Don Singleton

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Do you smoke?

Still Smoking? Watch This

Friday, November 30, 2007

Stalking???

Talking about CNN using questions from members of Democratic campaigns and other Democratic supporters in the Republican You Tube debate, Todd Beeton from MyDD said To fan the flames, Michelle Malkin is doing her usual stalking job

STALKING???. Since when is using Google to do research defined as stalking?

on several of the questioners and has uncovered support for some of the Democratic candidates. God forbid!

Allowing partisans to ask questions is not the problem. Identifying them as undecided voters when they had decided, and or were not eligible to vote, is the problem.

Hat tip Danny Glover

But the most humorous response to CNN using plants to ask questions at the debate came from Jim Lynch who blogged In a cable television coup, the Home and Garden Network has landed the next presidential debate. It will be co-hosted by Martha Stewart and that irritating gardening guy with the goofy mustache.
“We heard about the large number of plants in the past two debates and realized that we would be the logical choice for the next forum,” a spokesman for the network announced.

“While plants can improve the curb appeal of any home and are simple to work with, it is best to learn from the professionals.”

“CNN and YouTube made a half-hearted attempt, but sometimes you just have to call a ficus a ficus,” concluded the spokesman.
Candidates will be invited to participate in denim and flannel. Question will be vetted by the Department of Agriculture.

Execute her

Guardian Unlimited reported Thousands of Sudanese, many carrying knives and sticks, have taken to the streets of Khartoum calling for the execution of British school teacher Gillian Gibbons, jailed over a teddy bear.... Some of the protesters, who one reporter at the scene said numbered as many as 10,000, carried clubs, knives and axes - but not automatic weapons, which some have carried at past government-condoned demonstrations, suggesting the rally was not organised by the government.

So when the government sponsors a demonstration people are armed with automatic weapons? Is that to help them get their point across, or to discourage counter demonstrations.

During the sermons, the Muslim cleric at Khartoum's main Martyrs Mosque denounced Gibbons, saying she intentionally insulted Islam but he did not call for protests.

Do you think the teacher called for them?

"Imprisoning this lady does not satisfy the thirst of Muslims in Sudan.

They seem very thirsty.

But we welcome imprisonment and expulsion," the cleric, Abdul-Jalil Nazeer al-Karouri, a well-known hard-liner, told worshippers. "This an arrogant woman who came to our country, cashing her salary in dollars,

Really? The currency is Sudan is the Sudanese pound and dinar, and the woman is a British subject, so I can see her being paid in British Pounds or Euros, but dollars?

teaching our children hatred of our Prophet Muhammad,"

The bear was named by a seven year old boy named Muhammad, who named it after himself. If you don't like the name of Muhammad being misused, why is it the most common name in the Islamic world?

he said.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Teddy Bear Teacher

FOXNews reported British teacher Gillian Gibbons was convicted of insulting Islam for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad and sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation from Sudan, one of her defense lawyers said Thursday.

That is certainly better than being executed, but she did not name the bear herself. A seven year old boy named Muhammad gave the bear HIS OWN NAME.

Ali Mohammed Ajab, of Gibbons' defense team, said she was found guilty of "insulting the faith of Muslims in Sudan"

Muslims seem to be offended very easily. I wonder if that means they have doubts about their own faith.

under Article 125 of the Sudanese criminal code, a lighter conviction than the original charge of inciting religious hatred. A charge later confirmed by a judge leaving the closed court session. "I feel this is very serious and very unfair," he told The Associated Press outside the courtroom. Ajab, who also works for the Khartoum Center for Human Rights, said the issue was raised by "hard-liners who are always trying to make some noise," in an apparent reference to religious conservatives. Ajab said his center would appeal the verdict, an opinion not shared by Gibbons' employer.

That is probably not a smart move, since the rape VICTIM that appealed got her sentence more than doubled

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Not Politically Correct

Talk about being Not Politically Correct

Hat Tip to Glenn Reynolds

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Quota for Muslims

Mansoor Ijaz wrote in csmonitor I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that "jihadism" is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today.

He is right.

He answered, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified.

You select cabinet secretaries based on the most qualified, not on a quota basis.

But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration."

Captain Ed blogged Ijaz, however, started off by doing exactly what he accuses Romney of doing -- playing identity politics. The presidential Cabinet includes only a small number of positions, and Ijaz wants Romney to commit to holding a position open for a Muslim, regardless of qualifications. Which position should this nameless Muslim take? Homeland Security? Defense? State? And what qualified candidates does Ijaz have for these positions?

As it turns out, Ijaz has someone in mind: himself. Ijaz spends four paragraphs talking about what a great candidate he himself would be, given his service to the nation. Nothing on his resume rises to the level of running the Pentagon, Homeland Security, or even the Department of the Interior. He would certainly make a good advisor to the FBI or the CIA, or perhaps the State department -- the kind of position Romney acknowledged as a possibility.

Ijaz also gives some indication that he didn't even understand his own question:

Imagine how a qualified American Muslim FBI director, sensitized to the genuine concerns among Arab and Muslim communities about civil rights violations, would be able to ensure that FBI actions and policies target the real bad guys, not communities as a whole.
If the communities would help root out the bad guys, there would be no need to target the entire community.

The FBI Director is not a Cabinet position. The FBI director reports to the Attorney General. Romney's answer doesn't rule out that kind of assignment, assuming -- once again -- that a Muslim has the qualifications for the job.

Romney should have emphasized that in his answer. The point in picking Cabinet officials should be to find the best people for the job, and had Romney emphasized that, he would have shown Ijaz as the small-minded questioner he was. Instead, Romney gave a direct answer in the same sense of identity politics that Ijaz used, and noted that in that kind of system, plenty of other minorities would have claim on Cabinet positions before Romney worked his way down to the Muslims, Sikhs, Laplanders, and Vietnamese.

Ijaz thinks he's skewered Romney for bigotry. Instead, he has only outed himself as a self-promoter and identity-politics obsessive.

Captain Ed blogged As it turns out, Ijaz left a few items out of his resume in the Christian Science Monitor in yesterday's essay. In 1997, the Washington Post reported Ijaz's involvement in presidential politics -- for the Democrats:
Mansoor Ijaz, a 35-year-old businessman, was precisely the kind of political activist the White House was seeking last year to help finance President Clinton's reelection campaign.

Wealthy and well-connected, Ijaz was more than willing to pitch in. By Election Day in November, he had raised $525,000 for the Democratic cause, including $250,000 from his personal funds and $200,000 donated by guests at a fund-raising reception for Vice President Gore at Ijaz's New York penthouse in September, according to Federal Election Commission records, White House documents and Ijaz.

Think Progress tries to spin this into racism on Romney's Part Religious Minority Candidate Mitt Romney Comes Out In Favor Of Religious Bigotry.... Note to Romney: As a Mormon running for President, you’re going to need to come up with a better justification for religious bigotry against Muslims.

According to the CIA World Factbook (which uses 2002 numbers), Mormons comprise just 2 percent of the U.S. population, while Jews and Muslims comprise 1 percent each. Based on 2001 numbers, there were 2.8 million Mormons and 1.1 million Muslims in the United States. Surveys since that time indicate that the number of Muslims may have eclipsed the number of Mormons living in the U.S.

What does that have to do with anything?

Moreover, according to a recent Pew survey, Americans are about as familiar with Mormonism as they with Islam:

They know no Morman has flown planes into buildings to kill people,

Think Progress blogged Romney falsely spins his anti-Muslim bigotry.

After facing intense scrutiny for his bigoted comments about Muslims serving in public office, Mitt Romney attempted to “clarify” his position during a campaign stop in Florida by saying he opposes religious quotas:
It’s something I rejected, number one. And number two, point out that haven’t given a lot of thought to the people I would have in my Cabinet. I don’t have boxes I check off in terms of ethnicity, and it’s not that I need a certain number of people representing ethnic groups. Instead, I would choose people based on their merits… I’m open to having people of any faith, ethnic group. But they would be selected based on their capacity and capabilities and what they could bring to the Administration, but I don’t choose people based on checking off a box.
In his spin, Romney conveniently forgets his original argument that a Muslim shouldn’t be given a cabinet position “based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population.” As Matthew Yglesias points out, the original “account of Romney’s answer makes it seem as if Romney has no problem in principle with the idea of a Muslim quota,” but he “just doesn’t think there are enough American Muslims to justify a cabinet post.”

Over 1,500 Extremists Freed After Repenting

Arab News reported Saudi authorities have released more than 1,500 reformed extremists, who were detained on charges of embracing and spreading takfeer (the ideology that brands other Muslims who disagree with them as infidels).

What about the idealogy that we are all "People of the Book" (or ahl al Kitâb)
Surat Al 'Imran, 64 (Qur'an 3:64) says "O People of the Book! Let us rally to a common formula to be binding on both us and you: That we worship none but God; that we associate no partners with Him; that we erect not, from among ourselves, Lords and patrons other than God."
Did they mention that?

The extremists, under the guidance of the Ministry of Interior, had undergone lengthy counseling, according to Muhammad Al-Nujaimi, a member of the Counseling Committee and professor of comparative jurisprudence at the King Fahd Security College.... The suspects were largely confused about the meaning of jihad, which led to their believing in committing blind violence. They also viewed that the present Muslim rulers, scholars and public were infidels, and therefore demanded the establishment of a single Islamic state, said Al-Nujaimi.

I bet the major emphasis was on not killing current Muslim rulers.

“After several graded sessions with the committee, and having been convinced of their misguided vision, they renounced their erroneous ideologies, including the concept of driving out all infidels from the Arabian Peninsula,” he said.

Does that mean that this no longer applies.

The committee first evaluates the personality and the ideological crisis suffered by the suspect, and then decides on how to clean his mind of the mistaken impressions, said Al-Nujaimi.

How about a prefrontal lobotomy?

The committee in the later stages of counseling holds several sessions on the concept of obedience to a ruler, loyalty, conditions for baiat (declaration of allegiance to a ruler)

Again I bet the emphasis was on that point.

and the mistaken concept of murder and violence without guilt.

Murder and violence are ok, but they should feel sad about it.

Monday, November 26, 2007

Riots break out in Paris suburbs

BBC NEWS reported Youths

Youths? Were theyMethodist Youths? Hindu Youths? Buddist Youths? Oh, yes, Muslims again.

have damaged police stations, shops and cars in two Paris suburbs, following the deaths of two teenagers whose motorbike hit a police car.... Police sources said the two were riding a stolen mini-motorcycle, and that neither was wearing a helmet. The police car was on a routine patrol and the teenagers were not being chased by police at the time of the accident, police said. The collision wrecked the front of the car and smashed the windscreen.

The "youths" crash a stolen motorbike into the front of a police car, and blame the police? Why? for being there for them to crash into?

Witnesses have accused the police of leaving the scene and of preventing local people from trying to help the youngsters as they lay in the road.

If they left the scene how could they have prevented anyone from doing anything. If you are going to blame them, pick one thing.

The brother of one of the victims has called for the officers involved to be convicted.

Of what? Being in the way when two "youths" on a stolen mini-motorcycle crashed into them?

... A brother of one of the dead teenagers, Omar Sehhouli, said the rioting "was not violence but an expression of rage".

Maybe it was both, a violent expression of rage. But do they not teach "youths" how to express rage without violence?

Edwards Offers Heating Plan

NYT reported Former Senator John Edwards outlined a proposal yesterday in New Hampshire to lower the cost of heating oil, increase regulation of oil companies and promote energy efficiency....

Give the government more control. That is a typical Democratic solution. If that was a good idea, then socialism would have resulted in Europe being a major world power (it isn't), second only to Communist countries (and even Europe is in better economic condition than they are).

To ease the financial burden for low-income families, Mr. Edwards, a Democrat from North Carolina, said Congress should tap into its heating and oil reserves

Absolutely NO. Those reserves are for use in a time of war or major national disaster. Not to buy a politician some votes by temporarily driving down prices.

and increase subsidies to the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program....

Typical Democratic solution, Let the Government pay for it (with money it steals from the Rich.

He also spoke out against oil companies, saying they exerted too much control and should be investigated more fully by the Justice Department. “We need to find out if these oil companies are gouging the American people, because we know they’re making a lot of money,”

But first we need to investigate trial lawyers like Mr Edwards to find out if they are gouging the Judicial system, because we know they're making a lot of money.

Mr. Edwards said. “We need to stop subsidizing the big oil companies’ profits with taxpayer money.”

Which we do not do.

He proposed increasing financial assistance for a program to winterize homes, putting it on a $500 million annual budget, and supporting emergency loans for families to pay heating bills.

You don't borrow money to pay for a regular (annual) expense. You borrow money to make capital improvements, or because of an unexpected one time occurance like a major one-time destructive event or a major illness.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Nooses

MyFox Kansas City reported Travis Grigsby loves playing drums, but he and his friend Alex Coday weren't able to play for two weeks after they were suspended. It started after the band's performance at a football game. Some kids on the drum line said they were talking about the best knots to use to tie up the drum equipment. "Someone asked if anybody knew how to tie a noose and Travis did admit he knew how to tie a noose," Kim Grigsby said. Travis' mom said her son is almost an Eagle Scout, he knew how to tie it, but told his friends he wouldn't because you could get in trouble for that. Later, a black student on the drum line told the teacher he was offended. "Travis was accused of using a racial slur for saying the word 'noose.' Then he was suspended for 10 days," Kim said.

Betsy Newmark blogged They weren't talking about nooses to lynch black people, but a noose to tie a knot. But who cares? Someone was offended so suspend the kids.... Has the administration given students a list of words that are verboten? Oops, perhaps verboten is forbidden because it reminds people of Germans which makes them think of Nazis which makes them think of the Holocaust and thus, could offend people. Once you start allowing people to find offense at certain connections that they're making in their minds, the way is open to all sorts of charges that someone somewhere is offended.

No one has a right to never be offended. This is as stupid as Muslims rioting because of some stupid cartoons.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Massachusetts Faces a Test on Health Care

NYT reported As the Democratic presidential candidates debate whether Americans should be forced to obtain health insurance, the people of Massachusetts are living the dilemma in real time.

This the plan both Hillary and Romney are proposing

A year after Massachusetts became the only state to require that individuals have health coverage, residents face deadlines to sign up or lose their personal tax exemption, worth $219 on next year’s state income tax returns. More than 200,000 previously uninsured residents have enrolled, but state officials estimate that at least that number, and perhaps twice as many, have not.

And since insurance will cost a lot more than $219 they may not.

Those managing the enrollment effort say it has exceeded expectations. In particular, state-subsidized insurance packages offered to low-income residents have been so popular that the program’s spending may exceed its budget by nearly $150 million.

That again is to be expected. The ones signing up are the subsidized ones, and even that subsidy is busting the budget.

But the reluctance of so many to enroll, along with the possible exemption of 60,000 residents who cannot afford premiums, has raised questions about whether even a mandate can guarantee truly universal coverage. Additional concerns have been generated by projections that the state’s insurers plan to raise rates 10 percent to 12 percent next year, twice this year’s national average.

This to be expected. If they have to appeal to people spending their own money, they keep prices low, but if it is a government mandate, there is no incentive to keeping prices low.

That would undercut the plan’s secondary goal of slowing the increase in health costs.

Class Stagnation

Comments from Left Field whined Not that this comes as a surprise, exactly. Anybody who’s been paying attention knows that the American middle class has been losing ground for a quarter century because the wealth has all been moving to the top while the responsibility has been moving toward the bottom.

As I commented over there, "There is nothing to prevent people who wants to make the effort to improve themselves from climbing up the ladder. People just want to sit and whine for the government to do it for them."

But there are a couple of surprises in the Pew Research study released this week. The first is that the study was a collaboration between 5 different think tanks, three conservative, one liberal (the ratio you’d more or less expect to find), and one non-partisan - Pew, that led the study. And there you have it - the bogus Bushian concept of the “Ownership Society” in all its furtive glory applied to blacks by a black historian of black culture. Of all people, shouldn’t he know better? I mean, the signal that property ownership doesn’t mean all that much

If you would rather pay for an appartment or a rent house, and not have those payments go to home ownership, you have that right. Nothing forces you to be smart.

in the face of racism and classism is in the very “subprime mortgage debacle” he references. The main targets of the scam were the poor, the old, the sick, and minorities, preferably all four at once.

No only the ignorant to stupid to read the contract, or who came from a public school program that did not teach them how to read.

“Home ownership”, whether getting or keeping, was the bait for the trap, the goat tied to a tree that entices starving villagers into rifle range to be slaughtered by their enemies.

Anyone that signed a sub prime mortgage without reading it tied themselves to the tree.

Home ownership is not, of course, a Bad Thing. But neither is it the automatic panacea for racism and classism absent other criteria like economic and social justice. As a stepping stone out of poverty and/or inequality, it is in fact more or less useless without them. It may work, it may not. Its efficacy is determined by circumstances, not itself, the most important of which is probably social mobility - the openness of any society toward upward economic movement by the lower classes, and - as the WaPo’s Eugene Robinson wrote in yesterday’s column, that door now carries a “Closed” sign.

Closed only to those not willing to expend the effort to improve themselves.

Global warming NOT Hell on Earth

The Australian reported As it is, the temperature projections (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) does come up with in its fourth and latest report range from a rise in the global average temperature by the year 2100 of 1.8C for its lowest emissions scenario to one of 4C for its highest emissions scenario, with a mean increase of slightly under 3C. The average annual temperature in Helsinki is less than 5C. That in Singapore is in excess of 27C, a difference of more than 22C. If man can cope with that, it is not immediately apparent why he should not be able to adapt to a change of 3C when he is given 100 years in which to do so.

And that assums they are right. If the weatherman has difficulty giving an accurate 5 day forecase, what makes you think a UN agency can accurately predict the weather 100 years from now?

Problems with Canadian Health Care

Pajamas Media reported Once a proud supporter of Canada’s social safety net, Heather Cook now wouldn’t mind seeing a little more free-market competition in her country. Maybe then she wouldn’t have to wait over a year to take her son to the doctor’s office.

You get what you pay for. And you wait for what you don't pay for. And in Canada, you can't even pay for it and get it when you need it.

Canadians are proud of their social safety net. Growing up in the True North, Strong and Free, I was never afraid of not being able to afford to go to the doctor and I knew that there were programs out there that magically took care of the sick and poor. Though I’ve never had to take social assistance, family members of mine have. But it wasn’t until I started paying taxes that I started to hold the system to higher expectations. And it wasn’t until I started getting some real world experience that I realized that in some ways the system is very broken.

If US health care is broken due to its inaccessibility, Canadian health care is broken because it’s too accessible. Imagine that US health care has ten doors with different admission costs. The line up for the ‘free’ door is long, but there’s still a steady stream at the other end where the entry is so expensive that there’s a sign overhead reading “if you have to ask - you can’t afford it”.

But there are also those other eight doors in the middle.

In Canada, there’s one door. And, lucky you, there’s no admission. Well, unless you count the provincial health care fees you have to pay if you make more than the accepted poverty level. And those pesky taxes.

We have the taxes too, but we can go to the doctor when we are sick. It just is not free.

Health care costs make up, on average, 40 percent of a province’s budget. About 73 percent of all health care is paid for by public funding (taxes), while the rest is paid for with supplementary insurance packages (paid for by the individual) and employer-based programs, or direct from the consumer’s pocket. But that one door? It has a heck of a lineup. Across Canada the words “wait times” are buzz words. They show up in campaign promises, opposition criticism and anywhere you find sick people. Provinces have developed “wait time registries.” What’s the median time for an MRI in Alberta? Almost 9 weeks. And for about 360 of the 18,839 people served in a 90 day period, their wait was up to a year.

I was in the hospital, and about to be discharged, and something came up the doctor wanted an MRI on. The wait for the hospital MRI was going to be several hours so I asked him to just discharge me, and I would get one on an outpatient basis. I called, and got an appointment for one the next day. I arrived, and did not even have to wait. They gave me the films and I hand carried them to the doctor.

Granted, if you arrive in the ER in desperate and dire need of an MRI, you are rushed to the front of the line. The rest just wait. Not knowing, wondering, waiting.

Aceh invites tourists to see Sharia law in action

Adnkronos reported Tourism authorities in Indonesia's Aceh province hope that its practice of Sharia or Islamic law will attract visitors. "We invite international tourists to visit Aceh to observe how an Islamic community lives and how the Islamic code of Sharia is applied," said Cipta Hunai, an Aceh tourism official, in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).

Gee, it sounds like a fun-filled vacation. You may not get to drink, or listen to music, or many other things, but you get to see women stoned to death, and people beheaded. Doesn't that sound like fun.

Muslim-devout Aceh is the only province in Indonesia allowed to apply Sharia law. However observers say that the application of Sharia in the province has harmed the rights of the poor and women.

And also the rights of middle class and rich and men. That is it's purpose.

Hunai said that Sharia allowed for the development of a peaceful and secure community in Aceh which would be appreciated by tourists. He said that Sharia law in Aceh was a tourist attraction because it allowed foreigners to see a reality, that perhaps, they did not already know. "Here the tourists can visit many mosques

One might be interesting, but what is to be gained by seeing many?

and see how a community lives under laws based on the Koran," he said. Hunai denied that public canings - which are allowed and used to punish some crimes - could shock and discourage non-Muslim tourists.

As long as they were not caned.

"We don't believe that this can scare anyone. In any case, the punishments are carried out to correct Muslims who have made mistakes," he said. "But one must remember that these punishments are only applied to Muslims and here even the religious minority is respected," he added.

Can Christians build Churches, and talk publically about their faith, or must they do that in secret, and pay a big tax besides?

Corporal punishment is carried out in Aceh for crimes including the sale or consumption of alcohol, gambling or meeting a person of the opposite sex, that is not your husband, wife or family member, in a private place.

Any of the fun stuff.

According to data provided by local tourism authorities, there has been an increase in the number of visitors to Aceh, the province that was the epicentre of the massive 26 December 2004 tsunami which killed some 170,000 people and left thousands of others homeless. In 2005, just over 4,000 international tourists

Probably to see if they could help those hurt by the tsunami, not for the pleasure of seeing Sharia in action.

and 320,000 Indonesian tourists visited the province

Hopefully they learned enough about life under Sharia that they will not extend it to the rest of the country.

Communism (and Socialism) do not work

NYT reported When the central government in Beijing announced an ambitious nationwide campaign to reduce energy consumption two years ago, officials in this western regional capital got right to work: not to comply, but to engineer creative schemes to evade the requirements.

Attention Hillary: Communism (and Socialism) do not work

... It was a cat-and-mouse game grimly familiar to Chinese officials, who have a long tradition of spearheading ambitious nationwide campaigns that are all too often thwarted at the local level, partly because local priorities clash with national ones.

As Thomas "Tip" O'Neill—a longtime Speaker of the House in the U.S. Congress—once declared "All politics is local"

Friday, November 23, 2007

Iraqi school guard and wife beheaded

Christian Today reported Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple's children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday.The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because he did not pray and wore western-style trousers,

And he should lose his head for that? And what did his wife do?

they told police interrogators after being arrested in Diyala province northwest of Baghdad.

Indian court houses bombed

Jerusalem Post reported A series of near-simultaneous explosions ripped through courthouse complexes Friday in three north Indian cities, with blasts going off in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad, killing at least ten lawyers and injuring dozens more, officials said.

I wonder if they have been reading Shakespeare's Henry VI, part 2 ('The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers')

... But Padam Kriti, a spokesman of the Uttar Pradesh Bar Association, said the state's lawyers had decided earlier this year not to defend any terror suspects, adding "it looks like" that decision may have been behind blasts.

No I guess it is just if they won't defend terrorists, let's kill more people, and maybe they will change their minds. Ahh, isn't the "Religion of Peace" peaceful.

Don't make me touch the Jooozzzz

Yahoo! News Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations decided Friday to attend next week's U.S.-sponsored Middle East peace conference. But the Saudi foreign minister said he would not allow "theatrics" such as handshakes with Israeli officials, insisting the meeting make serious progress.

They don't want to shake hands with the Israelis because they might get Jewish cooties on them.

Woman sentenced over religion

News24 reported An Egyptian Christian woman has been jailed for three years because her father's brief conversion to Islam 45 years ago made her legally a Muslim while her official papers said she was Christian.

Supposedly there is no compulsion in religion but it apparently does not extend to allowing a Christian to remain a Christian if her father converts to Islam for a short period while she is a child.

... Nagui Ibrahim left home in 1962 when daughter Shadia was two years old, converted to Islam and took on the Muslim name Mustafa. Three years later, after a reconciliation with his wife, he moved home and re-converted to Christianity. In the process, he got someone to forge his documents back to say he was Christian.... Authorities detained Ibrahim and also informed his daughter that on paper, Ibrahim was still a Muslim and therefore so was she. Children in Egypt automatically take their father's religion. Under Egyptian law it is also illegal for a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man.

Apparently even a woman that does not know she is a Muslim, and who has no intention of being a Muslim.

She was charged with "providing false information on official documents" for stating she was Christian on her marriage certificate in 1982.

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