Pope(ss) Joan

Was pleasantly surprised by the movie Pope Joan today. The strength of this woman who became Pope was stunning and aspiring. In a time where women were worth less than cattle and only useful for reproduction and householding, there was this strong girl Johanna longing for knowledge. Her brother Johannes got killed in an attack by the Vikings, which made her decide to continue her life as him. Living the life of a young man she eventually became Pope.


We will probably never find out how true this story is. But sure it is known that in the past many women disguised themselves as men only to be accepted in the male-dominated world. Read the amazing stories of these 10, e.g.

Amnesty Int. official deplores its work with a jihadist

I can only agree with Gita Sahgal if it is true that Moazzam Beg has a double agenda. More and more I'm loosing faith in the works of human rights groups such as Amnesty International when they are blind for human rights abuses by the ones whose human rights they are defending. If this case is true, it'd not be the first mistake the organization makes:

Amnesty International is ‘damaged’ by Taliban link
An official at the human rights charity deplores its work with a ‘jihadist’


A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims.

Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.

In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.

Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.

Amnesty’s work with Cageprisoners took it to Downing Street last month to demand the closure of Guantanamo Bay. Begg has also embarked on a European tour, hosted by Amnesty, urging countries to offer safe haven to Guantanamo detainees. This is despite concerns about former inmates returning to terrorism.

Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.

“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”

Read more...

UPDATE: Gita Saghal apparently had been suspended from her job. Now... why would that be? This is her statement:

"Amnesty International and Cageprisoners

Statement by Gita Sahgal

7 February 2010

This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.

Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.

The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.

I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.

The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should. The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.

I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners. I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg. Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights. Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.

As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.

I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially."

See also my previous article about how the left got corrupted.

UPDATE: And the plot thickens....

Secular western tolerance for Muslim intolerance

Seculars in the west are often quick to condemn any expression of 'Jewish bigotry', while ignoring the antisemitism rampant in the Arab press and media. Where is their contextual counterbalance?

"The mainstream media in the United States is quick to denounce any perceived affronts to Arab or Islamic culture, and just as quick to condemn any alleged expressions of Jewish or Israeli chauvinism. But the media is reluctant to criticize antisemitic expressions from Arab or Muslim sources, draw any connection between Islamism and terrorism, acknowledge the history of Arab expansion and colonialism, or discuss the supremacist implications of jihad – even as it openly plays out in Europe. Rather, liberal pundits often wax dreamily poetic when discussing the so-called “golden age of Islam” or the myth of Islamic tolerance. Moreover, they tend to rationalize any antisemitic or anti-Western expressions in the Arab world as reactions to Israeli intransigence or American colonialism.

In reality, there was no real sense of tolerance for “infidels” in the Arab-Muslim world. Historically, Jews in Arab lands were relegated to the status of dhimmi who often lived in ghettos, were endowed with few if any substantive rights, and were subject to the whim and whimsy of their hostile neighbors. Although many in the West believe that Jewish life was more tolerable through the ages in the Islamic lands, the general treatment of Jews there was in fact not much different than in Christian Europe, and sometimes was even worse.

During the early Islamic period, for example, Jews were required to wear distinctive badges or metal seals around their necks, and starting in the 9th Century the Caliphate in Baghdad required Jews to wear the yellow badge – a practice that was later adopted in Christian Europe during the Middle Ages. Starting in the year 1005, the Jews of Egypt were required to wear bells on their garments, and in Medieval Baghdad they were often physically branded. In many Arab countries Jews were required to live in ghettos and were not permitted to use the same public bath houses as Muslims. At various times throughout Islamic history, Jews of the Mideast and North Africa were subjected to pogroms, massacres and forced conversions just as they were in Europe.

Despite the fantasy of the “Golden Age of Spain” when Jews were supposedly free, equal and prosperous, Iberian Jewry often fared little better in Muslim Spain than in Christian Europe. The reality was famously evidenced by the experience of Maimonides. Despicable though the anti-Jewish policies of the Catholic Church may have been, the Rambam and his family were exiled from their native Cordoba not because of Christian persecution, but because the conquering Almohads gave the Jewish community the choice of conversion to Islam or death.”

Read post in full

And not only concerning Jews, also concerning Muslim women the secular western world is deafening silent. Some of the videos you are about to see in this youtube playlist of Women and Islam are graphic:

Taliban and their non-respect for women

34 lashes as punishment for what exactly?

(...)Reached by phone, Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan claimed responsibility for the flogging. "She came out of her house with another guy who was not her husband, so we must punish her. There are boundaries you cannot cross," he said. He defended the Taliban's right to thrash women shoppers who were inappropriately dressed, saying it was permitted under Islamic law.(...)

Sher Muhammad Khan, an official in Swat with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said: "They have committed so many atrocities since the peace deal. They have taken entire control of the district. There is nobody to control them; they decide disputes according to their whims."(...)(...)The woman in the video, named as Chaand and believed to be aged 17, was punished (...) on suspicion of having had an illicit relationship with a married man. She did not receive a trial. "The whole case is based on the suspicions of one neighbour," said Minallah. The woman's brother is among the men pinning her down, she added. "It's symbolic that he does it with his own hands. It gives him honour in local society, that he has done it for the sake of religion."
(...)

Since the peace deal, women have been beaten for shopping unaccompanied in Mingora's main market and dozens of girls' schools remain closed, many of them bombed.(...)

Read the whole article

Wow!

Men and women not separated at Western Wall

Again I stumbled upon an old picture on which clearly can be seen that men and women were not praying separately at the Western Wall as they do nowadays:


Source: Ynet

When advertisements blatantly lie

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I'm shocked

How can a lawyer, a woman ffs, say such horrible stuff?

This... is a historic moment

Well, Obama won. That's a historic moment.

And another important historic moment to remember from the books of history (see all the way down this blog for more info):
Susan B. Anthony Breaks US Law to Vote (1872). She defied US law and voted in the presidential election, asserting that the 14th Amendment entitled her to do so. She was arrested and fined, but her actions drew great attention to the women's rights movement.