David Yerushalmi: Is Shariah the Same as Jewish Law?

MFS - The Other News

                         Afternoon Posting.

• Muslim summit planned over NYC Islamic center.A summit of U.S. Muslim organizations is scheduled to begin Sunday in New York City to address both the project and a rise in anti-Muslim sentiments and rhetoric that has accompanied the nationwide debate over the project.It has yet to be seen whether the groups will emerge with a firm stand on the proposed community center, dubbed Park51.(See Koran  The primary purpose of the meeting is to talk about ways to combat religious bigotry.Rauf, he said, may have been a regular talking head for the national news media on Muslim world affairs, but among New York City imams he was something of an outsider, Ubaid said."He was not that involved with the local Muslim community," Ubaid said. He said that included a general failure to round up support for the center before going public with his plans. "Had he consulted us, we probably would have told him, gently, no."Al-taqiyya .Questions about the project's finances have lingered. The investment partnership that owns the property, led by El-Gamal, quickly fell more than $224,000 behind on its property taxes this summer.The city's finance department confirmed Friday that El-Gamal had begun resolving that debt Wednesday, turning over a check for a little more than $35,000 and signing on to an eight-installment payment plan to pay the rest.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BigPeace:Burned for Being American.Another Sept. 11 is behind us, leaving something new and disturbing, a dark spawn to examine with plenty of careful soul-searching.That legacy begins with the reflexive, lockstep process by which an American citizen, Terry Jones, was simultaneously depicted and denounced as a raving lunatic for even conceiving of his plan to burn copies of the Koran to mark the ninth anniversary of demonstrably Koran-inspired attacks. In society’s fearful fervor to distance itself from Jones, there was evidence of that same politically correct lie that has plagued us from Day 1: that there exists no logical and discernible connection between what the Koran commands and what happened on 9/11. Thus, Jones’ lawful, harmless symbolic stunt making the connection — burning copies of the Koran at his Florida church — became a paralyzing taboo, and Terry Jones was demonized with impunity, even by many who defended his free-speech protections and constitutional rights.And on Wednesday, the Seattle Weekly (rather calmly) announced the planned disappearance of its cartoonist Molly Norris, she who once called — in a cartoon — May 20 “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” The paper wrote: “On the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, ‘going ghost’: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity.”“Wiping away her identity”? For a cartoon? But this is exactly what Western civilization itself is doing. And that’s why all you hear, past those echoing denunciations of the Florida preacher, is … silence.All they needed was a Muslim favorable President?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Truth, Justice, or the Obama Way?The Justice Department is forced to investigate itself. It is about to get harder for both the Obama administration and the mainstream media to downplay the New Black Panther party scandal.The mainstream media did their best to ignore this blatant case of voter intimidation by two New Black Panther party members at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008. Though the threatening behavior was captured on videotape, Obama political appointees dismissed the case on the eve of a default judgment. When in early June a key trial team member, Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams, resigned and then testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the media grudgingly reported on his testimony.Read the full scandal story here.Click here for comments.

• When Presidents Cry "Hostage!".To listen to President Obama, you'd think we were in the grip of a never-ending hostage crisis.In sixteen speeches, statements and interviews this year, including his State of the Union address, he has decried the hostage-taking of one issue or another.Hmmm let me see if i get this right : he used it 16 times in 2 years ,Ten other Presidents used it 10 times in a 100 year time frame?You're trying to say his use of the word "Hostage' is "Normal"hahahaha!Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Lookingat the Left.Historic 9/11 Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero Rally.Massive Media Distortion of Massive Rally in New York City.This year’s 9/11 anniversary in New York brought opponents and supporters of the controversial “ground zero mosque” to lower Manhattan by the thousands. That fact has spawned a new controversy, as the American people yet again were served a false narrative by the dominant liberal establishment mass media.Exhibit A, in the “media reality distortion case #2,478,697″ is the photo scene below. This photo shows the 9/11 Remembrance/Stop the Ground Zero Mosque Rally hosted by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. According to the New York Times, what is seen here is a crowd of 2,000 persons. According to the New York Daily News, the crowd below contained “hundreds,” despite the fact that it stretched jam packed as seen below for three city blocks. Local NYC News Channel 10 reported live that there were 30,000 people at this rally. Channel 10 should be applauded for doing their job, and the rest of the media stands exposed.But wait! The distortion goes much deeper than just downplaying by a factor of 10 or 20 the size of the Stop the Ground Zero Mosque Rally.Read and see the whole story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:AmericanThinker.The Problem of DisHonor Killings.Fisk notes that many women's rights groups suspect that the number of victims of Dishonor killings may be four times higher than the UN's "latest world figure of around 5000 deaths a year." Meanwhile, "Amnesty International and news archives suggest that the slaughter of the innocent for "dishonouring" their families is increasing by the year." Moreover, whilst the practice is known to occur amongst Hindus and Sikhs in South Asia and the West, as well as amongst Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, it is still largely confined to Muslim communities in countries such as Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey. However, the custom may be equally widespread in Egypt and the Gulf states, where media freedom on the issue is much more restricted.Read the full scandal story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Michelle'sMirror.TOP 10 REASONS LADY M THINKS BEING FLOTUS IS A JOB FROM HELL.Lady M’s spokesperson here at the Big White, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, immediately issued an official denial yesterday morning. Later in the afternoon Gibbsy tweeted out a denial from his official burrow. This was followed shortly by a spokeswoman for Ms. Bruni who said that First Lady Carla Bruni had nothing what-so-ever to do with the new, soon-to-be-released-and-sure-to-be-a-bestseller, book;although it was originally reported that Carla and the Ambitioust had been written in conjunction with Carla Bruni. So, with all those denials floating around, you can pretty much bank on it being true. But everyone has agreed to pretend it never happened. That’s called circling the wagons in politics, and once again,the supportive MSM came through for us.You got to see the vid !!Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:BigPeace.Al Qaeda Seeks an Exchange of Hostages.The name Mohammed Bouyeri is not familiar to most Americans, but is well-known in the Netherlands. Mr. Bouyeri is the Islamic terrorist who ritually slaughtered Theo van Gogh on the streets of Amsterdam back in 2004, and is now serving a life sentence for the crime. Along with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Theo van Gogh had produced a movie about the plight of women under Islam, and the murderer was thus executing the punishment for blasphemy and slander against the prophet, as required by sharia law.Now an Al Qaeda website is in effect calling for the taking of Dutch hostages so that they can be exchanged for Mr. Bouyeri.Islam a religion of peace?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• 2 Crooks Ahmed&Ahmed behind Britain's biggest tax fraud given 10 MORE years in prison for failing to pay back £184 million.Two crime lords behind Britain's biggest tax fraud have been jailed for an additional 10 years each after failing to pay back £184.6 million.Syed Ahmed, 37, and Shakeel Ahmad, 38, were part of a 21-strong gang who brought luxury houses and sports cars with the proceeds of a £37.5 million pound VAT sting.They were sentenced to seven years' imprisonment in 2007 for their part in the "missing trader" VAT con, in which they cheated the system through the import and export of computer parts.Read the full scam story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Thereligion of peace.Kerala girl defies threats, wears jeans - not burqa.Kasargode (Kerala), Sep 18 (IANS) An aeronautical engineer by qualification and preparing for the civil services exam, a 23-year-old Muslim girl here refuses to wear the burqa and often wears sports jeans despite constant threats to her life. Rayana R. Khasi, a resident of Kasargode, 600 km from state capital Thiruvananthapuram, has handed over the threat letters she received to the police.Rayana has the full support of her family. She has had police protection since Aug 17, thanks to a court order, after increased threats in the last two months.Rayana is unfazed as she has the complete support of her parents and four younger sisters.Trouble started after her return from Chennai around this time last year. She was in Chennai for four and a half years to complete her aeronautical engineering course and then stayed on for six more months for civil services exam coaching. When she came back, first there were polite pleas from her relatives to wear the traditional Muslim attire. 'Then my neighbours started advising me and since then there have had anonymous callers on my mobile telling me they will have no choice but to kill me because I continue to defy the burqa,' said Rayana'My father is a businessman and when he is short of money, it is my mother who comes to his help by giving her gold ornaments. And that is when she resorts to wearing the burqa so that no one can see that she doesn't have her jewellery! Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Hindus most discriminated in Pak, Bangladesh’ by the State Islamic authority.Ed Royce, Republican Congress Man, US.An American Congressman has slammed the alleged ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan and said that Hindus have been discriminated much more than any other ethnic group in these countries.Speaking at the Capitol Hill reception hosted by the Hindu American Foundation, California Republican Ed Royce said he had nothing but “feelings of humility and empathy for a people who have been subjected to — despite the tolerance of their own religion and despite the way in which Hindus have treated and accepted others — more discrimination than just about any other ethnic group.”The influential lawmaker, who was presented with HAF’s Friend of the Community Award for his campaign against discrimination and human rights violations of Hindus in Bangladesh, said that “as someone who has been to Bangladesh, Pakistan, to Central Asia, to South Asia and talked with many of the victims,” he deplored the kind of human rights abuse they had undergone in these countries.“And, my fervent hope is that we can learn from the lesson of what has befallen other victims and begin to take the action necessary to cut off the support for the Deobandi schools, for the madrassas, which are turning out the next generation of those who are going to teach hate.”Royce said it was also imperative that “we’ve all got to pressure the government of Pakistan to put an end to those textbooks which teach the concept that hatred should be visited upon the Hindu minority or spread the message that only one religion should be practiced in that country.”“And, it’s also my hope going forward that we can further our humanitarian efforts to assist those victims of the type of ethnic cleansing that is going on today,” he said.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

MFS - The other News

                          Morning Posting.

• President Obama renominates radicals to judgeships; unethical, pro-criminal, inexperienced.President Obama has just renominated four radicals and oddballs to judgeships, even though they previously failed to get confirmed by the Senate because of public opposition. The judges are Robert Chatigny, Goodwin Liu, Louis Butler, and Jack O'Connell.The President also renominated radical law professor Goodwin Liu, who wrongly thinks that some forms of welfare are constitutionally mandated (which means that taxpayers can't stop paying for it even by voting out of office politicians who like welfare), which is at odds with the Supreme Court's state-action doctrine.He also renominated Louis Butler, who was so extreme that he was removed from the Wisconsin Supreme Court by voters. His empathy for criminals was summed up by his nickname, Loophole Louis.If you really hated America would you do anything different?Read the story here.Click here for comments.

• Leaked DHS memo details amnesty without Congress involvement.A newly leaked amnesty-memo inside Department of Homeland Security reveals a way to grant amnesty without Congress debating comprehensive immigration reform or casting a vote.This is the third inside memo to be leaked to the media regarding the Obama Administration’s intent to legalize 20 million illegal aliens currently residing in America unlawfully. The first memos came out of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agencies- both put together likely tools that could be used to make an amnesty end run around lawmakers.The American Spectator recovered the latest document from DHS and reports some dubious plans that insiders say went all the way up to the DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• EU gives thumbs up to Turkey amid Orthodox mass controversy.The European Union threw its support behind Turkey in a controversy over attempts to hold a Greek Orthodox mass at the former basilica of Hagia Sophia despite Turkish laws that bar any religious services there.Chris Spirou, the president of the US-based International Congregation of Hagia Sophia that is behind the attempt, told the Anatolia news agency late on Thursday that they had called off the trip after receiving a statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry, which he said amounted to a ban on entering Turkey. Speaking to a Greek news agency on Friday, he said the International Congregation of Hagia Sophia would take the Turkish ban to the European Court of Human Rights.But a spokesperson for Stefan Füle, the EU commissioner for enlargement, appeared to agree with Turkish officials, saying on Friday that religious freedom could be restricted for the sake of public safety. “The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms grants the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion to all, and adds that such freedom can be subject to limitations necessary in a democratic society, such as public safety or protection of public order,” Angela Filote said in a statement.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has lifted curbs on Christian worship at other sites under an EU-inspired drive to improve human rights, namely at an Orthodox monastery in Sümela and at an Armenian church in Van. “The Commission considers that freedom of worship in Turkey is generally observed. The conduct of a Holy Mass in the Sümela Greek Orthodox Monastery on August 15 this year, together with the planned conduct of the Holy Mass in the Armenian church of Akhdamar this coming Sunday are further testimonies of this,” Filote said.Hmmm TWO masses in a year means religious freedom for the EU?Someone please explain this to me.Or better ask the Pope if he considers this religious freedom!If they were to tell Muslims to worship only twice a year, the whole world would be in fire and bloodshed!Read the full scandal story here.and here.Click here for comments.

• Home Depot Founder Hammers Obama 'Academics'.No one in the White House knows how to create jobs, and Bernie Marcus knows why. On CNBC, the founder of Home Depot blasted Barack Obama and his administration as a collection of tenured dilettantes who have never had to meet a payroll in their lives. Greg Hengler offers a couple of juicy excerpts from his appearance, especially when Marcus starts “apologizing” for having created over 300,000 jobs through the kind of entrepeneurship that the current White House wants to discourage.Read and see the whole thing here.Click here for comments.

• HT:WeaselZippers.White House: Hey, Our Stimulus Kicked Ass, Didn’t it? Public: Are You Out of Your Effin Minds?The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll showed 92 percent of Americans say the economy’s in bad shape while a mere 24 percent believe it’s improving. And for the first time, more people think President Obama has hurt the economy than helped it, 33 percent to 30 percent.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:AstuteBloggers.MTA/GCT: During Yom Kippur ,they turn a section of NY's Grand Central into a Turkish Mosque!?Hmm perhaps related to the story MFS mentioned on Sep 05....Ottoman princess to bring Jermaine Jackson to İstanbul for charity project.The princess also noted that she will attend another US meeting in September where she expects to meet US President Barack Obama and his wife Michele Obama, in an event at the Turkish Embassy in Washington.That will be a change for the President and his wife after meeting all these Christians these last months?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:WeaselZippers.Russia: Moscow Imam Threatens to Send Muslims to Pray in Churches if They Don’t Get More Mosques.The lack of mosques in Moscow may drive Muslims to visit Orthodox churches, imam-hatyb of the Moscow Cathedral Mosque Ildar Ayautdinov expresses his concern.Hmmm perhaps Putin might build a few in Siberia?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• GM IPO to be open to "all" investors: Treasury.The upcoming initial public offering of General Motors Co will be open to the widest possible range of investors, including both overseas funds and U.S. retail buyers, the U.S. Treasury said on Friday."We expect that potential investors will be sought across multiple geographies with a focus on North American investors, in line with what is typical in similar transactions," the statement said.The U.S. government will not become involved with the decisions about how many shares are allocated to specific investors, it said.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:WireUpdate.Iran President Ahmadinejad calls for release of Iranian prisoners following release of U.S. hiker. Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday said that the release of U.S. hiker Sarah Shourd was a unilateral gesture that was made without the promise of a quid pro quo, but he said that Iranian officials would appreciate a similar act by the United States, CNN reported.Shourd, 32, was singled out for release due to her being a woman, he said. “Iranians, because of our Islamic culture and our Iranian culture, have a very special respect for women,” Ahmadinejad noted, despite the country’s less-than-stellar track record with women’s rights. “We just dignify women, so the system decided that she should be released.” Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:Freerepublic.Obama Re-Writes Declaration of Independence to Leave Out "Creator".Hmmm he sure has a problem with god?Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Political Scientist Hamed Abdel-Samad.'Islam Is Like a Drug'.In a SPIEGEL interview, Egyptian-German political scientist Hamed Abdel-Samad talks about his childhood as the son of an imam in Egypt, why he thinks Islam is a danger to society and his theories about the inevitable decline of the Muslim world.In a sense, Islam is like a drug, like alcohol. A small amount can have a healing and inspiring effect, but when the believer reaches for the bottle of dogmatic faith in every situation, it gets dangerous. This high-proof form of Islam is what I'm talking about. It harms the individual and damages society. It inhibits integration, because this Islam divides the world into friends and enemies, into the faithful and the infidels.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Pope's battle to save Christmas: Don't let atheists crush your traditions, Benedict tells Britain.The Pope issued a clarion call to defend Christianity last night, saying Christmas was at risk of being struck from the calendar.In a strongly-worded speech delivered in Parliament, Benedict XVI bluntly told politicians not to ‘silence’ religion and discourage public celebration of its most important festivals.And in a thinly-veiled attack on controversial equality legislation, he said laws which forced Christians to act against their consciences were wrong.‘There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere,’ he told senior politicians and public figures.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Swiss Institutions Ask: Where's the Gold?He who owns the gold makes the rules." – An old adage.Have you ever wondered what would happen if most of the claimed US gold reserves do not really exist? Can Washington continue to operate under its own questionable and often non-existent accounting rules if it doesn't have the gold reserves as promised? Should we worry about the old idiom, "When the chickens come home to roost" when a person, entity or a government pays dearly for a mistake or something bad they have done in the distant past?Well, the gold has to be somewhere but what if it is in France, Germany and Switzerland rather than in Fort Knox? The price of gold probably wouldn't change much except in dollars which would likely dramatically fall in value as would US Treasury obligations. While the monetary elites and their central banks might prefer to keep the question under wraps, American citizens and foreign holders of dollars and US debt deserve the same full disclosure and transparency as required in the private sector.Congressman Ron Paul Questions Whether There's Gold at Fort Knox and the NY Fed.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• HT:CarolineGlick.The perils of diplomatic theater.The current flurry of diplomatic activity is deeply disturbing. It isn't simply that the Obama administration has strong-armed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu into participating in diplomatic theater with the PLO whose successful completion will leave Israel weaker and less defensible. It isn't merely that the newest "peace process" diverts our leadership's attention away from Iran and its nuclear weapons program.The most disturbing aspect of the latest round of the diplomatic kabuki is that Israel's leaders and Israel's staunch friends in the US are enthusiastically participating in this dangerous project.But while devastating, Krauthammer's position is a side issue at the end of the day. Krauthammer is not the man charged with defending Israel. He's a newspaper columnist and television commentator.The man charged with leading and defending Israel is Netanyahu. Netanyahu is the man who stood for election. Netanyahu is the man who is responsible for leading and defending this country.And Netanyahu is the man who is now leading us on a path to degradation and defeat.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Another Obama success story: $111 million in Stimulus spending saved or created 55 jobs.What a bargain! Only $2,018,000 a job!An audit of federal stimulus spending by the City Controller of Los Angeles reveals -- I hope you're sitting down -- that $111 million in Stimulus spending... saved or created 55 jobs.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• California Iran Contracting Act awaits Governor Schwarzenegger's signature.Iran's mullahs have been trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity for many years. For most of this time, most of the world has gaped slack-jawed and done nothing effective to stop them. They are therefore now excruciatingly close to their goal.More recently, the world has begun to shake off its torpor. However, since the supposed "last resort"--military destruction of the Iranian nuclear sites--is actually unthinkable for too many world leaders, economic sanctions are increasingly on the agenda. In addition to U.N. sanctions, there are U.S. sanctions legislation. Moreover, a U.S. law has authorized the American states to enact their own sanctions laws. Such special permission is required because ordinarily the states aren't constitutionally permitted to have their own little foreign policies.But compromise is part of the legislative process,and AB 1650 would nonetheless be a significant addition to the sanctions regime against Iran.The bill now sits on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk. As is his custom, he has not indicated whether or not he'll sign it.Hmmm Obama doesn't want to upset Iran does he?Better bully Israel.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• City plans to bill pastor for security around planned Quran burning.The city of Gainesville, Florida, plans to send a bill estimated at more than $180,000 to Pastor Terry Jones for security costs surrounding his controversial threat to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the September, 11, 2001, attacks, a police spokeswoman said Friday.Police agencies spent more than a month working on security plans to ensure the community surrounding Jones' Dove World Outreach Center -- the planned site of the burning -- was safe, according to Gainesville police spokeswoman Cpl. Tscharna Senn.The Gainesville Police Department said it spent more than $100,000 while the Alachua County Sheriff's Office spent an estimated $80,000 during the weekend of the planned demonstration.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Obama's Lethal Engagement With Radical Muslims and the United Nations.I believe that President Obama's obsession with engaging the Muslim world by whitewashing the barbarism of Islamic ideology and apologizing for the supposed wrongs committed by the United States, coupled with his engaging the United Nations as if it were the central part of his foreign policy, as well as the sole arbiter of international law—all while the UN itself is rapidly succumbing to the influence of radical Islam - are placing our country in grave danger for the reasons I explain in Lethal Engagement.Read the book!Read further info here.Click here for comments.

• Unfreezing Arctic Assets.A bloc of countries above the 45th parallel is poised to dominate the next century. Welcome to the New North.Imagine the Arctic in 2050 as a frigid version of Nevada—an empty landscape dotted with gleaming boom towns. Gas pipelines fan across the tundra, fueling fast-growing cities to the south like Calgary and Moscow, the coveted destinations for millions of global immigrants. It's a busy web for global commerce, as the world's ships advance each summer as the seasonal sea ice retreats, or even briefly disappears.Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• Ottawa asked to study fish in oilsands area.The fish are hard to look at.One whitefish has a golfball-sized tumour bulging from its side. Another is simply missing part of its spine, its tail growing from a stumpy rear end.One has no snout. Another is coloured a lurid red instead of a healthy cream. Others are covered with lesions and still others are bent and crooked from deformed vertebrae.All were taken from Lake Athabasca, downstream from the oilsands in northern Alberta, and were on display Thursday. All are reasons, say a group of scientists and aboriginals, for the federal government to conduct an independent study on what's happening to the Athabasca River and its watershed after decades of industry expansion."A lot of people are afraid to eat fish from the lake," said Robert Grandjambe of Fort Chipewyan, which is also downstream of the oilsands. "It's time we had a proper monitoring study done."Read the full story here.Click here for comments.

• World's most beautiful synagogues.Just before Yom Kippur, Ynet asks 10 cantors to choose synagogues throughout world they find particularly breathtaking in their beauty. Pictures displayed here for your enjoyment.Read and see the full story here.Click here for comments.