Family Planning in Islam

“In every bed, there is a promise.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yesterday I was reading a commentary in Tariq Nelson’s blog talking about Fatherhood that just boggled my mind. Mind you, these were mostly Muslims participating in this discussion. One brother was talking about women who are looking for baby daddies to get them pregnant so they can force him to send them a check for child support for the rest of his life, and he complained about these women using the money to get their hair done or to finance their future lung cancer. He was trying to imply that bad women didn’t deserve child support. It was like no one ever told him how babies are made.

The politicians like to talk about “freedom of choice.” They are talking about abortion. The assumption is that if a woman chooses not to have an abortion, then the blame, and thus, the financial and emotional responsibility for the child, rests squarely on her shoulders. I’ll never forget my Italian teacher in college giving us undergrads a lecture on morals. She said something I’ve never heard anyone say out loud. “When you choose to have sex, you have made that choice.” God bless her for her bravery to speak out in the face of the victimization and oppression of women and children!

In Europe it has been the norm for at least a century for a marriage to occur after “accidental” pregnancy. Marrying the woman who served as the incubator for your sperm is the normal biological way that moderately decent men have sustained the future of the human race. And just because it was an accident doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. In Islam we believe that life begins before eternity. There is nothing that happens that was not written by Allah. If that soul came into being, there is no shifting blame because you didn’t want to be a father or because that was not the ideal woman you wanted to be stuck with. There isn’t even the question of whether or not you love her. You just marry her. My great-uncle married his wife after impregnating her in East Germany. They were married for decades and after she died, the deaf and nearly blind old man slowly made his way every day to her grave to keep it tidy. When I told him I had converted to Islam, all he wanted to know was if the Quran says you will be with the one you loved, after you die. I said of course. So if you look at European society it is clear that feeling a little rushed into marriage does not negate the possibility of eternal rewards.

Do these American men have any idea how many poor yet honest men in Asia, Africa, South America, even North America, are living without sex for months and years at a time, often going to another city for work so they can send money home to their families? Can you imagine the terrified lifestyle of a typical Afghani woman existing on a couple bags of rice and lentils, taking care of her children alone, in the middle of a violent war, waiting for her husband to come back with some groceries in a few months? Many families who are blessed to be together are very much together. As in, living in one room. Sharing a house with their siblings and their spouses and their children. Many families, even in Europe, live in a one room apartment. During the night, the living room becomes the bedroom.

If you have never witnessed childbirth, let me explain something to you. It really hurts. It turns your body inside out. For a woman to choose to let a man put his “gushing fluid” inside her is the voluntary personal choice to go through an experience that feels about as pleasant as having a bus roll over your body very very slowly. Pregnancy is a time of daily nausea to the extent that if she were a man, she would choose not to work that day, and needing to take constant care to get enough protein to prevent oneself from fainting. If there is no food immediately available there is agony. Childbirth can last for three days. So any man that wants to complain about sending an ex-lover $300 or even $3000 a month should think about for whom he would willingly take that kind of pain and hardship. It takes a woman three years to get back the full use of her body after having a baby, and she actually loses the strength of her eyesight and teeth. So what a man might have thought was simply a romp in the hay for her is a life investment. There is no such thing as “accidentally” getting someone pregnant.

In Islam, men are the maintainers of women. There is none of this weird American marital squabbling about who pays what. Motherhood is a full time job. She carries the child in her womb for 9 months and then nurses the child for two years, sacrificing her calories, her strength, and her free time. A mother cannot come and go as she pleases. She cannot fall asleep whenever she wants. And it’s not a question of whether she wants to do it or not. Women are biologically programmed to suddenly wake up on emergency alert if her baby so much as coughs in his sleep. Men crash out and just sleep like logs. There is a real danger in letting a man have full responsibility for a baby because babies deprive the caretaker of REM sleep. People who are deprived of sleep for a prolonged period of time spend a lot of energy merely “coping.” Somebody has to get the bills paid while the other person maintains the living standard of the home. That is why parenting is a shared responsibility. There is no burden on the woman to work outside the home in addition to the full time job of raising a child in a clean and safe environment. The least a man can do is pay all her expenses. If he cannot afford to buy his family a house, his wife and the kids can share one mattress like the majority of people in the world. Even if a man is sleeping outside, he can put a tarp over his family’s head. Because every soul born is someone that God commanded to be born and a man must take full responsibility for his family. Anything a woman spends on household expenses is rewarded by God the same as donating to charity, while anything a man does to help clean the house is rewarded by God as a charity.

In Islam, if the marriage does not work out, the children are the man’s full financial responsibility. He has to keep them alive - not just send their mother a $300 “donation” per month. Someone has to keep the utilities on and a father must do everything he can to find a way to make sure his kids’ mother is home for her children. If you don’t think you are ready for the financial and emotional responsibilities of parenting, don’t have sex. Or if you must do it, then use a condom. And always marry the woman first. Be clear before you touch her if you consider this to be a permanent commitment or a temporary relationship. If it’s the latter, tell her how long you are willing to commit: in advance. Whatever you do with her, do it in God’s name. And take ownership of your own sperm. The benefit of a prenuptial marriage contract, even just handwritten, is that it will have a date on it and the courts will honor it in case of a dispute.

Women have to start taking themselves more seriously. You can tell within ten minutes if a guy wants to get married someday or not. If he does, then the question is if it’s you he wants to marry and if you would want to marry him. If he doesn’t want to marry you in God’s name then it means he doesn’t want to take responsibility for your children. So don’t be a dimwit. You can figure this out in advance. If all hints fail, just ask, “So, how many kids do you want?” on the first date. Motherhood is a full time career worthy of a six digit income. Make it worth your while. Find a man who will do everything he can to find a way to love the mother of his children, provide them with food and a roof over their heads, and if they cannot work things out he would be aware of what it costs to raise a child. This is what you need to be thinking about on your first date. Does the man value his offspring? Does he have a sense of personal honor?

There are two things that will tell you if a man is going to put his money where his you-know-what is. Those things are religious accountability and racial pride. While neither of these things are guarantees of marital bliss, they do imply the idea that a man must provide for his children, not only out of some ambiguous and fluctuating emotional attachment but because they are his flesh and blood, part of his lineage. Such a man is looking for a woman who has the qualities he wants in his descendants. He is always thinking long term about how to put his DNA to proper use. The sure sign of a no good man is a man who just lets things happen. Some men think that a crime is less criminal if it’s done in the heat of passion. He will try to act like he didn’t realize that he put his sperm into another human being. The act of taking off your clothes is a deliberate act. Don’t do it without getting married first.

Precinct by precinct, freedom is now

Every candidate that is running for office right now, Democrat or Republican, except Ron Paul, has promised AIPAC to continue the US belligerent stance against Iran. Obama promised that he would continue to threaten to bomb Iran. Furthermore there is a good chance of US troops in Sudan, Pakistan, and other places. So if we care about the future of the planet our number one concern is to pull the plug on this system of funneling US taxpayer money into corporate subsidies that finance Israel’s wars.

Everybody disagrees with Ron Paul about something. Many left-leaning Democrats reject him because of his pro-life stance on abortion. Yet, Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate in your lifetime that has promised to bring home all troops from every US base that is not in the US. He has promised to cut off all foreign aid to Israel and the Muslim dictators. Did you hear that folks? He is offering you your freedom. He wants to phase out income taxes. The Prophet (pbuh) was also opposed to income taxes.

Ron Paul has taken a moderate stance on the immigration issue. He wants to help 60 million foreigners immigrate here legally. He is the only candidate that is opposed to home to home searches for illegal immigrants. He is realistic about the tax burden on society that is created by uncontrolled immigration. Some people think that you can’t be a nice person if you don’t want amnesty for all illegals. But if your neighbor lost her house and became homeless because of your coercive charity plan, was it worth it? Dr. Paul’s position is not a fixed position regarding immigration. He believes that in a good functioning economy people will be more tolerant of newcomers. He is the only presidential candidate that is not embarrassed to talk to Iran. He promised to lift the sanctions against Iran, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, etc. He is a fiscal conservative. Best of all, he has really good manners. He doesn’t act. He is humble and genuine. He is the only presidential candidate I trust to talk to Ahmedinejad or Bashir. He is in favor of a currency backed by gold or some other commodity. He will stop printing paper money. Isn’t that what we believe in?

Best of all he claims he will liberate thousands of non-violent prisoners his first day in office and give all the US detainees the right to a fair trial. He will shut down Guantanamo and repeal the Patriot Act. He doesn’t believe in “Islamofascism.” He calls this kind of speech war propaganda. There are so many deeply important things that Ron Paul is doing for the Muslims that we should be willing to give everything and do everything we can to be of service to this remarkable man. Don’t go by the official campaign ads; The official campaign flyers are geared towards a certain type of mainstream American consumer audience and don’t give you a good picture of the clarity and depth of Dr. Paul’s grasp on reality. http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/ has his articles and speeches and are a better indication of his thinking on the issues.

Ron Paul has 10 years of a voting record that shows he is the closest to a friend that we have in Washington. No other candidate, not even Kucinich, has promised to cut funding of Israel. If you are not registered to vote as either Unenrolled or Republican, you cannot vote in the primary anyway but you can still get involved with freeatlast2008.com. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying because of US interventionist policy. Ron Paul is the only candidate talking about non-intervention. That’s priceless.

Also keep in mind: As president he doesn’t have a lot of power to do much about the “controversial” issues like immigration and the gold standard because he’d have to get it through Congress. The only power he really has as president is commander-in-chief of the US military. He’d be authorized to end the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan etc. And he can pardon prisoners. Everything else has to go thru Congress. He’s a low-risk candidate to back, and by doing so you can tap into a VIBRANT peace movement! It’s not your usual leftist peace protest, it’s a socially conservative peace movement. That is so priceless.

It’s important to mention that there is currently a precinct by precinct coordinated attempt to reclaim American democracy from the special interest lobbies. It has been proven that all it takes is about 10-20 people per precinct to turn things around entirely. By hooking into the ronpaul.meetup.com network you would gain valuable contact with other Americans who support the Constitution.

Please watch http://youtube.com/watch?v=FG2PUZoukfA

In closing I want to urge you to give Dr. Paul a chance because the press combined with coordinated email attacks to smear Dr Paul as the scariest man imaginable is because of his refusal to continue funding for Israel’s wars. Nothing they say about him is true. Please note that the people who spearheaded the vicious anti-Paul campaign are the same group of people who always smear CAIR and our mosque. I would only go on like this about a course of action we must take together now, if I thought it were a life and death situation. And it is. We have to pull the US out of everywhere and the only way we can do that is by pulling the plug on war financially. Ron Paul plans to do that.

Martin Luther King Day Money Bomb - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA2AGnOOp3g

Wear a Condom for World Peace!

Glenn Greenwald went on for paragraph after paragraph in Salon Magazine http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/22/klein/index.html going on and on about why he still deserves to live even though he’s considering voting for a pro-life Republican, namely Dr. Ron Paul, for president.

It is stunning to me how many people would rather have an abortion than have world peace. It seems pretty selfish to me. But I guess that’s what having an abortion is all about. Men who don’t want to take responsibility for their offspring. It has absolutely nothing to do with women’s rights if you ask me, and I have always been female. It has to do with the assumption that women must earn a living or else they are a drain on society.

Glenn Greenwald wrote:

“There’s no question that abortion — whatever one’s views on it are — is a vital, even central issue of individual rights… But abortion isn’t the only important issue… of Paul’s candidacy.”

There are actually a lot of questions about what are the most vital issues concerning the individual rights of women, and how abortion fits into that picture. If you ask me, abortion is a distraction from the three fundamental rights of sexually active women.

Marriage - the promise of a man to provide for his offspring and fulfill the needs of his woman.

Dowry - a gift given from the man to the woman to legitimize his interest in her.

Maintenance - all expenses paid (food, clothing, shelter, medical care) for life.

In the ideal world, every woman should and would demand this from any man seeking to enjoy her. Abortion “on demand and without apology” destroys this ancient security net for women.

“If people who support a candidate with the wrong position on abortion (or gay rights) can be accused of being indifferent to the rights of women or gay people, then — by the same exact “reasoning” — those who end up supporting candidates who affirm America’s right to act as an imperial power or who want to continue many of Bush’s executive power abuses [as Hillary Clinton certainly does and as even Barack Obama and (to a lesser extent) John Edwards do] should be accused of being indifferent to constitutional liberties, the rule of law, and the lives of millions of innocent Muslims,” continues Greenwald.

I do not presume to know what the “right” position is on abortion. Neither does Ron Paul. He doesn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of the Constitution. He says leave it up to the state. There is no way New York Jews are ever going to criminalize abortion. So it’s a non-issue.

Muslims discover Ron Paul

After the Republican debate on Tuesday evening in Dearborn, Mich., a reporter from the Arab-American News asked Ron Paul what he thought of the term “Islamic fascism.”

“It’s a false term to make people think we’re fighting Hitler,” Paul responded. “It’s war propaganda designed to generate fear so that the war has to be spread.”

The call has gone out to all the Muslim Americans to hurry up and register to vote Republican so that they can vote in the Republican Primary to support Ron Paul, the anti-interventionist, non-isolationist candidate for President of the United States. Muslims are opening their wallets and joining teaparty07.com as well.

An anonymous Ron Paul supporter posted the following message on the internet: “Muslims and Americans have an unique window of opportunity for the 2008 election. There is a candidate running as a Republican that would work to completely cut off the funding to Israel, remove ALL US troops from Arab lands, and repeal the Patriot Act. He’s a Republican with Libertarian views named Ron Paul. Ron Paul’s policies ranging from monetary to foreign are top notch. Till now Muslims and Americans have not had an American Presidential candidate that really suited their best interests. This election is unique in that we have a man running as a Republican that speaks the truth…We know the current policies in the Middle East are failing, not only making it less safe in the world but hurting and killing innocent Muslims, which our media callously calls collateral damage. It is our duty as Muslims to follow the truth regardless of how futile it may seem. Ron Paul is the only candidate that does not seem to be swayed by the influential lobbies that the other candidates are catering to.”

Ron Paul stood up in Congress in 2006 and opposed a resolution that sided with Israel in the Lebanon-Israel conflict. He stated the following.

Ron Paul: “Mr. Speaker, I follow a policy in foreign affairs called non-interventionism. I do not believe we are making the United States more secure when we involve ourselves in conflicts overseas. The Constitution really doesn’t authorize us to be the policemen of the world, much less to favor one side over another in foreign conflicts. It is very clear, reading this resolution objectively, that all the terrorists are on one side and all the victims and the innocents are on the other side. I find this unfair, particularly considering the significantly higher number of civilian casualties among Lebanese civilians. I would rather advocate neutrality rather than picking sides, which is what this resolution does.”

Ron Paul has also sponsored a bill to overturn the Patriot Act. He is one of the few members of Congress from either of the major houses that is speaking rationally about these issues. How can we get everyone, and I mean everyone, to join the Ron Paul Republican voter sign-up campaign?

There is general frustration with politicians these days, and the unwillingness to believe that supporting a particular candidate will make a difference. But whether Ron Paul wins or loses, ronpaul.meetup.com is a great way to meet your neighbors who are against the war and organize the community on a grassroots level. If something like Katrina ever happened to us, knowing our neighbors could mean the difference between life and death to our families.

The common thread I’ve been reading lately about leftists and Jews is that they are having trouble getting more than a dozen people to come to their stuff (whether anti-Zionist or Zionist). The anti-Israel movement is not moving forward, because “protest Zionist imperialism” is just not a catchy slogan. By contrast, there are over 400 RP activists against war taxes in Boston alone. Every day the list of passionate anti-war activists grows. Very few of them agree with every single RP position, they just want to get the Lobby out of the way and pull the troops out of Iraq.

One reason it’s working is because of the software. They made the ronpaul.meetup.com site almost like a dating site, where you can make friends with people in or near your zip code. They made it very easy to get together with new people to join the activism. You can’t beat technology, may as well use it.

In the event that RP actually won the election and got the Hamas treatment, his supporters are fully in support of the Right to Bear Arms. It would be interesting to see what followed.

If anti-war protesters want to continue to focus on the genocidal machinations of the global zionist-imperialist military, industrial, financial, political, neoliberal, media complex, they have to be willing to meet with anyone any time to hear what ideas people have to address this, which is our primary responsibility - even if they are Republicans.

If you ever saw Ron Paul in an interview it cannot be said that he avoids discussing vital issues. He is someone who is willing to make a statement and stick by it even when no one agrees with him. I don’t “believe” in electoral politics but it’s not that much sweat off my brow to go and vote to end war.

I think the fact that NO pro-Israel group will let Ron Paul speak at their convention, not even peace Zionists, is evidence enough that he is the only person to put in charge as commander-in-chief. And, even if he loses, making all these contacts with local anti-interventionists is priceless. If you want to expand the peace movement so that it overlaps with the freedom movement like ripples in a pond, you just have to respect the fact that people might agree with you, but for different reasons.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/muslims_for_ronpaul/

Why do Muslims hate feminists?

Feminism is connected to the developments of critical thinking in the period 1930 - 1980 in France, England, and many other countries throughout the world. But Western feminism died in the 80s. In the 1980s many women realized if we want to “worship the Goddess,” and be like the Mother Earth we have to celebrate our fertility, we have to be true to our souls. We didn’t want to hurt our bodies with pharmaceutical chemicals to prevent what was natural from occurring. We just wanted motherhood to be a happy, emotionally safe learning experience. We wanted committed partnerships. We wanted to be surrounded by people who love us, not just fight to survive in the rat race. We would rather marry a man who would pay all the bills because we can. Feminists have written that marriage is a form of prostitution and thus degrading, but not all women agree with that viewpoint.

As a heterosexual woman, I admit to feeling occasionally marginalized by “progressives” just over this one word, because all these men and lesbians are telling me what I’m supposed to believe about myself as a female. I’m totally cool with being a woman. I don’t view it as an oppression. The only thing, is I view the life transaction as a series of rights AND responsibilities.

The “feminist” label alienates many many women I know. Mainstream Muslim women are totally offended by feminists. When a German woman I know told an Iranian woman I know that she chose not to have children because she had too many emotional issues with her mother, the Iranian woman was so offended she would never speak to her again or look at her. “I love my children,” she insisted to me. “When they were babies and they fell asleep in my arms, I just held them and watched them sleep.”

Many of the Muslim American women you’ll find at the mosque view life as a competition to see who can have the most children. The ones who had a bad birth experience will typically avoid having more kids after that, but in those cases it is out of a sense of emotional trauma, not because they had planned or wanted to limit their reproduction. [A lot better education about how to have a safe and enjoyable birth needs to be made available to more women, including most American women.]

The idea of earning their own income would be something they’d resist, and would normally do so only if widowed, but even then would rather rely financially on a brother. Those who are college educated and earn a separate income still make their husbands pay all the bills. Some Muslim women stubbornly refuse to learn to drive a car in order to manipulate their husband into doing all the errands and grocery shopping. Another way they express their refusal to get a job is by putting on niqab (the face veil). They view this female chauvenist lifestyle as a right. In Muslim countries it’s the women not the men pushing the movement to dress like the Virgin Mary (for obvious reasons). The burqa is their way of saying to men, “You will NOT disrespect me.

One of the first things the US did after they set up their military bases in Pakistan was to push the media to publish images of semi-nude women. When western colonists try to convince Muslim women of their feminist ideology, the women view it as an imposition, and they protest against it with signs that say, “My hijab is my honor.” There are tens of thousands of Muslim women in America who feel this way. There are tens of millions of Christian, Jewish and secular women who agree with them on at least one point.

When I think of feminists, like most Muslims I have come across, we think of Zionist collaborators; Irshad Manji, Nonie Darwish, Ayan Hirsi, and these other neocon novelists who write ridiculous and uneducated anti-Islam “tell all” books that are so absurd that only a fool could take them seriously. These intellectual prostitutes are working for the group of people that includes Robert Spencer, David Horowitz, Charles Jacobs and all those racist clowns. Ayan Hirsi, an upper class Somali Muslim got elected into parliamentary office in the Netherlands by dumping on Muslims. Her willingness to fabricate entertaining stories for neocon audiences and tell them what they want to hear got her offered a job by the American Enterprise Institute.

When an Asian woman or an Arab woman or an African woman says she is a feminist, in the eyes of many many women and men I have known, it means to them that she has become westernized. Her brain has been colonized. She has made herself “non-scary” to liberals. She has sex without marriage. That is what “feminist” means to Muslims essentially. It’s almost an obscenity. Feminism is connected in their minds with the Oppressor class of Harvard educated ruling families that control so many countries in the world, embezzling money, drinking wine with white people, engaging in Freemasonry and planning their wars on the innocent. That is how they speak of them and how they think of them.

Western liberals need someone to “explain” Islam to them because they view Islamic society through an Orientalist lens that assumes that the Westerners are both intellectually and ethically superior to Easterners. They hear what they want to hear and show disrespect to the image that they have projected upon a person like Ahmedinejad. When he said, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuality like you,” he was mocked as having said, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals.” Because of prejudice, Orientalists cannot respect the fact that in other cultures, open promiscuity, whether homosexual or heterosexual is simply not tolerated.

I might add that although the public hangings in Iran make westerners squeamish, especially when they are for sex crimes, what we have to understand is that Iran is a democracy. Rapists, sodomizers, hookers and smugglers get hanged because the public demands it. The leadership is doing what the majority of the population wants. If someone is a rapist or a murderer it is a financial drain on society to keep him locked up in prison, feeding and clothing him for the rest of his life. Execution is how Iranian society chooses to deal with those they feel are destroying the fabric of their society. It is not the result of a heartless dictatorship. Not to mention, Iran executes a lot fewer people than the United States.

I asked the gentle Iranian woman who loved her babies so much about the execution of Communists in Iran and she said without hesitation, like this was the mainstream point of view in Iran, “They should be killed. They are the enemies of God.”

I personally don’t quite understand it but crowds of people in more than one Muslim country will typically yell, “Kill him! Die! Die!” while watching a public hanging. For better or for worse, they vent their aggression at the criminals of their own society, instead of venting their aggression at competing ethnic groups or by bombing other countries like liberal westerners do.

Legal Approach vs Idealistic Platitudes

Due to a conflict between those wanting to focus on legal approaches and those preferring to dwell on idealistic platitudes, the first One State meeting in Boston was canceled before it happened.

It seems like whether you talk about a two state solution or a one state solution, certain folks are always willing to concede rights on behalf of the Palestinians that they would never cede for themselves under American or international law. I think that’s why they like to keep it a Jewish-Arab issue or a “bi-national” issue, to leave majority of the world population out of the conversation, to leave the Arabs without back-up.

There is also a split between those who want to wait until “someday” when Israelis can be convinced to accept their neighbors as “equals” - as long as they don’t try to demand from Jews what Jews expect from the Germans (like putting aging prison guards in prison, getting their former houses back, demanding reparations and social security benefits) - and those who believe that we must have a plan that takes into account the possibility that some Jews are not going to like being treated like equals to non-Jews, and some of them will perceive the enforcement of international law as “vengeance.”

My point of view is that until Zionism is declared a criminal ideology and prosecuted as such, there is not much hope of any useful compromise since Zionism gives certain folks rights over others and that’s not fair.

Any solution based on human equality has to also take into account that giving Jews “equal rights” with Palestinians discriminates against all non-Palestinian Gentiles. Why should an American Jew have more stake in what goes on in Palestine than say, an Irish American or a Chinese Malaysian? A Jewish State is unfair because it favors Jews over Palestinians, but a bi-national state is unfair because it favors Jews over non-Jews worldwide. Before Israel’s existence, Palestine used to accept peaceful immigrant communities from all over the world who were not Arabs nor Jews. Why should Jewish residency permits be placed above others? Why not use other methods of preferring groups of immigrants over others?

I believe the Palestinians should have the right to decide who gets to live as an immigrant in Palestine, and maybe they should give a chance for non-Jews who want to immigrate there with the Palestinians’ permission. The idea of Palestine as a safe haven for childlike Jews is also insulting to Jews.

I think it is healthy to go back and forth between the extremes of idealism and justice-thinking to come up with a workable plan. So I guess it shows you what you are up against when trying to fight for justice for Palestinians, because there is still a lot of resistance from older Jews especially - using human rights language to tell Palestinians what they need to give up next. Claiming to want peace and reconciliation while excluding those who want to talk about what specific legal actions will be necessary for peace, by slurring them as full of “hate” or “vengeance,” is really no different than the approach that the Zionists are already using.

In any case, I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the One State group was supposed to be. If what is required is a discussion group, then maybe we should just throw it out there and let the Palestine discussion groups fight it out. So that is why I am making this an open letter. I really think that no One State Solution is possible without the majority participation of non-Jews.

I tend to view this from a psychological perspective. I see that liberal secular Jews do not have a tradition of gut-wrenching repentence in front of God, although this does exist in Rabbinical Judaism where you say to God, “I deserve to die for what I did, but please forgive me.” The resistance within the secular mind to getting to this point of spiritual abasement is what I view as a primary obstacle to dealing with “terrorist populations.” Muslims and Christians do have “sorry” and “accepting punishment” as a cultural philosophy and tend to view these two actions as a prerequisites for forgiveness of sinners.

What we are seeing with the Secular One Statists, is the imposition of secular values onto a non-secular society, where they want Jews to just be accepted as equals with Palestinians while they want Jews to be exempted from having to make reparations and especially exempted from prosecution for their crimes. And as I see it increasingly clearly, we are dealing with a sociological issue that is deeper than racism.

Women and Islam

I’m not sure what Islamic law even benefits men. Most of the laws
benefit women and children. I think that is the reason that 4 out of 5
western converts are women. Few western men want the responsibility of
having to buy a cow when the milk is free. Children are considered
liabilities. Western couples usually strive to avoid making them.

There is one thing that is difficult in Islamic law and that is that
after divorce, a man is only responsible for the woman financially for
3 1/2 months after the divorce. Shariah does require a man who
divorces his wife while her child is under two years old to pay her a
living wage for the duration of the breastfeeding of his child. There
is a very long list of benefits that women get under Shariah that
western women never dreamed of asking for. In an Islamic state, the
Muslim community, starting with the family, is supposed to provide for
single women. However in the west we have the concept of alimony to
make up for the financial disparity between ex-husband and ex-wife.

There is nothing in Islamic law that PREVENTS a society from creating
additional civil laws to deal with complex questions. For example, an
Islamic government could require an ex-husband to pay alimony to his
ex-wife for one year. Or, an Islamic government could choose to
legalize medical marijuana. As long as people are using their rational
mind in making decisions about how to create a government, that is
what counts. “Islam” is not inherently oppressive. Whether the
Constitution is based on We The People or In the Name of Allah the
Beneficent the Merciful, the Constitution is only so good and so
protective as the people who are enforcing it. There should be checks
and balances in any government.

I personally would never consider a man who did not conform to Islamic
guidelines of responsibility. My only problem with traditional Muslim
men is they don’t have the same communication standards as European
men. But this has nothing to do with laws. It’s just cultural
expectations. Islamic law doesn’t legislate communication styles. It
essentially deals with economic. Shariah basically says, that the
woman’s money is her money, and her husband’s money is her money. He
cannot spend her money the way western men use their wife’s income to
pay the household bills, like they expect it. Islamic law doesn’t
require women to clean the house, or cook the food. In fact according
to Islam, men are supposed to hire a maid to help their wife at home
as soon as their income allows it. Women are not restricted from
participating in education and economics. But women have the God-given
right not to have to work outside the home. It’s a right. Not a
privilege. This is essential for a child-centered society which Islam
is. Islam oppresses men and women for the sake of children.

I totally support the idea of equal rights for all the women in a
man’s life. The western laws that say the one wife gets all the
inheritance and her children get a home, while the mistress’ children
are considered illegitimate, this is serious oppression of women. The
woman #2 can’t get health insurance, she has to pay her own rent. If
the man dumps her, she has no dowry to soften the blow. It’s
injustice. In Islam if the man is with more than one woman he has to
buy each woman her own apartment and pay for her food and the
children’s food. This helps the economy and is good for the kids so
the mom can be a mom and not have to put the kids in daycare. Muslim
women prefer to live in this child-centered lifestyle.

Unfortunately when Islamic people try to become “modern” they start
oppressing women by forcing them to get a degree and go to get a job
so they can increase the family’s revenue. The hardest thing about
many Islamic cultures is living with the mother-in-law. In the
extended family it’s the women who abuse each other, not the men. The
mother is like the queen of the family. Even when he’s 30 years old
her son will obey her. It’s really important to establish that kind of
relationship so that the son will take care of his parents in old age.
While it seems not-spiritual, the economic basis of Shariah make sense
in the long term. It may not be for everyone, but it works for a lot
of people.