And to go along with the story about the Nigerian woman being buried and stoned for making love to a man two years after she was divorced, a Taino friend of mine sent the following article to me. I wonder what they did to the camel? I'm sorry for being so glib about this but the world of the desert where people would kill the population of small groups through their physical experiments is no longer true. Sexuality is not the same today as then and we should be willing to realize that there are things that relate to the common and things that do not. Considering that a woman would be murdered for sex and the man would be pardoned with a light sentence for bestial sexuality makes one wonder about the possibility of logic with such a system. Remember Scappes, Mad Cow, and all of the diseases that come from living with and near domestic animals. You would have to know nothing of bacteria or the medical practice of the last 100 years to approve of this nonsense.
One should remember that this is at its heart a warrior system that has more often than not conquered for political conversion. They even admit that on the Moslem sites on the Internet as they explain the basics of Islam including Jihad. To kill a woman for having sex with a man, any man but to give a six month sentence to a young man with forty lashes is what they gave that American boy for removing a street sign in Singapore. Does this let you know just how they feel about half of the human race? The mothers of their children and their own mothers? I don't mean to push this thing with the Arabs. Consider the plight of the Gay population of China a place where they have a tolerant history and a glorious tradition of Gays in the theater. Today after following the path of the Western Communist ideology the population is the most persecuted in the country with the government following 19th century Middle Eastern attitudes towards sexuality and causing an AIDS epidemic in the process. The arrogance of the Western World in the 19th century is still murdering people even though the Empires are gone. Ignorance is no excuse for idiocy. Well I guess that is enough of a Cranky old man. Here read it for yourself. For those who say that America does it as well and I should keep my mouth shut I will say that you are right about the first part and that is the reason I don't keep my mouth shut. But that is another post. Arab News SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=17502 Jail and lashes for bestial teenager By Saqar Al-Amry, Arab News Staff Published on 05 August 2002 JEDDAH, 5 August - A court in northern Saudi Arabia has sentenced a Nigerian teenager to six months in jail and 240 lashes for having sex with a camel. Dr. Eisa Abdullah Al-Ghaith, a judge at a summary court in Tabuk, told Arab News that the court found the 17-year-old boy guilty of "having tried to have sexual relations with a camel." But the camel's owner said the young Nigerian "got into his farm and had sex" with the dromedary. The teenager was arrested by police while he was trying to have sex with one of the camels. The teenager confessed before the court that he intended to have sex with the camel. Ghaith said the lashes will be administered in six installments of 40 lashes each with an interval of seven days. Copyright © 2002 ArabNews All Rights Reserved. And on the other hand from the same Arab News Service: Arab News SAUDI ARABIA'S FIRST ENGLISH LANGUAGE DAILY ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=18128 UK Chief Rabbi says Israeli policy incompatible with Judaism By Ha'aretz Service Published on 28 August 2002 The Chief Rabbi of Britain Jonathan Sacks harshly criticized Israel in an interview published Tuesday in The Guardian, saying that the current situation in Israel has caused the country to adopt a stance "incompatible" with the deepest ideals of Judaism and that the current Palestinian conflict is corrupting Israeli culture. "You cannot ignore a command that is repeated 36 times in the Mosaic books: 'You were exiled in order to know what it feels like to be an exile.' I regard that as one of the core projects of a state that is true to Judaic principle. I regard the current situation as nothing less than tragic, because it is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long-run with our deepest ideals," Sacks said. Sacks said that "there are things that happen on a daily basis which make me feel very uncomfortable as a Jew." He said that he was "profoundly shocked" at the recent reports of IDF soldiers smiling while posing for photographs over the corpses of dead Palestinians. "There is no question that this kind of prolonged conflict, together with the absence of hope, generates hatreds and insensitivities that in the long run are corrupting to a culture," he said. Asked if he would join other rabbis who have described the IDF occupation of the territories as immoral, Sacks said that already in 1967, after the Six Day war he "was convinced that Israel had to give back all the land for the sake of peace. My father, bless him, was convinced that Israel's neighbors would never make peace. Thirty five years later, I think we were both right." Sacks said that he would be willing to hold talks with Sheikh Abu Hamza - the fundamentalist north London Muslim religious leader who describes himself as a Taliban sympathizer and admits to sharing Osama bin Laden's views. On Monday, the sheikh was quoted saying it was "OK" to kill non-Muslims, and equated Jews with Satan. Sacks said that a meeting between the two is "a thought worth pursuing. I absolutely don't rule it out." Sacks also revealed in the interview, that he met one of Iran's highest-ranking religious leaders, Ayatollah Abdullah Javadi-Amoli in New York in 2000. "We established within minutes a common language, because we take certain things very seriously: we take faith seriously, we take texts seriously. It's a particular language that believers share." A language, Sacks said, which most Muslims feel the west is incapable of understanding. Sacks said that he would not sit and talk with people "who kill those with whom they disagree." He said that he would not sit down with a would-be suicide bomber. "In order to listen, I have to be alive," he said. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Copyright © 2002 ArabNews All Rights Reserved. I would agree with the Rabbi about both the need to establish the separate countries and the corrupting influence of any war. I've have worried about this since the 1967 war and have worked on these issues with the sacred people who have come to study since the early 1970s. I used to challenge Rabbis in Synagogues where I sang even though I wasn't Jewish, about these very issues. To their credit they listened and talked to me and they didn't fire me. Today, the threats of bombs has made the Jewish congregations more prone to hire only Jewish singers since everyone has to go through the same security as entering an airport but this time it is the local synagogue. The kind of passionate questioning that I did would have a very different feeling today when such energy from an outsider could mean that I was carrying something around my waist. Even though that reality pollutes today's discussions I also agree with the Rabbi about the seriousness of religious folks. And finally I find it heartening that this Arab newspaper reminds me more of the Wall Street Journal in its bias than a simple propaganda organ. If I can live with the patronizingly provincial chauvinism of the WSJ I can do the same with this. But I too agree that the line must be drawn with those who kill those with whom they disagree. I would add that the issue for me extends to the level of oppressing those as well, as long as they are peaceful. There are people that I know who look at the land and its "development" and will never accept those who have, in the mind of the observers, despoiled the earth. They would commit murder to cleanse the earth and be surprised that the level of hell they end up in (if you believe in that sort of thing, except for literary purpose which is mine here) contains the monsters of history. War is never an answer unless you are willing to be a murderer of old people, women and children because that is what you will be no matter how righteous your cause. But I can understand people defending their homes on both sides of the Middle East and I choose to align myself with those who are least likely to destroy my family, my home, my faith and my culture. I have no illusions about people and I like people whenever I get to know them. I enjoy multiple cultures and my culture when it has been in the ascendancy as in the court of the great Kublai was the most religiously tolerant court in the world. Of course they weren't very tolerant of anything else. So how about our understanding that there is no answer to this other than information and truth. Religions change and grow. They progress just as all information does. There are scientists who teach in schools who still complain about the New Math and there are performing artists who believe the last music was written by Beethoven that Wagner was a blowhard and that Verdi could only write waltzes. I know, I studied with some of them and they were nice people but they didn't care much about being bothered by the progress of knowledge or technical competency. The limited fundamentalist souls are not only found in religion. As Brad said, flood the Middle East with information of all types. Remove the provinciality with sophistication. Forget about inviting the Princes and their consorts, invite the Artists, the Singers, the Poets. There are plenty of expatriate artists here in the US from those countries. I have taught some of them and they are wonderful sophisticated souls. Certainly capable of enlisting as much or more than old politicians or aristocrats. Have Sussan Deyhim perform at the White House and break the barrier of performance in Iran and Iraq by sending in the same orchestras that broke down the Soviet walls. Talk to the Mullahs and let them deal with wild eyed artists who know of what they speak. Remember Cat Stevens? He is now a Mullah. He was only a commercial performer but there is an opening. Lower the warriors and raise up the people who speak across generations and cultures to the core of what it means to be human in every spiritual tradition. People thought that Leonard Bernstein was soft in the head when he suggested such things in the Cold War, but then he put the New York Philharmonic in Moscow playing Charles Ives and things were never the same again after that. We have incredible Arab and Farsi Artists who have trained here and all over the world and they now live in New York City. Deyhim is Farsi and her partner is Richard Horowitz a fine composer who works on native instruments. Why not send them. Horowitz was the composer for Bertolucci's movie the "Sheltering Sky." The same could be even more true for China and North Korea. Chinese Artists have had big successes here. Now let's send more over like when Isaac Stern did such incredible things to help the healing after the cultural revolution. Meanwhile here in America invite the cultural movers and shakers to come to our parties, our meetings and ask them questions. Loads and loads of questions. Find out everything that you can from them and then ask more. The Internet and International contacts through the Arts and intellectual scholarship had as much to do with the death of the Soviet System as any military stuff we did. Business, business and more business did them in. I would agree with Brad about weaning ourselves from their products but we should also require that students from the Moslem countries be added courses that constantly question the values of Jihad and military proselytizing for their religion. Begin with that old fox Louis Farrakhan. Let him play the violin and then get someone smarter than Donahue to deal with the issues of costume religions. Confess to him and see if he has the ability to forgive and if he doesn't then question how the world can ever be whole without giving in to his view of Ultimate Concern. Instead we get salesmen like Farrakhan and the Christian right wing. Those are not the alternatives. That will never exist with the science of the future. You have to deny science to belong to those groups and their faith will never build rocket ships, bridges or deal with the issues of population expansion except to question its existence. But do this like the Israelis did with their wild children after the 2nd world war. I knew some of them and one of them is now a world class physicist expert in time. His father was murdered and fell on him at the shooting to protect him when the Germans came through the Jewish villages in Russia. He escaped into the Russian forest at five years old and at six was carrying a pistol to fight the Nazis. At 12 the war was over and he wouldn't give up his gun and the Jewish authorities wouldn't demand it either. They took him and the other wild children in and told them that they were the heart and future of the Jewish Nation. They asked him what he wanted and he said "he wanted to go to the opera" and they took him although he had never seen one and had only heard of it. Gradually they weaned the pistol away and they found his brother and mother alive, he thought them gone, and he went to City College in New York City and learned to speak English in the cheapest movies he could find. In Times Square. When I knew him he was the head of a company and building timing mechanisms used in industry all over the globe. Someone needs to come from a place of love for those wild children who are blowing themselves up. Challenge and deal with the culture of their adults and teach both another economics that doesn't rip them off. Don't just use them as raw materials for our industry! Show them that although they must have the courage to change and get rid of old processes no longer viable, show them by doing the same yourself. Throw off your need to encourage the death of homosexuals by holding back on AIDS research. Re write the parts of your book that is no longer appropriate to the 21st century global community. Give up your foolish economic stories that make addicts out of your consumers and wastes the riches of the world in order to keep your silly market running. Stress fundamentals, but the fundamentals of human relationships and not old beloved art stories from the time when your ancestors wandered in the Jezreel Valley and Egypt and Babylon hunted you for sport. Stress the inadequacy of the process of sacrificing victims to battles like the battle between the fundamentalist Christian President of Nigeria and the Moslems that is creating the sacrifice of that poor mother by stoning. She probably will die sacrificed just as surely as she was taken to the plaza of the Temple Major in Tenoctitlan and had her heart torn from her chest. At least the Aztecs weren't afraid to touch their victims. These cowards throw stones. Questions, questions and more questions and much humor. Testosterone laden males have a great deal of trouble with humor. As does an estrogen laden female looking for the best genes for her child. Demand more from yourselves than a rutting season for the four leggeds. Every culture should have to prove its mettle in the court of world opinion in this era of information. Secrets are the enemy. No one knows how many have been stoned in Saudi Arabia because no one outside can find out. Mecca and Medina should have no more secrecy than they allow anyone else. Cultures are important and every culture has something to offer but secrecy with the Germans from 1938 to 1945 was toxic to the entire human species. Let the light shine on the principles of every religion, philosophy, myth and story. Demand that they grow and change in behavior not in converts. The time has come for each culture to deserve keeping its place in the tapestry of humanity. Tell the truth about the past, adjust and create a humane and civilized present and think seven generations into the future for any and all actions that we do for our own self interest. There is no more desert just as there are no more buffalo and you can have same sex without catching diseases if you are temperate and clean in your hygiene. Live correctly in the present and put old science to bed with respect just as you say goodbye to your Elders when they go to their final rest. Music, Art and Ritual will allow you to remember, out of respect, but human sacrifice, murder of the first born and murder of that which is believed unnatural in a simpler time, should never raise its head again. Consider that there are artists all over the world like Jim Behrenholtz who was my student years ago and who has studied and worked all over the world as a composer, dancer and singer studying the ancient springs of all people and put himself at the feet of their greatest teachers. He is one of the few Western dancers of the world to dance the over 100 dances of Shiva which is performed with live cobras around his neck. Behrenholtz is the opposite of provinciality and chauvinism. A mild slight man who has been known to perform with over 100 lbs of live snakes for some of the greatest audiences whether in India, Egypt with the Maya in Mexico or the Marawa in Sudan. In his most recent work titled Psalms of Ra recorded at the Lucas Skywalker Ranch Studios in California he wrote: "Today, in the Middle East and throughout the world, people are killing each other in the name of God. They are using religion to justify acts of hatred and violence and to separate us from each other based on our ethnic, religious and national identities. The Psalms of Ra is an impassioned call to stop this separation. It is a call to the remembrance of our oneness, to a recognition of the basic scientific and spiritual truth that we are all children of the Sun. We are all reflections of its light through every color of our human rainbow. When we are finally able to appreciate this unity in diversity then the wars and the killing will end. Then the peoples of the Middle East in the center of the global storm, will see the common spiritual root that we share. We will remember that we are sisters and brothers, as can be proven by our ancestral languages of light. Let us rise to the occasion of our global transformation and be the magnificent radiant beings of light that we are capable of being. The darkness has lasted too long....." "Y'hee or! Y'hee or!! Ka'asher haboker yakum b'shamayim oov'aretz." "Let there be light! Let there be light!! So the dawn shall rise over the heavens and the earth." Ray Evans Harrell
