Only difference between believing in a Ghost or a God is the sanctioning of the latter
The most evil of evil muslims, the Saudi "king", has declared Atheism and Human Rights as terrorism - he calls it "tolerance"! Immediately confront your politicians who support this unbelievable oil gangsta and his accomplices!
How does the world react? You? By calling Klevius an "islamophobe"?!
Here's the muslim born (apostate?!) Mr X "president" Barry Barakeh Hussein Mohammed Obama Dunham Soetoro (or whatever) bowing (2009) for the most evil of men on the planet today. The very same evil guy he first called after becoming "president" and whom he groomed again last week.
Atheism is the only straightforward path to Universal Human Rights (including women)!
No wonder God, Allah (or whatever) is tricky to convince about Universal Human Rights (including women) because HE was created as a tool for rapetivism (look it up) and the subjugation and enslavement of others.
When God was created he was made like Adam.
When the basic idea of Universal Human Rights was created it was made like Adam AND Eve.
And for you who think heterosexual attraction, i.e. that women are sexier than men, could be (exc)used as a reason for depriving women of legal sameness. Please, do think again! And read Klevius Sex and Gender Tutorial - if you can!
Believing in Universal Human Rights (Atheism) is called "islamophobia" by supporters of religious fascists.
You stupid (and an accomplice to the worst of evils) Kleviusophobe! Is this evil Saudi guardian of islam an insult to Mohammed and islam - or is he actually a true copy of Mohammed of today? However, he's certainly the world's foremost propagator of Humanrightsphobia and intolerance (islam) by the help of "we-must-make-business-with-them" politicians. This latter is why the oxymoron "islamophobia" is so popular in the defense of dealings with Satan.
Oh, I see Sharia! The ultimate weapon against Human Rights and criticism of one's own evilness
Atheism (the belief in Universal Human Rights) is now equalized with terrorism in Saudi law - in line with OIC's world wide anti-Human Rights Sharia. Simultaneous with a Saudi islamofascist "tolerance" campaign!
Klevius question to Mishal Husain, BBC's islamofascist Sharia presenter: Why don't you give the compulsory license fee paying Brits a thorough information about this. You can use Klevius without even mentioning him! You know Mishal, Klevius thinks most Brits don't have a clue of the depth of the problem witgh islam. So why not give them a hand from your ivory tower at the world's biggest "
James Kirk Wall: The Saudi regime of kings and clerics is a hate organization.
They hate women
They hate Jews
They hate Christians
They hate other Muslims who claim divine authority
They hate other Muslims who don’t share their interpretation of Islam
They hate America, but not to our face
They claim to hate homosexuality, but behind closed doors who knows
They hate free speech
They hate equal rights and equal opportunity
They hate Atheists and have declared them to be terrorists
Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said: "Saudi authorities have never tolerated criticism of their policies, but these recent laws and regulations turn almost any critical expression or independent association into crimes of terrorism.”
But it gets even worse. It’s also illegal for anyone to imply that these recent laws are unjust.
Klevius: And this happens while Saudi Arabia's Riyadh principality also has begun a campaign 'to encourage patriotism and spread of moderation and tolerance'. A convoy of young volunteers will make 13 tours to areas across Riyadh to spread a culture of dialogue and acceptance of others. The tours will include symposiums, training courses and exhibitions of publications from the "king" Abdulaziz Centre for
Evan Helmuth: So which pressing, terrorism-related concern does the new law address first? Does it ban incitement to violent jihad from the pulpit or the dissemination of Jihadi propaganda online?
Nope, the leading concern of Saudi Arabia’s new terrorism law is atheism.
You read that right. The world’s number one exporter of poisonous Wahabi doctrines and of the jihadi rabble which is the inevitable result of such doctrines considers atheists its foremost terrorism concern.
Article One of the new law defines “calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based” as terrorism.
We can all rest easy now. Finally someone has taken a courageous stand and is dealing with the widespread scourge of Saudi atheist suicide bombers which has so afflicted the region.
And Article One is by no means an empty threat. In February 2012, Saudi poet and journalist Hamza Kashghari was extradited from Malaysia at the request of his government and imprisoned without trial until October 29, 2013 for a series of tweets that Wahabis and other religious conservatives considered insulting to the Prophet Mohammed.
In a similar case as recently as January, another poet, Ashraf Fayadh was jailed without charge after someone complained that his poems “contain atheist ideas”. He remains behind bars.
This persecution of the irreligious is doubtless attributable to the royal family’s constant need to provide sops to the ultra-conservative, largely Wahabi clerical establishment upon which they rely for a great deal of their regime’s legitimacy as the ‘Custodian of the two Holy Mosques’. The parts of the new law dealing with atheism could therefore be seen as a bid to satiate the Wahabi religious establishment and buy the monarchy some loyalty from the country’s sheikhs.
Whatever the logic, the idea that the biggest threat to Saudi Arabia is a mass outbreak of ‘atheist thought’ and that what the country mostly needs is less freedom of expression is enough to make a cat laugh. And of course the perverse irony of the world’s leading exporter of jihadi suicide bombers cracking down on the imagined menace of atheist terrorists is off the charts.
Atheism though is by no means the only form of thought crime to which the Saudi government confines itself in its new terrorism law. Article two addresses “throwing away loyalty to the country’s rulers.” Article six outlaws “contact or correspondence with any groups, currents [of thought], or individuals hostile to the kingdom.” Article eight criminalizes protests, sit-ins and petitions.
As Human Rights Watch pointed out in their excellent report on the new law last month, it is already being used to silence political speech and imprison dissidents and human rights activists, in addition to atheists.
Perhaps the most worrying part of The Kingdom’s new focus on Richard Dawkins fans and pro-democracy dissidents is that whatever time and manpower the country’s security forces spend scouring Twitter for insults to the Prophet and pouring over poetry that might or might not insult religion is time and manpower they aren’t using to monitor and stamp out actual violent jihadis; or to prevent young Saudis from traveling to Syria to fight with Al Qaeda affiliates.
Perversely enough, we could end up with a situation in which this fatuous terrorism law diverts resources and efforts away from dealing with actual terrorism threats posed by religious extremists and toward locking up human rights activists and skeptics of religion, thereby increasing threats to both Saudi Arabia and the world.
You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Jewish and muslim feminists are the true but sad clowns of religion - and the main reason that the transition from religious sex apartheid to free women has stalled
Blu Greenberg naively (see further below) argues for retaining an allegiance to Jewish law while also shaping it to be more inclusive of women and responsive to women's ethical claims. And she does it simply because she hasn't fathomed the full extent of the evil* logic in the origin of religious rapetivism.
* From our point of view, i.e. that women are fully humans. However, the problem arises simply because although most(?!) religious people admit this (they continuously have had to alter their positions towards Atheistic Human Rights), they simultaneously try to desperately defend the (evil) origin of their religion which rests on sex segregation/apartheid.
Blu Greenberg: We who are committed to traditional Judaism are standing today at the crossroads on the question of women. Feminism disturbs our previous equilibrium, for it makes a fundamental claim about women contrary to the model generated by halakhah [Jewish law].
Principles of Feminism
The feminist ideology can be summed up as follows:
1. Women have the same innate potential, capability, and needs as men, whether in the realm of the spirit, the word, or the deed.
2. Women have a similar capacity for interpretation and concomitant decision-making.
3. Women can function fully as "outside" persons, in broader areas of society beyond the home.
4. Women can and should have some control over their own destinies, to the extent that such mastery is possible for anyone.
Principles of Jewish Feminism
Let us reduce these broad statements from the level of generalization to a theology of woman as Jew:
1. A woman of faith has the same innate vision and existential longing for a redemptive‑covenantal reality as a man of faith. She has the same ability and need to be in the presence of God alone and within the context of the community. Such a woman is sufficiently mature to accept the responsibilities for this relationship and the rights that flow from these responsibilities. If these spiritual gifts do not flow naturally from her soul, she can be educated and uplifted in them in much the same fashion that Jewish men are.
Klevius comment: No, she can't be 'educated and uplifted' from her flesh, simply because as a feminist (i.e. separatist) she actually underscores religious essentialism.
2. Jewish women, as much as men, have the mental and emotional capacities to deal directly with the most sacred Jewish texts and primary sources. Jewish women are capable of interpreting tradition based on the sources. They can be involved in the decision‑making process that grows out of the blending of inherited tradition with contemporary needs.
Klevius comment: No doubt they can, and they do it without addressing the key point, namely sex segregation. That's why Klevius calls them sad clowns.
3. Some women, as some men, are capable of functioning in the positions of authority related to the religious and physical survival of the Jewish people.
Klevius comment: Indeed! The physical survival of the Jewish (or muslim)
4. Women as a class should not find themselves in discriminatory positions in personal situations. In such matters as marriage and divorce, a woman should have no less control or personal freedom than a man, nor should she be subject to abuse resulting from the constriction of freedom.
Klevius comment: Avoiding 'abuse resulting from the constriction of freedom' is only fully achieved via Atheism and Universal Human Rights! As long as you're stack in a god, you or someone else is always limited when it comes to Human Rights.
How is it possible that a tradition with so highly developed a sensitivity to human beings could allow even one law or value judgment that demeans women, much less a host of such laws?
Klevius comment: Human beings? Didn't we just talk about sex segregated women! Or are there different species of 'human beings'? And if there are, how on earth could we possibly be equal then?
The stratification of men and women in Judaism simply reflects the male‑female hierarchical status in all previous societies in human history. Moreover, in light of the primary model of Jewish woman as domestic creature‑-as wife, mother, dependent, auxiliary‑-all other roles and responsibilities that seemed to conflict with the primary model simply were eliminated.
Klevius comment: Indeed!
I do not wish to imply that Jewish women were oppressed. This is far from the truth. Given the historically universal stratification of the sexes, plus the model of the Jewish woman as enabler and the exclusive male (rabbinic) option of interpreting the law, there could have been widespread abuse of the powerless. But this did not happen. In fact, the reverse is true; throughout rabbinic history, one observes a remarkably benign and caring attitude toward women.
Klevius comment: This is a remarkable statement. She continues to defend religious sexism by referring to 'the historically universal stratification of the sexes' (Klevius translation: sex segregation). There were 'widespread abuse of the powerless'! That's the very core of religion, i.e. to defend the taking of slaves and robbing and slaughtering Canaanites etc "infidels".
Nevertheless, there is a need today to redefine the status of women in certain areas of Jewish law. First, a benign and caring stance is not discernible in every last instance of rabbinic legislation. Second, paternalism is not what women are seeking nowadays, not even the women of the traditional Jewish community. Increasingly, such women are beginning to ask questions about equality, about a more mature sharing of responsibility, about divesting the power of halakhic interpretation and legislation of its singular maleness.
Going Forward: The Options
I have referred to the crossroads at which we stand. A crossroad implies choices. There are three ways in which halakhic Jews may proceed with regard to the question of women:
1. We can revert to the fundamentalist pole, where hierarchy of male and female remains unchallenged in most areas of human life.
2. We can allow the new value system to penetrate our civil lives but not our religious lives. In other words, women may be encouraged to see themselves as equals in social, economic, and political spheres. This is the current stance of modern Orthodoxy.
3. We can find ways within halakhah to allow for growth and greater equality in the ritual and spiritual realms, despite the fact that there are no guarantees where this will lead us.
Integrating Non-Jewish Values
It is my firm belief that the third path is the one we now must begin to follow. Admittedly, I have been propelled in that direction by the contemporary Western humanist liberation philosophy of the secular women's movement; those who would hurl at me the charge of "foreign‑body contamination" therefore are absolutely right. But is there any religion in history, including Judaism, that has not borrowed from the surrounding culture?
The real question is, What do we do with what we borrow? What are the unique Jewish ways in which we appropriate positive ideas, customs, and values? How can we enhance our system by these new accretions? And most important, in what ways can they become continuous with the essence of Judaism? True, the original impulse for all this, as I have said, derives from feminism, but even if such a movement hadn't evolved, I still would like to think that a creative pondering of the ideals of Torah Judaism might lead to the same conclusions.
Klevius comment: Here I just refer to
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, a former Vice-Chairman of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the main body of American Modern Orthodox Rabbis and the largest rabbinic organization in the world.
Rabbi Pruzansky has written numerous articles opposing Open Orthodoxy, and insists that - contrary to the claims of its founder - it does not qualify as "Orthodox" at all, due to what he says is a complete abandonment of Torah values and a gradual abandonment of Halakha altogether.
Arutz Sheva sat down with Rabbi Pruzansky to get to the opposition to the Open Orthodox movement in the US.
Where Modern Orthodoxy differs with hareidi streams of thought, he elaborates, is its belief that normative Halakhic standards can be strictly adhered to without shutting oneself off from the rest of the world. They are simply two different approaches, but share the same fundamental Torah values.
But despite all that, clearly there are many Jewish people who see Open Orthodoxy as filling a need... that something is missing in their Judaism. How do you respond to that?
For Rabbi Pruzansky, this question drills down to the fundamental error committed by movements such as Open Orthodoxy: an attempt to adapt and rewrite Torah values to suit every demand or ideal of the contemporary western world.
"You can't slake every thirst, that's the bottom line," he explains.
In particular, he says the domination of Open Orthodoxy and similar fringe movements by feminist activists is an indication that they are not drawing their fundamental values from the Torah, but looking outside of it.
"When it comes to feminism especially, it's a secular value, an un-Jewish value, and for the most part it's an anti-Torah value.
"When you mix something impure into a pure system, they don't go together... something will have to give... either the Torah or feminism."
He points out that he often meets Orthodox women who "see themselves as feminists in terms of the right to receive equal rights in the workplace and wages, etc... But not a single one is interested in wearing tefillin, being a hazan (cantor), because that's just a man's role in shul.
"The bottom line is that egalitarianism isn't a Torah value, so if you ask how it can fit with Torah - it's not going to be a natural fit!
"We need to be able to derive our values and our worldview from the Torah. Anything that's not there just isn't our values."
So is there perhaps a failure by the Orthodox leadership to communicate that message? Because clearly there are people seeking "Jewish values" from outside the Torah.
"Yes - there is actually double failure:
"The first failure is education - the notion (still entertained by many Orthodox educators) that everyone has to be educated the same way is fundamentally flawed.
"But there is a much broader point," he stresses, namely that "there are some Orthodox rabbis who have encouraged these expectations" because of pressure to cave into "secular values".
Like any legal system, he explains, "There is a limit to how much Halakha can tolerate."
"The failure to reach those expectations has engendered an industry of grievance; those grievances that are unassuagable are responsible for the creation of Open Orthodoxy and other fringe movements in the Torah world."
The phenomenon is helped along by the media, he says, which allows relatively fringe groups to punch well above their weight.
"They have the ear of the media so their influence is exaggerated.
"The Jewish media in America is by and large... hard-left, with very few exceptions, and even those with some connection to Orthodoxy - those with Orthodox publishers and the like - don't have appropriate respect for rabbis. Granted they thrive on controversy - that's also part of it - but they simply do not know or accept any limits.
"And that is also part of the problem: Western man does not accept any moral limits at all," he says, echoing the famous American saying: "Don't tread on me!"
In contrast, however, "Transposing that sentiment onto Torah is absurd.
"In Torah we surrender to the system, we don't conform the system to our desires."
So how is Orthodox world responding... how should it be responding?
"Right now we're in the realm of simply protesting.
"But there is a movement of thought that is gaining ground - it hasn't swept through all Orthodoxy - to actually ostracize and declare openly that these movements are not Orthodox - with all that entails for conversions, taking part in prayer quorums, etc...
Do you think that's the right route?
"I would much rather have some kind of rapprochement, reconciliation. The Torah world is small enough. It can accommodate the left-wing but it can't accommodate a female hazan, a female rabbi, dilution of conversion standards, mixed church choirs...
"There is only so much that the Torah world can accept; but nevertheless, rather than ostracizing or alienating I'd rather draw [them] near - but it has to be because we all accept he same terms of reference.
Do you think there is any hope for reconciliation at all?
"There's always hope. I'm not confident in the short term but in the long-term more so... except a number of adherents to this group will inevitably eventually leave Orthodoxy altogether.
Here's OIC's Sharia messenger in UK, Sayeeda Warsi and her co-muslim Abu Qatada
Whereas Human Rights allow you to live under Sharia (if you are so stupid* so you really want to) Sharia doesn't allow you to live under Human Rights!
* meaning the wish to hinder others from accessing full Human Rights
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