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POPSYemen: 8-year-old girl forced to marry, demands divorce Nujood’s case is considered the first of its kind where a minor prosecutes her father for marrying her off at a young age and subjecting her to harm . Early marriage is “one of the biggest development challenges in Yemen,” said Naseem Ur Rehman, chief information officer for UNICEF in Sana’a . A 2006 field study revealed that child marriage among Yemeni girls reached 52.1%, compared to 6.7% among males. The study, conducted by the Woman and Development Study Center, affiliated to Sana’a University, disclosed that marriage age raised gradually from an average of 10.24 years to 14.70 years for women and from 20.97 to 21.54 years for men. It indicated that the average marriage age varies from one geographical area to another; for example, it showed that girls in Hodeidah and Hadramout married at the average age of eight, while in Mukalla the average age was 10. Meldung in Deutsch: stern.de
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POPSWhat to do with an Anti-Blogger Government Expert The blogging community in Indonesia is mighty pissed off over a certain Government expert and presidential advisor on technology who has been maligning bloggers as hackers and up to unsavory things. Last night Minister for Information Muhammed Nuh met with bloggers and when asked what should be done about the so-called "expert" his advice was:
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POPSMuhammed What's the big deal over a cartoon? Kurt Westergaard life is in danger because of this? Seems pretty accurate to me.
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POPSMaking a Comeback: Male Belly Dancers in Egypt
More: Mesbaah is shimmying in a society that has long struggled with ever-changing limits of social tolerance. A carved relief at a pharaonic-era tomb near Cairo shows today's dance prohibitions were yesterday's norm. It depicts a chorus line of men at a religious festival; each wears a sash knotted on his left hip, a fashion for dancing men and women that lingers today. Male performers were once considered more reputable than females. In his book "The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians," Edward William Lane, an Englishman who lived in 19th-century Cairo, observed that male dancers were preferred by Cairenes who thought women "ought not to expose themselves." From 1834 to 1849, women dancers, known as ghawazee, were banned from the city. Rakia Hassan, 62, a retired dancer, recalls that in her childhood, males peddled their skills along with women on Muhammed Ali Street, then a one-stop shop for belly dancer hires. Me: Never even knew males use to belly dance.
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POPSWho would Muhammed Torture? Jesus' choices then become relative. When responding to evil, the bar has already been set! Of course, the clueless will raise elements strictly intended to bait people, using iconic figures related to their beliefs, with the intent to attack and injure their sensibilities, get them to respond emotionally - the level on which they operate. These individuals need to begin some research, use some of my clips as starting points and get some light shining on the realities that will allow you fewer excuses for remaining in such ignore-'ance'.
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POPSShahadah from a Jewish Perspective The Muslim declaration of faith (Shahadah = testimony, and from the same root as ‘shaheed’ which you can roughly translate as ‘martyr’) runs thus: “There is no divinity but Allah, Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”. At one time I used to wonder about this — question why we took the name of the Prophet alongside that of God. Why, if we submitted to God, did we have to declare our allegiance to a man chosen by God to spread the word? Eventually I came to accept this as the best summation of our religion of Islam. We submitted wholly to Allah in the latest format as preached by Muhammad. It made sense to me. Then I read this and some of the old thoughts (…and doubts) came flooding back:
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POPSWhat's the diff. between Sunni and Shia? Before the Iraq War, I didn't actually know there was any difference. I just naively thought all Muslims were the same. But of course, they have variations between them, even though they do believe in the same god, Allah. Just as the Catholics, Protestants, Jews and so on, believe in their same god, God.
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POPSQu'ran and the Bible
How ironic that two of the oldest books of the world would be so similar in nature. Something of notice, however, is the fact that the Qu'ran was written after what we call the Torah (old testament of the bible). The old testament was written in Greek, recognized by the word Septuagint, which was written between the 3rd to 1st century BC in Alexandria, whereas the prophet Muhammed didn't write down what the angel Gabriel told him to write until 610-632 AD. Under the assumption that Muhammed did not use the Septuagint or any of the disciples writings or that of the Dead Sea Scrolls in his "literal" transcription of what the angel Gabriel told him, then wouldn't that right there substantiate the old testament writings and that of Christ's life on earth. If so many of the prophets were mentioned in both the Qu'ran and the Bible, then couldn't we assume rationally that there is a connection between the two? So why the separation? Or did he just take from texts what he found necessa
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