Abu Faris's blog

A number of Sudanese women, including non-Muslim Southerners, were arrested by police last week on charges that they violated the public dress code

Lubna Hussein, a journalist and a public information officer at the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) was one of nine young women taken by the Public Order Police (POP) [POP are the Sudanese equivalent of Saudi Arabia's notorious "morality police] on Sunday from a ballroom in an area east of Khartoum.

The only thing in common between all those taken into custody was that they were wearing trousers, she said.

Hussein said they found four young women ahead of them waiting for interrogation by a judge in Al-Sagana court.

Among the detained were four from Southern Sudan, three of whom were under the age of eighteen, she added.

I am a bit of a collector of what the 16th Century Humanist and Protestant Reformer, Sebastian Castellio described as the follies and vanities of theology. A rich source of ludicrous religious injunctions from Islam may be had at the "Islam Questions and Answers" site run by the Saudi shaykh, Muhammad Salih an-Munajid.

Now just when you thought it could not get any more absurd, the worthy shakyh discusses the permissibility of eating mermaids. He pontificates, inter alia:

"Many of the fuqaha’ mentioned mermaids and differed on the ruling concerning them. Some of them said that they are permissible (to eat) because of the general meaning of the evidence which says that whatever is in the sea is permissible. This is the view of the Shaafa’is and Hanbalis, and is the view of most of the Maalikis and of Ibn Hazm and others. And some of them regarded it as haraam because it is not a kind of fish. This is the view of the Hanafis and of al-Layth ibn Sa’d. "

The shaykh concludes:

After a while, one rapidly becomes accustomed to the painful fact that the internet is swarming with people, some of who are suffering from some fairly unpleasant personality disorders. Combine this with the other well-known fact that religions seem to equally be attractive to the sane and the clinically deranged alike; and one is left with the uncomfortable conclusion that if one is going to meet the loony online, it is most likely going to be during some sort of discussion about religion. Politics often acts as a similar magnet for the unhinged, offering boundless opportunities for paranoid personality disorders to manifest as conspiracy theories of one order or another. For this reason, for centuries perhaps, the unwritten rule of social interactions between strangers in England has been the ban on talk of politics or religion.

More news from Iran, at:

http://tehranbureau.com/

May 31, 2009 "CQ" May 28, 2009 --

Iran supplied U.S. diplomats with the location of Taliban military units in Afghanistan after the initial bombing campaign in the fall of 2001 failed to rout them, according to former officials in the George W. Bush administration.

The Islamic regime also gave the Bush administration "really substantive cooperation" on al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, at one point providing Washington with a list of 220 suspects and their whereabouts, said one official, former White House National Security Council Iran expert Hillary Mann Leverett.

Leverett said that in December 2002, after the U.S. gave Tehran the names of five al Qaeda suspects it believed were in Iran, the regime found two, which they delivered to the U.S. air base at Baghram, in Afghanistan.

But the budding relationship died on the vine.

Promoted to the front page

Any serious student of the Arabic language will want to own a copy of the illustrious "A New Arabic Grammar of the Written Language", by JA Haywood and H M Nahmad.

First published in 1962, it has been through two editions and numerous reprints since - but has never been out of print. It remains the core grammar for most university level Arabic courses in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the Anglophone world.

At some 700 pages long, it is a hefty tome; and given that it is an academic text it is very expensive to buy in hard copy. However, courtesy of Shaykh Google and a little time, I have tracked down a scanned copy to download. It may be viewed, or saved (in either doc or pdf format) from the following site:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/8907360/Haywood-Arabic-Grammar

Fatwa from 2003: Soccer is Forbidden Except When Played as Training for Jihad

One of the anti-soccer fatwas was published in full in Al-Watan on August 25, 2005. According to other sources it had been issued by Sheikh 'Abdallah Al-Najdi.

The fatwa declared that it is only permissible to play soccer when its rules are different than the accepted international rules. This was based on a hadith [Prophetic tradition] which forbids Muslims to imitate Christians and Jews. The fatwa read:

"1. Don't play soccer with four lines [surrounding the field], since this is the way of the non-believers, and the international soccer rules require drawing [these lines] before playing.

Promoted to the front page. Originally published on June 3, 2009

Over a hundred years ago and more, Winston Churchill, then a young man attached to Kitchener's army on its march through Sudan, perhaps sat close to where I now sit, close by the confluence of the White and Blue Niles, and listened as the Call to Prayer, drifts across the mighty river, from the far Omdurman shore, from out the Mosque of the Tomb of Muhammad Ahmed al-Mahdi.

Churchill was and is many things to many people - a brilliant war leader, a violent anti-socialist and union-buster, a political survivor and opportunist, a man of some principle and conviction... all of these things and more; but all agree, by God, he could write. He wrote the following appreciation of the Sudanese Mahdi, leader of the first successful liberation war against British colonialism. Perhaps Churchill sat close to where now I sit, close by the place where the two rivers meet and flow northwards to a still distant sea:

Promoted to the front page

"In June and July 2007, Waging Peace researcher Anna Schmitt conducted a three week fact-finding mission to Eastern Chad. The aim of the mission was to assess the humanitarian, human rights and security situation in the region and to collect testimonies from Darfuri refugees and Displaced Chadians.

While collecting testimonies from adults, women told Anna how their children had witnessed horrendous events when their villages were being attacked. This prompted Anna to talk to the children. She gave the children aged 6 to 18 paper and pencils and asked them what their dreams were for the future and what their strongest memory was.

Promoted to the front page

A prominent Saudi scholar [cough, splutter - Ed] warned youths studying abroad of using ethanol or other fuel that contains alcohol in their cars since they could be committing a sin, local press reported Thursday.

Shaykh Mohamed Al-Najimi, member of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, based his statement on a saying by the prophet that prohibited all kinds of dealings with alcohol including buying, selling, carrying, serving, drinking, and manufacturing, the Saudi newspaper Shams reported Thursday.

Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad would violate the prohibition if they used bio fuel, he said, since it “is basically made up of alcohol.”

Majimi stressed that his statement should not be considered an official fatwa, but is rather a personal opinion. He noted that this is an important issue that needs to be studied by the relevant religious bodies.