TexanInfidel's Blog

Apparently a National Day of Prayer has made atheists feel left out of the political process.  They have filed suit against President Bush, the Governor of Wisconsin, and the White House Press secretary to name a few for endorsing this National Day of Prayer.  So because they don't believe in God they are willing to make sure that people who do believe in God of all backgrounds aren't legitimized with a government sanctioned day. 

Why don't they make a National Day of Reflection?  Or a National Day of Absolutely Nothing Spiritual?  Perhaps a National Day of Arrogance?  Why must they tie up our court systems with this drivel just because they feel left out?  This is a country of religious freedom.  You may believe or not believe as you so choose.  Nothing bad has ever come from encouraging people to pray and perhaps we'd be in better shape if more people prayed faithfully. 

Just another case of atheists and agnostics trying to ruin the party for everyone else. 

Story from AP:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jx_1ONlKrjl6772I
YzxULImuf1_AD93JCE6O4

So was it a slip of the tongue or was Freud right?

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http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/07/obama-v
erbal-slip-fuels-his-critics/

Obama's verbal slip fuels his critics Christina Bellantoni (Contact)
Sunday, September 7, 2008

ST. LOUIS, Mo. - Sen. Barack Obama's foes seized Sunday upon a brief slip of the tongue, when the Democratic presidential nominee was outlining his Christianity but accidentally said, "my Muslim faith."

The three words -- immediately corrected -- were during an exchange with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on "This Week," when he was trying to criticize the quiet smear campaign suggesting he is a Muslim.

But illustrating the difficulty of preventing false rumors about his faith from spreading, anti-Obama groups within one hour of the interview had sliced it out of context and were sending it around via email. They also were blogging about it.

Mr. Obama, who is a Christian and often proudly speaks about how his faith has influenced his public service, said he finds it "deeply offensive" that there are efforts "coming out of the Republican camp to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith."

The exchange came after Mr. Obama said that Republicans are attempting to scare voters by suggesting he is not Christian, which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said was "cynical."

Asked about it on ABC, Mr. Obama said, "These guys love to throw a rock and hide their hand."

"The McCain campaign has never suggested you have Muslim connections," said Mr. Stephanopoulos, who repeatedly interrupted Mr. Obama during the interview.

"I don't think that when you look at what is being promulgated on Fox News, let's say, and Republican commentators who are closely allied to these folks," Mr Obama responded, and Mr. Stephanopoulos interrupted: "But John McCain said that's wrong."

Mr. Obama noted that when Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin "was forced" to talk about her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, he issued a forceful statement to reporters that the line of inquiry was "off limits." But he said the McCain campaign tried to tie him to "liberal blogs that support Obama" and are "attacking Governor Palin."

"Let's not play games," he said. "What I was suggesting -- you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith. And you're absolutely right that that has not come."

Mr. Stephanopoulos interrupted with, "Christian faith."

"My Christian faith," Mr. Obama said quickly. "Well, what I'm saying is that he hasn't suggested that I'm a Muslim. And I think that his campaign's upper echelons have not, either. What I think is fair to say is that, coming out of the Republican camp, there have been efforts to suggest that perhaps I'm not who I say I am when it comes to my faith -- something which I find deeply offensive, and that has been going on for a pretty long time."

Asked to comment on the accidental misstatement illustrating the difficulty of the issue, Obama spokesman Bill Burton offered this comment: "I'm not surprised that the only outlet doing this story is The Washington Times."

You can view the full context of Mr. Obama's comments on ABC here.

Sarah Palin won't openly discuss her religious beliefs.  However, she left a pentecostal church in 2002 because it was too "extreme".  She discretely attends Wasilla Bible Church in her home town.  Please note the differences: Obama attended his church, a church by all accounts that was the church to attend if one wanted to be successful in the Chicago African-American community.  He sat for 20something years listening to a controversial (extreme if you will) pastor and endured it.  Either because he knew he had to attend the church to get ahead or because he agreed with what Wright was saying.  This as compared to a woman who prefers to attend church each Sunday quietly with her family. 

Here is a pretty good article.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/us/politics/06chu
rch.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&ore
f=slogin

In Palin’s Life and Politics, Goal to Follow God’s Will

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Gov. Sarah Palin looked to biblical leaders for guidance.

By KIRK JOHNSON and KIM SEVERSON Published: September 5, 2008

WASILLA, Alaska — Shortly after taking office as governor in 2006, Sarah Palin sent an e-mail message to Paul E. Riley, her former pastor in the Assembly of God Church, which her family began attending when she was a youth. She needed spiritual advice in how to do her new job, said Mr. Riley, who is 78 and retired from the church.

“She asked for a biblical example of people who were great leaders and what was the secret of their leadership,” Mr. Riley said.

He wrote back that she should read again from the Old Testament the story of Esther, a beauty queen who became a real one, gaining the king’s ear to avert the slaughter of the Jews and vanquish their enemies. When Esther is called to serve, God grants her a strength she never knew she had.

Mr. Riley said he thought Ms. Palin had lived out the advice as governor, and would now do so again as the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

“God has given her the opportunity to serve,” he said. “And God has given her the strength to carry out her goals.”

Ms. Palin’s religious life — what she believes and how her beliefs intersect or not with her life in public office in Alaska — has become a topic of intense interest and scrutiny across the political spectrum as she has risen from relative obscurity to become Senator John McCain’s running mate.

Interviews with the two pastors she has been most closely associated with here in her hometown — she now attends the Wasilla Bible Church, though she keeps in touch with Mr. Riley and recently spoke at an event at his former church — and with friends and acquaintances who have worshipped with her point to a firm conclusion: her foundation and source of guidance is the Bible, and with it has come a conviction to be God’s servant.

“Just be amazed at the umbrella of this church here, where God is going to send you from this church,” Ms. Palin told the gathering in June of young graduates of a ministry program at the Assembly of God Church, a video of which has been posted on YouTube.

“Believe me,” she said, “I know what I am saying — where God has sent me, from underneath the umbrella of this church, throughout the state.”

Janet Kincaid, who has known Ms. Palin for about 15 years and worked with her on some Wasilla town boards and commissions when Ms. Palin was mayor here, said Ms. Palin’s spiritual path, from the Assembly of God to Wasilla Bible, has had a consistent theme.

“The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible,” Ms. Kincaid said. “Her principal ethical and moral beliefs stem from this.”

Prayer, and belief in its power, is another constant theme, Ms. Kincaid said, in what she has witnessed in Ms. Palin. “Her beliefs are firm in the power of prayer — let’s put it that way,” she said.

Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the McCain-Palin campaign, said Ms. Palin had been baptized Roman Catholic as an infant, but declined to comment further.

“We’re not going to get into discussing her religion,” she said.

In the address at the Assembly of God Church here, Ms. Palin’s ease in talking about the intersection of faith and public life was clear. Among other things, she encouraged the group of young church leaders to pray that “God’s will” be done in bringing about the construction of a big pipeline in the state, and suggested her work as governor would be hampered “if the people of Alaska’s heart isn’t right with God.”

She also told the group that her eldest child, Track, would soon be deployed by the Army to Iraq, and that they should pray “that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God, that’s what we have to make sure we are praying for, that there is a plan, and that plan is God’s plan.”

Larry Kroon, who has been the presiding pastor at Wasilla Bible for the last 30 years, declined to describe Ms. Palin’s beliefs or the role she plays in the church, but suggested that she is more of a back-bencher than a leading light.

“Todd and Sarah come in as Todd and Sarah — they’re very discreet about it,” he said, referring to Ms. Palin’s husband.

One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.

“A lot of churches are about music and media and having a big profile,” Ms. Morgan said. “We are against that. That is why it is so attractive to politicians because they can just sit there and be safe.”

“We’ve gotten a lot of their people when the other churches get too extreme,” Ms. Morgan continued. However, she added, “If you lift your hands when we’re singing, we’re not going to shoot you down.”

Mr. Kroon (pronounced krone), a soft-spoken, bearded Alaska native, said he was convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that the task of believers is to ponder and analyze the book for meaning — including scrutiny, he said, for errors and mistranslations over the centuries that may have obscured the original intent.

It is that analysis, he believes, not anything he preaches, that makes most people in his church socially conservative, he said.

“I trust my people can go out with that and they can deal with an issue such as abortion — any issue out there — whether it’s in the public arena, or in the hospital room with their relative dying of cancer, because they will be equipped with a biblical perspective that will enable them to react in that situation,” said Mr. Kroon, who described himself as “pro-life.”

“Our congregation would tend to be conservative, and it’s not because I’ve told them to be,” he said.

Some Jewish groups have raised concerns since the announcement of Ms. Palin’s selection to the Republican ticket that discussions in the Wasilla Bible Church might go beyond conservatism. Last month, a leader in the group Jews for Jesus, which advocates converting Jews to Christianity — but which has been accused by some Jews of anti-Semitism — spoke at the church. The speaker, David Brickner, spoke enthusiastically about the “miracle” of conversions in Israel by the group’s missionaries.

The church has also come under fire among some gay advocacy groups for promoting an upcoming Focus on the Family conference in Anchorage dealing with the so-called curing of homosexuality.

The Wasilla Bible Church, which draws 800 to 1,000 people for Sunday service, itself is discreet to the point of self-effacement. Only a single small sign on the gravel road leading up to the property declares the name. On the three-year-old building itself, which looks more like a warehouse than a cathedral, a large cross over the rear entrance is the only declaration of purpose.

People who know the church and its parishioners say that the mix of simplicity and quirkiness is common in Alaska, where many people have moved over the years and left their pasts and old church lives behind.

Homegrown churches like Wasilla — started in the early 1970s by a handful of families, including Ms. Morgan’s, during the construction boom in building the Trans-Alaska pipeline — have become singularly Alaskan. Mr. Kroon still remembers the days of a single room with a wood-burning stove that he would have to fire up before services.

Mr. Kroon said the Alaskan spirit of go-it-alone individuality gives the church a mix of joiners and resolute nonjoiners. The church offers full-immersion water baptism, which some people want and others do not.

“I have people who’ve been here since I got here, and they still say, ‘Don’t put me on the membership roll,’ ” he said. “There’s definitely a cultural element.”

From Michelle Malkin.  I love the guy who keeps yelling "what part of the woman's body is the baby?"

http://michellemalkin.com/

Leave it to the atheists to call for the resignation of a great general for endorsing a religious novel.   Why can't they (the left) allow people to worship as they choose?  Riiiiight because religious freedom only applies if you aren't a Christian - anyone feeling that way?  I say Petraeus 2016!

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http://www.military.com/news/article/petraeus-book-
endorsement-draws-fire.html?col=1186032310810&wh=wh

Petraeus Book 'Endorsement' Draws Fire

August 20, 2008Military.com|by Bryant Jordan -->

Gen. David Petraeus is used to controversy surrounding the war in Iraq, but his publicized thoughts on an Army chaplain's book for Soldiers put him squarely in the middle of the ongoing conflict over religious proselytizing in the U.S. military.

The book is "Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel," by Army Chaplain (Lt. Col.) William McCoy, and according to Petraeus' published endorsement of the work, "it should be in every rucksack for those times when soldiers need spiritual energy."

But the endorsement - which has spurred a demand by a watchdog group for Petraeus' dismissal and court martial on the grounds of establishing a religious requirement on troops - was a personal view never intended for publication, the book's author now says.

"In the process of securing … comments for recommending the book I believe there was a basic misunderstanding on my part that the comments were publishable," McCoy said in an Aug. 19 email to Military.com. "This was my mistake."

In addition to Petraeus, Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling also is quoted plugging the book in press releases and advertisements and on the jacket.

McCoy, writing in response to Military.com's Aug. 18 inquiry to Petraeus' office for comment, said the two generals' endorsements "were intended for me personally rather than for the general public."

In response to follow-up questions from Military.com, McCoy said he has asked that all distribution of the book be halted until a new "graphic overlay" for the back cover  is produced "so there is no further public misunderstanding."

McCoy did not respond to questions on the timing of the endorsements, and why it took so long before the officials learned their endorsement has been used in print. Petraeus' endorsement has been on the book since its 2007 publication, while Hertling's plug first appeared on the 2005 edition. Both also are quoted in newspaper ads for the book and on the book's Amazon.com Web page.

Patraeus spokesman Col. Steven Boylan said the general has been Iraq since the beginning of February 2007, "and unless someone [like Military.com] notes it, we would not be aware of it," he said in an Aug. 19 email. "We don't get the stateside papers in Baghdad and I doubt very much that Gen. Petraeus goes to Amazon.com much, if at all."

Mikey Weinstein, head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, believes McCoy is taking the fall for Petraeus and Hertling's improper endorsements. Weinstein said it "strains credulity" that Petraeus never knew that his private written endorsement of the book was in the public domain since last year.

Weinstein is a former Air Force judge advocate general and White House counsel during the Reagan administration. His group has been fighting in the courts to keep improper proselytizing out of the military. Now, he said, he intends to incorprate the Petraeus and Hertling endorsements into an ongoing lawsuit against the Pentagon for an alleged pervasive and permicious "pattern and practice" of religious liberties violations in the military.

"MRFF is now officially putting both Army chaplain Lt. Col. Bill McCoy and  General Petraeus on notice not to destroy any of the written or  electronic records of their communications about this [issue]," Weinstein said.

The chapters in McCoy's book are offered up as "Orders," he said, and one of them is titled "Believe in God."

With his plug for "Under Orders," Weinstein said in a statement to Military.com, Petraeus - one of the most widely recognized officers in the American military - is endorsing religion as something all Soldiers should have and, specifically, the Christian religion.

"General Petraeus has, by his own hand, become a quintessential poster child of this fundamentalist Christian religious predation, via his unadulterated and shocking public endorsement of a book touting both Christian supremacy and exceptionalism," Weinstein told Military.com Aug. 16.

And by endorsing a book that argues only those who believe in God can fully contribute to the military mission or unit, Weinstein contends that Petraeus insults ""the integrity, character and veracity of approximately 21 percent of our armed forces members who choose not to follow any particular religious faith."

He said that even if Petraeus offered his comments personally, that's a distinction without a difference. "Privately he's denigrating 21 percent of troops," Weinstein said. Suppose he privately denigrated women, African-Americans or Jews? Weinstein asked.

"He should still be relieved of duty and court martialed," he said.

Rev. Billy Baugham, a retired Army chaplain and executive director of the International Conference of Evangelical Christian Endorsers, backs Petraeus' right to plug the book. Past generals, among them George C. Marshall and George Patton, made the case for religion in the ranks.

Marshall claimed that the Soldier's spiritual life was critical to his morale, even more than equipment, while Patton, said Baugham, had a chaplain pray for good weather for an coming battle and then submitted him for an Army Commendation Medal afterwards, when the weather turned out clear.

"So the ICECE would support what General Patreaus has done," Baugham said.

Chris Rodda, a freelance writer and researcher for the MRFF, noted in an Aug. 16 column on the Daily Kos Web site that she found much in "Under Orders" that was "pretty good." It offered sound advice and promoted a brand of Christianity that it would be good to see more often both in the military and civilian worlds, she said, and even warned against the practices used by some "para-church groups" within the military that Weinstein's group considers dangerous and unconstitutional.

But in the end, she claims, the book paints those who don't believe in God as "somehow deficient," in that they may - in McCoy's words - view their own "agenda [to be] more important than [the] unit's agenda and thus lead to unit failure."

Author McCoy, writing Aug. 11 in his blog on Amazon.com, acknowledges that the book does promote Christianity.

"No one [else] has written a book which allows for varying world views and perspectives while suggesting the Gospel might have an idea worth considering. Under Orders does just that," he wrote.

McCoy is endorsed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, according to a recent press release for his book. Now the chaplain for U.S. Army Garrison Kaiserslautern, Germany, McCoy previously served as chaplain for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth and, before then, the 10th Mountain Division, according to the release.

© Copyright 2008 Military.com. All rights reserved

Here is a great piece by David Freddoso summarizing Barack's inaction and/or rejection of bills designed to protect the most innocent among us. 

I honestly don't understand the following:

1) how anyone could consider abortion anything other than murder

2) how anyone could vote for a man who votes to allow abortion survivors to be killed when they are capable of surviving

Read on.  

 

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http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTBkYTYzZDNjND
gyMWJmMzMxYzljYjYxNmEwMTdhYWE=

Life Lies
Barack Obama and Born-Alive.

By David Freddoso

In 2001, Senator Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois senate to speak against a bill that would have recognized premature abortion survivors as “persons.” The bill was in response to a Chicago-area hospital that was leaving such babies to die. Obama voted “present” on the bill after denouncing it. It passed the state Senate but died in a state house committee.

In 2003, a similar bill came before Obama’s health committee. He voted against it. But this time, the legislation was slightly different. This latter version was identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which by then had already passed the U.S. Senate unanimously (with a hearty endorsement even from abortion advocate Sen. Barbara Boxer) and had been signed into law by President Bush.

Sen. Obama is currently misleading people about what he voted against, specifically claiming that the bill he voted against in his committee lacked “neutrality” language on Roe v. Wade. The bill did contain this language. He even participated in the unanimous vote to put it in.

Obama’s work against the bill to protect premature babies represents one of two times in his political career, along with his speech against the Iraq war, that he really stuck out his neck for something that might hurt him politically. Unlike his Iraq speech, Obama is deeply embarrassed about this one — so embarrassed that he is offering a demonstrable falsehood in explanation for his actions. Fortunately, the documents showing the truth are now available.

At the end of last week, Obama gave an interview to CBN’s David Brody in which he repeated the false claim that the born-alive bills he worked, spoke, and voted against on this topic between 2001 and 2003 would have negatively affected Roe v. Wade. This has always been untrue, but, until last week, it appeared to be a debatable point that depended on one’s interpretation of the bill language. Every single version of the bill was neutral on Roe. Each one affected only babies already born, not ones in the womb.

But in 2003, in the health committee which he chaired, Obama voted against a version of the bill that contained the specific “neutrality” language — redundant language affirming that the bill only applied to infants already born and granted no rights to the unborn. You can visit the Illinois legislature’s website here to see the language of the “Senate Amendment 1,” which was added in a unanimous 10-0 vote in the committee before Obama helped kill it. This is the so-called “neutrality clause” on Roe that everyone is talking about:

 

1 AMENDMENT TO SENATE BILL 1082

2 AMENDMENT NO. . Amend Senate Bill 1082 on page 1, by

3 replacing lines 24 through 26 with the following:

4 “(c) Nothing in this Section shall be construed to

5 affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal

6 right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at

7 any point prior to being born alive as defined in this

8 Section.”.

The addition of this amendment made the bill identical to the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act.
This Committee Action Report, dug up in Springfield by the National Right to Life Committee and revealed last week, shows two different votes. In the left column, under the heading “DP#1”(or “Do Pass” Amendment 1), we see that Obama’s committee voted 10-0 to add this neutrality language to the bill. In the right column, we see that the committee then voted 6-4 to kill the bill. Obama was among the six “No” votes.


CONTINUED    1    2  Next >

 

 

I'm no Catholic, but the right to life should span all backgrounds.  Pat Buchanan, you prophetic soothesayer...

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http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=27992

A Catholic Case Against Barack 08/12/2008 In the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama rolled up more than 90 percent of the African-American vote. Among Catholics, he lost by 40 points. The cool liberal Harvard Law grad was not a good fit for the socially conservative ethnics of Altoona, Aliquippa and Johnstown.

But if Barack had a problem with Catholics then, he has a far higher hurdle to surmount in the fall, with those millions of Catholics who still take their faith and moral code seriously.

For not only is Barack the most pro-abortion member of the Senate, with his straight A+ report card from the National Abortion Rights Action League and Planned Parenthood. He supports the late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion, where the baby's skull is stabbed with scissors in the birth canal and the brains are sucked out to end its life swiftly and ease passage of the corpse into the pan.

Partial-birth abortion, said the late Sen. Pat Moynihan, "comes as close to infanticide as anything I have seen in our judiciary."

Yet, when Congress was voting to ban this terrible form of death for a mature fetus, Michelle Obama was signing fundraising letters pledging that, if elected, Barack would be "tireless" in keeping legal this "legitimate medical procedure."

And Barack did not let the militants down. When the Supreme Court upheld the congressional ban on this barbaric procedure, Barack denounced the court for denying "equal rights for women."

As David Freddoso reports in his new best-seller, "The Case Against Barack Obama," the Illinois senator goes further than any U.S. senator has dared go in defending what John Paul II called the "culture of death."

Thrice in the Illinois legislature, Obama helped block a bill that was designed solely to protect the life of infants already born, and outside the womb, who had miraculously survived the attempt to kill them during an abortion. Thrice, Obama voted to let doctors and nurses allow these tiny human beings die of neglect and be tossed out with the medical waste.

How can a man who purports to be a Christian justify this?

If, as its advocates contend, abortion has to remain legal to protect the life and health, mental and physical, of the mother, how is a mother's life or health in the least threatened by a baby no longer inside her -- but lying on a table or in a pan fighting for life and breath?

How is it essential for the life or health of a woman that her baby, who somehow survived the horrible ordeal of abortion, be left to die or put to death? Yet, that is what Obama voted for, thrice, in the Illinois Senate.

When a bill almost identical to the one Barack fought in Illinois, the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, came to the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2001, the vote was 98 to 0 in favor. Barbara Boxer, the most pro-abortion member of the Senate before Barack came, spoke out on its behalf:

"Of course, we believe everyone should deserve the protection of this bill. ... Who could be more vulnerable than a newborn baby? So, of course, we agree with that. ... We join with an 'aye' vote on this. I hope it will, in fact, be unanimous."

Obama says he opposed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act because he feared it might imperil Roe v. Wade. But if Roe v. Wade did allow infanticide or murder, which is what letting a tiny baby die of neglect or killing it outright amounts to, why would he not want that court decision reviewed and amended to outlaw infanticide?

Is the right to an abortion so sacrosanct to Obama that killing by neglect or snuffing out of the life of tiny babies outside the womb must be protected if necessary to preserve that right?
Obama is an abortion absolutist. "I could find no instance in his entire career," writes Freddoso, "in which he voted for any regulation or restriction on the practice of abortion."

 

In 2007, Barack pledged that, in his first act as president, he will sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would cancel every federal, state or local regulation or restriction on abortion. The National Organization for Women says it would abolish all restrictions on government funding of abortion.

What we once called God's Country would become the nation on earth most zealously committed to an unrestricted right of abortion from conception to birth.

Before any devout Catholic, Evangelical Christian or Orthodox Jew votes for Obama, he or she might spend 15 minutes in Chapter 10 of Freddoso's "Case Against Barack." For if, as Catholics believe, abortion is the killing of an unborn child, and participation in an abortion entails automatic excommunication, how can a good Catholic support a candidate who will appoint justices to make Roe v. Wade eternal and eliminate all restrictions on a practice Catholics legislators have fought for three decades to curtail?

And which Catholic priests and prelates will it be who give invocations at Obama rallies, even as Mother Church fights to save the lives of unborn children whom Obama believes have no right to life and no rights at all?

In this story, the fact that divorce rates are up is a GOOD thing...

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1009066.html>

Last update - 18:29 06/08/2008 10-year-olds aren't too young to be brides in Saudi Arabia By The Associated Press Tags: Saudi Arabia, Islam, marriage 
An 11-year-old Saudi Arabian boy gave out invitations to his classmates for a big event his family was planning this summer - and it wasn't his birthday party.

It was his wedding to a 10-year-old cousin.

Muhammad al-Rashidi's marriage was eventually put on hold, his father said, after pressure from the governor of the northern province of Hail, who considered the elementary school student too young to marry.   The case is among a recent spate of marriages involving the very young  reported in the media and by Saudi human rights groups. They have been widely denounced by activists, clerics and others who say such unions are harmful to the children and trivialize the institution of marriage.

Saudi Arabia is already rocked by a high divorce rate that has jumped from 25 percent to 60 percent over the past 20 years, according to Noura al-Shamlan, head of the research department at the Center of University Studies for Girls.

We are studying this issue so we can put an end to this phenomenon, said Zuhair al-Harithi, board member of the Human Rights Commission, a Saudi government-run rights group. These marriages violate international agreements the kingdom has signed.

Al-Harithi's group recently succeeded in delaying the consummation of the marriage of a 10-year-old girl after getting reports from medical centers in Hail that she and a man in his 60s had showed up for the mandatory prenuptial medical tests.

He said the commission wrote to the province's governor and head of Islamic courts urging them to stop the marriage.

But there are other marriages involving children that have gone ahead.

One involved a 15-year-old girl whose father, Muhammad Ali al-Zahrani, a death-row inmate, married her off to a cell mate who also was sentenced to death. The father's sentence was carried out July 21, when he was beheaded for killing another man.

Pictures of the wedding, held in the prison in Taif for the men, appeared in several newspapers. Media reports said inmates recited poems and delivered speeches in the presence of prison officials. The teenage bride and other women, as is the custom here, held a separate reception outside the jail.

The groom, Awad al-Harbi, and his bride were allowed to spend two nights together in a special prison quarters after the wedding, according to Al-Watan. Al-Harbi told another newspaper, Al-Madina, recently that his wife was pregnant.

There are no laws in Saudi Arabia defining the minimum age for marriage.  Though a woman's consent is legally required, some marriage officials do not seek it. For example, a father can marry off a 1-year-old girl as long as sex is delayed until she reaches puberty, said one marriage official, Ahmad al-Muabi.

Known as ma'thoons, these officials have legal authority to preside over marriage contract ceremonies. They ask the groom and the woman's guardian if they approve of the marriage and then give them the marriage papers to sign.

There are no statistics to show how many marriages involving children are performed every year. And it's also not clear whether these unions are on the rise or whether people are hearing about them more now because of the prevalence of media outlets and easy access to the Internet.

But the phenomenon is not new, said Sheik Muhammad al-Nujaimi, a strong opponent of the marriages. He and other clerics, activists and writers have urged the government to pass legislation setting the minimum age for marriage and to resolve differences among the kingdom's religious authorities over the issue.

There are different (religious) opinions regarding the marriages which is why we need the government to settle the issue through legislation, said al-Nujaimi.

Such marriages occur not only in Saudi Arabia. In April, an 8-year-old Yemeni girl sought out a judge to file for divorce from a man nearly four times her age. Her lawyer said she was one of thousands of underaged girls who have been forced into marriages in Yemen, an impoverished tribal country at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

Activists say the numbers in Saudi Arabia are not so high. They say the girls are given away in return for hefty dowries or as a result of long-standing custom in which a father promises his infant daughters and sons to cousins out of a belief that marriage will protect them from illicit relationships.

Denouncing the custom, Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al Sheik, the kingdom's grand mufti and top religious authority, said recently a guardian should not impose his will on his children or promise them to their cousins.

Islam has stipulated that both parties agree to the marriage contract, he said, according to Al-Madina newspaper. The woman must express real consent to the suitor, and a guardian must not impose his choice of husband on her ... or force his son to marry someone he doesn't want.

Al-Muabi, the marriage official, told Lebanese-run LBC TV that because marriage in Islam takes place in two stages - a marriage contract can be signed months or even years before a woman moves in with her husband - that means a 1-year-old girl can be married off.

A man can enter a marriage contract with a 1-year-old girl, not to mention 9 years, 7 years or 8 years, said al-Muabi. This is just a contract indicating consent, and the guardian in this case must be the father.

Al-Muabi maintained such unions make sense in some cases, such as when a man is the sole guardian of many daughters.

Isn't it better to marry his daughter to a man with whom she can stay and who can protect her and support her, and when she reaches the proper age, have sex with her? Who says all men are ferocious wolves? said al-Muabi.

However, Sheik Abdul-Mohsen al-Obeikan, a legal adviser at the Justice Ministry, said a girl's consent is crucial.

A marriage official should not conclude a marriage contract without the
woman's agreement and without her signature, al-Obeikan, who is also a member of the appointed Consultative Council that acts like a Parliament, told Al-Madina. Officials who ignore such instructions expose themselves to punishment.

Until laws are put in place to protect children, Saudi human rights groups have been speaking out against the practice.

When girls are married off at a young age they will be deprived of education and of enjoying their childhood, said Suhaila Hammad of the National Society for Human Rights, a private Saudi group. Their bodies won't be able to tolerate pregnancy and delivering children.

But there's only so much the groups can do.

Muraiziq al-Rashidi, the 11-year-old boy's father, told The Associated Press he will delay his son's marriage only by a year.

God willing, we will hold the wedding next year, he said.

I would suggest that every spiritual person on this blog read The Shack.  www.theshackbook.com

I read it recently and it helped to rejuvinate my faith (c'mon guys, you know we all struggle) and make me think "outside the box" of what is traditionally preached in church.  Now you take some and leave some, but the message is amazing - none of us can possibly fathom God's love for us. 

 

From HotAir.com...  You know, the most thoughtful and wise professor I had used the following illustration of how the laws of free speech apply:  Your right to swing your fists wildly ends where my face begins. 

Obviously if you say that life begins in the womb (backed by scientific evidence of feelings and personalities developed in the womb - and not to mention that any mother can testify the rate at which her child develops inside) you have no right to voice your opinion.  But if you want to destroy someone else's planned, permitted, executed silent protest no one can touch you.  I think I'm going to start posting every leftist nut job that interrupts a peaceful protest with a tantrum...

And call me judgemental, but I don't know that this guy is going to be reproducing any time soon anyway...

---

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/05/07/video-pro-lif
e-memorial-destroyed-because-abortions-a-right-and-your
e-not-allowed-to-challenge-that/

And before you ask, no, your right to free speech that he’s challenging doesn’t count. Exit question one: This sort of makes sense by Doug Kmiec standards, no? Exit question two: “If there’s a student on this campus that … might be having an abortion, might be going through this, you’re going to put this up in front of them? Are you crazy?”

 

I would like to see everyone read a blog series by Robert Spencer called "Blogging the Qur'an".  It is an incredibly informative and unbiased look at the Qur'an posted each Sunday on www.hotair.com.

The link directly to the archived blogs is:

http://jihadwatch.org/articles/bloggingtheq.php

Personally I am a Christian and I enjoy Robert Spencer's commentary and analysis of the Qur'an - which was written long after Christ walked the Earth. 

Please let me know what you think!

Barack Obama likens having a baby to contracting an STD.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nNbaig-D5pk

Most people are scared to find out they will be having a child - regardless of whether you are 16 or 36, single or married.  But to call a baby "punishment" is terrible, especially since he is a father.   Shadows of doubt continue to be casted on Obama's faith - I have never heard a Christian talk this way...

I would LOVE to hear someone spin this to mean anything positive. 

According to Ted Turner, if we don't do something about the environment we will all turn to cannibalism because there will be nothing to eat!  Also, the problem with the earth is that we have too many people.  So what should we do Ted?  Watch CNN until we die of boredom?

http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=2eaad768
-0c42-4287-a62a-d4146726a99b

Who's the fear monger now?

I'm posting this under "faith" because Environmentalism is now a religion.  Not one that worships a higher being being but one that is being followed blindly despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Please hurry and get your copy before the oppressive, murderous thugs have them all removed:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/28/liveleak-pull
s-fitna-after-receiving-very-serious-threats/

It is the second video on the page.  I must warn you that it contains VERY disturbing images - not at all suitable for children.

Regardless of whether you are Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Agnostic - this effects you.