This story is a few weeks old, but I’m just now getting around to it.

A leading Al-Qaeda militant on Wednesday called on Muslims worldwide to defend Uighurs in China’s restive northwestern region of Xinjiang. He told Uighurs to prepare for a holy war or Jihad and urged a “vast media campaign” to raise awareness of their fate at the hands of “oppressive” China.

In the video posted to jihadist websites, Abu Yahya al-Libi appeared to launch a frontal assault against China.

The coming war between China and Islam has been boiling under the surface for some time now.  China, having the benefit of a closed media and an existing international reputation as bad guys, will react to this war in a much different way than the west.

They will react in ways that countries like the US or Great Britain, or even Russia cannot.

He [ed. the Al-Qaeda militant] also accused China of using “satanic ways” to oppress Muslims in the province and replace them with other ethnicities while “looting their wealth and undermining their culture and religion.”

“Tens of thousand of people have been silently killed to prevent a revolt. The communist Chinese government has tried to eliminate all links between eastern Turkestan and the Islamic nation by sending colonisers to constantly reduce the number of Muslims,” he stated.

Another tactic China is using to exterminate Muslims is calling the province Xinjiang instead of eastern Turkestan, just as Palestine’s name as been changed to Israel, al-Libi argued.

He described China’s presence in Xinjiang as an “occupation” and claimed the colonisation of the province has made the Muslim population a minority.

“The Chinese have closed all the Islamic schools, forbidding the study of the Muslim religion. They have arrested and killed all the Muslim leaders,” he said.

Xinjiang is also the province where China is carrying out the largest number of nuclear experiments, al-Libi alleged.

“Thousands of people have died from the radiation emitted by the many nuclear missiles that have been launched and the experiments carried out in the area,” al-Libi concluded.

Uighurs make up 8 million people out of Xinjiang’s population of 20 million. It covers one-sixth of the country and is relatively sparsely populated.

I wouldn’t be surprised if 8 million Uighurs just ended up disappearing one day.  It’s surely not beyond the ability of the Chinese to execute.

China has been mostly silent as the rest of the international community deals with the threat of Islam.  (See, for instance, Iran.)

It will be interesting to see how they react when the threat is in their own back yard.

I’m not kidding.

Mariamu Stanford, a soft-spoken, 28-year-old single mother from rural Tanzania, has earned a grim distinction: She’s one of only two people with albinism — a group that has faced discrimination in East Africa — to survive a brutal attack by those wanting to sell the limbs of albinos on the black market.

Video story at ABC

Here’s the vid from Al Jazeera. Shock at 1:40, and the last 30 seconds nails the look of horror to your face.

Another vid, have a trash can near, in case of vomit:
Youtube Link … the “more info” part has a few more articles.

The basics are, Hamas hosted/funded a mass wedding for 450 couples. The men appear to be in their 20’s. The girls are half their height, appearing to be around 9-ish. Each couple is given cash (sources differ on the amount, $500usd or $612usd) to fund their journey into rape-ville.

There’s several articles published online from July 31st. Most are middle eastern, and the American ones have the least info. Several from Canada, Europe, Australia have basically the same story: Link.

The anti-radical-islam blogs have published it the most and have more photos than what is shown in the Al Jazeera video. Tim Marshall, of Sky News seems to be the first to dispute the apparent pedophilic wedding ceremony, claiming that he was there, and that the little girls are neices of the grooms, which is a cultural norm for weddings. Here’s a link to the best pro-Hamas event summary I found. Strange how Tim and other deniers of child brides can’t come up with one blasted photo of age-appropriate brides at this ceremony. Additionally, nobody I’ve read has yet attempted to explain the last 30 seconds in that video, and how incredibly obvious it seems that the little girl is getting into the rape-mobile and then gazing mournfully out the window of her marital home.

None of my preliminary searches have uncovered anything about nieces dressing up as brides for play during the wedding. Admittedly, most documents are a brief overview of the event such as this. There are however, several references (like this) to Islamic wedding norms that include marriage of an older man to a girl as young as ten. It seems odd that if pedophilia could in any way be suggested by these ceremonies, they would officially address it in an article like this.

But hey, I’m sure that we culturally ignorant Americans just don’t understand.

You have presented me with a highly undesirable option. I am troubled.

A RADICAL Muslim group sparked outrage last night as it launched a massive campaign to impose sharia law on Britain.

I haven’t been able to fake surprise yet, but I’m still trying, so bare with me.

The group declared: “We hereby request all Muslims in the United Kingdom, in Manchester, Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow and all other places to join us and collectively declare that as submitters to Almighty Allah, we have had enough of democracy and man-made law and the depravity of the British culture.

“On this day we will call for a complete upheaval of the British ruling system its members and legislature, and demand the full implementation of Shari’ah in Britain.”

Last quote, my personal fav…

Mr Choudary has said that under sharia law in Britain people who commit adultery would be stoned to death, adding that “anyone who becomes intoxicated by alcohol would be given 40 lashes in public”.

He has also mocked the deaths of British soldiers, and branded an Army homecoming parade a “vile parade of brutal murderers”.

The Islam4UK website is currently down. I’ll try to get in for an update later on.

Yet.

The founder of the Jedi religion inspired by the Star Wars films was thrown out of a Tesco supermarket for wearing his distinctive brown hood.

Daniel Jones, 23, who has 500,000 followers worldwide, was told the hood flouted store rules and was ordered to remove it or leave the supermarket.

As a result Jones, who also goes by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, claims he has been ‘victimised over his beliefs’ and left ‘emotionally humiliated’ by the supermarket in Bangor, North Wales.

Really? This freak has 500,000 followers. Dude.

Tesco, for their part, argued that the guy was full of it, and that real Jedis, like Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker all appeared in public without their hoods.

I give it 10-1 odds that he wins the lawsuit. I mean, he has the evidence:

‘They said: “Take it off”, and I said “No, its part of my religion. It’s part of my religious right.” I gave them a Jedi church business card.’

I know all you Christian ‘Harry Potter’ fans were conflicted and worried about your everlasting-souls due to previous comments by Cardinal and future Pope Joseph Ratzinger when he stated that, “the “Harry Potter” novels contained “subtle seductions” that could “deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.””

But good news!

On Wednesday, L’Osservatore Romano, the newspaper of the Holy See, wrote that “Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth entry in the film franchise adapted from the J. K. Rowling novels, was “the best of the series.” It added: “The mixture of supernatural suspense and romanticism sets the right balance, making the adventures of the protagonists more credible,” according to Agence France-Presse.

Most are taking this article as a nod to all you Christian’s that you can now worship the golden cow named Harry, then go home to work on your wand techniques. I mean… tame your dragons. Err… beat your bludgers? This post just took a turn for the worse!

Source: Dave Ryan and here.

This is a funny article. I think they should have built him in the likeness of the buddy Christ instead, but…

A Swedish protestant church assembled this six-foot tall Jesus figure. Composed of 30,000 piece LEGO bricks, it took about 40 volunteers a total of 18 months to finish their massive Jesus project.

We need to do some buoyancy math on Lego Jesus to see if he can also walk on water, or if he’d sink like a ton of Legos.

So here we have a woman being persecuted in the press for a “crime” that’s not even half as bad as
sick and abusive acts that get little publicity. Favoritism of religious and cultural traditions?! Well it appears that way on the surface, but further reading shows that it’s just domestic violence like we see all the time. Nothing unique or culturally motivated at all.

In conclusion, physically assaulting your kids is normal and not really more prevalent in one culture than another, but if you want a better chance of avoiding your name in papers, do it for Allah.

Bonus question: is it interesting how we’re encouraged to look at sick behavior from believers in a Judeo-Christian faith as a direct reflection on their ideology or even their God, whereas each terrorist act or honor killing is just a radical who took scripture the wrong way when they read infidels deserve death to mean kill infidels, or women have no rights to mean women have no rights?

Yes, I’m over-simplifying. But if I’m far off base, how badly must CAIR suck at making a decent counter-point?!

I came across a recipe that called for Kosher Salt the other day.

Now, I’m certainly not the world’s biggest expert on what it means to be kosher, but I struggled to understand how salt would not be kosher.

Turns out that Kosher Salt is only called Kosher Salt in the US. In Britain, it’s called Koshering Salt, and in the rest of the world it’s mostly just called coarse salt.

It’s really just regular salt that has larger grains, i.e., is ground more coarsely. Because of the large grains, the salt is good for use in curing meats. (Or, to put it more graphically, in removing blood from meats.)

So what’s the deal with the name? For a meat to be certified as kosher, it cannot contain any blood. So the people who produce meat use this “kosher salt” to remove the blood and make the meat kosher.

And just for the record, all salt is kosher. Unless you add blood for some reason. And that would just be gross.

Source: wiseGeek

There was Pope John Paul I, of course.

John Paul I was notable for being the William Henry Harrison of Popes, dying only 33 days after he ascended to the papacy in 1978. (He lasted a whole day longer than WHH!)

John Paul I immediately preceded John Paul II.

There were implications of conspiracy in his death, and some believe that he died from drinking poisoned tea.

Source: The History Channel