In this mailing:
- Shoshana Bryen: Obama Administration Stabs Israel in the Back
- Raymond Ibrahim: Egypt's Sex-Slave Marriage
Obama Administration Stabs Israel in the Back
by Shoshana Bryen
July 5, 2012 at 5:00 am
July 5, 2012 at 5:00 am
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And so a
deal was done: give up Israel for Syria. As a veto-wielding member of the
United Nations, the U.S. could have nixed the program, but instead only
insisted that Syrian meeting be held in the morning and the Israel-bashing in
the afternoon; Ms. Pillai will have time in between for lunch.
The Founders in their wisdom divided the powers
of government; some to the Executive, some to the Legislative. The power of the
purse went to Congress; diplomacy to the Executive.
How that shakes out matters to the U.S. and our
democratic allies.
The democracy of Israel, for example, had a
good week with Congress. The Senate adopted, by unanimous consent (and 69
sponsors), a bill
increasing coordination in the fields of missile defense, homeland security,
energy, intelligence and cyber-security. It also called for enhancing Israel's
qualitative military edge (QME), a difficult-to-measure state of affairs, but a
concept that friends of Israel appreciate. The House already passed its version
of the same legislation.
The practicality of the bill is striking: do
things, share things, develop things, produce things, and protect things. These
are security enhancements that can only be done with an ally. Congress wants to
do them with Israel.
President Obama, on the other hand, has been
doing diplomacy, which by its nature skirts the concrete. Many administrations,
including this one, believe speech is action. Diplomats fear they won't
get credit for damage avoided, so they often choose to produce no outcome all –
just another meeting set for later – and never end the "process."
Playing for compromise – or even a respectable loss – can be satisfactory.
Talking can replace doing. That may work for the United States, a big country
with room to maneuver when it makes mistakes, but Israel lives much closer to
the edge. Diplomatic trouble can quickly become economic, political or military
trouble.
The UN Security Council has not managed to have
a discussion about Syria since April, but the President has finally figured out
how to have the Council "briefed" on the subject by Navi Pillai – a renowned
Israel-basher. The French wanted to discuss Syria. The Russians were willing
only if the US-French-British adventure in Libya was on the docket. Rotating
member Pakistan wanted to hang Israel. And so a deal was done – give up Israel
for Syria – protecting the French, skirting the Russians, and accommodating our
friends the Pakistanis. As a veto-wielding member, the U.S. could have nixed
the program, but instead insisted only that the Syrian meeting be held in the
morning and the Israel-bashing in the afternoon; Ms. Pillai will have time in
between for lunch.
Read the unparalleled Anne Bayevsky for the details.
France, by the way, was the only European
country to agree that the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem should be listed
as a Palestinian UNESCO Heritage Site. The US is not a member of the World
Heritage Committee. Our delegate campaigned
against the vote, but lost. We are accustomed to losing in the UN, and it seems
not to bother us much as it should for a country that covers nearly a quarter
of the U.N.'s payroll with a blank check, no questions asked (or, more
accurately, no answers given).
In the UN Human Rights Council, our
representative Eileen Donahoe again remonstrated
the Council for its "biased and disproportionate focus on Israel, as
exemplified by this standing agenda item."
The "standing agenda item" is Item 7,
"Human Rights Situation in Palestine and other Occupied Arab
territories." It mandates that every discussion in the Council have a
component devoted to (castigating) Israel. Ms. Donahoe objects – but she knows
(her boss, the President, knows) she will lose every time because she is
sitting with the likes of Congo, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Qatar, Cuba, the
PRC and Malaysia. Players rotate (terms on the Council are three years), but
the number of countries with unspeakable human rights records far exceeds the
number of democratic countries, and the number of countries that vote en
bloc (Arab/Muslim/African) far exceeds the number voting independently. The
Council will always contain a preponderance of authoritarian countries whose
governments engage in human rights abuses and have nothing to lose by
castigating Israel.
President Obama stated that the U.S. would
engage the Syrian uprising in the context of UN-sponsored discussion and
UN-sponsored plans. Over last weekend, the UN-sponsored Syria Action Group
convened in Geneva. Neither the Syrian government nor the opposition attended.
The final communiqué told both how to behave; both rejected the tutorial. The
U.S. and Russia also have also publicly disagreed about the implications
of the document.
We talk; they run out the clock.
Ditto Iran. The third P5+1 meeting with Iran
was held last month in Moscow. The talks ended with the Iranians intractably
proclaiming their "non-negotiable demands" and the West offering another round
of "technical expert talks." As the talks failed, a new and heavier
round of sanctions was slated to begin on 1 July. But as the date rolled
around, the Obama administration gave waivers
to 20 of Iran's biggest trading partners to allow them to continue to purchase
Iranian oil.
More talk not followed by action – not even
action required by U.S. legislation.
Granting that Congress gave the Executive
Branch the waiver option, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen nonetheless criticized the administration for letting China off
the hook. "The administration likes to pat itself on the back for supposedly
being strong on Iran sanctions. But… (it) granted a free pass to Iran's biggest
enabler, China." She pledged
that "Congress will once again fill the leadership vacuum created by the
administration, and work to strengthen sanctions against the regime in
Tehran."
There are ways Congress can "fill the
leadership vacuum" produced by the administration's determination to talk
its way through the world's problems – even when large parts of the world prove
immune to its charms. The most useful would be for Congress to continue to
establish practical measures of cooperation with Israel, working with Israel as
a partner in addressing the security threats faced by democratic countries
large and small -- and, with the power of the purse the Constitution grants it,
take the suggestion of Ambassador John Bolton: only "to pay for what we
get, and get what we pay for" in funding the UN.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The
Jewish Policy Center. She was previously Senior Director for Security Policy at
JINSA and author of JINSA Reports from 1995-2011.
Related Topics: Israel
| Shoshana
Bryen
Egypt's Sex-Slave Marriage
by Raymond Ibrahim
July 5, 2012 at 4:30 am
July 5, 2012 at 4:30 am
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"When I want a sex-slave," [I] should be able to go "to
the market and pick out whichever female I desire and marry her." — Sheikh
Huwaini
Egypt's "first sex-slave marriage"
took place mere days after the Muslim Brotherhood's Muhammad Morsi was made
president.
Last Monday, on the Egyptian TV show Al Haqiqa
("the Truth"), journalist Wael al-Ibrashi showed a video-clip of a
man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, "marrying" his slave. Before making the woman,
who has a non-Egyptian accent, repeat after him the Koran's Surat
al-Ikhlas, instead of saying the usual "I marry myself to you," the
woman said "I enslave myself to you," kissing him in front of an
applauding audience.
Then, even though she was wearing a hijab, her
owner-husband declared that she is forbidden from such trappings and commanded
her to be stripped of them, so as "not to break Allah's laws." She
took her veil and abaya off, revealing, by Muslim standards, a seductive red
dress (all the other women present were veiled). The man claps for her and the
video-clip (which can be seen here)
ends.
The man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, who identified
himself as an Islamic scholar who studied at Al Azhar and an expert at Islamic
jurisprudence, then appeared on the show, giving several Islamic explanations
to justify his marriage, from Islam's prophet Muhammad's "sunna," or
practice, of "marrying" enslaved captive women, to Koran 4:3, which
declares: "Marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four… or
what your right hands possess."
Though the term malk al-yamin literally
means "that which is owned by your right hand," for all practical
purposes, and to avoid euphemisms, according to Islamic doctrine and history,
she is simply a sex-slave. Linguistic
evidence even suggests that she is seen not as a human but as a possession.
Even stripping the sex-slave of her hijab, the
way Awn did, has precedent. According to Islamic jurisprudence, whereas the
free (Muslim) woman is mandated to wear a hijab, sex-slaves are mandated only
to be covered from the navel to the knees—with everything else exposed. Awn
even explained how Caliph Omar, one of the first "righteous caliphs,"
would strip sex-slaves of their garments, whenever he saw them overly dressed
in the marketplace.
Awn further went on to declare that he believes
the idea of sex slave marriage is ideal for today's Egyptian society. He bases
this on ijtihad, a recognized form of jurisprudence, whereby a Muslim
scholar comes up with a new idea—one that is still rooted in the Koran and example
of Muhammad—that fits the circumstances of contemporary society. He argued
that, when it comes to marriage, "we Muslims have overly complicated
things," so that men are often forced to be single throughout their prime,
finally getting married between the ages of 30-40, when they will have a stable
career and enough money to open a household. Similarly, many Egyptian women do
not want to wear the hijab in public. The solution, according to Awn, is to
reinstitute sex-slavery—allowing men to marry and copulate much earlier in
life, and women who want to dress freely to do so, as technically they are
sex-slaves and mandated to go about loosely attired.
The other guest on the show, Dr. Abdullah
al-Naggar, a professor in Islamic jurisprudence at Al Azhar, fiercely attacked
Awn for reviving this practice, calling on him and his slave-wife to
"repent," to stop dishonoring Islam, and arguing that "there is
no longer sex-slavery"—to which Awn responded by sarcastically asking,
"Who said sex-slavery is over? What—because the UN said so?"
In many ways, this exchange between Awn, who
advocates sex-slave marriage, and the Al Azhar professor symbolizes the clash
between today's "Islamists" and "moderate Muslims." For a
long time, Al Azhar has been engaged in the delicate balancing act of affirming
Islam while still advocating modernity according to Western standards, whereas
the Islamists—from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Salafis—bred with contempt and
disrespect for the West, are only too eager to revive Islamic practices that
defy Western standards.
While this may be the first sex slave marriage
to take place in Egypt's recent history, it is certainly not the first call to
revive the practice. Earlier, Egyptian Sheikh Huwaini, lamenting that the
"good old days" of Islam were over, declared that, in an ideal Muslim
society, "when
I want a sex-slave," he should be able to go "to the market and
pick whichever female I desire and buy her." Likewise, a Kuwaiti female
politician earlier advocated for reviving the institute of sex-slavery,
suggesting that Muslims
should bring female captives of war—specifically Russian women from the
Chechnya war—and sell them to Muslim men in the markets of Kuwait.
And so the "Arab Spring" continues to
blossom.
Raymond
Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Egypt
| Raymond
Ibrahim
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