With a totalitarian party to vote for!!!
CAIRO — Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.
The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.
SDA – ahead of the curve, once again. But then, so was anyone who dared pay attention.
mmmm, wonder if our Canadian air force will have promoted the same result in Libya ??
Would have never guessed.
Anyone who watched the documentary made about the origins of the Egyptian uprising (“Arab Spring”) knew the Muslim Brotherhood were behind the whole thing.
Miss me yet?
Some new friends for Israel to play with.
Told you so..
So, about 40% of the Egyptian electorate voted to return to the 7th century.
(Yes, George we do miss you. You weren’t anywhere near as confrontational to our domestic enemies as to our foreign enemies but we’re far safer today than on 9/11. Which wouldn’t have happened without the dereliction of duty of Bill Clinton & Co.
(And wouldn’t we all love to know what documents Sandy Berger stole from the National Archives and destroyed? And what in those documents was so dangerous to the Clintons that Berger, Clinton’s former National Security Advisor, was willing to do this for them???)
Told you so..
Posted by: Glenn Beck at December 1, 2011 1:45 AM
Yes…I wish he had been wrong.
I believe the proper term is Insha’Allah. My buddy Anoush left Egypt years ago, as did the rest of his family. Anoush is a pretty smart guy.
Libya should just roll right along into freedom and protection of natural rights soon too…
Arab Spring Swimwear.
–
Sexy toe nails-
http://www.ahiida.com/Modest-Fit-Blue-Pink-Sml-Ahiida-Logo.html
But 60% voted for some other parties, they can’t consider it a mandate. Oh, right. Interesting times ahead.
mike
So do I Jema 54
It’s too bad that so many shallow people can’t see past the messenger and focus on the message. Beck isn’t “hipster” and “cool” or lets face it- “atheistic” enough with his slightly manic delivery to hit the frequency of the people who should really be listening to him. As a group they go with the herd mentality without bothering to think for a second that they might be the buffalo stampeding towards the cliff.
Instead they listen to people who make their (lucrative) living off of what they think their audience wants to hear. A positive feedback loop that removes all rational thought.
Here’s an example: strap on an electric guitar, stand in front of a 100 watt amp and turn all the dials to 10 (11 if you can) and then try to think.
Doesn’t work well, that’s a positive feedback loop. (BTW that’s what CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warmists believe)
Makes you wonder about feedback on the brain.
[end ramble]
Most folks on here seen it coming . It will happen in the rest as well. Frankly. I wish we had all been wrong. Will be wrong about the others as well. Unfortunately this has been long in the making by the MB. The only thing in doubt was how Harsh the regime will be. Not that it would be Islamic. Same with Tunisia & Libya, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq.
That the secular press seen none of this is no surprise either. They are so out of tune with reality, you have to wonder if their mad, or just so frighted, they shiver in bed every night. Willful blindness.
Ah so, Revnant, the mad Ayatollahs will have their Grand Calif sooner than later. And Mr. Imadinnerjacket will create the great Apocalypse by attacking Israel and the Twelvth Imam will come and all will go to heaven where the 72 virgins await. I love it when a plan comes together.
One person, one vote…….one time.
65% between the MB and the Salfafists…yeesh. The MB is “the moderate pleasant face”, the salafists are way out there.
Normal pattern follows. Once in power they infect the army and the bureaucracy secular institutions) with the friends and supporters. The army is in a tough spot….the good news is none of these guys is ever any good at keeping a modern military or society running so they descend into becoming paper tigers.
Lets see if they give any credit Obama for his support. That was the point wasnt it? Support these guys and help them rid themselves of their dictator and bingo bango boingo you have a new friend and ally……sound slike Obama reasoning. especially after he went to all that trouble to make a speech in Cairo and everything.
I wonder if in a year he will feel as safe making a speech in the same environment, the only difference being the strongman is gone. Betcha he wouldnt feel as comfortable, safe or for that matter care.
I shed no tears for Mubarek, but honestly, couldnt this have been better engineered, or supported etc. Were there not other options?
I wonder if the good Dr Zwarhiri, Al Queda #1, will feel comfortabel showing up in Egypt (his home) now?
Stephen
You have pretty much sumed it up.
As far as arab military/militia you are correct.
In my estimation, Saddam’s army was as good as it gets in the arab world…not saying much.
Eygpt’s massive army is….despite US tutors, aid and equipment is but a pale shadow of Sadat’s host…the rot has already set in.
The question is how wise, resolved and pragmatic the General Staff is…traditionally the Eygptian military has been a respected institution in Eygpt and rightly so. Somehow I doubt that they will surrender their power easily.
As far as “dinerjacket” and his nukes…time will tell…already internal elements are causing considerable grief for the regime….not-with-standing a transparent power struggle on-going between “dinerjacket” and the mullahs….then ya have the kurds and Baluchi’s….
In my estimation that “spontaneous”(not) demonstration at the Brit embassy is a sign of frustration/desperation.
Syria is a question mark. Assad’s regime is doomed but there are signs that there is more than a bit of rivalry between Turkey and Iran to influence the result…Iran has threatened to strike NATO radar assets/bases in Turkey…
kakola
“I believe the proper term is Insha’Allah.”
Pretty much…..
I wonder what Obozo and Shillery are thinking today.
A true Holiday Inn result, no surprises.
Make that “Shrillery”.
Egypt . . . making a great lead forward all the way back to the 7th century.
But here’s the thing–Egypt is completely and utterly broke. Their currency reserves are almost depleted because they’ve been trying to keep the Egyptian pound from collapsing. Food prices are through the roof.
And Egypt doesn’t have oil the way other Middle Eastern countries do, and it doesn’t really have agriculture to feed itself.
So Egypt is utterly screwed. Unless we keep giving them handouts, and right now I think Europe is going to be the recipient of most of the U.S.’s generosity (though that’s stupid, too).
Egypt is just going to be in chaos because of shortages and extreme poverty. As long as that chaos is just riots in the street, then they’re only a danger to themselves. I just hope it doesn’t spread to attacking Israel or something to distract the people from how awful life is now.
“SDA – ahead of the curve, once again. But then, so was anyone who dared pay attention.”
Yup.
But whether it’s AGW or Islamic governments, I don’t imagine any of us are getting much delight from saying “Told you so”.
When exactly is the MSM right exactly?? I can’t think of a single instance. Not one.
What a bunch of morons. Their opinions no longer matter.
stephen and sasquatch have it right.
Fred, not only Egypt, but the whole ME is slowly but surely dawning into a new 7th century. The left is smiling, as their ideological mates are picking up the slack.
SDA, ahead of the curve nails it.
I’ll disagree with the apocalyptic scenarios some are suggesting will occur.
First, it is naive to think that a people ‘allowed’ a free vote for the first time in a generation and more, will opt for a rejection of their religious infrastructure. That doesn’t make sense; why would they do this? The Founders of the US didn’t reject Christianity or the British rule of law; they did opt for self-governance within both.
Second, the basic infrastructure of a society is its economic capacity to support its population. Fundamentalist Islamism cannot do this in the modern world because it rejects individual reason, science and change – and interactions with other economies and peoples. Therefore, I’m predicting, if I may, that fundamentalist Islam will not become dominant in Egypt. Orthodoxy won’t disappear, as it hasn’t in either Israel or any Christian country, but it can’t become dominant.
As others have pointed out, the basic economy in Egypt is in a shambles. They do not, unlike Iran and Saudi Arabia, have the raw resource of oil to fund fundamentalist repression of their people (and Iran is seething even within this oil-funded repression). Their state resources are – heh – tourism, which requires openness to others and stability, and the Suez Canal – which also requires openness and stability.
AND they must enable a middle class private sector economy; this is absolutely vital. Vital. Vital. They can’t rely on the two state forms of wealth: tourism and the Suez. These two state forms of wealth production are simply insufficient to support the modern Egyptian population.
This means that the govt must enable individual entrepreneurship, open markets, global trade. All of these are impossible in a fundamentalist Islam.
Therefore, I’m predicting a slow development of a free middle class – who ARE Muslim – but who are not fundamentalist, and who ARE capitalist and who ARE global entrepreneurs. This means a constitutional democracy – for this mode of govt is always the govt of the middle class.
a different bob >
“I wonder what Obozo and Shillery are thinking today”
They are thinking, job well done.
coming soon to a “new democracy” near you…and, since nobody appears willing to stop it…here, next…
Sharia Court Sentences Gang Rape Victim To Be Lashed 100 Times After She Delivers Baby For Committing “Adultery”
JEDDAH — A 23-year-old unmarried woman was awarded one-year prison term and 100 lashes for committing adultery and trying to abort the resultant fetus.
The District Court in Jeddah pronounced the verdict on Saturday after the girl confessed that she had a forced sexual intercourse with a man who had offered her a ride. The man, the girl confessed, took her to a rest house, east of Jeddah, where he and four of friends assaulted her all night long.
The girl claimed that she became pregnant soon after and went to King Fahd Hospital for Armed Forces in an attempt to carry out an abortion. She was eight weeks’ pregnant then, the hospital confirmed.
According to the ruling, the woman will be sent to a jail outside Jeddah to spend her time and will be lashed after delivery of her baby who will take the mother’s last name.
ET >
Stick to your guns ET. You indeed have vehemently argued all along that the Muslim Brotherhood is of no issue, and that everything will be much better in the ME/ NA after this “Arab Spring”.
It would be disappointing if you started backpedalling at this point.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the youth of Egypt do want freedumb like we have in NA but that doesn’t mean they will get it. The terrorists will take over for sure just like in Iran and every other crap hole. Time to just pull the hell out of the whole region and let them implode.
knight – yes, I’m sticking to my economic analysis. The reason is because: a society rises or falls based on its economic capacity to sustain its population. The ideology must be secondary. Always.
The situation in the ME is that the economic capacity, sustained by oil – which was developed purely and only by Western technology and money – enabled these Islamic nations to support their population for a generation. AND, to retain their old power structure of tribalism. This phase has now ended.
The exponential rise in ME populations, and their urbanization, has resulted in an economic situation where the monolithic state owned economy (of oil, or tourism/Suez) is unable to sustain this population. Hence – the tectonic creakings between the old power blocs, which have reacted by turning more and more to fundamentalist repression of the population..and the drive for an open society that enables the rise of a middle class. A middle class, by definition, cannot be fundamentalist. It has to be open to collaboration, changes, rational analysis.
Bush moved in and sparked the shift in the ME in Iraq…it would have come anyway but this moved the transformation into a faster mode. Now it’s in a domino phase. Egypt was obviously an earlier rather than later phase (Iran, Saudi Arabia) because its state economies (tourism, Suez) are not as lucrative as oil.
No, the people will not choose fundamentalism, Islam or otherwise. But they won’t reject Islam as a daily mode of life (which is not a fundamentalist mode). However, changes will come as the middle class develops.
Again, the reason is simple: economics and demographics. Can the economy sustain the population? Fundamentalism Islam rejects a middle class; it’s two-class (rulers and ruled) and this size of population REQUIRES (I mean that) a middle class private sector small business economy. Period.
ET
You prediction is logical but arab muslims are not logical.
Middle class entrepreners are vitually unknown in islamic society…beyond a few merchants in the bazaar or nomadic traders….unless these ambitious folk maintain an armed retinue…they get looted/killed in the next riot. Inevitably the survivors are reveiled to be no mare than brigands….not the basis for a modern economy….hence the weakness of the House of Saud…
A middle class in muslim scoiety is as ficticious as “palestinians” (egyptians, jordanians, syrians and yemenis).
An islamic middle class is like a “moderate muslim”….not islamic.
ET >
We have a lot of respect for your views and opinions and hopefully you are right with this. If you are not or only partially, we are in for a rough ride.
The events in the ME lately remind me of the events in the ME and southern Europe during and after the 7th century, as well as the Mongol invasions of Europe in 1222 AD.
Just a replay of Iran, where the EEEVILLL Shah was betrayed by his Western allies and ousted.
Elections were held, and a harsh and far bloodier Islamist regime came to power entirely democratically.
We are still living with that reality.
sasquatch – well, I’ll quibble with your axioms.
First, your statement that ‘arab muslims are not logical’ is confusing. ‘Arab’ is an ethnic group within our common species and as such, such people are capable of logic.
Second, Islam is not the issue, as I’ve been pointing out. Muslims here in Canada and the US are quite capable of being both logical and engaged in the middle class economy. For you to declare the the only genuine Islam is fundamentalist Islam is akin to saying that Judaic Reform members are not Jews. Or that Protestants are not Christian.
Third, there is indeed a growing middle class economy in the ME – in all areas from Palestine to Syria to Egypt. That’s the reason for the open implosions that are going on; this pressure by the middle class for more political, social and economic power.
And finally, my argument, which is economic, has nothing to do with logic. That is, my argument may be (and is) logical, but economics is not logic but an infrastructure of a population. My point is that this infrastructure, which is a wealth-generating system, must support its population. That’s all.
If this wealth-generating infrastructure can’t support its population..trouble. And the tribal wealth producing infrastructure, of a state economy dealing in state owned basic resources controlled by the Rulers..can’t generate enough wealth to support the population increases of the last decades.
This has to change to enable more wealth production. The only means of doing this is by private small and medium businesses. That’s the domain of the middle class. And the end of the tribal two-class system.
ken kulak – I don’t see the ME situation now as anywhere comparable to the origin of Islam in the 7th c or even, the militant expansion of the tribal Islamic nations vs the decaying tribal Christian nations of the 13th c.
The 13th c, by the way, saw the emergence of the middle class in Europe and the gradual implosion of the church as a political power. It took several hundred years for the church to lose its political control over western society.
It won’t take that long for Islam to transform, but, it won’t be an easy transformation. Islam was, right from its origin, a political and economic movement (as was Christianity) but Christianity enables freedom and a middle class while Islam rejects both. However, the economic infrastructure is the ‘deep cause’ and this requires a free people, a middle class economy. Islam has to change.
And we in the West have to reject multiculturalism, which enables pockets of fundamentalist Islam to exist, parasitic on Western economies, to ideologically feed the ME nations.
I found this article on arab armies and their ineffectiveness some years ago…it”s a good read:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/deatkine_arabs1.html
The MB is “the moderate pleasant face”, the salafists are way out there.
~Stephen
The MB assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for signing the Camp David Peace Accord with Israel.*
That’s why the MB was banned in Egypt for so long.
Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri, current leader of al-Qaeda and last “emir” of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was a leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
The entire salafi movement as it exists today came from Egypt through influencial Muslim Brotherhood writers such as Sayyid Qutb and his brother Muhammad Qutb who moved to Saudi Arabia as an educator after his brother Sayyid was executed for his part in the conspiracy to assassinate Egyptian President Nasser.
Muhammad Qutb knew al-Zawahiri personally and was a mentor of both al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden.
Sayyid Qutb, a seminal Islamist writer, was instrumental in bringing the nationalist Free Officers Movement headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser to power through the overthrow of Egyptian King Farouk.
*the Muslim Brotherhood was one of the paramilitary forces that fought against the new State of Israel at it’s birth in 1948
Inbetween a society rising and falling based on its ability to sustain its population there is a little matter of a thing called war that is the last step of the ‘rulers’ of the society to retain power. We can only hope that this last step will be played out entirely in the Middle-East. The Judeo-Christian charity has proven that giving massive foreign aid to these regions for the last fifty or so decades has only increased the size of the war that will eventually erupt.
oz- Sayyid Qutb was opposed to Nasser and Nasser’s ‘secular state’. He was tried for treason and executed.
Qutb was, I’d suggest, a naive romanticist, in the line of such other romanticists as Rousseau and Hegel, and various cultists, and also, a fascist, in the line of such other fascists – which is also a romanticist movement – as Hegel and H*tler.
In all senses, he was an isolate fundamentalist, akin to those people who believe that man is evil and must be scourged and purified and live within a strict authoritarian rule. That is, he does not, as does Christianity, accept the fallibility of man. Instead, he sees modern man as corrupted by modernization and considers that IF he followed fundamental Islam, THEN, he’d be pure.
The focus in the ME has to be on the economic infrastructure and their population. The ideology must enable the economy to support the population. And no fundamentalist purism, whether it be fascist or ‘environmentalist’ can do this.
odd how the west is prepossessed with removing the ‘dictators’ that are the only ones holding the most rabid islamic fundamentalists at bay then act surprised when they get irrational ayatollahs that can’t be reasoned with instead…watch and see what happens in the ME by this time next year….and then wait for it to arrive here…by our own invitation
antenor – yes, agreed, war is a tactic of the entrenched rulers to retain power. There are several antagonists in this ME scenario; the two greatest are not Israel and ‘the others’, but Iran and Saudi Arabia. The latter does not want Iran to move in, while Iran has clear imperialist agendas.
Several concerns: would it be the type of war that is used to increase access to resources (as in the Third Reich’s expansionist agendas)? For Iran, this could be the case – against SA. But I doubt if the other nations, such as Iraq and Egypt and Israel, want that to happen. I’d even suggest they’d collaborate against Iran!
Then, there are the other nations watching, planning and plotting; these include China and Russia.
The US under Obama has seriously weakened its military and economic capacities. If there is a war, I think the key players would be the Islamic nations amongst themselves – for their greatest threat is not the West. But Iran.
ET
I hope your right. It a good dream, but from my little bunker it seems this is all being done to encircle Israel for yet another major attack with Islamist forces in charge. This time with the resources & man power of many Muslim Nations. Look how these revolutions are encircling the Nation Islamics want to destroy. It will be their undoing. Iran is in internal turmoil right now. Christianity is spreading their like wild fire. Hence the ban on Satellite TV.
At least this is what Iranians who have escaped are saying. The government is at war with its own people.
That will not stop them in Alliance with Russia who hates Isreal as much as the Jihadists. Thats why they supply Hezballah & the Philistines with ever increasing amounts of military hardware . From tanks to rockets to planes.
Time will tell. Never underestimate the goad of hate or ideology. Just ask the Armenians, Jews, Ukrainians.
JMO
revnant – I don’t see it that way. I think it would be politically and economically disastrous for the Islamic nations to actually ‘wipe out’ Israel. What would be left for them to use to sideline the economic and political unrest in their own populations?
I see the Islamic tribal dictators as having deliberately set up Israel as a convenient ‘Evil Other’ which they used to retain ideological, and thus economic and political, power in their own nations.
After all, they refused to assist Palestinians – not only because there are levels and levels of hierarchical status among arab peoples, and the Palestinians are among the lowest of the low, but, I maintain that these Islamist dictators used the I-P scenario to divert their people’s focus from the internal economic implosions.
They could have gotten rid of that corrupt Arafat; they could have enabled a fair Palestinian state; they could have helped the Palestinians focus on their own economy. They chose instead, to incite unrest.
The key problem in the ME is the economic and political infrastructure of statism and tribalism. It simply can’t support the massive population increases – as much as 40% over the past decades. They can’t keep blaming the West, blaming Israel, etc. The informational electronic network doesn’t permit such top-down control over a population.
They have to free the people from tribalism (a two-class structure) and enable a middle class to move to economic and legislative power.
The only ‘what if’ scenario now, I think, is Iran’s imperialist ambitions. Obama blew their democratic movement by utterly ignoring it and siding with the dictatorship. But Saudi Arabia and others in the region don’t want Iran as boss.
So- it’s dicey, but I think the implosions will be internal.
As for the MB in Egypt, you can’t expect a people to vote out their religion. As I said, the Founders didn’t reject Christianity when they opted for self-government.
But, fundamentalism has to go; that is, the notion of ‘purity’, a utopian romanticism, has to go – and a great strength of a middle class is that it can’t operate within utopianism. The free market operates in reality. Not imaginary realms.
oz- Sayyid Qutb was opposed to Nasser and Nasser’s ‘secular state’. He was tried for treason and executed.
-et
Yes, I did state that Qubt was executed by Nasser but what of it?
The statement that Nasser and Qutb worked together to overthrow King Farouk still stands.
It is an historic fact.
Qutb and Nasser used to sit together and discuss the overthrow of the secularist Farouk, sometimes spending 12 hours in discussion, while Nasser hid the fact that he too was a secularist like King Farouk.
That is why Qutb became involved in trying to overthrow Nasser, for which Qutb was executed.
The assassins who killed President Anwar Sadat were secret Egyptian Army members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Nasser, who overthrew King Farouk, had a secret cohort too.
Nasser kept his secularism hidden from his secret cohort just as he kept it hidden from Qubt.
There is, no doubt, a secret Muslim Brotherhood cohort existing in the Egyptian Army today just as there was in Nasser’s day and in Sadat’s day.
It’s a theme that many find to be obvious but there are some, you for example, who for various reasons are willfully blind to.
My general point is that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian Army have a long history of collusion and then violently betraying each other.
This seems to be a general theme in Arab relations.
It’s obviously cultural.
As Knight99 observes, it’s interesting to see you sticking to your guns and not letting the facts of history unfolding before your eyes shake you from your mistaken convictions.
You’re a lot like Barack Obama that way.
Just an observation.
oz – heh- I’m reasonably immune to personal insults.
I stick to facts. And economics realities and demographics are facts. Ideologies are beliefs. Don’t confuse the two.
The pertinent identity of the Turk, Farouk was not his secularism but his corruption. Both Qutb and Nasser were against this corruption. Both were against the British occupation. Remember, the key statist resources of the ME were built by the wealth and technological expertise of the West; that includes all the oil and the Suez Canal. The Islamic nations, rejecting reason, individualism and science, didn’t have the technology. But they liked the wealth.
You are ignoring two facts: The first is the fact that Qutb was a utopian ideologue who believed that the only means of ridding the state of this corruption was by means of a fascist Islamism, ie, fundamentalist Islam. The second is that Nasser was a socialist, a secularist and statist and fought against the Islamists (Qutb, al-Banna)and furthermore, was a nationalist.
These two world views- which go even beyond the points above – should not be ignored. Don’t link Qutb and Nasser; their goals and ideologies were the opposite of each other.
Again, if there is one thing no-one can ever, ever, ignore, it’s the economy. That’s because we are, like it or not, material beings and must survive, not by our beliefs but by our material provisions. That’s what’s going on in the ME now, the implosion of the old economic infrastructure. The new one must enable a middle class; it’s the only means of wealth production in that size of a population. You choose to ignore this.
And no, there is nothing cultural about what is going on in the ME; it’s a fight between tribalism and modernity (two class vs three class); and utopianism vs realism.
oz – heh- I’m reasonably immune to personal insults
Why did you engage me at 1:52?
What was your point?
Did I or did I not state at 1:39 that Qubt was executed by Nasser for his invovlvment in the assassination attempt?
What facts did you miss sticking to there?
Qutb saw King Farouk’s secularism as corruption, Nasser saw Farouk’s cooperation with foreign European government’s as corruption.
Don’t link Qutb and Nasser; their goals and ideologies were the opposite of each other.
~et
What part of “Nasser hid his secularism from Qubt” did you not understand.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem?
They colluded to overthrow King Farouk, it is an historic fact.
They spent a lot of time together discussing the overthrow, it is an historic fact.
Your stating that King Farouk was corrupt is irrelevant.
Saying an Arab or Muslim leader is corrupt is like saying water is wet, it’s a given, it’s cultural.
“what’s going on in the ME now, the implosion of the old economic infrastructure. The new one must enable a middle class”
Now that’s funny.
What’s going on the the western world today is the implosion of the old economic infrastructure and destruction of the middle class.
You really need to get out more and survey the world around you.
Destruction of the old economic or political infrastructure does not inevitably foster or lead to the creation of a middle class or even a better economic infrastructure however firmly that you BELIEVE it does.
ET. What’s that old Middle Eastern saying?
Oh, yeah, I remember:
“Behind every cloud….there’s a s***storm”.
but it’s for the best, according to the moonbats…wait for it….
Afghanistan: Taliban Buy 13-Year-Old Boy To Use As a Suicide Bomber For $170
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2011/11/30/my-uncle-sold-me-for-170-dollars-to-be-a-suicide-bomber.html
Kabul — Sherzai was 13 years old when his uncle sold him to Taliban insurgents for 15,000 Pakistani rupees (170 dollars).
‘Then the Taliban told me to carry out a suicide attack,’ he said, now in a juvenile correctional facility in Kabul. ‘They said I would be a martyr and I would go to paradise.’
Sherzai, a shepherd with no father and a bed-ridden mother, is from Gardez city, the provincial capital of Paktia province that borders Pakistan and is the focus of military operations.
Sherzai escaped shortly after he was sold to the Taliban. But he was arrested, and a court sent him to the centre where he studies and takes vocational training in carpet weaving, tailoring and computers.
He shares his room with nine other children who are in the centre for various offences.
ET –
Second, Islam is not the issue, as I’ve been pointing out. Muslims here in Canada and the US are quite capable of being both logical and engaged in the middle class economy.
I agree that Muslims are capable of participation in the middle class economy. More specifically, though, I think that “fundamentalist” Muslims are capable of this. You seem to disagree…?
For you to declare the the only genuine Islam is fundamentalist Islam is akin to saying that Judaic Reform members are not Jews.
Yes, I agree: “Reform” Jews are not really taking Judaism seriously. Similarly:
Or that Protestants are not Christian.
A better analogy would be that mainstream/liberal Christian churches are not really Christian – which they are not.