RTFA: http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=78524&ne…

Mar 19 - A new audio message allegedly from Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden appears on the internet.
The Al Qaeda leader threatens the European Union with grave punishment over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad recently re-published in the Danish media. Bin Laden says the cartoons are part of a “crusade” which he’s linked to Pope Benedict.

Fascinating video, apparently produced by Bin Laden. In it, he declares that Islam is the superior law, when compared with … well, I don’t know what he’s comparing it to. See, the situation is complicated… Bin Laden claims that laws governing speech don’t protect any speech that would violate the laws of Islam.

I suppose that in the United States, we have a British-style common law system that aggregates and synthesizes historical precedent. This is combined with federal, state, and local republics, whose representatives are subject to popular vote. Each element in this shared historical catalog legal precedents is traceable, ultimately to its philosophical roots, which may have originated several millennia prior. At first glance, it seems like speech laws originated centuries before Islam.

Of course, that’s not a satisfying reason to dismiss Bin Laden’s remarks. Bin Laden points out a number of moral failures of the political machine that runs the US, UK, EU, and others. By showing that the system contains contradictory elements, he concludes that the system is failed and, by default, is therefore inferior to Islam.

So, we have a political system that simultaneously:

1) condones free speech
2) commits massacres

On the basis of 2 being unquestionably wrong, Bin Laden concludes that the system is also wrong on point 1. From the US perspective, the big difference between 1 and 2 is that the “people” are generally in favor of 1, but the people are generally opposed to 2. I think most people want to change 2, but want to keep 1.

The battle over religious pictures has been fought before. It was called The Great Schism, which had its roots in Iconoclasm. If you don’t recognize the word, iconoclasm means “to ban pictures.” That’s right - a multi-century war was fought between the 8th and 11th centuries inside the Catholic Church, ending with the entire machine splitting in half. It started with pictures, and it started when someone took a hilarious, unnecessarily extreme stance towards those pictures.

On this basis, I conclude that this Bin Laden video is just another TROLL. The authenticity of this video hasn’t been confirmed by anyone I trust, so this might just be another state-sponsored prank. The very notion that images would be a greater problem than massacres is so stupidly extreme, it might as well have been said by Rush Limbaugh.

The video is designed to rile up a bunch of people who seem to care about speech, and who love to flame a troll. Conveniently, someone has been fanning the fires of a particularly viral stand alone complex: Anonymous.

…let me just say:

IT’S A TRAP.

DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

HERE BE DRAGONS.

RTFA: http://valleywag.com/360376/pakistan-bans-youtube-…

The Pakistani government caused a worldwide, two-hour-long YouTube outage on Sunday after it ordered Internet service providers to block the site. Reports suggest these two videos were responsible for the ban. The first animates the Danish cartoons which caused riots in 2005. The second is a trailer for Forbidden, a film which argues Islam is an inherently violent religion. Here’s that clip:

I have to admit that the lip syncing clip is totally funny. The other one strikes me as being fairly propagandistic, but I’m not big on censorship…

RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080214/wl_mideast_af…

BAGHDAD (AFP) -
Iraq’s government said on Thursday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is due in Baghdad on March 2 for the first visit ever by an Iranian president to the neighbouring country.

The announcement came shortly after Iraqi and US officials said that Tehran had asked for a delay in talks expected this week in Baghdad between the United States and Iran on the future of Iraq.

It’s called “Operation Chameleon.” Take an Islamic nation (Iraq), install a puppet ruler, alter the local religion to be more similar to neighbors (Iran), and bingo: your puppet looks just like your “enemies”. Next thing you know, your puppet is being wined and dined on Kish Island, and “this might be the start of something grand.”

RTFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incoherence_of_th…

The Incoherence of the Incoherence by Andalusian Arab philosopher Averroes (Ibn Rushd) (1126 - 1198) is an important work of philosophy in which the author defends Aristotelian philosophy within Islamic thought.
It was written in the style of a dialogue against al-Ghazali’s claims in The Incoherence of the Philosophers (Tahafut al-falasifa), which criticized Islamic Neoplatonic thought. Originally written in Arabic, The Incoherence of the Incoherence was subsequently translated into many other languages. The book is considered Averroes’ landmark; in it, he tries to create harmony between faith and philosophy.

RTFA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca

s an Islamic holy city in Saudi Arabia’s Makkah province, in the historic Hejaz region. It has a population of 1,294,167 (2004 census). The city is located 73 kilometres (45 miles) inland from Jeddah, in the narrow sandy Valley of Abraham, 277 metres (909 ft) above sea level. It is located 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Red Sea.
The city is revered by Muslims for containing the holiest site of Islam, the Masjid al-Haram. A pilgrimage to Mecca during the week of the Hajj is one of the Pillars of Islam, a sacred duty that is required of all able-bodied Muslims who can afford to go, at least once in their lifetime. People of other faiths are forbidden from entering the city.

I never knew you couldn’t enter the city if you weren’t Muslim - is this really true?