Vanderbilt chaplain agrees that homosexuals should be killed

As a graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School, I know that the university generally and its religion departments specifically fully embrace conceptually and practically gay rights. The teachings of the Jewish and Christian scriptures that say that homosexual practice is sinful are either simply ignored or reinterpreted by the professoriate. This is a very strong institutional value of the university.

So what are we alums to make of Awadh Binhazim, a Vanderbilt Muslim chaplain, who

publicly acknowledged what those of us who study shariah Islamic law know..., when pressed on whether or not shariah Islamic law requires the death penalty for homosexuals, asserted that yes, it does. Furthermore, he stated: "I don’t have a choice as a Muslim to accept or reject teachings."

The video:



Here is Vanderbilt's position on the controversy:

A recent forum at Vanderbilt University has generated questions about the university's stances on discrimination and free speech.

The "Common Ground: Being Muslim in the Military" event on Jan. 25 was part of Project Dialogue, a series at Vanderbilt dedicated to bringing diverse viewpoints to campus. It featured Awadh A. Binhazim, Muslim chaplain at Vanderbilt, and Army Reserve officer Capt. Darryl A Cox discussing issues military leaders face as they encounter and lead soldiers with Islamic beliefs.

During the question-and-answer session that followed the presentation, a student asked Binhazim about Islamic law and homosexuality. Binhazim answered the question with his interpretation of an Islamic law.

For clarification, Vanderbilt strives to bring many points of view on the issues of the day to campus for examination and discussion. This is the purpose of Project Dialogue.

No view expressed at a Project Dialogue or similar campus forum should be construed as being endorsed by Vanderbilt. The university is dedicated to the free exchange of ideas. It is the belief of the university community that free discussion of ideas can lead to resolution and reconciliation.

Vanderbilt is committed to free speech. It is equally committed to a policy of non-discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin or sexuality.

There has been some confusion as to Binhazim's role at Vanderbilt. He is the Muslim chaplain at Vanderbilt, a volunteer position. He is not a professor of Islam and is not associated with Vanderbilt University Divinity School. He has adjunct associate professor status at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in pathology. This position, which carries no teaching or research responsibilities, is also unpaid.

I cannot even imagine a Christian (or Jewish) chaplain saying gays should be executed. According to ReligiousTolerance.org, the only reference in the Jewish-Christian Bible prescribing death for homosexual acts is Leviticus 20:13. However,

Over the last few centuries, most Christians and Jews have rejected Leviticus 20:13. They no longer call on the death penalty for homosexuals. Only Christian Reconstructionists and a few Christian hate groups wish to revert to mass executions of gays and lesbians today.

Which is true. But I absolutely guarantee that the university would fire a Christian chaplain who denounced homosexuality as merely abominable. However, execution of homosexuals is a fact in Islamist countries, especially Iran. The photo at right is from the hanging of two teen-aged boys in the Islamic Republic in 2006. The Washington Post reported it was one of a series of photos.

The pictures show a dismally sad drama: Two young men, identified by the Associated Press as aged 16 and 18, are seen shackled in a prison van, sobbing; one of them is then seen being led to a scaffold; other shots show the boys together with dark-hooded men placing nooses around the boys' necks; and two final images show their bodies hanging from ropes, in a large public square, as a crowd watches from a distance.

What Chaplain Binhazim said was that this hanging, and countless others in Iran and other Islamic countries, was dictated by the basic tenets of Islam and that he agrees with those tenets. Hence, these executions are right and proper and unobjectionable.

You may recall that when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University in 2007, he said there are no homosexuals in Iran. Now we know why. He has them killed.

Let me be clear of my own position here. Asked a straightforward question, Mr. Binhazim gave an equally straightforward answer: This is what Islam says and I am bound by the tenets of Islam to accept it. I personally do not think he should be disciplined or fired for answering the question, even as bluntly as he did.

But there is not the slightest doubt in my Vanderbilt-alumnus mind that a Christian chaplain would indeed be disciplined by the university. So what Vanderbilt will do now is something of a defining question for the school. It prides itself on being tolerant and inclusive. Well, let's see just how tolerant and for what it shall be.

The whole forum lasted about 80 minutes. The co-speaker, Army Reserve Capt. Cox, is a Muslim convert. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, testified to Congress this week that the Defense Dept.'s "don't ask, don't tell" policy should be revoked and that gays should be allowed to serve openly. A good question for Capt. Cox would be, "As a Muslim officer, do you accept Islam's doctrine that homosexuality is an abomination?" There is no possible answer for him but yes, since textual literalism is a basic tenet of Islam. Then, "If you were directed by your superior commanders to participate in and publicly support a gay rights event, similar to such events already held by the military for ethnic minorities, would you comply?"

The entire forum may be viewed in eight parts starting here. Related coverage from Vanderbilt's campus newspaper:

Sparks fly at presentation on Muslims in the military

Vanderbilt 'Muslims in the Military' event goes viral

Finally, speaking of things Vanderbilti, Gen. David Petraeus will "engage in an open dialogue at Vanderbilt University about his actions as commander of the surge in Iraq and the role of U.S. forces overseas" at the university on March 1 (link). The event will be streamed live.

Update: comments turned on - please read comments policy.

Sit down before reading

When all the blood drains from your head when reading this, it would be better to be sitting down. Here's the intro graph.

That is the administration's own projections. Read the rest, if you can take it.

Breitbart didn't "rope-a-dope" the media

Glenn Reynolds linked to Jim Treacher's piece on The DC entitled, "Andrew Breitbart, master of the rope-a-dope," which says,

If you’re too young to remember Ali vs. Foreman — which most of the people I work with are — Ali used something he called the rope-a-dope to win. Basically, he let Foreman beat the snip out of him until Foreman got tired, and then Ali swabbed the canvas with him. “Rope-a-dope” has now become shorthand for any strategy where you let your opponent think he’s winning, as you bide your time until you’re ready to strike back.

Breitbart used this technique to great effect during the ACORN sting. He predicted exactly what his opponent was going to do — make statements of fact that they knew not to be true — and allowed it. Then he made his countermove by proving them wrong with hard evidence. He did this over and over, and they fell for it every time.

Well, no. I do remember Ali's rope-a-dope ploy and what Mr. Treacher does not. Ali was cheating while Foreman fought fair. The occasion was the "rumble in the jungle" fight held in Zaire (Congo) on Oct. 30, 1974.

Ali called the "technique" rope-a-dope because he literally used the ropes of the ring as part of the trickery. He had the fight organizers loosen them significantly. His tactic was indeed to let Foreman exhaust himself hitting on him, but not even Muhammed Ali wanted to take Foreman's jab straight to the head. So over and over again he backed up against the ropes, which were loosened so much he could darn near lie down on them. Foreman could not get a straight hit onto Ali except on his midsection, but Ali had probably the toughest abdomen in boxing at the time.

Other boxers have used the rope-a-dope tactic, of course, but without Ali's covert advantage. It's considered quite a risky thing to do since it involves, you know, getting pummeled in the hope of outlasting the opponent.

In politics, the term has come to mean opening an apparent advantage to one's opponents in the hope they won't see the trap laid for them. Chess players, of course, use this ploy all time, sacrificing pieces to gain positional advantage or to capture more valuable pieces in return. So in that sense I see what Mr. Treacher is trying to say about Andrew Breitbart. Rope-a-dope's inherent risk is worth taking only if one's opponent is highly predictable. And when it comes to the media, there's no problem there.

Say hello to Miss Ha-vah-ee

This very nice young lady is named Raeceen Anuenue Woolford. She hails from Honolulu, Ha-vah-ee. She competed last week in the Miss American contest but did not take home the crown.

Wait a minute, you say? What was her state? You heard me: Ha-vah-ee.

For some reason it has become an affectation to germanize the pronunciation of the state, as if some tourist from Stuttgart was speaking. This was a constant irritant from Saturday night's Miss America pageant's MC, Mario Lopez. "The next semi-finalist is Miss Hava-ee!"

Except it's not "Havaii." And while we're at it, Ha-wah-ee is not really correct, either. In the Hawaiian language, every syllable is pronounced. In fact, IIRC, no letter is silent. There was no written language used by the island chain's residents when Capt. James Cook visited there in 1778. He tried to write in English as closely as he could what the natives called the place, transliterating the name as "Owhyhee" or "Owhyee." The initial O is actually a type of definite article in the native language.

Written Hawaiian uses English letters, but only 12 of them, plus the 'okina, a symbol of a glottal stop, which is treated as a consonant.

Hawaiian is an official language of the state, the other being English, of course. To emphasize that all the letters are pronounced, many of the state's residents, especially those of native stock, write the name as Hawai'i and pronounce it, Ha-wah-ee-ee. This is very common pronunciation on local radio stations.

But in the time I spent in the state, I never heard anyone, whether of Western or Polynesian descent, pronounce the state's name as Ha-vah-ee.

The Aral Tradition

Yesterday and today rains let up a bit. All around Jerusalem, fruit trees are in bloom; in Efrat, the almond blossoms are incredible.

The Water Authority workers have finally returned from their two month strike so the effect of the this year's rains, thus far, could be measured in the Kinneret. It's been since December that the last reading of the Sea of Galilee's level was taken. At that time it was low. Special water conservation measures have been implaced and people are worried.

Then the rains. Both Arutz Sheva and Ha'aretz are reporting that the seasonal rains thus far have raised the Kinneret's level by 87 centimeters, 57 centimeters in January alone. The Kinneret is still 44 centimeters below the Red Line of 213 meters below sea level, but the additional rains and run off in February are expected to bring the current level higher still. And so, we pray for more rain.



It is in this context that Syria's renewed demands for Israeli unconditional surrender should be measured. Whenever the Syrian One Word Chorus GOLAN is belted out from the Geek of Damascus, the Israeli Two Word Refrain ARAL SEA should be given equal time.
The spawn of Soviet Miracles of Agriculture, the Aral Sea of your Rand McNally Atlas ain't no more. With its feedwaters diverted for agricultural five year objectives, the Aral Sea has been steadily disappearing. In 2006, the remaining waters were divided by a concrete dam that has stayed the judgment for the northern waters; but, has essentially abandoned the southern waters to its fate.

In terms of the region, it is a no brainer what will happen if Syria gets to dip into waters of the Sea of Galilee. At total water resourse profligate, Syria has mismanaged its inheritance to say nothing of its adherence to water treaties with its neighbor Jordan, which is certainly a concern for Jordanian farmers and bureaucrats alike.

As for convincing the Syrians about the historial and religious importance of the Kinneret, perhaps that's a job for Saint James of Plainsville. In the meantime, Israelis will continue to follow New Yorkers to say, "fehgeddabowdit".

Healthy insanity

Like Gerard, I survey the Washington, D.C., scene and try to get more cynical every day, but I just can't keep up. So some sanity reinforcers (not original with me):

1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they slow down.

2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice.

3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they want fries with that.

4. Put your garbage can on your desk and label it "in"

5. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.

6. In the memo field of all your checks, write "for very personal favors".

7. Finish all your paragraphs with, "in accordance with the prophecy."

8. Dontuseanypunctuationmarksorpsacesbetweenwordsandseeifreaderscanfigureoutwhatyourewriting

9. As often as possible, skip rather than walk.

10. Ask people what the time is. Laugh hysterically after they answer.

11. Specify that your drive-through order is "to go".

12. Sing along at the opera.

13. Go to a poetry recital and ask why the poems don't rhyme.

14. Put mosquito netting around your work area. Play a tape of jungle sounds all day.

15. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their party because you're not in
the mood.

16. Have your coworkers address you by your wrestling name, Rock Hard Kim.

17. When the money comes out the ATM, scream "I won!", "I won!" "3rd time this week!!!!!"

18. When leaving the zoo, start running towards the parking lot, yelling "run for your lives,
they're loose!!"

19. Tell your children over dinner, "Due to the economy, we are going to have to let one of you go."

The big job market exit

The story of prolonged unemploymen, click charts for larger view:

Megan McArdle:

George Mason University's Mercatus Center:

Lead researcher Veronique de Rugy explains,

Using data from the Obama administration’s website Recovery.gov and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this chart shows the month-over-month changes in the number of unemployed workers and members of the civilian labor force in tandem with the administration’s stimulus spending. By using dual measures of employment instead of simply examining monthly changes in unemployment, this chart captures the magnitude of job loss in America more completely – not only have workers lost their jobs, many more workers have also stopped looking for new employment altogether. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the month of December alone, 85,000 jobs were lost. In comparison, 661,000 people exited the labor force, or 7.7 times the amount of new unemployment.

Sounds Familiar

Although rated as "Sweden's most eco-friendly city" by CNN, Malmo has undergone some significant changes.

Massive immigration has made Malmö today one quarter Muslim, and stands to transform it into a Muslim majority city within just a few decades. One of the most popular baby names is not Sven, but Mohammed. Pork has been taken off some school menus. Want to learn to drive? You can attend Malmö's own "Jihad Driving School."

But despite Malmö's usually placid appearance, this experiment in multiculturalism has not gone well. In the Rosengaard section of Malmö, a housing project made up primarily of immigrants, fire and emergency workers will no longer enter without police protection.

Unemployment in Rosengaard is reported to be 70 percent. An immigrant-fueled crime wave affects one of every three Malmö families each year. The number of rapes has tripled in 20 years.

But Malmö has been so accommodating toward immigrant Muslims that a local Muslim politician, Adly Abu Hajar, has declared that "The best Islamic state is Sweden!"

These changes, of course, are having predictable consequences.

Don't ask Malmö's Jews to give the city the same glowing assessment. Jews who dare walk the streets wearing their yarmulkes risk being beaten up.

"It's true. Jews cannot walk the streets of Malmö and show that they're Jews," said Lars Hedegaard.

Hedegaard lives across the water from Malmö in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was a columnist for one of Denmark's largest newspapers. He says pro-Israel demonstrations in Malmö, like the ones during the fighting in Gaza earlier this year, were met with rocks, bottles and pipe bombs from Arabs and Leftists.

So, it should be no surprise when Ha'aretz reports that the Mayor of Malmo decries both Anti-Semitism and Zionism.

Swedish Jews are upset about comments made this week by the mayor of Malmo, who said anti-Semitism and Zionism were both forms of "unacceptable extremism," and urged local Jews to disassociate themselves from Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.

"These statements and other events in Malmo are making the Jewish community feel very uncomfortable and some people, especially the young, are leaving the city," George Braun, the president of the Jewish community in Gothenburg, about 250 kilometers from Malmo, told Haaretz. Ilmar Reepalu, mayor of Malmo, Sweden's third largest city, spoke in an interview published in a Swedish newspaper on Wednesday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day. "We accept neither Zionism nor anti-Semitism," Reepalu said. "They are extremes who put themselves above other groups, seeing others as something lesser."

Wow. What an original idea. Anti-Semitism is equated with Pro-Semitism. Where have I heard this before?

Can a Great-Russian Marxist accept the slogan of a national Great-Russian culture? Of course not! Such a person would need to be placed among the nationalists, and not among the Marxists. Our business is to struggle against the national culture of the Great-Russians, the culture of the ruling Black Hundreds and bourgeoisie. Our task is to develop, in a purely international spirit, and in close alliance with the workers of other countries, those seeds of a democratic and working-class movement which are contained in our history also.

The same applies to the most oppressed and down-trodden nation, the Jews. Jewish national culture is the slogan of the Rabbis and the bourgeoisie—the slogan of our enemies. But there are other elements in Jewish culture and in the whole history of Jewry. Out of some 10½ million Jews in the world, a little more than half live in Galicia and Russia, backward and semi-barbarian countries which keep the Jews by force in the position of an outlawed caste. The other half live in the civilised world, where there is no caste segregation of the Jews. There the great and universally progressive features of Jewish culture have made themselves clearly felt; its internationalism, its responsiveness to the advanced movements of our times (the percentage of Jews in democratic and proletarian movements is everywhere higher than the percentage of Jews in the general population).

Whoever directly or otherwise puts forward the slogan of national culture (however well intentioned he may be) is the enemy of the proletariat, the defender of the old and caste element in Jewry, the tool of the Rabbis and of the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, those Jewish Marxists who join up in the international Marxist organisations with the Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and other workers, adding their mite [sic] (both in Russian and in Jewish) to the creation of an international culture of the working-class movement, are continuing (in the teeth of Bundist separatism) the best traditions of Jewry, and struggling against the slogan of “national culture.”

Bourgeois nationalism and proletarian internationalism—here are two hostile and irreconcilable slogans, corresponding to the two great class camps throughout the capitalist world and reflecting two distinct policies—and, more than that, two philosophies—in the national question. By defending the slogan of national culture, and building upon it an entire plan and practical programme of so-called “cultural-national autonomy,” the Bundists in practice act as the propagators of bourgeois nationalism in the workers’ ranks.

The words of one V. Lenin, 1913. I guess Lenin forgot about the third half of the Jews who were living in the such parts of Terra Incognito like Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, or Ethiopia. I wonder what Lenin would say about Russia playing footsies with the Mullahs (Islamic Rabbis) at the expense of the proletariat who dwell in Iran.

Meantime, I sure would like to hear the thoughts of the Mayor of Malmo on Jihadism or even Sha'ria. Fair's fair, nu?

The market reacts

Last night President Obama promised a suspension of capital gains tax for small business and a temporary tax credit for new hiring or raising wages. Sounds great, eh? Here is how the markets reacted this morning:

Blue is the Dow, Yellow is S&P 500 index, Yellow is NASDAQ Composite

Remember, the Dow and the other major indices are futures markets. They are risk assessors. And the risk assessment to investment this morning is not good. There was no bounce to American businesses perceived by the market in response to the SOTU. Since the market moves in direct correlation to the buys and sells of institutional and individual investors, the collective futures prediction of enormous numbers of investors is extremely negative.

You may protest that the market began declining days ago. And so they did - in direct response to the punishment against banks that the president last night denied he was waging. The graph:

In just over one week the Dow has dropped almost six percent, the NASDAQ approaching seven.

Now a SOTU history quiz, all regarding post-WW2 presidents. What president said the following in a SOTU speech?

1."America has the greatest economic system in the world. Let's reduce government interference and give it a chance to work."

2. "To be successful, we must change our attitudes as well as our policies. We cannot afford to live beyond our means. We cannot afford to create programs that we can neither manage nor finance, or to waste our natural resources, and we cannot tolerate mismanagement and fraud."

3. "We here in Washington must move away from crisis management, and we must establish clear goals for the future, immediate and the distant future, which will let us work together and not in conflict." [I refer you to my previous posts that the government does not do crisis management, it does management by crisis.]

4. "First, the economy must keep on expanding to produce new jobs and better income, which our people need. ... Secondly, private business and not the Government must lead the expansion in the future."

5. "And we will also provide strong additional incentives for business investment and growth through substantial cuts in the corporate tax rates and improvement in the investment tax credit."

6. "However, again, we know that in our free society, private business is still the best source of new jobs."

For answers, click here and page down.

The Frontline

To add to the growing list of "local heroes", a Quick Chek clerk (say that ten times) in New Jersey called authorities because he noticed a guy wearing a bulky jacket and acting weirdly. Sure enough, the guy was loaded for wild boar; and in his room, he was prepared to take on Fort Drum.

Annie Jacobsen at Pyjama's Media has the following assessment:

The important player in this story, at least as far as winning the war on terror is concerned, is the Quick Chek clerk on Route 28. Like the Dutch filmmaker on NWA Flight 253 and the video clerk near Fort Dix, the clerk’s actions no doubt saved countless lives. Sad but true, the clerk gets an A+ for counterterrorism work well done. Long gone is the idea of John Doe being “the last line of defense” — the clerk, the filmmaker, and the video duplicator are increasingly finding themselves on America’s front lines.

If there is one lesson learned from the War on Terror in Israel it is simply it is the civilians who are the frontline and the authorities are the backup. In fact, that's what they do best--provide quick and effective backup (response) to unfolding situations. Until The Wall reduced incidence rate of characters like Lloyd Woodson from popping off, the prime targets were women, children, oldsters, youngsters, and folks standing about doing their daily chores. In a word, civilians.

That being the case, unlike business as usual, where the Front is somewhere else, North Americans can no longer free ride on the law enforcement industry to provide frontline protection. The Front is at the corner gas station, the local medical clinic, the mall, public transportation, or the bus stop. Like all Frontline personnel, the critical way of acting is also the correct way--recognize the situation and call for backup.

The critical question here is "If I don't do it, who will?" And that question leads to an important, and unintended, consequence. A civilian population with such resilience and critical awareness can only be an empowered polity. The days when Americans could choose "not to be involved" are over. Americans are involved whether they want to be or not.

Vigilance of this sort, moreover, is not wasted. That energy can be applied in a variety of settings. For example, Americans could begin to scrutinize the behavior of their elected officials at all levels of civil society with equal diligence. I mean, as long as Americans are becoming critically aware of their environment, they could easily turn their gaze to other odd behaviors in the public place.

In that case, something truly miraculous could emerge from all of this mess--then we would truly make a silk purse out of some pig's ear.