A motion tabled by a group of MPs, requesting the Federal Government to submit a bill to provide for the possibility of same-sex “marriages”, has been rejected by 110 to 26 votes in the Austrian National Assembly.
This shows once more that “homo-marriage” is neither inevitable nor unstoppable. Remarkably, however, there was no mention of this unsuccessful initiative, or of the vote against it, in any of the major media outlets in Austria…
Source: https://agendaeurope.wordpress.com
1- You can see clearly in this misTafsir of the Secular and Liberal Muslims an astonishing similarity with ISIS and other extremist groups with regards to the methodology they employed in reading the text of the Quran and Sunnah, clearly both used the same unacademic, out of context, cherrypicking and incomprehensive reading of the sacred texts. We can say either the liberals employed Tafsir Daeshiy or Daesh employed Tafsir Libraliy.
2- Ask any lay Muslim who actually have read the whole Quran, with technology they would easily quote you these three verses. Does these verses sound like a prohibition of rape? :
إِنَّكُمْ لَتَأْتُونَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّن دُونِ النِّسَاءِ ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ مُّسْرِفُونَ
“Verily, you practise your lusts on men instead of women. Nay, but you are a people transgressing beyond bounds (by committing great sins).” (7:81)
أَئِنَّكُمْ لَتَأْتُونَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّن دُونِ النِّسَاءِ ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ تَجْهَلُونَ
“Do you practise your lusts on men instead of women? Nay, but you are a people who behave senselessly.” (27:55)
أَتَأْتُونَ الذُّكْرَانَ مِنَ الْعَالَمِينَ وَتَذَرُونَ مَا خَلَقَ لَكُمْ رَبُّكُم مِّنْ أَزْوَاجِكُم ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ عَادُونَ
“You go in unto the males of the ‘Alamin (mankind), and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your wives? Nay, you are a trespassing people!” (26:165-166)
3- The wife of Lut a.s and the people of the city were punished due to their complicity and tacit approval of the crimes, it is that simple, really.
4- The word ‘transgression’ (عادون and مسرفون) in the verses encompasses both sexual and non-sexual sins which includes rape as well as consensual sodomy and lesbianism. There is no evidence whatsoever to exclude consensual sodomy from the transgression of the people of Lut a.s, in the contrary, the textual, thematic as well as semantic evidences actually point to it as being one of the main reason that led to their destruction.
وَلُوطًا إِذْ قَالَ لِقَوْمِهِ أَتَأْتُونَ الْفَاحِشَةَ مَا سَبَقَكُم بِهَا مِنْ أَحَدٍ مِّنَ الْعَالَمِينَ إِنَّكُمْ لَتَأْتُونَ الرِّجَالَ شَهْوَةً مِّن دُونِ النِّسَاءِ ۚ بَلْ أَنتُمْ قَوْمٌ مُّسْرِفُونَ
“And (remember) Lut (Lot), when he said to his people: “Do you commit the worst sin such as none preceding you has committed in the ‘Alamin (mankind and jinn)?
“Verily, you practise your lusts on men instead of women. Nay, but you are a people transgressing beyond bounds.” (7:80-81)
5- The liberals were known to oppose literal reading of texts, but in this case it appears that they will only accept the criminal status of sodomy when there is a clear cut prohibition laid down in a verse with an explicit description of the act. Again, Tafsir Daeshy at work.
Source: Noor Deros
HANOI, VIETNAM — As U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Ted Osius deals with geopolitical concerns like China’s island-building efforts in the South China Sea. But the personal can also be political when Osius introduces his husband, Clayton Bond, and speaks of their adopted children.
“We are here to celebrate family. Family is acceptance. Family is love,” Osius told a cheering throng at a U.S.-sponsored festival last week to promote the cause of gay civil rights across Southeast Asia.
With the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans the last major outstanding case to be decided this term by the U.S. Supreme Court, some gay rights activists are saying that even a defeat would do little to slow the global momentum of their cause in part because of Obama administration policies — and diplomats like Osius.
As a same-sex couple with children in diapers, Osius, 54, and Bond, 38, are in the vanguard of the civil rights movement known as LGBT — shorthand for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
The Obama administration has pressed the LGBT cause internationally since a 2009 speech by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she declared “gay rights are human rights.”
While an anti-gay backlash has grown in the Arab world, Russia and many other nations, the cause of gay rights has made strides globally that once seemed implausible. Voters in Ireland, a Catholic nation, recently endorsed same-sex marriage. Osius is pressing for greater LGBT acceptance in Vietnam, where the first gay pride parade took place four years ago.
Two years ago, the authoritarian government here decriminalized same-sex unions and is now considering broader LGBT issues. The nation has proven receptive to the ambassador’s unconventional family, said activist Le Quang Binh, director of the Institute of Social Studies, Economics and Environment.
“Their beautiful family strikes down many stigmas,” Binh said. “They excite many people, especially youth, to accept differences and respect other people’s choices and rights. Above all they inspire LGBT communities for fight for their rights.”
Osius, a career foreign service officer who helped open the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi in 1995 and is fluent in the language, is one of six openly gay ambassadors appointed by Obama, including one as a special envoy for human rights of LGBT persons. That’s five more gay ambassadors than the one each who served under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Of the current six, all but Osius were political appointees from outside the foreign service.
Osius also championed gay rights within the State Department. When he entered the foreign service in the mid-1980s, the discovery of homosexuality would result in the revocation of security clearances. Many careers had been ruined before Osius and some colleagues founded a group known as Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies. In 1993, the State Department dropped discriminatory policies while, with greater attention, the Clinton administration applied the “don’t ask, don’t tell” mantra to the military.
Change came in fits and starts. When Clinton nominated Hormel Foods heir James Hormel as envoy to Luxembourg, Republican senators angrily refused to consider him, and Hormel ultimately assumed the post on a recess appointment. A few years later, when openly gay career diplomat Michael Guest was named ambassador to Romania, gays were impressed that then-Secretary of State Colin Powell introduced Guest’s partner with the respect accorded a spouse.
But when Guest retired in 2007, he pointedly criticized Powell’s successor, Condoleezza Rice, on the issue of benefits for same-sex couples. Guest said he “felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family– and service to my country.”
It was at a Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies gathering in 2004 that Osius first met Bond, who had come out a few years earlier at age 24. Two years later, they were married in Canada.
While Osius has a broad portfolio of concerns, Bond, who is on leave from the State Department and is working toward a law degree, has assumed the role of unofficial LGBT ambassador.
Their family reflects diversity in other ways: Osius is white, Bond is African-American and their 19-month-old son and 3-month-old daughter are Latino.
The children are biological siblings. Bond said they were adjusting to life with an infant son when they received word that the boy’s birth mother was again pregnant and wondering if they’d consider a second child.
Bond said they hope to set an example. On a recent day at the U.S. ambassador’s official residence in Hanoi, he proudly watched as workmen replaced the familiar signage on foyer restrooms from men and women to a new symbol for “gender neutral” — an image that depicts a figure divided vertically with a skirt on one side and pants on the other.
“It makes me so happy,” Bond said. “This is all about affirming people’s dignity.”
Source: www.mcclatchydc.com
LYON/SOUSSE/KUWAIT CITY — Terrorists carried out attacks in Tunisia, Kuwait and France yesterday (June 26), leaving a bloody toll on three continents with at least 63 dead, and prompting new concerns about the spreading influence of jihadists.
Tunisia was rocked by a brazen attack, when a gunman opened fire with his Kalashnikov at a beach resort in Sousse, killing at least 37 people, and wounding 36 others. He was killed by security forces.
It was the second major terrorist attack on the country’s vital tourism industry this year.
The Sousse attack comes after three Islamist gunmen killed more than 20 people, almost all of them tourists, in a mass shooting at the National Bardo Museum in Tunis in March.
The motive and identity of the attacker were not immediately clear. But Tunisian authorities have struggled to suppress a small but violent hard-line Islamist insurgency that has sprung up in the years since the Arab Spring political upheavals in 2011.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for an explosion at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait City. At least 25 people died and more than 200 were wounded in the suicide bomb attack.
Worshippers were kneeling in prayer when the bomber walked into the Imam Sadeq Mosque and detonated explosives, destroying the walls and the ceiling. More than 2,000 people were praying in the mosque.
After the attack, ISIS said in a statement posted on social media that it had targeted a “temple of the rejectionists” — a term it generally uses to refer to Shiites, whom it regards as heretics.
A tiny, wealthy oil exporter, Kuwait has been largely insulated from the mayhem in the region, and open tension between Sunnis and Shiites is not common.
But the assault in Kuwait City resembled others launched by ISIS recently on Shiite mosques in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, prompting many to believe that ISIS is seeking to incite a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shiites.
The day of horror began in France, where a man stormed an American-owned industrial chemical plant in the town of Saint-Quentin-Fallavier near the city of Lyon, decapitated one person and tried unsuccessfully to blow up the factory. Two people were also injured during the attack.
Speaking from a European Union summit in Brussels, French President Francois Hollande described the incident as a terrorist attack and said all measures would be taken to stop any future strikes on a country still reeling from Islamist assaults in January.
France has been on high alert since January after attacks against the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, a kosher grocery store and a policewoman that left 20 people dead in the Paris region, including three Islamic extremist attackers.
A car rammed the factory gate and ploughed into gas canisters, touching off an explosion. A decapitated body and flags with Arabic writing were found at the entrance. The severed head at the factory’s entrance appeared to be an echo of the Islamic State’s practice of beheading prisoners and displaying their heads for all to see.
French security officials say the man whose severed head was found hanging at the gate of the factory has been identified as a local businessman, who might have been the attacker’s employer. He is believed to have been killed before the explosion.
One of the attackers, who is known to French intelligence services and had links with Salafists – a fundamentalist doctrine within Sunni Islam, was arrested. His wife was also taken in by the authorities while authorities were questioning at least one other suspected accomplice.
There was no immediate indication that the three attacks were coordinated. But the strikes came at roughly the same time, and just days after the Islamic State called for such operations during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
“It appears to be an effort to launch and inspire a wave of attacks across three continents, reminiscent of Al Qaeda’s simultaneous multiple attacks of the past,” said Bruce O Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who is a counterterrorism expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“The Kuwait operation is especially dangerous, as this is the Islamic State’ first operation in a gulf state,” Mr Riedel said in an email the New York Times. “The others will be deeply alarmed,” he added, referring to member countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council.
While investigations continued in each of the countries, the quick succession of the attacks raised the possibility that the Islamic State, which has seized control of territory in Iraq and Syria, has successfully inspired sympathisers to plan and carry out attacks in their own countries.
“Muslims, embark and hasten toward jihad,” said the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Mohammed Adnani, in an audio message released earlier this week. “O mujahedeen (guerrilla fighters) everywhere, rush and go to make Ramadan a month of disasters for the infidels.”
United States intelligence and counterterrorism officials were scrambling yesterday (FRI) to assess the connections, if any, between the attacks in France, Kuwait and Tunisia. Officials said that if the assessment found that the attacks were linked, officials would seek to determine whether the Islamic State had actively directed, coordinated or inspired them.
Source: www.todayonline.com
SINGAPORE: The quality of life for the Malay-Muslim community in Singapore has “improved tremendously” compared to 50 years ago, Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs Dr Yaacob Ibrahim said on Friday (Jun 26).
“Malays are now homeowners, we have a better educated population, wealth has been increasing in the Malay-Muslim community and we collected more ‘zakat’ last year compared to previous years,” he said to reporters at a Mendaki house visit.
“By and large, the state of affairs of the Malay-Muslim community here is quite good.”
Dr Yaacob, who is also the Minister of Communications and Information, was responding to comments made by former Malaysian law minister Zaid Ibrahim in his blog.
On Wednesday, Mr Zaid wrote that he couldn’t “wait for Malays (in Malaysia) to be like Singaporean Malays”, saying that the latter enjoyed a “clean and transparent system of government and a good and fair housing policy, on top of reaping the benefits of the modern advanced economy that is Singapore”.
Mr Zaid said he meant for the post to clarify a tweet he had posted earlier, responding to former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s criticism of current PM Najib Razak.
“I think the most important thing for me as a member of the Malay-Muslim community is to be thankful for what we have in Singapore,” Dr Yaacob said.
While the community does have its challenges, the important thing is to figure out how to go forward, he added.
“We need to preserve what we have and maintain the standards that we have lived by to ensure that the succeeding generations can also enjoy a higher quality of life, for themselves and for their children,” he said, citing values such as meritocracy and the absence of corruption.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com