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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Though long, I admit, these Harper's excerpts blew my mind. The link itself to Harper's page is much longer than the excerpts. Per agreement with Laury, I link to my message board for really long ones, but these little sound bytes from Harper's seemed to belong together in one post. As I read through there Harper's excerpts, at times, I grew suspicious that they were not factual news items, but some sad attempt at humor. Once or twice, I was laughing almost to tears, which I am ashamed to admit, since the events are no laughing matter. I could not resist modifying one item with an untruth. The excerpt about Egypt attempting to reduce noise during call to prayer DID NOT say that they text messaged the call to prayer to everyone's cell phone. I wickedly added that part. What they really did was designate one mosque/minaret in the neighborhood rather than have every mosque make the call, with antiquated temperamental loudspeaker systems.

P.S. If you google on TANCREDO MECCA you will find many pages about the notion of nuking the Kaaba.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Tancredo

Sitaram may possibly be one of the first to discuss the notion of nuking Mecca on the Internet.

You can easily see from my posts in 1999 why I am now intrigued by the articles on Tom Tancredo.

Take a look at the page I posted on the uncanny date of 9-22-99

at http://www.sitaram.0catch.com/page163.htm entitled "Emergency, Dial 911",

and then look at the previous page 162, entitled
The Destruction of the Ka'ba

Hadith indicates Mohammed wanted to dismantle Kaaba.

Translation of Sahih Bukhari

Volume 1, Book 3, Number 128:

Narrated Aswad:

Ibn Az-Zubair said to me, "Aisha used to tell you secretly a number of things. What did she tell you about the Ka'ba?"

I replied, "She told me that once the Prophet said, 'O 'Aisha! Had not your people been still close to the pre-Islamic period of ignorance (infidelity)! I would have dismantled the Ka'ba and would have made two doors in it; one for entrance and the other for exit."

The paperback entitled "The Sayings of Muhammed" (ISBN 0-88001-641-8), translated by Neil Robinson, (Ecco Press), has on page 27 a fascinating saying of "prophet" Muhammed concerning the Kaaba:

"The person who destroys the Kaaba will be "Old Thin Legs", an Abyssinian."

(When Sitaram read this, he had visions of someone writing "Old Thin Legs" on the side of a missle, just as the Israeli children recently wrote on missles aimed at Lebanon.)

(excerpt from page 162)

I found this post the other day on another message board, written by someone that I do not know. This post illustrates several things. Firstly, it illustrates some of the historical events which are at play in the minds of an ever increasing number of people. Secondly, it illustrates the lightning speed (or electronic speed I should say) with which slogans, ideas and concepts travel in the internet. Today, such thoughts are on somemones message board. But, next month, next year, such thoughts have travelled around the world many times and have been transmuted and refined, and are now on some General's desk in some nations Strategic High Command. (beginning of excerpt from message board post):

They can criticize and degrade other faiths but we can't even question what we observe in history or how we suffer through this history. In their judgment, Aurangajeb destroying Visveswara temple or a conquering invader putting a Sivalingam as a step in a mosque, these are noble deeds. They have no understanding (or don't care) how important Visveswara temple in Varanasi is to Hindus just as Mecca is to them. But we just have to put up with it because we belong to a faith they don't consider real.

They destroyed thousands of mandirs, temples, synagogues, and churches over the centuries. I think that destruction of the Kaaba AND Mecca would be the HIGHEST FORM OF POETIC (Karmic) JUSTICE. Perhaps the free world should train their missles at the Kaaba in Mecca. The total destruction of Mecca and the Kaaba would be the most decisive blow that the free world could deliver in an all out war. Even if the free nations ultimately lost the war, the Kaaba could never be replaced, and the so-called "invoilable place of worship", would be forever destroyed. Then future generations of that religion would be forced to evolve and change, just as Judaism changed after the destruction of their one and only temple in Jerusalem by the Roman Titus (under Vespasian) in 70 C.E.

Fiction has a strange way of becoming fact. Fantastic science fiction tales from the 19th century, telling of men walking upon the moon, are no longer seen as fantastic.

===============
I just now googled on Iran praying 3 times and found this interesting link:

http://www.harpers.org/Islam.html

Religion helps us explore the really important questions in life!

The most bizzare news item at that link:

Jun 3 In Baquba the heads of 8 Sunni men were found in Dole banana boxes.[Indian Express][Reuters]»

May 13 In Kenya pilgrims were traveling to Mombasa to see a miraculous tuna with a Koranic verse inscribed into its scales. "God," reads the tuna, "is the greatest of all providers."[AFP via Yahoo! News]»

May 10 A fight broke out in the lobby of Iraq's parliament building after a cell phone played a Shiite ringtone.[Reuters]»

Mar 16 In the Netherlands organizers were planning to encourage tolerance by holding a soccer game matching homosexuals against Muslims. Gay Muslims, said organizers, will be able to choose which team they will join.[Seattle PI]»

Feb 27 In France far-right groups were criticized for serving pork soup to the poor with the intent of discriminating against observant Muslims and Jews. "We are all pig eaters!" chanted a crowd of soup activists. "We are all pig eaters!"[The New York Times]»

Apr 4 In Mecca, a man stabbed his father to death after the father threatened to tattle on the man for not praying.[Arab News]»

In Volgograd, Russia, officials closed the city newspaper after it published a cartoon that showed Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, and Buddha watching TV together. (I hope they weren't watching "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy"

A judge ruled that it was illegal for the Bush Administration to continue to imprison several Chinese Muslims at Guantánamo Bay. Nine months ago a tribunal determined that the prisoners in question were not actually enemy combatants, but U.S. law will not allow them to be sent to China because China persecutes Muslims, and no other country wants the prisoners. The judge also noted that he had no power to enforce his own ruling.[Boston.com]»

Woah! I never saw THIS before: Jul 18 U.S. Congressman Tom Tancredo (R.-Colo.) said he did not advocate bombing Mecca, but did not want to rule out the possibility.[Al-Jazeera]»

Jun 28 A fourth American soldier in Iraq converted to Islam.[Watching America]»

Apr 29 Egypt was planning to cut down on noise pollution in Cairo by stopping individual calls to prayer from the city's four thousand mosques; instead, the call to prayer will be text messaged to all cell phones.[BBC News]»

The Vatican warned Roman Catholic women not to marry Muslims.»

Apr 15 The Spanish government said that the bombers in Madrid sold hash and ecstasy and drank holy water from Mecca.»

Mar 26 A lamb was born in Hebron with "Allah" spelled out in Arabic on its flank; the lamb's owner said the animal was born on the day Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was assassinated. Some people claimed they could see the word "Muhammad" spelled out on the lamb's other side.»

Jan 22 Saudi Arabia's highest-ranking cleric said that women's rights are anti-Islamic.»

Jul 27 The Malaysian government decreed that a man may divorce his wife via text message; under Islamic Sharia law men are allowed to divorce their wives by uttering the word "talaq" ("I divorce you") three times.»

Islamic militants cut the noses off six Hindus in Kashmir. »

Islamic militants disguised in Indian army uniforms executed 24 Hindus in Kashmir after ordering them to line up next to their homes. The victims included two young girls aged four and two. »

The Islamic Cultural Center of Dublin, Ireland, announced that it will oversee the translation of the Koran into Gaelic. »

In Nigeria, an Islamic court ordered that a man who cut off his wife's leg because he believed she was cheating on him must have his own leg cut off without anesthesia. »

President Vladimir Putin of Russia asked Pakistan to please stop funding Islamic terrorists. »

More than 200 people were killed in rioting by Nigerian Muslims opposed to the Miss World pageant after a newspaper suggested that the Prophet Muhammad would have married one of the contestants if he were alive today. Churches in Kaduna were burned and armed youths attacked people suspected of being Christian; the local governor threatened to shoot rioters on sight. »

The novelist Michael Houellebecq went on trial in France for saying that Islam is “the most stupid religion.” »

(see http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=109473 )

A Secret Service agent admitted writing, “Islam is evil, Christ is King,” on a Muslim prayer calendar while searching the home of a man accused of entering the country with counterfeit cashier's checks. »

Islamic radicals in Indonesia were roaming around looking for Americans to kill.»

Lashkar-e-Jabar, a militant Islamic group in Kashmir who last month threw acid on two unveiled women in Srinagar, announced that henceforth unveiled Muslim women would be shot; Hindu and Sikh women should also wear their traditional garb, the group said, to distinguish themselves from Muslim women, to prevent mistakes.»

In Nigeria, an Islamic court refused to allow a woman to divorce her husband because his penis was too large.»

Singapore's highest Islamic authorities declared that Muslim men, who can divorce their wives by stating “I divorce you” three times in quick succession, may not do so via cell phone text messages.»

An Iranian court sentenced several people, including a prominent journalist, to long prison terms for attending a conference in Germany that was deemed “un-Islamic” because a bare-armed woman danced there and a male protestor took off his clothes.»

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