Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Somali Refugees in Kenya Already Have "The Right of Return" to Somalia. Problem Is They Don't Want to Return
Found an interesting factoid here:
Why, Palestinian refugees even kept the keys to their pre-Naqba domiciles, something I doubt the Somalis would do (since it's clear they want to stay in Kenya, a country which, if Al Shabaab has its way, would slide into the "Islam" category).
Kenya is host to the largest refugee camp in the world, Dadaab - home to about half a million people - near the Somali border, while it is believed that more than 30,000 Somali refugees live in Nairobi alone.Somalia is already slotted into the Dar al Islam category. That, along with the fact that it's a failed basket case of a state, is the reason these refugees don't want to go there. Whereas Palestinian refugees do want to "return" to Israel, which used to be part of Dar al Islam, but which has been yanked (temporarily, they believe) into the Harb division by lowly, thieving Jooos.
Why, Palestinian refugees even kept the keys to their pre-Naqba domiciles, something I doubt the Somalis would do (since it's clear they want to stay in Kenya, a country which, if Al Shabaab has its way, would slide into the "Islam" category).
New Muslim Pleads, "Don't Call Me a 'Revert' 'Cuz It's Offensive, 'Kay?"
The New True Believer lays it all out here:
Okay, I get it--you don't want to be called a "revert" (which you must admit is much better than being called, say, a "pervert").
Would "baal teshuvah" be completely out of the question?
The problem comes, then, in deciding what to call these people who accept Islam later in life. If we are not to call them “converts”, what are we to call them?
Unfortunately, in rightly rejecting the word “convert”, many Muslims have settled for using another word which is quite unsuitable and, to many who have accepted Islam, quite offensive.
In the English language, we usually use the word “revert” to mean taking a step backwards in life. People can revert to a life of crime, for example, or they can revert to smoking. In English usage, we don’t usually revert to something good. It has a very negative connotation. So how can we possibly refer to those who embrace Islam with their hearts and minds as “reverts?”
The one who first coined this term to refer to New Muslims was probably not familiar with English as a first language. The idea is correct, that people are returning to Islam, but the word is not – and it can do more harm than good.I think the New Muslim is being a tad hypersensitive. And if, as he says, "we don't usually revert to something good," how does he account for the Muslims, both old and new, who want to "revert" to the way things were done back in the time of Islam's founder and his "rightly guided" successors?
Okay, I get it--you don't want to be called a "revert" (which you must admit is much better than being called, say, a "pervert").
Would "baal teshuvah" be completely out of the question?
Canadian Media "Heroes" Loubani a "Doctor" and Greyson a "Filmmaker"? Well, Yes. But They're So Much Than That
Erza Levant fills in the blanks that Canada's consensus media have redacted. Loubani, for example, is no simple emergency room doctor. He's
Levant touches on another salient fact about these two "anti-Israel propagandists and activists": they have the worst timing ever. They breezed into Egypt at the precise moment when their guys, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, were on the way out. And for their unerringly bad timing, as well as their own arrogance and stupidity (just think--but for that they could be bloviating about Israeli malfeasance and Palestinian virtue in the comfort of their own cockroach-free pads back home), they are now paying the price.
Update: Eye on a Crazy Planet is a "big fan" of both lads.
an extreme activist. When a Canadian cabinet minister was announcing a grant to help people with disabilities, Loubani stormed into the press conference, disrupting it, shouting about how he’s a refugee from Palestine. Even though he’s been in Canada since he was a child. And he’s a rich doctor, doing just fine.
Loubani just wouldn’t leave the press conference, even when security guards asked him to. He kept shouting like a crazy person until police escorted him away.As for the "filmmaker," he's
a leader of the extremist group called Queers Against Israeli Apartheid – the anti-Israel group that has marched in the gay pride parade in Toronto. Which is odd, because Israel is the only country in the Middle East where homosexuality isn’t a crime and where they actually have a gay pride parade, too.
The punishment for being gay in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip is the death penalty.But of course.
Greyson is obsessed with sex. He makes movies about his obsessions, with titles like Urinal and After the Bath. He explores his sexual feelings about Pierre Trudeau. Of course he’s a professor at York University.
Levant touches on another salient fact about these two "anti-Israel propagandists and activists": they have the worst timing ever. They breezed into Egypt at the precise moment when their guys, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, were on the way out. And for their unerringly bad timing, as well as their own arrogance and stupidity (just think--but for that they could be bloviating about Israeli malfeasance and Palestinian virtue in the comfort of their own cockroach-free pads back home), they are now paying the price.
Update: Eye on a Crazy Planet is a "big fan" of both lads.
"Dost" In the Wind
The NatPo reports that some chicks with oodles of time on their hands are pushing to change a line in O Canada:
If we absolutely must fiddle with the anthem--and, personally, I think for tradition's sake we should leave it alone--there's a pretty obvious fix that would do away with the "dost" but retain the meaning: "True patriot love/In us you do command."
Surely Margaret Atwood, who after all is an acclaimed poet (the gender neutral term for "poetess"), could have suggested it.
A website – restoreouranthem.ca — is set to go live this week, with endorsements from former prime minister Kim Campbell, author Margaret Atwood, Senator Nancy Ruth, former senator Vivienne Poy, and Sally Goddard, mother of Nichola Goddard, the first female Canadian soldier to be killed in combat, in Afghanistan in 2006.
The campaigners are seeking to have Robert Stanley Weir’s lyric, “in all thy sons command,” replaced with “thou dost in us command.” They argue that those were the original English lyrics that Weir altered to more gender specific words before the First World War.
“It’s not a change, it’s a restoration,” Nancy Ruth said Monday.Maybe so, but it's a really crappy, archaic, tin-eared one. To the modern ear, "dost" sounds like "dust," especially when sung. So in effect we'd be singing "thou dust in us command." And since there's a natural inclination to want to make the "dust" and "us" rhyme, we could even end up singing, "though dust in ust command," which makes no sense whatsoever.
If we absolutely must fiddle with the anthem--and, personally, I think for tradition's sake we should leave it alone--there's a pretty obvious fix that would do away with the "dost" but retain the meaning: "True patriot love/In us you do command."
Surely Margaret Atwood, who after all is an acclaimed poet (the gender neutral term for "poetess"), could have suggested it.
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