Magic Statistics

Turkey’s Directorate on Religious Affairs, the Diyanet, last week posted some controversial guidance regarding women’s behaviour in an article about “Sexual Life”.

"Women have to be more careful, since they possess stimulants," and they "have to be covered properly so as not to show their ornaments and figures to strangers."
. . .
It added that if women have to communicate to the opposite sex they "should speak in a manner that will not arouse suspicion in one's heart and in such seriousness and dignity that they will not let the opposite party misunderstand them."

The advice, obviously based on Muslim attitudes toward women—indeed, “Our Prophet Muhammed” is cited as a moral authority—has angered Turks who want to maintain the country’s secularist constitution and polity.

[T]he Diyanet and its "Sexual Life" article have come under fierce criticism from Turkish secularists and feminist groups — particularly as it equates flirting and dating to adultery and puts the responsibility for such things entirely on women.

The article also raised the ire of many Turks by warning that men and women not married to each other should not be seen together; discouraging women from working in mixed-gender workplaces; and claiming that it is "immoral" behavior for women to wear perfume outside the home.

Yusuf Kanli, a columnist with the pro-secular "Turkish Daily News," says the Diyanet's stance on women s [sic] similar to the views of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan: "Putting on perfume is a sin. Flirting is an indecent attitude. A man and a woman's going out together or walking in the street together is a sin."

The “Sexual Life” article is seen by many as another sign that the government is set on raising the influence of Islam in Turkey's state and society.

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• Turkey’s secular establishment challenges ruling party

The Middle East Times has received a series of photographs taken in Africa, probably in northern Nigeria, indicating that the Shiite terrorist organisation Hezbollah is supporting and co-operating with Islamist extremist groups in sub-Saharan Africa.

The photographs were reportedly taken in the West African nation of Nigeria, although there is no independent way of confirming it. It is clear, however, that the images were taken somewhere in Africa.

Sustaining the source's allegation that these pictures were shot in Nigeria is the fact that first; there is indeed a large Shiite minority in Nigeria with whom Hezbollah would find a natural ally, and second; there is a large Lebanese Shiite immigrant community in that country who settled there in the 1960s and 1970s, coming mostly from south Lebanon.

The photographs show an unidentified Shiite mullah (his religious affiliation is easily identified by his dress) being given full military honors during a parade complete with uniformed militiamen and hundreds of Hezbollah yellow flags as well as giant posters of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
. . .
"The link between the Islamist movements in the Middle East and Islamist networks in Africa is not to be underestimated," said Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington.

Hezbollah is known to receive logistical and financial support form Syria and Iran, and it is suggested that Hezbollah is in Africa for the purpose of spreading the Iranian Islamic revolution.

h/t: International Christian Concern

Previous related posts:

• Muslims riot in northern Nigeria over alleged blasphemy
• No al-Qaeda or Taliban in my country: Nigerian Sultan
• Al-Qaeda agents arrested in northern Nigeria
• Nigerian Taliban

Some entrepreneurs who know a little about dispensational theology have set up a website to send e-mails to those left behind after the rapture removes all Christians from the earth.  Somehow I doubt that non-believers heading into the Great Tribulation would appreciate receiving e-mails saying, in effect, “I told you so”, but I don’t subscribe to dispensationalism, so what do I know?

Get this: The website is called You’ve Been Left Behind.  “I got out of here and you didn’t.  Deal with it!”

For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when — according to Christian end times dogma — Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.

"You've Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ," reads the website, which is purportedly run "by Christians, for Christians." The domain name is registered through an anonymous proxy service, presumably to protect the proprietors from the Forces of Darkness, and not because they're up to anything shady.

The e-mails will be triggered when three of the site's five Christian staffers "scattered around the U.S." fail to log in for six days in a row — a system that incorporates a nice margin of safety, should two of the proprietors turn out to be unrepentant sinners or atheists.

Hmmmm.  That means the e-mails could also be triggered if three of the five “staffers” abscond to Brazil with the money.  Would that qualify as a rapture?

h/t: Kruse Kronicle