The video Somalina posted reveals the insensitivity and daftness of many pious control-freaks, the self-appointed gate-keepers of morality and decency. It seems that a person's obsession with so-called decency and morality is directly proportional to his insolence and depravity. At any rate, radical conservatives live in a parallel universe, a universe where it is morally praise-worthy to condemn a relationship simply on the basis of religion. Then again, those who lie on the extreme end of the religious spectrum are notoriously misogynistic: Only to conservative bumpkins is the beating of women a way of honoring them. How merciful. One has to understand the wicked psychology of religious nut-jobs and right-wingers to understand their animosity towards Idil. It's egregiously commonplace.

Adeer, there’s nothing original about this discussion. It’s an old debate, a seemingly eternal struggle, between the reactionary forces of traditionalism and the progressive voices of liberalism. Every society has elements and individuals who defend rigidity and conservatism, and those who champion the principles of liberalism and enlightenment. Recently, a new poll conducted in Mississippi asked conservatives whether interracial marriage should be illegal. Appallingly, nearly half of respondents said that such relationships should be illegal. While right-wing Muslims do not, for the most part, condone racial bigotry, Muslim conservatives are unabashed, even piously proud, in their unconscionable defense of religious bigotry. If you ask a right-wing Muslim whether it should be illegal for a Muslim (woman) to marry a non-Muslim, a majority of Muslim conservatives would answer in the affirmative. Small wonder. It matters not a whit that these ninnies sincerely (and delusively) believe that Islam condones, nay mandates, religious bigotry. You cannot lend respectability to bigotry by claiming that it is from God. This the reason that clerics like Torabi have rejected the regressive, conservative stance on this matter. Any Muslim can marry any non-Muslim. Freedom of choice is a beautiful, dare I say divine, concept.

Amusing thread. This thread beatifully illustrates the profound difference between the cultural sensibilities of Liberal and Conservative Muslims. (Conservative Muslims, of course, insist that there is no such thing as a Liberal Muslim.) There are many Muslim men and, to the chagrin of puritans, Muslim women who are happily married to non-Muslims. A Liberal Muslim would not find this problematic. Philistine Conservatives, however, ever the cultural alarmists, would insist that such love is expressly forbidden, especially if such innocent affection involves a Muslim woman marrying a non-Muslim man—haram, the miscreants shriek! Such misogynists, however, have no problem with a Muslim man marrying a Christian woman, provided he is afforded exclusive indoctrination rights to the child. Odd, isn't it? As with any cultural issue, these raffish right-wingers are wont to prattle on that their view, and only their view, represents the pristine Islamic position. Thus, any Muslim who finds their draconian, indeed illiberal, interpretation of Islam distasteful is disobeying God. Not surprisingly, it’s an old and tedious ruse that scurrilous conservatives have resorted to, time and again. I don’t think Liberal Muslims should let these intolerant naifs use religion to buttress their deep-seated animus and bigotries against non-Muslims. Besides, Islam is hardly unequivocal on this matter. There's enough grey area here. Let the mullahs and their minions blithely regurgitate scripture. Text is nothing if not interpretation. And there’s no reason to think that the interpretation of benighted conservatives is the morally correct one. If these know-nothings had their way, they would, perhaps, consign music and art to the flames. Muslims who appreciate the beauty of art and the harmony of music would not let these unsophisticated fops deprive them of such pleasures. In like manner, open-minded and tolerant Muslims should not let these bigoted misogynists use Islam to cast aspersions on Idil’s relationship. There's nothing disreputable or dirty about her relationship. I have no qualms with people who marry those with whom they share cultural affinity. Social homogamy determines much of our mate preference. As a matter of sheer probability, you are more likely to choose a spouse who shares your background--your ethnicity, your education, and your religion. There’s nothing wrong with such preferences. Problems only arise when mullahs and their minions insist that to marry a person of a different religion is criminal and ungodly. Liberal Muslims find such virulent and militant nonsense divisive and morally odious. Muslim women can marry whomever they want. P.S. Hasan El-Torabi, a Sudani Muslim Cleric, was berated and castigated by vulgar conservatives in his country when he stated that it was permissible for a Muslim woman to marry a non-Muslim man. "The Shariah allows it", he proclaimed defiantly. Rather than engage his juridical arguments, the conservatives did what they do best: ugly intimidation, reprehensible demagoguery, and outright thuggery. Sad. But what else would you expect from intellectually bankrupt islamists?

A Somali prophet? Perish the thought. Why would God want to communicate to Somalis in their own language instead of an ancient, foreign one? To be taken seriously by the masses, he must speak in tongues. Obscurity can mask insanity.

^ I suppose you think there is no such thing as moral progress? Alas, the conservative mind is ever ossified. To suggest that humans have made only technological progress in the past 2000 years is flagrant fundamentalism. Obviously, you know more about science than someone who lived a thousand years ago. Do you really think that you know nothing more about ethics and morality than a bronze-age Bedouin? Has our moral knowledge, our moral imagination, not expanded one iota since the golden age when people thought camel urine a panacea? Unlike people who lived in 12th century, we no longer believe in the inherent inferiority of women—we don’t insist that a woman’s testimony is inherently inferior to the testimony of a man. Slavery is a moral stain that can never be whitewashed. Those who defend any form of slavery today—this is true of right-wing Christians and Muslims—are moral monsters. We can forgive, but not embrace, our benighted ancestors’ ethical abominations. Their moral ignorance was no less pronounced than their scientific ignorance. You wouldn’t trust a medieval doctor to perform surgery on you, so why would you trust his moral guidance? Why should a rational person pine for the moral traditions of a primitive people? Does the accumulation of knowledge mean anything to rabid conservatives? I think you're conflating moral progress with moral relativism. Progress does not necessitate relativism.

I think a religious costume like the Niqaab is risible and ridiculous—but I would not, aesthetic considerations notwithstanding, ban it. There are interesting parallels (and distinctions) between this issue and the issue of polygamy. I’ve been trying to keep abreast with the landmark polygamy case in British Columbia, Canada. Polygamy is illegal in Canada. (It’s illegal in all developed countries, thankfully.) Proponents of polygamy have argued that anti-polygamy laws constitute an infringement upon the constitutional principles and fundamental rights (religious rights) guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Trudeau, you might reckon, famously said that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation”. The government cannot intrude into the private lives of consenting adults. As a social liberal, I would have serviced the same argument in support of same-sex marriage. To be sure, it’s a powerful argument from civil libertarianism. But – as with all arguments from libertarianism—it is hopelessly naïve and unsound. The basic rights afforded by the constitution are invariably limited. Freedom of speech is not absolute (i.e. incitement of violence is illegal). Freedom of religion is not absolute (i.e. marrying a minor, say, a 9 year old, is illegal). What about grey areas that involve the Niqaab and Polygamy? It should be conspicuous that cruel and exploitative practices cannot get a pass, even if such practices are rooted in religion. Historically, most pernicious and inhumane practices have enjoyed religious sanction; that some practice has a foundation in religion cannot confer legal immunity. You can’t perform female genital mutilation merely because you believe it is a tenet of your religion. Religion doesn’t give any citizen a trump card to trample on the rights of others. Religion doesn't give you the right to do anything. But I digress. Back to polygamy. The intrinsically harmful effects of this ancient practise are well documented. One would have to be blinkered by piety or patriarchy to deny the social ills of such arrangements. The cultish Mormons in Bountiful, BC, however, fatuously appeal to freedom of religion as though such freedom was unlimited and unrestricted. It will be interesting to see ruling of the Supreme Court on this matter. Legal experts are betting that the anti-polygamy laws will not be struck down. Is it possible to marshal a robust legal case against the Niqaab? In other words, can it be demonstrated, empirically, that the veil leads to an erosion of the rights of children and women, as is the case with polygamy? Does the government have a "compelling state interest" to ban the veil? Can the "notwithstanding clause" be utilized to effect such a curtailment of religious rights? If Layzie and others think it is possible to adduce an analogous case for the veil, and that there's no danger of a slippery slope, then I, too, would support the banning of the veil. Suffice it to say, I doubt it.

He spewed anti-Semitic rants, condoned Islamic militancy, denied the Holocaust and tutored high-profile terrorists (the Detroit underwear bomber). Then again, such things aren't exactly antithetical to the Salafi mindset. But things have changed. A few years earlier, it would have been impossible to distinguish the views of Yasir Qadhi from those of the radical Anwar Al-Awlaki. (I hear the throngs of youth who attend Al-Maghrib seminars are disgruntled by the fact that Al-Maghrib has banned the sale of Al-Awlaki tapes.) You see, lately, the Pakistani mullah has been engaged in a desperate make-over. How does a fundamentalist preacher pull this off? Denounce Al-Awlaki. Check. Praise the principles of free society and inquiry. Check. Visit concentration camps in Europe and apologize for asinine anti-Semitic tirades. Check. And finally, shake a woman’s hand, to the pious horror of conservatives. Check. The NYT article is more a culture piece than a trenchant analysis and criticism of the cultish Salafi subculture in America. Those of us who are secular Muslims relish the spectacle of a Salafi mullah tempering his erstwhile extremist views with calls to moderation. But as Yasir Qadhi has discovered, it is going to take more than shaking a woman’s hand to slough off the stigma of salafism. Unfortunately, he still retains the ultra-conservative dogma that informs much of the ideology of islamists and extremists. Why Yasir Qadhi Wants to Talk About Jihad. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/magazine/mag-20Salafis-t.html?ref=magazine

Adeer, I don't want to hijack a personal blog-thread. There's a whole thread on the topic of alternative medicine, quackery, and woo-woo therapies. I addressed the vapid allusion to premarin made by pious quacks. By the way, PubMed, though a valuable resource, indexes all manner of alternative 'medicine' journals, non-peer reviewed 'open' articles, and methodologically flawed 'studies'. In one part of the world, scientists are making break-through discoveries in cancer-screening techinques. In the other part of the world, dadyow wareersan baa kaadi geel iyo timir la wareegaya. Maa Calaynaa.

[quote=Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar;701768 And speaking of it, dadka now even kaadi geel ayaa la cabooyaa, caanihii waaba la iska dhaafoyaa. Dad wareeray, caafimaad ayee wataan kaadida geela ee dhahooyaan, according to an old xadiis, so they say. Dad wareersan. Naturally, camel excrement hasn't had the same marketing success of camel milk -- and it never will. At any rate, some of the asinine advocates of urine therapy resort to hadith-mongering to sell their piss "medicine" to the public. You know, ancient societies even advocated animal feces as a source of medicine and nourishment. Laakiin maanta haddaad tidhaahdo "xadiis weeyaan oo kaadi geel cab" cidi kaa yeeli meyso. The dubious hadith sales pitch can only go so far.

Che -Guevara;701201 wrote: Give me an example? Awoowe, I am loath to answer obtuse questions. But I shall make allowance for the possibility that you are egregiously ill-informed. One need conduct only a simple search of the congressional archives to ascertain the number of such hearings. The records and transcripts of hearings on the looming problem of ‘radicalization’ and ‘homegrown terrorism’ are available on the House and Senate websites. King’s unfortunate theatrics and demagoguery have ignited a needless conflagration of controversy. That being said, I doubt that any sensible person - conservative or liberal, muslim or non-muslim- would oppose a level-headed examination of homegrown terrorism and radicalization. And, of course, Muslim radicals do not have a monopoly on terrorism; Christian extremists, Right-wing Militias, and White Supremacists, all pose a substantial threat to US National Security. In some ways, SOL is a microcosm of the Muslim Community. Other than you, Maaddeey, Kashafa, and the few lily-livered merchants of martyrdom, I venture that the majority of Nomads shun terrorism and jihadism as morally odious. P.S. These are only some of the hearings by the Homeland Security and Governmental affairs Committee. The Senate and House Intelligence Committees have convened similar hearings. - Hearing, October 30, 2007: “The Role of Local Law Enforcement in Countering Violent Islamist Extremism.” - Hearing, September 10, 2007: “Confronting the Terrorist Threat to the Homeland: Six Years After 9/11.” - Hearing, September 19, 2006: “Prison Radicalization: Are Terrorist Cells Forming in U.S. Cell Blocks?” - Report, May 8, 2008: “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” - Hearing, March 11, 2009: “Violent Islamist Extremism: Al-Shabaab Recruitment in America.”

US Congress holds radicalization hearings all the time. And it is only reasonable that Muslim radicals garner copious attention given the political realities of Islamism and jihadism. When Somali- Americans or Pakistani- Americans go back to their countries to fight alongside other religious maniacs, it’s a serious problem. You would have to be delusional (and perhaps pious) to deny that some US Muslims are radicalized. Al-Shabaab is a terrorist organization, not a Somali nationalist movement; Lakshar-e-Taiba, in Pakistan, is more interested in the revival of the defunct Caliphate than reclaiming Kashmir. Which brings me back to my initial query: Why have these hearings become so controversial? It has everything to do with hysterical conservatives and rabid right-wing nut-jobs. Such conservative demagogues have tarred these hearings with xenophobia and bigotry. In the last five years, House and Senate committees have held at least 22 hearings focusing on the problem of radicalized American Muslims plotting terrorist acts or joining Al-Qaeda and similar groups, according to congressional staffers. The investigations have also been bipartisan, convened by the likes of Maine Senator Susan Collins — a moderate, low-key Republican — and former Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat. While King has been slammed for focusing solely on Muslims — the title of his investigation is “The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response” — five Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearings since 2006 have had the phrase “violent Islamist extremism” in their descriptions. The point is that the controversy over the hearings is mostly about King, who commands media attention like some lost member of the Kardashian family, Source: Slate Magazine (Weigel), via Andrew Sullivan.

Waar meeshu khuzacbalaat badanaa.

Ciyaal suuqu kolkuu diinta ku khafiifo buu caruurta maagaa, taasi hala yaabina. Mid baan garanayaa ee African American ah, markuu Islaam-ka bartay dabeecadiisa ismay bedelin. Dee qofku gadh weyn wuu la bixi karaa, oo miswaak wuu sidan karaa , laakiin ciyaal suuqnimadii halkeedii uun bay ahaan. Salafi ciyaal suuq ah ayaa dunida ugu daran, waa ayaan darro.

Lol@911-Truthnet. Is it any surprise that conspiracy crackpots would find much wisdom in the the Green Book. Ninkan Qadaafi ee aad marmar moodo inuu jawaan soo dhex galay buuggiisu wuxuu i soo xusuusiyoo kutub badan oo muqaddas ah. Dad baa markay akhriyaan sujuuda ama suuxa iyagoo u xamdi naqaya qofkii qoray. Laakiin anigu amakaag iyo qosol buu igu abuuraa.

Why would a jihadi misfit study Western law? I could be mistaken, but wouldn’t his head detonate from sheer cognitive dissonance? If his enrollment in a law program was merely a façade to deflect attention, why would he then unecessarily draw attention to himself through terrorism propaganda on youtube? Wuxu waa noocaa oo miidhan, waa dugaag aan caqli innaba lahayn. Allaylehe wax la xidho wuu yahay. I don't think the plump chicken-hawks on SOL, who reside in the West, really believe in the carnal fantasies of the merchants of martyrdom. Mar horeey is qarxin lahaayeen, oo xuurul ciin iyo webiyo khamri, iyo waxaynaan garanayn niyeysan lahaayeen.

Kan yaree Maaddeey waa fadeexad lugo loo yeelay. Belo.

I suspect Saudi scholars would also endorse bizarre rituals of this sort. Sunnah Mo’akkadah? Perish the thought.

Withdrawn.

John Seabrook writes " Is Watson a great breakthrough in science—a Sputnik moment—or an elaborate parlor trick? When I asked Steven Pinker this question, he responded": I don’t rule out the possibility that some components of Watson could both provide insight into human cognition and lay the groundwork for more sophisticated artificial intelligence applications, such as natural language processing (the fancy term for understanding human languages like English, as opposed to computer languages). On the other hand, when a system is designed to meet a highly specific challenge like playing Jeopardy, and one where the reputations of the designers are on the line, there will be enormous pressure to tailor the system to succeeding at that challenge by any means whatsoever, including kludges that are specific to the rather peculiar requirements of the game of Jeopardy. Pinker went on: The real problem is that we may never know. It will depend on whether the I.B.M. team divulges the methods in technical publications or keeps them as trade secrets. In the golden years of A.I. (1960s and 1970s), there was a lot of back-and-forth between academia and industry. Labs at Xerox, I.B.M., B.B. & N., and A.T. & T. were among the best research departments in the world, and people and ideas flowed in and out of them. Then A.T. & T. lost the free money from its telephone monopoly, and the other companies realized that their openness was just helping their competitors (e.g., the Macintosh GUI, which was basically stolen from Xerox PARC), and they forced their scientists to work on applied projects and kept the details out of the public domain. The result is that A.I. has become disengaged from cognitive science, the old A.I./philosophy gurus like Minsky, Papert, Simon, and Schank have not been replaced, and questions like yours may be impossible to answer, if I.B.M., as seems likely, will keep the specs secret. That is, we won’t be able to know how much of the program’s success to attribute to humanlike or superhuman intelligence, and how much to Jeopardy-specific hacks. Marvin Minsky, sometimes called the father of AI had this to say: Watson program may turn out to be a major advance, because unlike most previous AI projects, it does not depend mainly on a single technique, such as reinforcement learning [learning via reward and punishment], or simulated evolution ... but tries to combine multiple methods," . Source: New Yorker and National Geographic

^ Lol. You're not being paranoid. The voice simulator was not chosen at random.

^ Awoowe, dee cayaayirka iga daa oo qof carabi garanaya ha isaga kaaya dhigin, hamza iyo haa’ malahaa hal xaraf baad u heysataa. Waxaan u malaynayaa google translator baa ku yara dawakhiyay. Mockery lahayne, qof fahmaya turjumaan weydiiso. Kaftan weeyaan ee waxba aakhiro iyo meel fog ha ii jiidin. My tongue-in-cheek comments were about our strange fatwa culture.

حدثني أبو جاني بي بن العقول ‘ أخبرنا النورف بن المأفون ‘ عن الانجنون الكاتب ‘ عن خاله ‘ عن البرميثس عن أبي سعيد الخدري أنه قال: بينا أنا جالس ذات ليلة عند بيت أبي بوب إذا سألني أحد الاعراب - و أظنه راعي الغنم - عن إباحة كتابة البسلمة على الأوراق ‘ وقد كان في يده ورقة أرانيها قائلاً (( أتمنى أن أبعث بهذه الرسالة الى القوم ‘ وها أنذا استفتحتها بالبسملة الكريمة ‘ فهل ترون أمراَ محظوراً في هذا العمل)). و قد كان متوهما ان االذي فعله غير مباح. قلت: (( لا بأس به‘ كان أبو هريرة يفعل مثله ‘ ولم يرغبه النبي عن ذلك)) صححه البرميثس قال الشيخ نور (( البرميثس هذا لا يحتج به‘ كان مطعونا في دينه ‘ من أصحاب الفلسفة والتجربة ‘ اتهمه الشيخ المادي بالزندقة)) قال ابتجيس صاحب الرسائل المشهورة ((نحن غير قاطعين بإلحاد الرجل ‘ وكيف وهو يدعي أنه مسلم ‘ إلا اننا نراه واغلا في البدعة والعقلنة ‘ ولاسيما استهزاءه بالنصوص المقدسة‘ فتأمل

Ha! Well, the computer made some obvious blunders, but the game is far from over. It's estimated that IBM spent close to 2 billion on this project. But I take such marketing-freindly rumors with a grain of salt. In any event, I've always found the analogy of mindless algorithms and mindless neurons ineluctably seductive. With enough mindless algorithms, you can produce seemingly intelligent behavior. If your mind comprises billions of neurons, and if each neuron is a little more than a mindless robot, how does it produce higher-level functions such as intelligence. For those who are interested, click on this link to follow a lively debate between a neuroscientist, computer scientist, and a philosopher. The authors pretty much cover the well-known controversies about AI, consciousness, and brain science.

Nomads, this isn’t a debate about the existence of God. It’s about the use of silly miracle arguments to buttress any worldview. Indeed, there are better arguments to be had. Miracle arguments are, in the end, neither cogent nor coherent. The philosopher-theologian, Al-Razi (Rhazes), was known for his vehement instruction against what he dubbed, pejoratively, Asadeer Al-‘Ijaz, , instructing his pupils not to be seduced by specious miracle claims; there’s nothing more I detest, he exhorted, than inane arguments for views that I support heartily. Sincere simpletons might see the face of Jesus in a piece of cheesecake, or the name of Allah in the contours of a cloud, or perhaps fatuously fiddle with numbers so as to assign cosmic significance to a desert city, but it is unworthy of Islam and reason to stoop to such sophistries. A miracle peddler is a bit like snake-oil salesperson. A good dose of skepticism is required to see through their false enthusiasm. I don't think anyone can defend the 'math' behind this Mecca-Golden-ratio nonsense. Even if you didn't quite pay much attention to Math in high school - something that probably applies to most of the Nomads who responded thus far - you can still see the gaping holes in this argument. Are poor arguments admissible if the end is the promotion of Islam? I don’t think so. Dhalinyaro badan ee caadifad iyo xamaasadi heyso waxan odhan lahaa, adeerayaal, yaanay caadifadda hilinka toosan idinka leexin. Qofaad isku fikir ama isku diin tihiin kolkuu dood saqiim ama sakhaafa cad la yimaado, weligaa dhaliil oo ha dhiirri gelin. Even Nomads of divergent views as Johnny B and Sh. Nur, I hope, can find common ground on this point.