imra-usa.org

(Members of the Armenian and Greek Orthodox clergy scuffle during a clean-up of the Church of the Nativity, the site revered as the birthplace of Jesus, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem December 28, 2011. REUTERS/Ammar Awad )

A Christmas cleaning of the Church of the Nativity turned into scuffles on Wednesday between rival Christian clerics zealously guarding denominational turf at the holy site. Brooms and fists flew inside the church marking the birthplace of Jesus as some 100 priests and monks of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches brawled.

Palestinian police, bending their heads to squeeze through the church’s low “door of humility,” rushed in with batons flailing to restore order. “It was a trivial problem that … occurs every year,” said police Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled al-Tamimi. “Everything is all right and things have returned to normal,” he said. “No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God.”

Administration of the 6th century Bethlehem church, the oldest in the Holy Land, is shared by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics. Any perceived encroachment of jurisdictional boundaries within the church can set off a row, especially during the annual cleaning for Orthodox Christmas celebrations, which will be held next week.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller,

via Clerics clash in Church of the Nativity.

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The inimitable Ramachandra B. Abhyankar got another of his letters published in the Tribune Star. Below is his newest letter (originally published here):

Many Muslims are renouncing Islam because they respect the human rights of non-Muslims and women and disagree with the Islamic doctrines of Jihad (Islamic holy war against non-Muslims) and Sharia (Islamic law) which calls for the subjugation, oppression and exploitation of non-Muslims and women.

The list of such former Muslims includes names such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of the book “Infidel”; Wafa Sultan, author of the book “A God who Hates”; Nonie Darwish, author of the book “Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law”; M.A. Khan, author of the book “Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery”; Ali Sina, author of the book “Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography”; and Ibn Warraq, author of the book “Why I am Not a Muslim.”

These respected individuals have concluded that Islam cannot be reformed. At a time when it is well known that Muslims enjoy equal rights with non-Muslims in non-Islamic countries, Islamic countries continue to discriminate against non-Muslims to various degrees because of Islam. Discrimination against non-Muslims and women is at the heart of Islam. By renouncing Islam, former Muslims announce their resolve to peacefully co-exist with the rest of humanity.

Former Muslims are heroes because they have listened to the voice of their conscience in spite of the ever-present threat of the command to Muslims contained in the Islamic edict pronounced by the Prophet of Islam and recorded in the Sahih Bukhari Hadith Collection: “If any Muslim gives up his Islamic religion, then kill him.” This edict of the Prophet of Islam is codified under Sharia as the death penalty for apostasy from Islam.

Ibn Warraq has suggested that former Muslims be given asylum by Americans, just as Soviet dissidents were granted asylum by Americans during the Cold War. Former Muslims can give valuable advice to Americans, as they have firsthand knowledge of Jihad and Sharia.

Americans can use this advice in combating the threat of homegrown Jihad, a topic dealt with in depth in the following book by Erick Stakelbeck: “The Terrorist Next Door: How the Government is Deceiving You About the Islamist Threat.” The book describes the “chip away strategy” of homegrown Jihad: mounting small-scale attacks like the Fort Hood attack or the attempted Times Square bombing, as opposed to a spectacular attack, such as the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.

Following the killing of Osama bin Laden, the FBI has warned that such small-scale, homegrown Jihad attacks are more likely.

— Ramachandra B. Abhyankar

Citizen Warrior

(An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man (L) argues with a secular man during a protest against the government's pledge to curb Jewish zealotry in Israel, in the town of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem December 26, 2011.REUTERS/Oren Nahshon)

President Shimon Peres urged Israelis on Tuesday to rally against ultra-Orthodox Jewish zealots trying to impose their strict religious code on a troubled town near Jerusalem. “We are fighting for the soul of the nation and the essence of the state,” Peres said in broadcast remarks at an event at his official residence.

The plight of an eight-year-old girl, who said last week that ultra-Orthodox men accused her of being dressed immodestly and spat at her as she walked to school, has added to growing concerns in Israel over a rise in religious extremism.

Shouting “Nazis, Nazis,” religious protesters in Beit Shemesh, where the incident took place, on Monday clashed with police deployed to prevent zealots from attacking TV news crews reporting on tensions in the town, some 30 km (18 miles) from Jerusalem.

Authorities further stoked anger among the zealots, who advocate gender segregation, by removing a sign urging women to avoid certain streets in areas where the ultra-religious live.

Pro-democracy activists scheduled a rally for 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) in Beit Shemesh to protest against the segregation of women and violence that has included stone-throwing at reporters and police.

“Today is a test in which the entire nation will have to mobilise to rescue the majority from the claws of a small minority that is chipping away at our most hallowed values,” Peres said. “No person has the right to threaten a girl, a woman or any person in any way,” he said. “They are not the lords of this land.”

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In a recent article (When Not Renting Is Sheer Lunacy) I complained about a landlord who refused to lower his rent in the past ten years and as a result kept his store empty of a tenant.

Reader Chris took the side of the landlord saying that if the landlord doesn’t want to rent out his property and continue to suffer severe loss then that’s his personal choice. Chris is wrong. What another landlord or retailer does on a street is my business if I also own a business on that street.

Consider the following: suppose that I own a business downtown and a bunch of stores uptown are my heaviest competition and you are a store-owner on that block. In order to ruin my business you decide to rent on my block and make your store into an eyesore. In addition, you allow your pet dogs to defecate inside your store and then vent out the foul odors into the street. You allow graffiti to accumulate on your windows and you hire mean-looking youths to hang out in front of your store. They do nothing illegal, they merely stand around looking like they will rob anyone who walks nearby. All this in an effort to destroy my business.

Do you really believe that this is merely your personal business? If the other store owners are not complete morons they will quickly sic the city’s Quality of Life Officer on me and rightly so.

In my town we had a similar situation. The owner of a business called London Shops at 525 Broadway is an idiot and a danger to the community. He does not mean to purposely destroy the business district, he just can’t help it because he has a mental illness: he has compulsive hoarding syndrome. He never opens the door to his store for business – his only activity is filling up almost every inch of available space inside his store with merchandise, children’s clothing.

After complaints from me and other merchants, the fire department declared his store a fire hazard and he was forced to throw away most of his stuff into a dumpster.

But he quickly filled it up again. One day his store and the surrounding buildings will all go up in a great ball of fire. It’s only a matter of time.

Detroit was once a vibrant and beautiful city. Here is what it looks like today after unions destroyed its automotive industry (Click on any panel for larger image):

Mosaic made with Mosaic Maker

This has been a Thursday 13 post [# 68] and is updated on some Thursdays.

Planck’s Constant

Photo Credit: Mary Harrsch

In my article How to Make time to read the Quran I wrote that one of the reasons that many religious Jews are so knowledgeable on a myriad of topics is due to the Rabbinic suggestion that while on the toilet, one should read a book on any non-holy subject to keep the mind focused on something other than G-d.

The Rabbis made a similar prohibition that Jews should not study Torah on Christmas Eve which they considered a “pagan” night. So instead, they were told to tear toilet paper, play card games, or read secular books. ¹

Of course, reading secular books by itself will not make one a Nobel Laureate. The point is that the Torah was not the only book in the world for Jews. The tolerance for all ideas, the freedom to argue and question, the value placed on living in this world rather than on accumulating points in the next, these are some of things that have helped Jews excel in many fields other than the study of the Torah.

As of this writing, not counting the Peace Prize, there are more than 173 Nobel Laureates of Jewish descent, see my article Muslim Inventions – Nobel Prizes.

It should be noted that in Islam the Quran is the only book one needs to read. If something is not in the Quran, then it is not important. If it’s already in the Quran, then it’s redundant.

And in part that may explain why, as of this writing, not counting the Peace Prize, there are only four Muslim Nobel Laureates.

Notes

(1):

Slate Magazine, 23 Dec 2009,
The little-known Jewish holiday of Christmas Eve. Seriously.

So what would Jews do on Christmas Eve?

1) Tear toilet paper. I kid you not. Bear with me, as the reason is a bit convoluted: Observant Jews do not tear anything on the Sabbath as they consider it a form of “work.”

…

2) Play cards, play chess, spin a tiny top. Many synagogues held poker games on Christmas Eve; some say this is where the custom of spinning the dreidel on Hanukkah matured from, as a way for Jews to pass to the time.

3) Everything from managing finances to reading secular books to, get this, sewing. (That last one was actually a custom of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.)

Planck’s Constant

There are various ways of getting an expediting pasport. This application process may take as long as the same day or three weeks depending on the methods you use to obtain this document. The following are various ways of expediting passport.

Application

The slowest of all the methods is through submission of the application forms at a receiving facility. However, this applies to new applications. Nevertheless, if you are replacing, mailing the form qualifies to be one of the slowest methods. You will also incur more costs in the process. There is a different application for expediting a kids passport.

Expedite

You are supposed to write “expedite” on the envelope and then use overnight delivery. This will take about three weeks to complete. There is hope though as there is a fast way you can expedite this document.

Methods

In this method, you have to visit your regional agency that offers passports. Here you will be in a position to acquire the document on the same day. The only thing you have to do is make an appointment with the agency near you. On the appointment day, ensure you carry with you all the relevant documents as you present the application form. Presenting your air ticket or program can help in showing the urgency for the trip and also make the whole process much smoother and faster.

Same Day Service

Despite the fact you can present your application and get the document on that day, there are factors that may hold back the process of you getting the passport. The first factor is that the agency may be busy at the time you want to travel and getting an appointment may be difficult. Most regional agencies have a restricted number of appointment openings, particularly for the same day expediting service.

Location

The other factor may be the distance between you and the agency. Most of these agencies are situated in the cities where they are easily accessible by the majority. If you are located in the outskirts of town, you will be required to travel for along distance to get to the location of the agency.

Facility

Distance becomes a hindrance because you will find that if you are near the facility, it can be possible to acquire the document within a day or two. However, someone living far away form the agency may have two alternatives. One is by applying for the document by the help of a professional expediter. The other one is where you have to travel all the way to the office to make an appointment.

Photo Credit: Collider.com

In our universe there exist an almost infinity of planets. Since I have a mathematical background I know that simple math tells me that during the past 13.75 billion years since the Big Bang, more than a billion Earth-like, life-bearing planets with intelligent creatures have come into existence.

The question of course is, why haven’t we been contacted by them? Ignoring for a moment the problem of distance, the answer is: Muslims.

I was thinking earlier today that if we are ever to make contact with alien life it will only happen during Christmas. At any other time visitors from the Planet Zanubia coming here will encounter only ill will, chaos, and gloom.

This season we hear songs of peace and hope and we see people of all faiths wishing each other joy and good will. But there is no Christmas in a Muslim world.

If I were from another world, a world advanced beyond imagination, I would postpone contacting Earth while Muslims still inhabit the planet. Why would any intelligent, advanced civilization want to make contact with a world like ours that suffers an ignorant, savage, primitive, violent, barbaric, and cruel cult like Islam as we do?

In the meanwhile, I wish my readers joy and goodwill despite the perilous times we live in.

Planck’s Constant

(Supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad attend a rally at al-Sabaa Bahrat square in Damascus, December 9, 2011.REUTERS/ Stringer)

The clannishness, secrecy and tenacity of Syria’s power elite around President Bashar al-Assad are hallmarks of the enigmatic Alawite faith that unites its members and arouses suspicion among the majority Sunnis. An oppressed minority for most of their history, Alawites suddenly took control in Syria in 1970 when Assad’s father Hafez staged a coup that sidelined the Sunnis. He built a ferocious security apparatus based on fellow Alawite officers.

This year’s bloody struggle between Assad’s forces and pro-democracy protesters, which has cost thousands of lives, splits the country along a minority-majority gulf made deeper by the fact many Sunnis call Alawites heretics and apostates.

“The political animosities have developed over the past 41 years that the Assads have been in power, but the religious animosities go back many centuries,” said Mohamad Bazzi, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Like most other Arab countries, Syria has seen conservative Islam spreading in recent decades. This has sharpened Sunni differences with the Alawites, who claim to be mainline Shi’ites and sometimes copy Sunni practices to play down differences.

The government’s brutal crackdown on protesters this year has also widened this split, Bazzi said, prompting some leaders of the mainly Sunni opposition Muslim Brotherhood to row back on a more moderate approach they had taken in recent years.

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Traffic safety is highly pursued due to the fact that numerous people are killed along highways every day. This is because of careless driving and other dangers associated with it. Evading these accidents can best be done by putting on traffic safety vests while one is on the road. They are usually made from bright colors that can reflect light far distances so other road users are able to see that a person is coming from afar.

Protection

The reflectors that these garments are made of make it relatively easy for one to be spotted some distance away by motorists. This provides is a big step towards insuring safety as a person works along the roadway or is riding or walking along a road.

Needs

Even with its advantages, your purchase decision should not be made blindly. You must consider various issues to ensure you get one that serves the intended purpose. Before considering any aspects of the garment you are about to purchase, you must consider the kind of task you want to use the vest for. Apart from the occasional use while changing a tire or doing other repairs, these garments are also used by people charged with traffic control. Road construction workers also need them in their line of work.

Use

The type of work you use the safety vests for dictates the measurements as well as the material. In some cases, you may require it to be a bid baggy while in others, a tight fit is the best. This is so when one is operating machinery such as during road construction.

Quality

You should always be alert to what vest is good for you. Ideally speaking, since these vests will be used most often outside in very harsh weather conditions, a good vest should be made from a material that will be able to stand all harsh climatic conditions. This means that the material must be sturdy and of high quality.

Cost

One thing that troubles many people is the amount they should spend purchasing such vests. Being a very important item, one might be inclined to pay a premium to get one with the best reflective qualities as well as a sturdy material. However, this should not always be the case since there are many stores offering them at discounted prices. This is especially the case when one is buying online.

Consideration

Usually when buying, you should also look for a provider who can offer you guidelines on how to maintain the vests in perfect condition. Remember, the main reason you need one is for the reflective property. Therefore, if you do not clean or maintain it properly, it is likely to lose these properties. If this happens, the garment will no longer be useful.

Yes, Virginia, there are Jewish terrorists in the world – Jews are not perfect and when some of them act like vicious thugs, destroying mosques and attacking innocent Muslims, then they deserve our condemnation. All decent Jews will demand that their government punish them for their wickedness.

Consider the following:

Family Security Matters, 22 Dec 2011,
Tag Mehir, The Israeli Jewish Terrorist Organization

Tag Mehir graffiti at a burned-out
mosque in Burka, this month.

By Nancy Hartevelt Kobrin, PhD

As an Israeli Jewish psychoanalyst with a doctorate on Islam, I feel I have a moral responsibility and obligation to denounce the recent upsurge in Israeli Jewish violence committed by Tag Mehir (lit. Price Tag) against Israeli Muslims and especially the torching of their mosques and the destruction of their property. This has motivated me to share some thoughts and observations and hopefully a few possible solutions.

…

I have written extensively on Islam and its use by some Muslims as having a propensity toward violence, domination focusing on female submission and abuse of women by male dominated shame honor based societies. Now I have the unpleasant duty to take a stance against my own people, or are they my own? These recent Jewish terrorists who destroyed and burnt innocent Muslims’ mosques terrorizing the Islamic community and their families in no way represent Jewish causes. Their acts of violence have nothing to do with fighting for a cause. This was clearly an act of aggression by a group of brainwashed manipulated youths whose rabbis incited them to act out of rage impulsively.

Muslim apologists will point to these very few evil Jewish anomalies and scream, “See, Jews also commit violence in the name of their religion.”

However, there is a difference. If somehow tomorrow a strange virus destroyed every single Jewish and Muslim terrorist, the world would still be facing a threat from Muslims but not Jews. A reader of the Family Security Matters article left this comment:

It’s sad but true that retro Judaism is as bad as retro Islam in its stern moral code and male chauvinism. The difference is that Jehovah only wants Jews to live under his stern laws, not everybody, and wants Jews to enact those laws only inside their communities, not throughout the world, and only commanded Jews to wage what could be called jihad to win the future Israel, not a jihad from pole to pole like Allah commands Muslims to do.

I do not excuse Jewish terrorism but I do want to put things in perspective: more people die from bee stings each year ¹ than have died at the hands of Jewish terrorists ² in the past 50 years. If only we could say the same about Muslim terrorists.

Let’s return for a moment to the idea of a world free of both Jewish and Muslim terrorists. I have written before that the danger to the civilized world is not from Islamic terrorists but from moderate Muslims. The US government has stopped more than a hundred plots by Islamic extremists, so we have a mechanism to remove that threat against our way of life. What we do not have is a mechanism to remove that other threat to our way of life, the moderate Muslim.

That seemingly nice Muslim co-worker, friend, associate, cab driver, deli-clerk who doesn’t blow up schools or hospitals but who wants us to

(1):

ABC News, 23 Jul 2009,
When One Bee Sting is Your Last

According to government statistics, about 3.3 percent of adults will experience anaphylaxis after an insect sting and there are 40 to as many as 100 deaths annually from insect-sting-related anaphylaxis.

(2):

Wikipedia, Jewish religious terrorism

A number of violent acts by Jews have been described as terrorism and attributed to religious motivations:

Yaakov Teitel an American-born Israeli, was arrested and indicted for several acts of domestic terror, namely a pipe bomb attack against leftist intellectual Zeev Sternhell, the murders of a Palestinian taxi driver and a West Bank shepherd in 1997, and sending a booby-trapped package to the home of a Messianic Jewish family in Ariel.

Eden Natan-Zada killed four Israeli Arab civilians on August 4, 2005.

Baruch Goldstein an American-born Israeli physician, perpetrated the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in the city of Hebron, in which he shot and killed 29 Muslim worshipers inside the Ibrahimi Mosque (within the Cave of the Patriarchs), and wounded another 125 victims.

Yigal Amir’s assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on November 4, 1995 has been described as terrorism with a religious motivation.

[edited by Bernie for brevity]

Planck’s Constant