The TDSB's Double Talk/Bafflegab Re Its Mosqueteria

To be clear (ha!), the Toronto District School Board does not allow religious indoctrination to occur on its premises, except when it does:

The Board continues to follow the legal requirement that religious exercises and indoctrination shall not occur in its schools.   However, there are requests for religious accommodation that can be accommodated. For example, students are not required to attend school on a religious holy day.  They are also accommodated with respect to religious dress requirements.  In all cases, requests are considered in light of legal and safety requirements.

In the case of Valley Park Middle School, at the request of parents and the local community (which is predominately Muslim), the school is providing unused space for prayer. The prayer services are not a Board or school activity and are not considered to be part of the instructional day.  The prayer service lasts approximately 30 minutes and then students return to class. In the past, several hundred Muslim students at Valley Park were leaving the school each Friday afternoon between November and March to attend prayers at a local mosque, which meant missing more instructional time and walking unsupervised to and from the mosque.  

The school is not teaching any “religious practice.”  Rather, it is providing a practical solution to allow students to adhere to religious practices that are required to be observed during Friday afternoons.

There have been concerns expressed that the practice of Islam separates individuals by gender.  This division of males and females during prayer is part of the Islamic faith.  The prayer is not conducted under Board auspices, and we are not in a position to dictate how religious exercises, such as prayer, are conducted by any religion.  Students who participate in the prayer services do so voluntarily and with parental permission.

We understand that this is a very sensitive issue for many, and that there will continue to be differing opinions among members of our communities. However, we believe it is the willingness to have courageous conversations like these that has made Canada the diverse yet cohesive society that comes together in Toronto District School Board’s classrooms every day...

Don't you love how the board pats itself on the back for being "courageous" even as it caves in to doctrines (gender segregation, sexual inequality) it professes to abhor, and prohibits as a matter of policy? As for the notion that there's been any sort of "conversation," courageous or otherwise, taking place--the board shut that down post haste so that a Wahhabi house of worship could become a permanent fixture at this school, and a model, perhaps, for future mosques at other public schools.

"Courageous"? If you say so, Timorous Dhimmis (of the TDSB).

Fatah's Facebook Page Glorifies "Beautiful Flower" Who Blew Herself Up, Killing 2 Israelis and Injuring Many More, In '02 "Martyrdom" Mission

"Peace" guy Abu Mazen's favourite kind of gal--a Zion-loathing bombshell.

"Removed from the TDSB Site"--a Lesson on Those Estimable Freedom Fighters, the Black Panthers

Eye on a Crazy Planet gets action--way to go, Richard!


When "Equality" Is a Bad Thing

As far as the UN's "human rights" body is concerned, 'splains UN "human rights" mucky-muck Eric Tistounet in this risible piece of puffery, "There is no difference between the USA or Andorra, or between Russia and Papua New-Guinea." And every country in the UN must submit to a probing of its "human rights" habits by the UN's "Human Rights Council," a body

made up of representatives of 47 countries, which change every three years. The representatives are usually diplomats from the countries based in Geneva. 

Well, doesn't that make it sound all nice and civilized? Unmentioned, of course, is the fact that these genteel Geneva-based diplomats hail from places such as Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia, whose deplorable human rights records hardly equip them to pass judgment on others. And rather than being a great leveler, placing America on the same plane as Andorra, as Tisounet says, what it really does is elevate non-Western, non-free nations--high fives to the UAE!--and do its utmost to knock down America and Canada and, first and foremost, Israel.

Fudd, Rhymes-With-Dud

Mark Steyn has immense fun examining the ineffectual Elmer Fuddy Duddy who seems incapable of being a senator from Nebraska (how on earth was he elected in the first place?) much less equipped to become America's next Secretary of Defense:

There are over 300 million Americans, and another 20 million Undocumented-Americans about to be fast-tracked down the soi-disant "path to citizenship." Surely, from this vast talent pool, it should be possible to find someone who's sufficiently interested in running the planet's biggest military not to present himself on the world stage as a woozy, unfocused stumblebum.

My advice should Chuck Fudd get the gig despite his obvious and manifold shortcomings: Be afwaid. Be vewy, vewy afwaid.

Behold, a New Victim Group

The "smelly".

TIME's Purple Prose

TIME Magazine is so deep in the tank for B. Obama that it claims his nominee for Defense Sec'y deserves another purple heart for the grilling he got yesterday.

A purple heart? For that most pathetic of performances?

A kick in the pants and a big hook to yank him off stage for good, more like.

Inside the Saudi Kingdom--Beeb Doc

It's a fun place--if you're male and "royal":

It's "Wear a Hijab Day, Infidel"!

Okay, I added the infidel, but it's implicit in the effort. And, FYI, wearing a headscarf is, like, totally a gal's own choice--

LONDON – Scores of non-Muslim women worldwide are planning to don hijab on Friday, February 1, to mark the first annual World Hijab Day, hoping it would lead to more religious tolerance and understanding and stress the value of hijab as a Muslim choice. 

"I knew that it's about modesty of behavior, not just clothing, and that it's a faulty assumption that women only wear it if they're forced to - especially in the US," Esther Dale, 28, who lives in the US state of California, told The BBC...

--except when it isn't:

Islam sees hijab as an obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations.

Meaning, silly infidelles, that it's obligatory for all chicks, not just Muslim ones.

The Real Point of "The Million Muslim March"--Dawa, Dawa and More Dawa

Last year's 9/11 brought a supine administration and four Americans murdered by jihadis in Benghazi (for reasons of the jihadi imperative, and not because of some crappy YouTube video). This year's anniversary may well hammer home the message of who's in charge:

Assalam Alaikum Brothers and Sisters,

We at AMPAC (American Political Action Committee) are planning an historic event for 9.11.13 where one million Muslims will march to Washington D.C. and demand that our civil rights be protected by our government. We are demanding that laws be enacted protecting our 1stamendment . We are asking President Obama to fulfill his promise from his first campaign for Presidency of a transparent government. Lastly we are asking for the release of the 9/11 commission report to the American people. On 9.11.01 our country was forever changed by the horrific events in New York. The entire country was victimized by the acts done on that day. Muslim and Non Muslim alike were traumatized but we as Muslims continue 12 years later to be victimized by being made the villains. To this day every media outlet and anti Islamic organization has committed slanderous and libel statements against us as Muslims and our religion of Islam. Yet our Government either sits idly by and does nothing to protect our freedoms or it exacerbates the problem with its constant war on terrorism in Islamic countries, congressional hearings on Islam in America, and its changes to the NDAA law. These lies told to the American population has made it impossible for us to do true Dawa. Why do we have to defend our religion while doing Dawa? Why can’t we just share the perfection of the Quran and the beauty of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (SWS)? It is time for us as Muslims in America to stop being defensive and start being proactive by using our right to vote and our freedom of assemble and let our voices be heard by our country and the world. Stand with us help us fight the injustices being committed against us. Help us to wake the American citizen up to the truth and together Muslim and Non Muslim can take our country back to its true Democracy which is “For the people by the people”. Our Prophet in his final message told us: “Whoever sees an injustice should set it right by means of his hand; if not, by his tongue; if not, then by his heart and that is considered to be the weakest of faith.” And more to the point “If my nation are afraid to say to the oppressor, ‘O oppressor!’, then there is no hope in them.”

Sincerely your Brothers and Sisters in Islam...

Isn't that what oppressed Timbuktuers said to their Islamist overlords (sotto voce, though, so they wouldn't get their hands sawed off)?

 

What's It Like Living Under the Thumb of Barbaric, Medieval-Minded Religous Zealots?

As newly-liberated Timbuktuers (niks?) tell the New York Times, it's brutal, bloody and horrific:

TIMBUKTU, Mali — When the Islamist militants came to town, Dr. Ibrahim Maiga made a reluctant deal. He would do whatever they asked — treat their wounded, heal their fevers, bandage up without complaint the women they thrashed in the street for failing to cover their heads and faces. In return, they would allow him to keep the hospital running as he wished.                                                         

 

The rebels wanted “to take away everything that made Timbuktu Timbuktu,” said Mahalmoudou Tandina, a preacher.                             

Then, one day in October, the militants called him with some unusual instructions. Put together a team, they said, bring an ambulance and come to a sun-baked public square by sand dunes.         

There, before a stunned crowd, the Islamist fighters carried out what they claimed was the only just sentence for theft: cutting off the thief’s hand. As one of the fighters hacked away at the wrist of a terrified, screaming young man strapped to a chair, Dr. Maiga, a veteran of grisly emergency room scenes, looked away.         

“I was shocked,” he said, holding his head in his hands. “But I was powerless. My job is to heal people. What could I do?”         

After nearly 10 months of occupation by Islamists fighters, many of them linked with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the people of this ancient mud-walled city recounted how they survived the upending of their tranquil lives in a place so remote that its name has become a synonym for the middle of nowhere.         

“Our lives were turned upside down,” Dr. Maiga said. “They had guns, so whatever they asked, we did. It was useless to resist.”...