{"id":1268,"date":"2005-10-31T23:41:11","date_gmt":"2005-10-31T22:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2005\/10\/31\/hanania_throws_his_toys_as_proggie_circus_hits_barcelona"},"modified":"2025-10-11T11:47:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T10:47:52","slug":"hanania_throws_his_toys_as_proggie_circus_hits_barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2005\/10\/31\/hanania_throws_his_toys_as_proggie_circus_hits_barcelona","title":{"rendered":"Hanania throws his toys as Proggie circus hits Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"

Umm Zaid ([1]<\/a>, [2]<\/a>, [3]<\/a>) and Izzy Mo<\/a> have had some correspondence with Ray Hanania, one of the advisory board for the so-called Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism despite being a Christian (albeit an Arab one), who penned a piece in the Chicago-based Southwest News Herald<\/a> condemning Muslim organisations for telling their audiences not to participate in Hallowe'en due to its pagan origins. Hanania has replied to both with a bit of mud-flinging.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

That Hanania is a Christian on the board of one of the most notoriously anti-Islamic "Muslim organisations" shouldn't surprise anyone. They have, to put it mildly, a shortage of Muslim supporters. One recalls that, during a "March against terrorism" in May<\/a>, Nawash's cabal managed to secure the support of a local Young Republican chapter, anti-Muslim Maronite Christian organisations, commercial organisations, and an "organisation" whose name included the words "Nawash sucks" backwards. The march, of course, with its lack of Muslim support, allowed Islamophobes to gloat, which may have been its purpose.<\/p>\n

Anyway, UZ has done an admirable job, ma sha Allah<\/em>, of explaining why Muslims have no need of Halowe'en. Since I started writing this, she's posted yet another one<\/a>, concerning the festivals that Muslims have that actually have meaning: the two Eids, Milad, Mi'raj, Ashura and the six days in Shawwal. She also makes the point that there's a big difference between secular holidays like Thanksgiving and this meaningless, pagan-derived, commercialised event. And to reiterate (although I'm not going to bother writing him), most religions consider themselves superior to others – if people believed otherwise, they would most likely join the group they preferred. It's nothing to do with bigotry; Muslims simply do not join in other religious groups' commemorations.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the pseudo-progressive circus has come to Europe this week, with a "gender jihad" event in Barcelona in which the usual suspects (Amina, Raheel) were in attendance along with an unknown local "Islamic" organisation. Yesterday's Guardian<\/em> had a write-up<\/a> of the event, in which it was reportedly claimed that "many of the fundamental concepts of equality embraced by feminism could also be found in the Qur'an". I'm not sure what "fundamental concepts" these are, given what a sect-ridden movement feminism is.<\/p>\n

They mouthed some of the usual platitudes ("horrific things were being done in the name of religion," said Wadud) and made the standard accusations against the scholars:<\/p>\n

\n"Gender jihad is the struggle against male chauvinistic, homophobic or sexist readings of the Islamic sacred texts," said Abdennur Prado, one of the meeting's Spanish organisers.
\nThose readings had been provided by Muslim scholars who, over the centuries, have been almost exclusively male. "Male chauvinism is the destruction of Islam as a well-balanced way of life," Mr Prado said.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now for the really staggering part:<\/p>\n

\nThe greatest danger was the spread of the radically conservative, Saudi-backed schools of Islam. "They don't want to go forward, they want to go back," said Prof Wadud, who also led mixed prayers at the Barcelona meeting.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As if the Saudis haven't been influential enough already over the past twenty years? As if people don't already think that what goes on in Saudi really does represent Islam just because they control the Haramain? As if their followers aren't to be found in every western ghetto? Like, is she blind, stupid or dishonest? (Or all three?)<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em>'s man observes that "British Muslims were strikingly absent from the conference", which really shouldn't surprise anyone as we never heard of it until it was mentioned on the BBC's news site<\/a> and at Harry's Place<\/a>. Perhaps they didn't bother inviting us because they didn't want us spoiling the party? Islam is, after all, considerably better-established here than it is in Spain, and the wolf doesn't go for a whole flock of sheep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Umm Zaid ([1], [2], [3]) and Izzy Mo have had some correspondence with Ray Hanania, one of the advisory board for the so-called Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism despite being a Christian (albeit an...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living_tradition"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-ks","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42743,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1268\/revisions\/42743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}