My blog title is ever-appropriate
“Women get jewelry. Men get laid. Happy Valentine’s Day.” - Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, a lovely quote which sums up all the silliness surrounding this stupid holiday. The video linked over there, showing men using jewelry to “hypnotize” women into (apparently) having sex with them, is a perfect example of human idiocy. I think I’ve already said as much as I need to about this before. Just love and be happy.
In other silly news, I have been getting a few emails and messages about Wikipedia’s Muhammad article having illustrations. So what? This shouldn’t even be an issue. Wikipedia is not trying to destroy Islam or defame the prophet. I support Wikipedia’s editors in their display of these images and all other images which expand human knowledge.
“Honey, look, I brought you this string of shiny rocks made with the blood of African kids! Wanna get busy?”
I will never understand the culture I was born into.
Nicely put. ;-)
I love Valentine’s Day! But probably only because it isn’t really Valentine’s Day here - it’s ‘Friend’s Day’
Which can of course be tricky because whereas you may only have one (or four… 
) spouse, you may have a bunch of friends. But it doesn’t really get stressful because it isn’t ‘mandatory’… I mean, of course the advertizers are trying to get us to buy all kind of cute red heart-y little thingies, but no one really expects you to. The max you do is send cards; this year I only sent one — to my grandma 
(Ps. I just came across a piece of news that says that each Feb 14, five million cards are mailed. (There are 5 million people, too.
) The only time more cards are sent is Christmas.)
(PPS. I got no cards! I’m so unpopular! Am I supposed to feel to be terrible now?
)
I presume the problem people have with the Wikipedia article is Islam’s interdiction on icons (or images in general). While the gut reaction is understandable, the position is ultimately untennable: that interdiction applies to creators, not to content.
Islam has no such prohibition, that’s the problem.
Right, the whole representational art automatically equals idolatry thing is ludicrous. Even my imam, who’s a very wise and level headed guy in many respects, kinda got edgy once because the room that NAU is kind enough to let the local Muslim community use for Jummah on Fridays had pictures of people on the walls. He didn’t pitch a fit or declare it haraam but he was clearly uncomfortable. The truth as I see it is that what an idol is or is not is all intention. Concepts of god or abstracts like nationalism can be idols, the ego can be an idol worse than anything Muhammad smashed, whereas a Buddha statue can be nothing like an idol if the attitude towards it is merely respect for a teacher, same with a Sufi tomb or a Shia painting of Ali.
Of course, too, even if we accepted that Muslims cannot render Muhammad in art, such a prohibition wouldn’t apply to non-Muslims anyway. Now they want Muhammad taken off the relief in the capital that includes other lawgivers (Hammurabi, Moses, etc etc). Yeah, the one piece of goodwill the American government shows towards Islam these days, let’s scrap it. It’s the same mindset of the Islamorons who tried to destroy Yusuf’s tomb recently.
Yeah, Dave, that’s what I meant by my comment about non-Muslim Wikipedia editors adding art of Muhammad.
And I agree with you that intention is, insofar as I can glean, at the heart of almost every Islamic tradition and law. You also aren’t allowed to steal, but if you steal a loaf of bread to feed your family, it seems to be a different matter: the intention being that of survival rather than of greed.
Sometimes people are just stupid. (Sure, I often am, too… But that’s another story.) Like you know that stuff going on in Denmark right now? Young Muslims setting randoms cars on the street on fire etc. (There’s probably a word in English for that, but I don’t know it and my dictionary is no help :-P) Some of them are using the fact that a few local papers recently published that ‘Muhammad cartoon’ again as an excuse. In the newspaper I usually read (hs.fi), an imam is reported to have told them, ‘Stop. The Prophet didn’t teach you to burn schools or cars and infrastructure. Muhammad taught us civilization.’ Thankfully someone’s still got their brain! But then comes out the Hizb-ut-Tahir and says something like [and this isn’t a good translation, but I’m having a hard time thinking of one], ‘Islam obliges truth; freedom of speech is the freedom to lie.’ Grr.
They are also trying to start up an Islamic party here in Finland. When I first heard about it, I was optimistic, ‘Yay, maybe this can lead to something good, different voices heard, knowledge, tolerance…’ Not so much. They haven’t succeeded in getting the 5,000 signatures required for registering a political party - and I sincerely hope these people never do. One of the things they’re advocating for is dealth penalty for adultery. (Never mind the fact that capital punishment in Finland was abolished long ago.) They also want the Finnish law to be replaced by sharia. I’m not ‘yay-ing’ so much anymore…
Oh, and needless to say, the founders if this great new party are Finnish converts. Yay!