"One of our stars is a 10-year-old kid from Tajikistan named Nabiollah, an angelic, big-eyed moppet who can recite the entire Quran from memory in an astonishingly pure boyish soprano, with remarkable command of melody and intonation. He’s like the Justin Bieber of Quran recitation, and judges at the Cairo event seize on him as an amazing gift from Allah. But memorizing the Quran (in Arabic, which he does not otherwise speak or read) at a rural madrassa has nearly been Nabiollah’s entire education; he is functionally illiterate in Tajik, his own language.
How does the Left respond to clear anti-education? They are a bit uncomfortable, but still manage to rise to their feet and applause this pro-Islam film. In the conflict of education versus Islamic propaganda – Mohammad wins every time."
Salon.com summarzied the film this way:
It’s “Spellbound” plus a poetry slam. Plus Islamic fundamentalism…but if you’re open to the possibility that Islam in practice is an incredibly diverse spiritual and social movement that embraces 1.6 billion human beings and a lot of internal discussion and disagreement, and that the more we know about it the better, then “Koran by Heart” is a movie you’ve got to see...
...She recounts that at the screening Rifdha and her parents were actually there along with the film’s director. Afterwards they took questions. And one person had the guts to ask the father directly if he would be open to letting Rifdha get more education and be a scientist. The Muslim father responded by saying Rifdha must be a housewife.
Just when Osman and all the Progressives are about to come to their senses about Islam, the director of the film speaks up. Here’s how Osman ends her article:
The director quickly took the microphone and spoke some words of wisdom. When we go around the world making films we don’t tell people how to live their lives, he said. Nobody tells us how to live our lives, he added. He graciously thanked the family for coming all the way to New York to attend the opening. Inspiring film. Good point. Lesson learned...
...And there you have it. It doesn’t matter what the Left believes about education, women, or freedom. The spread of Islam must happen. We must not fear it or reject any part of it. We can’t push our values on them, no matter how much the culture of Sharia spreads into our own borders.
Many of the articles on the film screenings reported the movie getting large standing ovations"
It's tricky being a liberal these days, isn't it? At least if you're trying to be consistent.
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Author and blogger Suzanne Venkner, who is the niece of Phyllis Schlafly responded to the following statement by Rep. Allen West:
"We need you to come in and lock shields, and strengthen up the men who are going to the fight for you. To let these other women know on the other side — these planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women, and all of these women that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness — to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient. That’s what we need you to do. Because if you don’t, then the debt will continue to grow…deficits will continue to grow."Venker said,
...The problem is that too many Americans, women in particular, are afraid to take a stand against feminism. They think being opposed to feminism means being against women’s rights or being throwbacks to a bygone era when women were at home doing nothing else with their lives but caring for children — which, besides being untrue, is not a bad thing anyway. But that is precisely how liberal women want people to think of feminism: as American women’s saviors.
But feminism did not save the women of America. If anything, it ruined them...
...That’s because feminism is about rejecting the timeless institutions that makes most people happy and any good society flourish: marriage and motherhood.
Liberal women don’t explain it this way, of course. They insist they’re not against the traditional family but merely want women to have choices. Hogwash. Not only do feminists subtly and overtly undermine traditional gender roles, they take credit for something they didn’t do. American women’s choices (a.k.a. “progress”) were expanded not from the bra-burning demonstrations that sought to reform society but from a natural evolution that was aided by technology – technology that was invented by men, I might add. American women should be thanking men, not feminists, for the lives they have today.
Allen West’s argument that liberal women have neutered men was courageous and spot on. It just wasn’t self-explanatory. West would have done well to quote antifeminist warrior Carolyn Graglia when making his argument:
The liberal feminists need to be reminded every now and then that the most significant "liberators" of women were not Gloria Steinem or Margaret Sanger, it was the men who invented the electric washing machine, the electric stove, and running water."The traditional family will remain in peril until we derail the feminist engine of reform by killing the sexual revolution, by replacing no-fault divorce laws with laws that protect homemakers and families, by ending preferential treatment of women in education and workplace, and by reforming all laws that discriminate against one-income families through requiring them to subsidize child care for two-income families.But these things will not happen until a change occurs in those men who have rejected the value of a woman’s traditional role and of a man’s contributions that make this role viable. Without those contributions, what do men think will define their manhood? If women’s traditional role is expendable, then, as increases in the number of well-educated, never-married mothers indicate, so also are men expendable for all purposes other than sperm donor. The result is a society increasingly like Sweden’s, which has the lowest marriage rate and one of the highest illegitimacy rates and employment rates of working-age women in the western world."
It's rather humorous that "The Donald" is getting so much attention for being a straight-talker and not being afraid to say controversial things. Of course, half of what he says falls into the realm of reality show fiction and the other half is shameless self promotion. Meanwhile, Rep. Allen West is saying actual substantive controversial things, speaking about matters of consequence with intelligence and eloquence. Let's hope we Americans wise up and demand more of West and less of Trump.
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(HT: Challies)
"BUFFALO, N.Y. — Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of 'pedophile!' and 'pornographer!' stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents.
That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought.
'We know who you are! You downloaded thousands of images at 11:30 last night,' the man's lawyer, Barry Covert, recounted the agents saying. They referred to a screen name, 'Doldrum.
'No, I didn't,' he insisted. 'Somebody else could have but I didn't do anything like that.'
'You're a creep ... just admit it,' they said.
Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice:
Password-protect your wireless router."I happen to be married to a techie who is very fussy about suchs things and I always wondered what the big deal was. OK....I get it now! Those SWAT team goons would probably confiscate my super-cool Google Chrome CR-48 notebook computer....what a tragedy that would be!
But seriously, this story does raise some important questions. Like, should the internet be free and open to anyone? Some who were interviewed for the story and commenting on it thought so and purposely leave their routers open as a courtesy to passersby, hoping others will do the same. This raises some obvious privacy concerns, although many in the younger generation don't seem to have the same worries their parents do. I suppose the rise of cloud computing will change this landscape as well.
The other question is why a heavily armed SWAT team was even needed for this operation. Could they have just knocked on the door and taken him into custody? Viewing child pornography, as vile and disgusting as it is, is hardly drug running or gang activity. What is the likelihood this guy was lying in wait for them with a cache of weapons? What kind of police state do we live in that an innocent man is subjected to the SWAT team breaking down his door in the middle of the night?
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Do you have questions about Ohio's SB5 and what it means for union members and taxpayers of the state? The American Policy Roundtable has prepared and excellent guide:
The guide takes on questions such as:
- What does the collective bargaining process look like under SB5?
- Will repealing the salary schedules put teachers with higher salary at risk for losing their jobs?
- Will tenured teachers (continuing contracts) lose their tenure?
- What does it mean to base salaries or wages on performance?
- If public employees can't negotiate for their health care benefits, won't their health coverage be much worse?
