Valentine’s Day Is Against…
You guessed it. It’s against the values of Islam. And it doesn’t come from some radical group like Taliban, or Saudi fanatics, it comes from supposedly developed and advanced Brunei:
Islamic Reminder On Valentine’s Day
Bandar Seri Begawan - Whether it is giving a Valentine’s Day card or flowers or text messaging to a loved one, Valentine’s Day is against Islamic teachings, according to an official from the Islamic Dakwah Centre.
This is because the act of celebrating another religion’s practice such as Valentine’s Day is considered against the teachings of Islam.
However, saying “I love you” to a loved one is not wrong, as long as it is not in conjunction with Valentine’s Day, said Awang Haji Mail bin Besar, head of lecture and media electronic section at the Islamic Dakwah Centre.
Despite regular sermons reminding Muslims that it is against the Islamic teachings to celebrate Valentine’s Day, many still mark the occasion, especially the young, he said.
The youngsters are easily influenced, by practices of other religions. However, Muslims need to understand their own religion and practices, and appreciate the Islamic teachings.
One of the problems that could arise from the celebration of Valentine’s Day is deviancy that might lead to promiscuity, especially when unmarried couples exchange gifts and expect more than just affection in return.
However, any promiscuous acts could affect their future if the unmarried couples do not end up marrying each other. — Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin
Right….and oh, Happy Valentine’s Day!
Muhammad Cartoons Reprinted
Citing this post by Michelle Malkin, and in an absolute solidarity with Danish newspapers’ editors who decided to reprint the cartoons of a man named Muhammad (considered a prophet by Muslims), World Divided is delighted to display them again as we did numerous times in the past months when posting about the events in Denmark:
Another One Bites The Dust
A Shi’ite arch terrorist eliminated in Damascus
Hezbollah operations chief killed in Syria blast
Hezbollah said Wednesday its operations chief Imad Mughniyah was killed Tuesday evening in a bomb last in a residential neighborhood of Damascus killed a senior Hezbollah military commander.
The group in a statement accused Israel of the killing.
Imad Mughniyah, who is known to have close contacts with Iranian intelligence, was behind the kidnapping of a TWA airliner to Beirut in 1985 and a number of kidnappings of Westerners in Lebanon during the 1980s. Mughniyah appears on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists and has a $25-million price on his head. He is also believed to be a high priority target of Israeli intelligence and, according to foreign sources, Israel has tried several times to assassinate him, most notably in Beirut in 1994, when a car bomb exploded outside his brother’s house.
Witnesses said that the blast shattererd windows on nearby buildings.The cause of the explosion, which occurred about 10:45 p.m. in the upscale Kafar Soussa neighborhood, was not immediately known. Security forces quickly sealed off the area and removed the destroyed car, which had its driver’s seat and the rear seat blown away by the force of the blast.
Residents, some in their pajamas, gathered to inspect the damage, careful
around shards of glass and debris. Three other cars parked nearby were also damaged, their windows shattered and doors blown out.“I was awakened by the explosion, rushed to the window and saw the glow,” one witness said. He lost the windows on his 5th floor apartment, which overlooks the bombed-out SUV.
Another witness in a 7th floor apartment rushed to the windows after the blast and said he “saw one (body) covered with a white sheet on the ground.”
Both spoke on condition of anonymity.
Several officials from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas were at the scene but there was no indication any of its members had been the target.
The witnesses and Palestinian sources in Syria and Lebanon said the blast was caused by a bomb planted inside the vehicle.
“The question on everyone’s mind is whether any of the Palestinian leaders here was targeted and whether there has been another Israeli penetration,” one Palestinian source said.
Here is his “page” on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist list
Denmark - Cartoonist Targeted
It was just a matter of time:
Reuters report (via WaPo)
Arrests made in Denmark in cartoonist murder plot
Several people were arrested in Denmark on Tuesday in connection with a plot to murder one of the 12 cartoonists whose drawings of the Prophet Mohammad caused worldwide uproar in 2006, Danish media said.
According to Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper that originally published the cartoons in September 2005, the suspects are accused of planning to kill 73-year-old Kurt Westergaard. He drew the cartoon that caused the most controversy, depicting Mohammad with a bomb in his turban.
Danish news agency Ritzau said police would not give details of the case before the Security and Intelligence Service holds a news conference later in the day to announce the arrests.
The cartoons initially went largely unnoticed, but were later reprinted outside Denmark and eventually provoked outrage among Muslims, most of whom deem any depiction of Mohammad as offensive.
Three Danish embassies were attacked and at least 50 people were killed in rioting in the Middle East and Asia.
Since then, several young Muslims have been convicted in Denmark of planning bomb attacks partly as a protest against the cartoons.
Oh…Bummah!
In this post I made an attempt to introduce a simple and easy way to choose whom to vote for in the US Elections when someone is confused or simply doesn’t have time to follow the candidates in the media. But here is another something that made me expand the explanation, this time from the Jewish/Israeli point of view.
There are two proverbs I’d like to quote
Show me your. friends, and I tell you who you are.
Show me your. friends, and I’ll show you your future.
and now to the point:
Gulf backs Obama in race for White House
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are neck and neck in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination after Super Tuesday primary elections, with Clinton winning the biggest of the primaries while Obama won more states.
However, Obama is the clear favourite of observers in the Gulf, with more than half of respondents to the latest ArabianBusiness.com survey preferring the Illinois senator over the wife of former president Bill Clinton.
…
Just over 50% of those surveyed by ArabianBusiness.com said Obama would be the best president for the Middle East, stating he was “something new, and offers a clean break from the past”.
…
Obama is seen by many as the most sympathetic to the Palestinians of all the candidates, blaming militant group Hamas for stalling the Middle East peace process.However, he has also campaigned as a staunch supporter of Israel, calling it “our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy”.
Uh? And because of that phrase Gulf citizens see him as a staunch supporter of Israel?
Only 26.5% of respondents voted for Clinton, saying she was “experienced, and considerably more versed in Middle East issues”.
…
The remaining 22.4% of respondents said neither would be better for the Middle East.
Lebanon - Drums Of War
This time, civil war.
After the presidential elections were postponed for the 14th time, it seems like the sides are closer to resolving this deadlock in a way so familiar in this country - civil war.
Walid Junblatt, the (political) leader of the Druze community in Lebanon and a member of western-oriented Hariri coalition:
Addressing the opposition, led by Hezbollah, Druze leader Walid Junblatt said in a televised speech: “You want anarchy? (We) welcome anarchy. You want war? (We) welcome war,” adding to the cheers of supporters that he and his allies, led by Hariri’s son Sa’ad, have “no problem with weapons and rockets.”
Read it all here
Unlike the endorsement of Sharia in UK, defined by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams “unavoidable”, there are two really unavoidable events that are about to take place in the near future: the civil or another border (with Israel) war in Lebanon, and the war in Kosovo.
No Politics Sunday
This photo can be quite deceiving:
At first it might look like fireflies, fireworks, or burning paper shreds…But it is a cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2218. It is so massive that its gravity bends and focuses the light from galaxies that lie behind it, this is why some of these galaxies image distorted into arcs, or trails.
This photo taken by Hubble Telescope. Credits to Andrew Fruchter (STScI), WFPC2, HST, NASA
