Two Ways Of Life

Just compare these two British ladies' feelings about Islam and Muslims. The first one is Lauren Booth, who has just converted to Islam. The other is Julie Burchill, a fellow journalist, who is commenting on Lauren's conversion.

See what a huge difference Islam makes in one's life.

Lauren Booth

About Western women converting to Islam

With “those feelings put into you in the UK and, I'm afraid, in the US about Islam being a frightening religion for women to join” … It is definitely not easy for a Western woman to convert to Islam. Everything that you have been shown about the way that Islam is treated in the West says to you that this is going to be difficult ... It is pretty massive. It is not a trendy religion in the West as you all now watching this. It is not Buddhism or Kabbalah.”

On her feelings after embracing Islam

“I feel really really happy. I feel more content than ever. I have always been a happy person but I feel more content than ever with everyday existence; I feel less stressed; I feel time and more hours of the day. I do not know why that is. I do not know if that has anything to do with Islam, but personally I feel very content.”

Her views on western media Islamophobic approaches

“… if they attacked me too harshly in the mainstream media, they reveal the Islamophobia that is latent in a lot of their writings.”

Her personal experience of converting to Islam

“I do not feel under pressure, but I do respect the laws. I have given up alcohol, which for an English woman is quite a leap. I found it easy. I do not want it anymore. That is something strange. I do not want alcohol at all…. I am finding that I want to spend more time in the company of other Muslims though. This is interesting. Just because suddenly people who are not Muslims seem slightly more sarcastic, more consumerist rather than being able to converse in a more spiritual way and I like these conversations.”

On discriminations against Muslims

“The one difficult thing for me in this converting to Islam has been the fact that it will affect the way I am perceived by people who watch my work with Palestinian organizations quite closely and critically because the sad truth is at the moment if you are a Muslim in the Middle East you are listened to less than if you are a Christian or if you a Jew. This is not the Christians' fault, that is a monologue that is coming over from the neo-cons from America and it has to do with the disrespect of the Muslim people so I don't think that my converting is going to help with my causes that I want to help in Palestine unfortunately, but I will give me energy to carry on when I find it difficult and it will give me the chance to pray even more for the people of Palestine, which is a good thing.”

Commenting about Tony Blair, her brother-in-law

“I wish it would have an impact in making him think that good rational people can become part of a community that have been much maligned and attacked by policies that his friends in Israel and his supporters in America have been part of over the past ten years and I wish he would take a closer look at those actions and what they have done in Iraq and Afghanistan and the role Israel plays in tormenting people in the West Bank in Gaza and East Jerusalem. I wish he consider Muslim people on a parallel as other people of the world instead of lesser people.”

Julie Burchill

Here is the other woman. She writes for the British newspaper, the Independent. In her column on Lauren Booth's conversion to Islam she has written the following under the heading: 'What sort of woman freely converts to Islam?'

On her own failure to convert to Judaism

“Last year I took the first steps towards converting to Judaism; also last year, I abandoned my attempt. It was partly that I find it hard to stick at any discipline, being bone-idle and highly hedonistic (for instance, I was only a lesbian for six months).”

On Trinity

“I found the Jewish idea of one deity far more sensible than the Father, Son and Holy Ghost free-for-all. I'm well aware that everyone who isn't a complete self-deluding fool finds themselves preposterous at times”.

On Islam

“Of course, there is one religion which proscribes its followers under threat of death from rejecting it, and that is Islam. Which just happens to be the one that Lauren Booth (born a Catholic called Sarah) has opted for.”

Spewing venom on Lauren Booth

“It's hard to know where to start when describing the sheer ickiness of Booth. That she works as a paid stooge for the murderous Iranian regime's television channel has to come pretty near the top. A woman, choosing to act a front for a gang of thugs who uphold the punishment of death by stoning for adulteresses! This is surely Stockholm Syndrome gone gaga.”

“Her entirely inappropriate addiction to the spotlight, although she was obviously designed as one of Nature's plus-ones, is another stand-out feature. A failed actress, a mediocre hack, it's pretty fair to say we would never have heard of her had her half-sister not married a man who became Prime Minister. And now her meal-ticket is Mohammed.”

On Lauren's following dietary laws of Islam

“Yes, it seems that even the faith she was raised in isn't narrow-minded, patriarchal and oppressive enough for the sensation-hungry Booth, who having tried everything else is so jaded that she can only get a kick from self-denial. (There does seem to be a particular affinity between Catholics and Muslims – Jew-hating is a great bonding agent.) And a kick it is – she describes her engagement with faith in terms that veer between the drooling of a clammy adolescent ("this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy") and that of a recovering alcoholic clinging desperately to the wreckage of her sobriety ("I haven't had a drink in 45 days!")

“Maybe like a lot of Western cowards, she thinks that if she sucks up to Islamism hard enough she will be spared its rage.”

On Islam

“What sort of woman freely converts to a religion which supports the oppression, torment and murder of thousands of Christians, homosexuals and spirited women, worldwide, every year? The sort of woman who writes love letters to a serial killer, I reckon. Still, might as well look on the bright side. Go on, Lauren, treat yourself to a full-face and – most essentially – mouth-covering burka!”

On her own beauty or lack thereof

“When I was young and gorgeous, occasionally someone would be brave or dumb enough to tell me that if I had my gappy teeth fixed, I would be even cuter. I would always say the same thing: "But if I had any more sex, I would be in a wheelchair. And surely the only reason people want to look better is to have more sex?"

“Decades on, my looks gone, I don't despise people who have cosmetic procedures but I do feel pity for them, because it means that: a) they haven't got the life they want and: b) they care what people think of them, and that's always a bit of a buzz-kill. With this in mind, I couldn't help smirking to see that the gappy teeth which some sad souls tried to convince me would blight my life are now all the rage, with women paying up to three times the cost of standard perfect teeth for customised nasty veneers featuring gaps and staining.”

Tony Blair's sister-in-law has converted to Islam

The Guardian Newspaper has reported that journalist and broadcaster Lauren Booth, 43, has converted to Islm and has started wearing Hijab, prays five times a day, reads the Qur'an every day, and has stopped eating pork and drinking alcohol.

She is Cherie Blair's sister and works for Press TV, the English-language Iranian news channel.

She decided to convert to Islam when she visited the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh, - a descendant of Prophet Muhammad (Peace and blessing be upon him), and sister of Ali Riza, in the city of Qom - and had what she describes as a "holy experience".

"It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy."

When she returned to Britain, she decided to convert immediately.

She said in an interview that she hoped her conversion would help Tony Blair change his presumptions about Islam.

Ms Booth's colleague at Press TV, former war correspondent Yvonne Ridley, converted to Islam in 2003 after she was captured and released by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I haven't had a drink in 45 days," Lauren Booth said. "And I was someone who craved a glass of wine or two."

The Sordid Underbelly of Capitalism

The leaders of the capitalist countries tend to show a studied oblivion towards the sordid underbelly of Capitalism. One of the sad but usually iqnored side effects of this system is how the weaker segments of society are left behind in this rat race.

Children and widows - call them single parents - are the ones who suffer the most.

A government-sponsored study conducted by London University's Institute of Education called Millennium Cohort Study shows 20% of British seven-year-olds live in "severe poverty" because their both parents together earn, including benefits, less than half the average national income. The numbers of poverty stricken children are even higher in families of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Almost 75% of children of these immigrant parents live in poverty. (51%) of black seven-year-olds and just over a quarter of white seven-year-olds live in poverty, with three-fifths from these groups in single-parent families.

The study tracked 14,000 children to understand how family circumstances determine a youngester's prospects for education, health and happiness in Britain. This is largely because of high unemployment rates for mothers and fathers.

About 7% of all seven-year-olds living in poverty do not have two pairs of all-weather shoes. About 50% do not get pocket money.

The number of children living in poverty is likely to be rising.

Scottish seven-year-olds are slightly more likely to be living in affluence. Welsh children are slightly more likely to be in poverty.

Another foul aspect of British society is the prevalent racial profiling and discrimination. Black are 26.6 times and Asians are 6.3 times more likely than whites to face stop and search by police which uses Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which was originally introduced to deal with football hooligans and the threat of serious violence.

Analysis was done by the London School of Economics and the Open Society Justice Initiative and it was based on Ministry of Justice figures for 2008-09.

The data reveal a marked escalation. Last year blacks were 10.7 times more likely to be stopped than whites, and Asians 2.2 times more likely. Ben Bowling, professor of criminal justice at King's College London, said this "stereotyping" by police "is likely to alienate those communities which are most affected".

This discrimination and stereotyping will certainly increase by new draft Home Office guidance which will allow police to stop and search on the basis of ethnic origin under Section 60. Use of Section 60 has already risen more than 300% between 2005 and last year.

The problem of racial profiling is not confined to Britain only but the British figures provide the widest "race gap" in stop-and-search found internationally. The previous highest stop-and-search record holder was Russian police which used these powers against non-Slavs on the Moscow Metro. Non-Slavs are 21.8 times more likely to be stopped and searched by Russian police than Slavs.

A study on the Paris Metro found passengers of Arab appearance were more than 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched. The practice is also exercised by the New York police. In New York blacks and Hispanics are 9 times more likely to be stopped than white New Yorkers.

You want to see another aspect of unregulated capitalism in action?

Remember the media circus and the twenty-four hour live coverage of the rescue of Chilean miners that were trapped in the collapsed mine for seventy days?

Here is some of what William K. Black, who was a federal regulator during the Savings and Loan crisis and appears in Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story', says about this incident.

The Chilean mine was privately owned. It had a bad safety record. It had been ordered to shut down permanently. The Chilean President Pinera had promised the people of Chile that: "never again in Chile would people be allowed to work in such inhumane conditions."

The mine owners had violated the law in failing to have a second entrance to the mine as an alternative escape route which would have greatly reduced the risk of the miners being trapped by the collapse of a portion of the shaft. The only way the mine owners could have gotten away with such an obvious violation of the safety rules was through bribery of the regulatory officials.

The mine did not have the required ladder that would have allowed the workers to escape the mine in the immediate aftermath of the collapse through a ventilation shaft that subsequently became inaccessible. A $25 ladder apparently would have prevented the tragedy, but the private owners' profit motive led them to avoid that expense.

The focus of the mine owners on profit and disregard for human life and limb explains why the second entrance and ladder were not there. Once the mine shaft collapsed, the private mining company declared that it not only could not pay to rescue the miners -- it could not even pay their wages. It threatened to file for bankruptcy.

The rescue was paid for by the State-owned mine (i.e., the Chilean government had to bail out the private mine owner to the tune of an estimated rescue cost of $10 to $20million in order to rescue the miners). The Chilean mine had gold and copper ore. Both of those minerals are selling for record prices. This makes the private mining company's failure to provide another exit and a ladder all the more outrageous. Where did the profits go?

Capitalism would have left the miners to die. The government paid to rescue the miners.

Old Hatreds, New Enemies

New Yorkers are up in arms. They do not want these uncouth, superstitious, and filthy newcomers to build their house of worship in Manhattan. Not in the heart of the city. They want it moved somewhere else. They see in their religion an enemy of democracy. They fear this house of worship will be a bridgehead on this land for an assault on Americans; and an effort to take over their government and to apply their own law. They are worried about plan’s foreigner backers. They think the newcomers’ ideology is antithetical to American ideals.

Sounds familiar? Probably you are thinking you have guessed it right?

No. I am not talking about Muslims and it not the community center and mosque, commonly called Park51, they plan to build on Park Place, near ground zero.

A lot of parallels, though. But your guess is way off the mark. Some 225 years.

The year is 1785. The new arrivals are Catholics. The house of worship is St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church, the oldest Catholic church in America at the intersection of Barclay and Church Streets, about two blocks from the site of the proposed Islamic Cultural Center at 51 Park Place.

The Harper magazine calls it The “Ground Zero Mosque” of 1785.

This history lesson comes from Father Kevin V. Madigan, the pastor of this church, who tells his view of the Park 51 project: “We were just pleased to have a new neighbor.”

The Harper magazine has an insightful history lesson of its own:

In England of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics were viewed as terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, and suffered brutal repression. When the government moved to emancipate the Catholics–restoring a measure of civil rights to them–this provoked violent mass demonstrations in 1780 that shook the monarchy. Across the Atlantic in America, anti-Catholic sentiment was if anything even more virulent, and it extended for many more decades, spurred by Catholic immigration.

The Park51 organizers say they will not accept any foreign support for their $100 million-plus project. St. Peter’s Church would not have been built without a 'handsome' donation of $1,000 from a foreigner — King Charles III of Spain.

The opposition to St. Peter came from Protestants. This time round the movement against Mosque is spearheaded by a Jew: Pamela Geller. Or so it seems, at least, from the coverage of the New York Times that has wasted a lot of time, space and ink on her.

It was a matter of survival then; it is a matter of survival now. Plain and simple.

Nicholas Kristof's Quiz

In the New York Times of October 9, 2010 Nicholas Kristof has asked the readers to test their savvy on religions by answering 13 questions given in a pop quiz.

Even though couple of his own answers are rather quizzical especially to question 2 where he says "But other sections of the Koran do describe coercion" without giving any proof or verse number of the Quran, as well as questions 4 and 10.

He may be forgiven as he himself is also a product of the same culture that is confused about Islam, Quran, Hadith (saying of the Prophet), and Muhammad (Peace be upon him and his descendants).

He says before he starts the quiz:

The New York Times reported recently on a Pew Research Center poll in which religious people turned out to be remarkably uninformed about religion. Almost half of Catholics didn’t understand Communion. Most Protestants didn’t know that Martin Luther started the Reformation. Almost half of Jews didn’t realize Maimonides was Jewish. And atheists were among the best informed about religion.

His focus is essentially on "extremism and fundamentalism" in the context of the recent "uproar about Islam", as he has mentioned. This emphasis on Islam is also evident from the fact that multiple choices given for every question have one thing in common: all, except one, have Islam, Quran, Hadith or Muhammad in them as an answer.

At the end of the quiz he cautions, leaving the sting in the tail (last sentence):

And yes, the point of this little quiz is that religion is more complicated than it sometimes seems, and that we should be wary of rushing to inflammatory conclusions about any faith, especially based on cherry-picking texts. The most crucial element is perhaps not what is in our scriptures, but what is in our hearts.

Quiz

1. Which holy book stipulates that a girl who does not bleed on her wedding night should be stoned to death?

a. Koran
b. Old Testament
c. (Hindu) Upanishads

Answer:
1. b. Deuteronomy 22:21.

2. Which holy text declares: “Let there be no compulsion in religion”?

a. Koran
b. Gospel of Matthew
c. Letter of Paul to the Romans

Answer:
2. a. Koran, 2:256. But other sections of the Koran do describe coercion.


3. The terrorists who pioneered the suicide vest in modern times, and the use of women in terror attacks, were affiliated with which major religion?

a. Islam
b. Christianity
c. Hinduism

Answer:
3. c. Most early suicide bombings were by Tamil Hindus (some secular) in Sri Lanka and India.


4. "Every child is touched by the devil as soon as he is born and this contact makes him cry. Excepted are Mary and her Son.” This verse is from:

a. Letters of Paul to the Corinthians
b. The Book of Revelation
c. An Islamic hadith, or religious tale

Answer:
4. c. Koran. Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet to be revered.

5. Which holy text is sympathetic to slavery?

a. Old Testament
b. New Testament
c. Koran

Answer:
5. All of the above.

6. In the New Testament, Jesus’ views of homosexuality are:

a. strongly condemnatory
b. forgiving
c. never mentioned

Answer:
6. c. Other parts of the New and Old Testaments object to homosexuality, but there’s no indication of Jesus’ views.

7. Which holy text urges responding to evil with kindness, saying: “repel the evil deed with one which is better.”

a. Gospel of Luke
b. Book of Isaiah
c. Koran

Answer:
7. c. Koran, 41:34. Jesus says much the same thing in different words.

8. Which religious figure preaches tolerance by suggesting that God looks after all peoples and leads them all to their promised lands?

a. Muhammad
b. Amos
c. Jesus

Answer:
8. b. Amos 9:7

9. Which of these religious leaders was a polygamist?

a. Jacob
b. King David
c. Muhammad

Answer:
9. all of them

10. What characterizes Muhammad’s behavior toward the Jews of his time?

a. He killed them.
b. He married one.
c. He praised them as a chosen people.

Answer:
10. all of these. Muhammad’s Jewish wife was seized in battle, which undermines the spirit of the gesture. By some accounts he had a second Jewish wife as well.


11. Which holy scripture urges that the "little ones" of the enemy be dashed against the stones?

a. Book of Psalms
b. Koran
c. Leviticus

Answer:
11. a. Psalm 137

12. Which holy scripture suggests beating wives who misbehave?

a. Koran
b. Letters of Paul to the Corinthians
c. Book of Judges

Answer:
12. a. Koran 4:34

13. Which religious leader is quoted as commanding women to be silent during services?

a. The first Dalai Lama
b. St. Paul
c. Muhammad

Answer:
13. b. St. Paul, both in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2, but many scholars believe that neither section was actually written by Paul.