Well there's a first for everything apparently. Finally, The New York Times has published a thoughtful, unapologist, solid opinon piece condemning recent Islamic outrages without resorting to blaming American foreign policy, Israel, Dick Cheney, Fox News, or Rush Limbaugh. I'm speechless.

Muslims who wonder why non-Muslims are often baffled, angered, even frightened by some governments’ interpretation of Islamic law need only look to the cases of two women in Saudi Arabia and Sudan threatened with barbaric lashings.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman who was gang-raped was sentenced to 90 lashes. The reason? Before the rape, the woman, who was then 19, had been in a car with a man who was not a family member — a crime under the kingdom’s legal code, which is based on a strict Wahabi reading of Islamic law. Punishing the victim of a brutal rape is reprehensible. Then a Saudi appeals court more than doubled her lashings to 200 and added six months’ jail time, apparently because she had the audacity to publicly challenge the court’s ruling. Her lawyer had his license to practice suspended.

In Sudan, a British primary school teacher was originally threatened with 40 lashes, a fine, or six months in jail after her class of 7-year-olds voted to name a teddy bear Muhammad. The government accused her of insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Muhammad is one of the most common names among Muslims, including the student who suggested it for the teddy bear. On Thursday, the court reduced the teacher’s sentence to 15 days in jail, but found her guilty and ordered her deported.

Saudi Arabia and Sudan have notoriously bad human rights records and the cases have ominous political overtones. The Khartoum government — so willing to punish the crime of naming a teddy bear — is responsible for the genocide in Darfur. The case was widely seen as a warning against Westerners who protest that mass slaughter. In the Saudi case, the girl was a member of the country’s persecuted Shiite minority, and experts said her sentence was harsh even by Saudi standards.

Khartoum’s few friends, in the Arab League and China, should make clear that such cynical games will only increase its isolation. The world should expect better from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, who has introduced some — but not nearly enough — political and judicial reforms. The king has a hallowed responsibility in Islam as Keeper of the Two Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. What one Muslim leader, Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain, said about the Sudan case can also be applied to the Saudis’: “How does this help the cause of Islam? What kind of message and image are we portraying about our religion and our culture?”

Labels: Islamic extremism, NYT, Saudi Arabia, sudan

Jimmy Carter's latest diatribe:

"He's [VP Dick Cheney] a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world," Carter told the BBC World News America in an interview to air later on Wednesday.

"You know he's been a disaster for our country," Carter said. "I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed."
Jimmy Carter is hardly one to be criticizing others for being a "disaster."

It's typical of the extreme left wing of American politics to resort to ad homonym attacks, particularly the Chickenhawk argument -- that those urging military action are never in the military.

Carter uses personal attacks because that's all he has, because it is he who has been the "disaster." The current administration has certainly failed in many ways but at least they didn't allow some two-bit Ayatollah to hold 52 of our citizens as hostages for 444 days. And this former president, so often praised for his peace promotion, has been just as much a disaster since he left office. He's an embarrassment.

One should never confuse "peace" with refusal to take significant action.

Liberals like Carter claim conservatives see only black and white, but fail to acknowledge the "shades of grey." It's not that conservatives don't see the grey, but rather in the end -- and especially as president -- one has to make a damn decision. The world's Carters use shades of grey as an excuse for inaction. The words every murdering dictator loves to hear are: "It's just all so complicated. We need more dialogue."

Carter's reaction to genocide in Sudan was to ignore it for years and then partake in a highly publicized "shouting match" with some low-level security guard. After he called his meeting with Sudan's dictator "constructive," even actress Mia Farrow termed Carter's comments "disappointing, offensive, arrogant and unconscionably ignorant."

You know your foreign policy priorities are out of wack when you make a Hollywood liberal look hawkish. Or is Ms. Farrow a "militant" too?

It shouldn't be a surprise. This is the same guy who recently labeled the Nazi's systematic extermination of 6 million Jews as "the so-called Holocaust," which is straight out of the playbook of an Iranian mullah. Nice, eh?

If promoting peace means coddling dictators who slaughter their own populations then may we all be warmongers.

Intentions do matter. Carter, like so many other liberals, would morally equate a Palestinian suicide bomber who targets a bus stop with an Israeli soldier who misses the Hamas terrorist with an M-16 shot and accidentally hits the kid the terrorist was hiding behind.

Then, as he does above with Cheney, he would label anyone demanding action more substantial than, say, a UN debate, as a "Chickenhawk," one who "avoided any service of his own." Yet, simultaneously Carter and other liberals cut the budget for the military as they did, and would again.

There are currently 2.33 million Americans in both active and reserve military service combined. Yet there are 134 million Americans available for military service. This means that less than two percent of Americans ever serve, while the remaining 98 percent do not.

So by Jimmy Carter's liberal Chickenhawk logic 98 percent of the US population should have no say in military matters.

Carter might want to read some Madison or Jefferson in his spare time, because the military as the sole power over all foreign policy is exactly what the founders chose to avoid.

But I hear Carter's philosophy works wonderfully in Egypt, Burma, Sudan, and a slew of other illegitimate regimes worldwide.

Labels: antiwar loonies, burma, carter, Cheney, Iraq, sudan