The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) continues to show the world how systemic murder and terror can be justified in the name of religion as the work of the faithful. Now, after brutalizing the population of Mosul, ISIS has turned its attention to those godless tramps of fashion: mannequins. ISIS has ordered that all mannequins be covered in veils as another application of medieval Sharia law.
The reason is the prohibition under Sharia law of depictions of the human form. Somehow covering the face excuses the fact that the rest of the mannequin is the human form, but Allah is apparently satisfied by a cloth over the face according to ISIS.
Mannequins continue to be the focus of clerics who seek to block their corrosive impact on the morals of society (here and here).
On the positive side, this is the most moderate move of ISIS which notably did not behead the mannequins in a public execution after forcing them to convert to Islam.
Nick Spinelli
This Pope might take the sassy outta mespo.
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Yep.
And then the spin out of Spinelli.
“I’m so dizzy … my head is spinning … like a whirlpool …
West ing house I presume:
Karen S wrote “The mafia of Italy are a good example”
Good point. The Italian mafia is simply bizarre, a group which professes to believe in a pacifist, yet kills people on a regular basis. They’re more like Satinists.
My original intent was to point out that Europe (save Italy), Canada, and other Western countries have few television evangelists or pundits (e.g. Rush Limbaugh) who profess to be Christian while being wealthy, a contradiction obvious to anyone who has read the New Testament. South Korea has a few, most notably the guy who illegally modified the Sewol ferry which capsized and killed hundreds, but then again the U.S. brought Christianity there.
Your spam filter’s not working, folks.
Why did President Thomas Jefferson read the Koran?
It began before Jefferson was president. He was then the American ambassador to France, and he was disturbed by what was happening in the Mediterranean.
The United States was paying this tribute also to “Barbary Coast” rulers. This bothered Jefferson. It just so happened that while he was an ambassador in France,
Jefferson met with John Adams (then the American ambassador to Britain) and together the two men met with the ambassador from Tripoli (one of the North African Muslim pirate countries).
Jefferson and Adams sat down to talk with this man. They asked him why Tripoli attacked ships. Why attack the United States? They had no previous interactions. Why the hostility? Why did they choose America as an enemy?
The Tripoli Muslim ambassador was very straightforward. He said, basically, “That’s what we do. We are commanded to do so by Allah.”
Completely taken aback by this revelation, Jefferson decided to look into the matter further, and did the one thing everyone should do: He read the Koran. He learned what Islam was about.
And when he became president, he expanded and then mobilized the United States Navy to protect American ships from Muslim piracy and then sent Marines to the shores of Tripoli,
who soundly defeated the Muslim warriors. This brought an end to the “Barbary Coast Pirates.”
Greg, I retrieved your comment at 12:59.
“It is solely an American thing to profess to believe in Jesus, while amassing a large pile of loot and ignoring his message of peace.” I disagree with this statement. The mafia of Italy are a good example.
Karen – we can also point to Henry VIII of England who was a theologian and Phillip II of Spain. Both were devote Christians.
I was an altar boy in the late ’50s and early ’60s, when Masses were said in Latin with the priest’s back to the congregation and people received Communion while kneeling. The only women I ever recall wearing veils were brides at weddings and widows at funerals. Women wore hats to church, but scarves were also acceptable.
Paul wrote “you missed the pleasure of being an altar boy and wearing wool cassocks in that heat”
The h3ll I did. I was an altar boy through eighth grade. I got sick once during mass while on duty. That was fun.
On a related subject, the young priest in our parish quit the priesthood right around the time that I graduated from Catholic eighth grade. We saw him hanging around the girls who had just graduated, so I guess he was a child molester who favored girls instead of the usual boys.
By the way, you meant to say “doily,” not “dolly.” Methinks you have Barbie on the brain.
Karen S wrote “Catholic women never, ever, wore a face veil”
I never saw them, but I am willing to admit that I rarely looked at old women.
Karen S wrote “the long fast before communion”
Now that I think about it, that probably contributed to my fainting.
saucy – thanks for correcting my spelling. Actually, I just bought tickets on Dolly the Steamboat which I hope to use this weekend.
I had a priest in college who would wait until all the pretty girls were seated in the front row to make the seating chart. He always he might have been priest, but he was not dead. 🙂
I do indeed, Karen.
Nick – and remember those little pillbox hats that would have a scrap of lace in the back as a vestigial veil?
Karen – those little pill box hats had a veil that was designed to cover the face if necessary. They seemed to have a tail because they draped over the top of the entire hat.
Help! Lost a post!
Eric:
“The jihadists’ claims utilize a corrupted quasi-religious form cloaked in Islam that isn’t all that different in its purposeful design.”
There are often efforts to differentiate jihad from Islam. That one cannot do. Islamic Extremism is the NORM, not the EXCEPTION, in all countries of the Middle East now. Dubai, Egypt, and Lebanon used to be more Westernized, due to tourism revenues, but they have become more extremist. Islamic Extremism was also the norm in the past, when the Muslim Expansion invaded Europe. Egypt used to be a Christian nation. And all that lovely Moorish architecture in Spain and Portugal came from conquering Muslims. Christians were enslaved to row galleys and serve Muslims. If it weren’t for the Crusades, we would all be wearing the veil and under Sharia Law now.
There are several terms used to describe a non-extreme Muslim – “Westernized,” and “moderate,” are examples. But Islamic Extremists (the norm in the Middle East) only recognize one Islam. There are no “denominations” of Islam. There is only Islam, and those who follow it strictly, or who do not follow Sharia Law. Strict Muslims would have “Westernized” Muslims follow Sharia Law, which they do not want to do, hence their immigration to Western countries. Not all Muslims in Western nations are Westernized. Westernized Muslims follow only the Peace Verses, and take a figurative meaning for the Sword Verses. But they are at odds with every single Islamic state in the Middle East. The Shah enraged Imams when he tried to Westernize Iran, and Carter, in his foolishness, played into the Imams’ hands when they fed US journalists the lies that he was a tyrant.
Jimmy Carter recently gave a speech for Muslim organizations, among people who had written that the US should be under Sharia Law, and that we should not honor fallen soldiers on Memorial Day. So there are extremists here in the US, too. That is at odds with Westernized Muslims, like many I used to know, who loved American freedoms, and would never want to live under Sharia Law.
Karen, I retrieved your comment at 12:20.
This Pope might take the sassy outta mespo.
Allow me to interject a nice religious story, one Pope Francis is delivering regularly. He just had what is described as a very emotional meeting w/ Meriem Ibrahim, the Christian woman who gave birth to her baby in a shackles while imprisoned in the Sudan. Her offense was being Christian.
Karen is correct. Now, some Italian widows[and Jackie O] wore black veils BY CHOICE @ the funerals of their husbands. My Italian grandma wore one when grandpa died.
Karen, We should hear “The fundamentalists in the US sill be doing this stuff soon if we don’t stop them.” I’m surprised we haven’t heard it yet.
I was pretty glad to have grown up post Vatican II. 🙂
Saucy – Catholic women never, ever, wore a face veil. It was always a head covering. Typically lace, which was expensive, but a clean scarf would do, too.
One of the reasons Vatican II abolished the long fast before communion is that it was too hard on people. My mother remembers getting light headed when they had to go to a later mass than usual.
In the old days, men always wore a suit. You can look at road workers from the 30’s, people in bread lines, and you’ll see the men in suits. They would take their coat off for heavy work, but they had it with them. Even in the heat. Casual wear really didn’t take off until fairly recently. I can’t recall which decade women’s casual summer dresses finally came into style, but I want to say either late fifties or early sixties. After that there was a prolific fashion paradigm shift similar to the Cambrian Explosion. And prior to that it was corsets . . . even in the heat. Women and men did faint from the dictates of fashion. In the church or out of the church. I grew up Catholic in the South. I would see families in suits and dresses on Church Day, no matter what the denomination.
And since suits were a requirement of respectable dress of any social class until fairly recently, when that casual dress did make an appearance, it was still the dress code to wear suits and dresses to church, as a matter of respect. It is still the dress code in many businesses today, although thankfully there is now air conditioning and lighter weight suits.
Saucy, Funerals brought out the hippie incense in Catholic Churches. I’ve been to too many funerals. However, the diversity of services are interesting. I think the Black AME and Catholic Churches do the best. They’re quite different, but equally helpful in processing the loss of a loved one. Unless you’re an atheist. Do they just mulch up the bodies and put them on the garden?
Paul – exactly. I always thought of doilies and lacy tablecloths when I saw them. By the time I came around, they were optional, so typically it was older ladies who wore them. I wore a lace veil at my First Communion. It’s lace, so it’s not hiding anything.
po@minutebol: “You cannot use an enemy source to explain an enemy thought”
Of course you can and should. The cornerstone tenet of the intelligence community is respecting the enemy. Part of respecting the enemy is seriously considering what the enemy shows and tells about himself, intentions, etc..
However, the key piece is, as President Bush made clear from the outset, Islam is not our enemy in the War on Terror.
Before WW2, German pride was okay by us, WW1 (and what we did to German Americans in WW1) notwithstanding. More, it was in many ways admirable as demonstrated by the German immigrants who enhanced the US. However, the Nazis’ claims relied on a purpose-designed, quasi-religious form of ethno-cultural nationalism that was cloaked in respectable German pride. The purposeful Nazi-corrupted form of German pride was not okay. The jihadists’ claims utilize a corrupted quasi-religious form cloaked in Islam that isn’t all that different in its purposeful design.
For a long time, even in the face of the obvious, until it was too late, a lot of folks, especially the America First Committee isolationist forerunners of modern Paul-type libertarians, deliberately chose not to differentiate between the Nazis and normal German culture and political concerns, with the same thought process of the people today who rationalize ISIS as a reasonable corrective for Sykes-Picot.