. In other words, you can't take the piss and claim your religion sanctions it. For this reason I believe rejecting the claims by Shabina Begum and Lydia Playfoot were the right decisions to make. The line has to be drawn somewhere and religious people cannot get away with anything just on the basis of belief.

Shabina Begum was the Luton schoolgirl who “wished” to wear a jilbab – or rather her brothers and Hizb ut Tahrir wished it for her. Lydia Playfoot wanted to wear a “chastity ring”.

The second important point to note in these cases is that the law is a very blunt instrument. The case went to court but I'm glad there isn't a specific law that bans or fully allows such symbols. It's a very British position to take, admittedly, but these decisions must be devolved to local authorities and schools. For example, if the kara was being used as a weapon by Sikh gangs (as used to be the case in West London), then I'd fully support the decision by a school to ban it locally. The local context is important.

This legal grey area might annoy those who want a complete ban or a law allowing religious symbols, but that would be counter-productive and a bad case of nanny-statism.

In France, the ban on religious clothing in schools was a direct response to Islam, and Jews, Christians, Hindus and Sikhs suffered as a result, in the name of consistency. All religions were punished because one behaved badly. Times journalist Minette Marrin’s unthinking response to the publicly expressed hostility of Muslims is to disestablish the Church. Why should we? Antidisestablishmentarianism rules OK – and UK.  Fortunately Marrin is only a journalist and does not make the law.

Muddling through is the British way, and it has a distinct advantage in this context. Conspicuous, rigid and petty enforcement of secularism in schools and offices is an understandable, but wrong-headed response to the territorial encroachment of Islam. We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If Britain purges religion from public life, it will be a victory, not for secularism and enlightenment, but for Islam.

In my last post I warn against throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This calls for a song about babies and bathwater, and what better than "Your Baby Has Gone Down the Plughole"? Click below for a mother's lament:

The song is best sung in a Cockney accent. My favourite line, from the angel, is "he won't need a bath anymore". Heartless but true.

Incidentally, over a year ago, somebody got his knickers in a twist with babies and bathwater and wrote about "using a sledgehammer to crack the baby in the bathwater." This prompted a mangle of mixed metaphors and malapropisms which readers may wish to revisit.

They bugger belief.

Update: Rebecca has already posted about this, but as we emphasise slightly different aspects of the topic, I'll leave my post up too. Do read the full post and the comments - and watch the clip - it's very enlightening.

Dave M of Harry’s Place has had trouble learning Arabic:

It’s not like European languages, which are basically verbal ways to convey information on who did what, where, when, how and why. It appears to me that having developed in an environment that prohibits any sort of critical thought, especially in the fields of religion and politics, Arabic has become a means to avoid dealing with difficult issues.

In some Arabic-speaking countries, asking ‘how’ and ‘why’ can get you imprisoned. Therefore the more skilled you are at it, the better you are at avoidance by using ever bigger words and ever more flowery metaphors. In the end it just becomes one big exercise in denial.

Nothing can top the frustration I endured trying desperately but in vain, for a full year, to have a normal conversation with the locals in Assad’s Syria. …

The only path left is learning via TV, at which point you’re like Alice In Wonderland, where facts, logic and analysis have absolutely no place. However conspiracies, unsubstantiated allegations, “group think”, paranoia, and denial become the common currency. If you don’t subscribe to them then you’re a “Jew” or a “spy”. What else could you be?

Understandably the Arab world likes to keep this sort of thing well away from the English-speaking world– which is probably why channels like Al Jazeera English do not broadcast the Arabic channel’s output.

It’s called taqiyya. But we have MEMRI.

However occasionally something slips through the net, and for whatever reason this episode of Al Jazeera’s “Top Secret” has English subtitles. It’s really worth watching for a very specific reason.

Not because of Mohammed Atta’s father ranting on about his son’s innocence, or even because he recites from the phony, antisemitic “Franklin Prophecies” while the presenter tacitly agree with him.

[,,,]

No, you should watch it because this represents mainstream Arab opinion. Forget anything spoken in English to a Western audience. That counts for nothing. This is what the vast majority of people truly believe.

[…]

Now even before analysing the content, I’d like you to notice the language. It’s very descriptive, passive, emotional, and all about feelings and sensations. It’s not about goals that can be analysed and measured. You try to speak Arabic like that and it feels like you’re stretching it to breaking point. You are swimming against a very strong tide.

Raphael Patai disussed the limitations of Arabic in The Arab Mind, but neither he nor this writer makes the connection with Islam. A reader comments:

Language is a reflection of the needs of the people who speak it. If Islam disappeared tomorrow, then the need for rational thought and discussion would create new ways to use Arabic. Something would change, an new pattern would be imported into the language, and rational discussion would flourish.

I think he is right. But for now, Arabic is a tool of Islam. Arabic-speaking apostates, for example Wafa Sultan, are all the more admirable for being able to think independently in such a language. 

I am focusing on particular points in this interview with Richard Dawkins in the Sunday Times . I have criticised the proselytising type of atheist before and elsewhere for attacking the easy target (Christianity and Judaism) but not the stroppy faith Islam. Give Dawkins his due here --he is setting himself up nicely for a fatwa.
Dawkins is about to chew up religion again now, in a television series about his hero, Charles Darwin, which holds up to ridicule those who refuse to accept the theory of evolution. Astounding though it may seem, 150 years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, there are many people who don’t believe its findings, he says.
“Science is being threatened in our class-rooms,” says Dawkins . . . More seriously, Dawkins believes that many science teachers who do believe in evolution are selling our children short by kowtowing to political correctness. Cowardice is at the root of the problem, he feels. When it comes to presenting the truth of science against the “mythology” of religion, science teachers duck the issue for fear of reprimand. And not only from evangelical Christians. In his view, devout Muslims are a large part of the problem.
“Islam is importing creationism into this country,” he says. “Most devout Muslims are creationists – so when you go to schools, there are a large number of children of Islamic parents who trot out what they have been taught.”
In his TV series, Dawkins faces a class of 15-year-olds at Park High secondary school in London. A few of the pupils readily tell him they don’t believe in evolution because it runs counter to their religious beliefs. It’s only after he bundles them into a coach and shows them fossils at the seaside that one or two admit there might be something in this evolution gig after all.
“I was shocked by how some put up barriers to understanding,” says Dawkins. “I showed them the evidence, and they just said, ‘This is what it says in my holy book.’ And so I asked, ‘If your holy book says one thing, but the evidence says something else, you then go with your holy book?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And they said, ‘It’s the way we’ve been brought up’.”
Even worse, from his point of view, their science teachers are extremely unwilling to oppose anything that smacks of a faith-held belief. And science teachers, people who should be Darwin’s flag-wavers, are simply looking the other way. “It seems as though teachers are terribly frightened of being thought racist,” says Dawkins. “It’s almost impossible to say anything against Islam in this country, because [if you do] you are accused of being racist or Islamophobic.”
He may be Darwin’s most ardent fan, (and the BBC must be kicking itself that Channel 4 has snapped him up a whole year before the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in 2009), but Dawkins does not believe we should subscribe to the dogma of “survival of the fittest” when it comes to our own lives.
“We need to rise above our Darwinian heritage,” he says. In what way? “Well, we devote our lives to writing books, composing music, creating poetry – all higher functions of the brain. (And of the spirit.) If we were following Darwinian dictates, we males would be spending all our time fighting other males to get females, and screwing them all over the place in order to have lots of children and grandchildren. I’m very glad we have risen above all of that.”
It is not true that God’s creation is incompatible with scientific theory. All the Christians I know well enough to discuss the subject with believe that God made the world. None of us believe that 6000 years ago He snapped his fingers and there it was, complete with dinosaur bones hidden to test our faith when tempted. St Peter said “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day”. Because the human mind can grasp a period of 6000 years but finds it harder to understand the eons the world took to evolve does not limit the Lord to our human timescale. To try to is to underestimate His handiwork. And as for the argument why would he make dinosaurs and the other creatures which are now extinct, well why not? They fascinate us, and sound to have been creatures of beauty, so who are we to try to limit God’s creativity only to that of obvious and utilitarian purpose to us. But that’s just this Christian’s view and Islam is another kettle of coelacanth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYN3D9aXbUw&feature=related

Nitsana Darshgan Leitner of the Israeli-based activist law firm Shurat Ha Din (SHD) Israel Law Center has done it again.

SHD sent  a letter to US Attorney General Mukasey suggesting that the International Solidarity Movement's Free Gaza project involving shipping 'humanitarian goods' out of Cyprus to Gaza may have violated the US Neutrality Act,18 U.S.C. section 960. Why?  Because this provocative act would support Hamas a designated foreign organization under US law and the funds from the project came from US citizens in California.

This 'humanitarian project' was supported by ex-President Carter.

Nitsana Leitner, as you may recall, served a summons on Former Iranian President Khatami at a dinner sponsored by CAIR in northern Virginia in September 2006, that we reported on. Slick move, as was this current effort to stifle the Free Gaza project by putting Us Attorney general Mukasey and the Department of Justice on notice to move in this matter of the ISM flaunting US  law.
 

The Sunday Mirror has an article and some video film believed to show boys between the ages of 5 and 13 being trained as Taliban soldiers, one of whom, an 11 year old is later killed.
The pictures come from a video filmed at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, where Taliban warlords are turning boys as young as FIVE into trained killers. Recorded only weeks ago, it captures a dozen nervous-looking boys in camouflage uniforms with headbands which say: There is no God but Allah.
The boy soldiers stand in line before being handed rifles and taught to fire rocket-propelled grenades.
They live in tents and say prayers before sleeping with weapons lying next to them. When their training is complete the children are filmed walking over the Pakistan-Afghanistan border right into a warzone.
The film shows one boy nodding nervously after he is asked: Are you prepared to die for Allah?
If he is killed, he will not be the first. In one section, the face of an 11-year-old soldier, named as Abdullah al-Rahim, is circled on the screen as he marches away.
Seconds later, images of his body wrapped in a white sheet appear, making him a martyr for al-Qaeda leaders determined to recruit thousands more children.
The footage was obtained by Sunday Mirror investigators after it was posted on an underground al-Qaeda website, which routinely trumpets the death of British soldiers killed by the Taliban.
The seven-minute video was issued by the Islamic Jihad Union, which has training camps in the north Waziristan province in Pakistan.
British commanders in Afghanistan say Taliban fighters increasingly use children as suicide bombers. They are also used as human shields during firefights.
Author and terror expert Neil Doyle said it was one of the most disturbing videos he had seen. He said: It is child abuse of the worst kind and shows the kind of sick tactics al-Qaeda use.
It is a bit hard to evaluate the video because the subtitles are in Russian. I would be interested to know the opinion of one of our Russian speakers. It could be argued that this is only the equivalent of our Cadets or the ATC but it doesn’t feel like it. Cadets don’t handle real weapons and don’t die as a matter of course. I know boys who are, or have been in the British Army cadets – it’s not all fun, everything worthwhile requires a modicum of hard work, but its not sheer terror either. These boys look ill and terrified. Their eyes are the giveaway.
The boys sent to defend Berlin in 1945 were older. The drummer boys at Waterloo were older. John Cornwell was older.

On this day, Aug. 3^rd, in 2005, Southern Sudanese civilians went on a rampage after the death of Sudanese vice-president John Garang in a suspicious helicopter crash. 130 people were killed in the riots.

The "Palestinian" Authority has asked Israel, which gave refuge to nearly 200, and gave free medical care to two dozen wounded, members or supporters of Fatah who had fled Gaza, not to keep them, nor to transfer them to the Arab-occupied "West Bank," but to send them back to Gaza.

The reason, as given by a "Palestinian" member of the Slow Jihad (Fatah) quoted in a Jerusalem Post article, is this: "Everyone knows that if we allow people to leave the Gaza Strip, almost all the residents living there would try to cross the border into Israel," said a senior PA official. "We don't want to leave the Gaza Strip to Hamas."

They would -- "almost all" of them, "try to cross the border into Israel."

You know -- into Israel, to which every Arab who can, whenever faced with Arab enemies -- as the members of Black September were by Jordanian King Hussein's men (they waded crossed the Jordan, their hands raised, knowing that the Israelis would not harm them but would take them in)  or the Fatah supporters now fleeing into Israel  -- that country, the country routinely denounced as "Nazi-like" or even "worse than the Nazis" (we all remember how the Nazis offered free medical care to Jews and other benefits, so that they would always flee to Nazi-held territory whenever they could). That country.

Don't forget this kind of telling display, and the even more telling comment by a Fatah official. Don't forget it, and don't forget to remind others, when they go into their Guardian-or-BBC or World-Council-of-Churches or Amnesty-International or Human-Rights-Watch or United-Nations slander-and-rant against Israel. Remember not to forget.