Islamic-Christian co-operation in Iraqi medieval art

From Leiden University in the Netherlands:

Art links Christians and Muslims in Medieval Middle East

The relationship between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East during the Middle Ages is often typified in terms such as conflict and violent opposition. Bas Snelders shows in his dissertation that this image is not true. Analysis of art from the period demonstrates that the two communities intermingled rather than living completely separately.

Christian and Muslim artists

Based on art historical and written sources, Snelders addresses the role played by art within the Syrian Orthodox community of Mosul. Christian art flourished in the 13th century in what is now Northern Iraq, and Muslims were very active as artists and patrons. Snelders’ dissertation explores the relationship between Christian and Islamic art.

Preserving identity

Snelders’ detailed comparative analysis sketches a nuanced image of the intensive cultural interaction that was typical of the time. Christians were completely integrated in their environment, and preserved their religious and social identity.

PIONIER research

Snelders’ research is part of the PIONIER research project on The Formation of a Communal Identity among West Syrian Christians (451–1300) at the Faculty of Humanities. NWO is funding the study.

21st century Western Islamophobes pretend that all Muslims have always been violently anti-Christian. Not true. In the Islamic Cordoba khalifate in Spain the relationship between Muslims, Jews, and Christians was good. In Iraq, good relations between Muslims and Christians were certainly not limited to the Middle Ages. Eg, the Saddam Hussein dictatorship was a terrible time in many respects. Even so, there was much Muslim-Christian cooperation, in daily life, also in the government and armed forces. However, after George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, a horrible time of violent persecution of Christians started.

On Dutch TV today, an Iraqi refugee, Amin, now living in a cellar in Jordan, was interviewed. He said: “My brother and my father were killed by the Saddam Hussein regime. So, I never expected I would have to say this: ‘Things under this occupation are even worse than then’. In 2005, I was a candidate for parliament. However, the situation became so bad that I had to flee the country“.

Life in Baghdad’s Slums: Fighting to Survive in Sadr City: here.

USA: Iraq withdrawal: here.

Iraq’s High Criminal Court sentenced former foreign minister Tariq Aziz to die by hanging today for persecuting Islamist parties opposed to the former Ba’athist regime: here.

Dutch clerical sexual abuse of children

This video says about itself, translated from Dutch:

A boy (Jelle) brings a symbolic white rose to a St. Francis statue in order to come to terms with the abuse / maltreatment in the boys’ boarding school St. Mary of the Angels of the Franciscan order in Bleijerheide, the Netherlands.

Translated from Dutch news agency ANP:

“Compensation for abuse at boarding school“

Published: August 31, 2010 6:08

HILVERSUM – The Franciscan friars must pay money to compensate for the sexual abuse in the former Franciscan boys’ boarding school at St. Mary of the Angels in Kerkrade‘s Bleijerheide district .

This Monday, lawyer Bob van der Goen said this in the TV show Knevel & Van den Brink.

Van der Goen defends the interests of Mea Culpa United, which unites victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy.

Testimonials

According to the lawyer, in the past at least fourteen friars have certainly abused pupils. He relies on the testimonies of 39 former pupils of the boarding school.

The lawyer said that the Franciscan brothers this Tuesday would find a letter on their doormat with a request to take responsibility for the abuse and to compensate the survivors. If they do not, he will start a court case.

See on the Kerkrade case also here.

According to Limburg regional TV L1, out of 20 monks teaching at the school, 14 are said to have sexually abused boys.

This is a Dutch TV video on the Kerkrade case.

Dutch Salesian abuse affair: here.

The Catholic church has been accused of being deeply misogynist, intolerant of gay people and monarchical by members of a group calling for change within its ranks: here.

Pope not punishing Belgian sexual abuse bishop: here.

Afghan war bloodier and bloodier

This video is about the civilian death toll growing in Afghanistan as more troops arrive.

With Obama’s Afghanistan surge now up to full strength, casualties among both US troops and Afghan civilians are rising sharply. New revelations of corruption and CIA payoffs raise the inescapable question: What are they dying for? Here.

Some Afghan Men Form Sexual Relationships With Young Boys: here.

Afghan bankers resign amid corruption allegations: here.

Karzai in panic as graft probe closes in: here.

Interview with Ex-CIA Agent Michael Scheuer: ‘Only the Taliban Are Not Corrupt’: here.

The coalition’s offensive in Kandahar, touted as the centrepiece of the “surge” in Afghanistan announced by US President Obama last December, is now well underway. With barely any coverage in the media internationally, as many 50,000 foreign and Afghan Army troops have deployed in and around the city: here.

US deaths in Afghanistan hit record in 2010: AFP: here.

No silver lining to the war in Afghanistan; bring the troops home! Here.

Britain: Military families write to MPs calling for vote to bring the troops home from Afghanistan: here.

Poland Says It Can’t Afford To Be In Afghanistan: here.

A hundred refugees from war-torn Afghanistan have staged a breakout from the remote detention camp in northern Australia where they had been locked up for months in a bid to draw attention to their plight: here.

Australia: It has been a dramatic week at Villawood detention centre, with a suicide sparking off a spate of rooftop protests. These events highlight the inhumane treatment of asylum seekers and the need to get rid of mandatory detention: here.

Guess Who Paid For Karzai Coteries’ Mansions? Here.

Sarkozy wants pan-European racism

This is a video about Sarkozy government xenophobia in France.

The French government is seeking to win support from official European institutions for its racist policy of rounding up and deporting members of the Roma community: here.

Though these are not “official European institutions”, Sarkozy will probably get support from racists in Germany like Thilo Sarrazin and the NPD.

The Sarkozy administration will continue expelling Roma people en masse, despite mounting unease in France and across Europe over the “odious” and “revolting” policy: here.

Resisting cuts and racism in France: here.

France has seized upon reports of the execution of a French aid worker by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in July to escalate its military intervention in its former colonies in the strategic Sahel region of Western Africa: here.

Britain: Planning rules that require local councils to make land provisions for traveller communities are to be revoked by the Tory government: here.

More flooding in Pakistan

This video is called Fortitude amid Pakistan disaster.

Hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes in the southern Pakistani province of Sindh over the past few days as flood waters threatened cities and towns: here.

The UN World Food Programme and UN Children’s Fund have warned that the floods ravaging Pakistan will exacerbate child hunger and malnutrition. This is in a country where millions of children already suffered from acute malnutrition or stunting: here.

As Pakistan floods continue moving south, calls for debt cancellation grow: here.

PAKISTAN: Floods Leave Afghan Refugees Down and Out: here.

Callously exploiting the humanitarian disaster caused by six weeks of flooding, the International Monetary Fund is spurning Pakistan’s pleas for the release of funds under a 2008 loan agreement until Islamabad implements policy changes that will punish the country’s impoverished toilers: here.

Seven weeks after catastrophic floods first hit Pakistan, the government has done next to nothing to provide relief to the 20 million flood-affected. Instead, the various political parties have descended into bickering, as they try to shift blame for the disaster onto their rivals: here.

China has indignantly dismissed claims that troops of the People’s Liberation Army are operating in a disputed area of Pakistan: here.

British Cold War assassinations

This video is called The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 1).

These are Parts 2 and 3 of that video series.

This video is called The Mafia, CIA and George Bush (Part 4).

Here are parts 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 100 of the series.

From AFP news agency:

Britain carried out Cold War assassinations: Le Carre

Sun Aug 29, 12:36 am ET

LONDON – Britain carried out assassinations during the Cold War, novelist and former secret agent John le Carre told The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

The espionage writer worked for Britain’s domestic and external intelligence agencies during the 1950s and 1960s.

“Certainly we did very bad things. We did a lot of direct action. Assassinations, at arm’s length. Although I was never involved,” said the 79-year-old, whose real name is David Cornwell.

TIME’s ‘feminist’ fake pro-war story

This video, recorded in 2009 in Britain, says about itself:

The inspirational anti-war Afghan MP Malalai Joya was joined on the platform by Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, a serving British soldier who was speaking in public for the first time against the horror caused by the war in Afghanistan.

Malalai Joya really is one of the bravest women in Afghanistan. She told the 300-strong audience at Conway Hall in central London that shes survived five assassination attempts and is still not safe with personal security guards or by wearing a burkha to cover her identity. Yet she continues to campaign against foreign occupation and fundamentalist warlords, and for womens rights and education. She believes all NATO troops must leave Afghanistan immediately.

Now, it seems that the infamous pro-Afghan war story in TIME magazine, using a cover photograph of a horribly mutilated Afghan woman, was not only written by a reporter married to a war profiteering businessman … not only falsely said that this mutilation would happen if United States occupation would end, while the atrocity in fact happened AFTER years of occupation, and not by opponents of that occupation … but the TIME story also fraudulently rehashed a three-year-old tragedy.

From the Afghan feminist site of RAWA:

Is Time’s Aisha Story Fake?

Nazia said her husband first shaved her head, and cut her nose and ears with a sharp knife and beat her until she was unconscious.

Abdulhadi Hairan

In July this year, Time magazine published on its cover page the photo of an Afghan woman whose nose was cut off; the title bellowed: ‘What happens if we leave Afghanistan.’

According to the Time story, the woman, identified as Aisha, had run away, after which a Taliban court ordered her nose and ears mutilated in the southern Uruzgan province.

Before the Time story, CNN also published a similar story in March this year, naming the woman as ‘Bibi Aisha,’ and reporting that her nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban. (Read that report and see the photo here)

After reading both the stories, and having a close look at the photos, I must conclude that the Taliban story of cutting off the woman’s nose and ears as told by CNN and Time is false. The reason behind this conclusion is that I had myself reported this incident in December 2007.

The incident took place in December 2007, just before Eid ul Adha, a muslim ritual of sacrifice. Aisha or Bibi Aisha was at that time Nazia. We found her in a hospital in Qalat, the center of southern Zabul province. She and the police told us that she was beaten by her husband, an old man who had already killed his first wife.

Nazia said her husband first shaved her head, and cut her nose and ears with a sharp knife and beat her until she was unconscious. The husband then fled and the neighbors took her to the hospital. I had posted that story on a blog site with her only photos, which were later posted on many other sites that helped attract NGO attention and to her being taken to Kabul for better treatment. See that blog post and Nazia’s first photos, which were taken just a few days after the incident, here. (Please don’t mind the poor English, I had just started learning English at that time).

The BBC Pashto website also published a story about Nazia. The BBC Pashto report at that time, which can be accessed on this link, says: (translated from Pashto) ‘Several women in Afghanistan’s Zabul province have demanded for the trial of a man who cut off his wife’s ears and nose.’

The BBC report further mentions that the couple was originally living in Paktia and had been shifted to Kandahar province. The Time and CNN stories, however, takes her from Uruzgan to Kandahar.

All these accounts and the photos prove that Aisha and Nazia is the same woman and that this is a domestic problem which prevails widely in the Afghan society. There is a strong need to work for reducing domestic violence instead of making fake stories by the well-established media organizations.

This is what “making progress” in Afghanistan looks like: 14 US soldiers killed in the last three days: here.

U.S. Military Loses Control Of Subcontractor Spending, Warlords Benefit: here.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and 9/11 in particular, a new type of nationalism has emerged in Europe. Nationalists and opponents of multiculturalism are embracing the demands and the vocabulary of feminists, and gay and lesbian activists. Western Europe is presented as a beacon of modernity and freedom, which must protect itself from conservative, traditional and intolerant migrants. During the international conference entitled Sexual Nationalisms. Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Belonging in the New Europe, more than eighty academics will come together to examine and discuss the relationship between sexuality and nationalism in the ‘new Europe’. The conference will take place on 27 and 28 January at the University of Amsterdam (UvA): here

Saudi teachers protest

Saudi Arabia Oil Film About US Capital Investment – Crazy! This video says about itself:

In light of today’s volatile energy climate, Desert Venture becomes a highly ironic and intensely interesting classic video about American oil production in the Middle East. A propaganda film through and through, Desert Venture seeks to lionize the American investors who came to Saudia Arabia and invested in energy at great risk. The rosy face that the narrator puts on the relationships built between Americans and “suspicious, strange people” is powerful.

This film is also one of the greatest collections of footage of 1950’s oil factories and plants in the Middle East. Stirring scenes of Saudi and American workers toiling in the heat for energy is captivating. For it’s outrageously positive tone and jingoistic viewpoint, as well as precious footage, Desert Venture is of crucial viewing importance today more than ever.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Saudi teachers take to streets over lack of jobs

Monday 30 August 2010

Two hundred Saudi teachers rallied for jobs at the Ministry of Education on Sunday in a rare protest in the conservative Western-backed kingdom.

The demonstrators, mainly Arabic language teachers, demanded a meeting with Education Minister Faisal Bin Abdullah and an end to their unemployment, saying that many of them had graduated 10 years ago and were still jobless.

“I have knocked on all the doors but they keep slamming shut in my face,” said protester Ahmed Abdullah.

The teachers ignored official requests to go home and continued to voice their demands before dispersing peacefully after a few hours.

The Saudi Department of Statistics said the unemployment rate in the kingdom of 27 million has reached 10.5 per cent, but unofficial reports put the rate at closer to 20 per cent.

Almost 40 per cent of those without jobs have university degrees.

Saudi women say no to guardianship system: here.

Salmonella eggs cartoon

This cartoon about the salmonella egg scandal in the USA is by Stephanie McMillan.

Sick from recalled eggs? Egg industry says it’s your fault: here.

US salmonella scare: farm inspections reveal manure, mice and maggots: here.

Government inspectors have found deplorable conditions at the two Iowa egg farms at the center of a salmonella outbreak that has sickened thousands in the US in recent months: here.

Salmonella at Egg Farm Is Traced to 2008: here.

US company that sickened thousands knew eggs carried Salmonella: here.

Food Inc., now out in DVD, is a damning indictment of the inability of the profit system to provide safe and healthy food for everyone. Its political conclusions are terribly weak: here.

German Islamophobe anti-Semite as well

This video is called CNN’s Fred Pleitgen on a neo Nazi campaign against a black German politician.

From Der Spiegel in Germany:

08/30/2010

A ‘Jewish Gene’

Immigration Provocateur in Germany Crosses the Line

Thilo Sarrazin, infamous for his controversial comments on Muslims and immigration, has unleashed a storm of criticism after positing the existence of a Jewish gene. Chancellor Merkel has had enough and many have called for him to be thrown off the board of the German Central Bank.

Angela Merkel is mad. In a Sunday evening interview on German public television, the German chancellor was visibly irate when asked about the recent comments on integration and immigration by Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the board at the German Central Bank.

“The statements from Mr. Sarrazin are completely unacceptable,” she said. “They are exclusionary in a way that shows contempt for entire groups within our society. For me, the worst part is that by confronting the issue the way he does, he makes a discussion of that issue much more difficult.” …

‘All Jews Share a Certain Gene’

Over the weekend, Sarrazin went even further. In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Sarrazin waded into the frought field of genetics, saying “all Jews share a certain gene, all Basques have certain genes that make them different from other people.” …

Merkel is far from the only politician who has expressed disgust at the comments by Sarrazin, a former member of government in the city-state of Berlin and still a member of the Social Democrats. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg suggested to the weekly tabloid Bild am Sonntag that Sarrazin should lose his seat on the board of the German Central Bank. “Every provocation has its limits. It is a limit that (Sarrazin) has clearly overstepped with his confusing and inappropriate comments,” he said.

Merkel too seemed to suggest that Sarrazin should no longer remain on the Bundesbank board. “I am certain that it will be a topic within the Bundesbank,” she said. Head of the German Central Bank Axel Weber has said he will comment on Sarrazin’s latest provocations on Monday afternoon. …

In previous comments, he [Sarrazin] has blasted welfare recipients and suggested they could live on much less money than they currently receive. He has also called students “assholes” and said that civil servants are “pale and foul smelling.” Of German plans to rescue the carmaker Opel, he said: “No one needs an Opel.”

Following his interview with Lettre, the SPD sought to kick him out of the party, an effort that ultimately failed this spring. Now, however, momentum seems to be building for another attempt. Last week, SPD head Sigmar Gabriel seemed to invite Sarrazin to leave the party when he said he had no idea why he was still a member.

Since then, several SPD members have gone further. Christian Gaebler, SPD head in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg, where Sarrazin is registered, told SPIEGEL “enough is enough. Should Mr. Sarrazin not go willingly, we are initiating proceedings to throw him out of the party.” Ralf Stegner, head of the SPD in the northern state of Schleswig Holstein, called him a “rhetorical bully” in an essay for SPIEGEL ONLINE. And Hannelore Kraft, the new governor North Rhine-Westphalia, told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Monday that “those who generalize to the degree that Mr. Sarrazin does do not belong in the SPD. He should go.”

It doesn’t seem likely, however, that Sarrazin will go willingly. “I intend to take my SPD membership with me to the grave,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung over the weekend.

In the past it has proved much easier for SPD bosses to kick out “too Leftist” members than it seems to be now to kick out anti-Semite racist Sarrazin. Sarrazin belongs among the neo-nazis of the NPD.

Neo-Nazi NPD Celebrates Thilo Sarrazin’s New Book: here.

See on Sarrazin also here.

UPDATE: German Bundesbank board member releases book, still employed: here.

Austrian police are investigating a video game released by the right-wing Freedom Party, the former political home of the late Jörg Haider, that invites players to stop the construction of minarets and mosques. But the politician behind the campaign answers his critics with: “We’d rather have Sarrazin than a muezzin”: here.

USA: Muslim worker asks federal probe of Disney discrimination: here.

Video: Full press conference of NYC taxi driver Ahmed Sharif and supporters talking about anti-Muslim attack: here.

5 Arrested in upstate NY on hate crime charges for targeting mosque; Muslim man hit by SUV: here.

Scores of club-wielding skinheads have attacked a crowd of about 3,000 people at a rock concert in central Russia on Sunday, killing a teenager: here.