Recently in Dour Mullah Category

This is absolutely brilliant -

As we already know, only Muslims are human beings. This is also an indisputable fact. So, when good Muslims meet non-Muslims, it is their duty to convert the latter. This way they are actually helping non-Muslims become human. If they convert, well and good. If not, they should be taken to task at once. Or better, bombed! After all, we believe in humanity.

(...) They should be bombed because it's okay to bomb non-humans. However, humans (Muslims), who might also die in such an attack need not worry. Along with the bomber they too will go to heaven. This is called collateral shahadat.

by blogger Nadeem Paracha. Satire aside, this probably is how Al Qaeda actually thinks.

(There's more where that came from)

This is eerie - Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile, culled from the official US State Department photo set on Flickr of Barack and Michelle Obama meeting various dignitaries and heads of state last week at the UN:

I find this as utterly captivating as The Infinite Khan.

Ramadan is pan-Arab television's holy land - a month-long sweeps, where the post-fasting masses hunger for entertainment. As a result, there is intense pressure to compete and innovate for new programming. One of the recent hits is Freej, the first 3D animated TV series for the region, about four diminutive veiled grandmothers. The show is the brainchild of 31-year-old Mohammed Saeed Harib, a Dubai native who studied at Boston's Northeastern University, where he was inspired by South Park and the Simpsons to create homegrown characters rooted in his own culture and identity.

The show finds humor along the dominant fault line of this city: the tension between old and new. Set in Dubai, where camel races are conducted mere miles from the base of the world's tallest building, the series focuses on four secluded and sometimes stubborn grandmothers.

[...] At Northeastern Mr. Harib started to sketch his first character, later named Um Saeed, a wise, stubby lady in red who often leads the grandmas' conversations. The cartoon he envisioned would extol grandmas as role models. Mr. Harib said that he imagined that the veil that partly covered a woman's face would be the "costume of the superhero."

[...] Before long Mr. Harib was being praised as the Matt Groening and the Seth MacFarlane of the Middle East. These references to the creators of "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy" are not lost on Mr. Harib, who noted that he was named to a local business publication's list of the world's 100 most influential Arabs.

But the show never attempts the risqué humor of American cartoon sitcoms. Instead it tackles hot topics like wedding traditions and bribery in a distinctly Arab way, sometimes merely hinting at issues.

Motioning straight ahead, Mr. Harib said, "You can't go like this." He made a curve with his hand and said, "You have to go like this." He joked that he could compare sexual behavior to the eating of an apple, but said that he hadn't written an episode about that yet.

"Freej" stoked controversy in its first season with an episode that alluded to Islamic extremism. The episode was pulled from repeat broadcasts but still appeared on the DVD of that season.

Sarah Al Jarman, the programming and acquisition manager for the English-language channel Dubai One, introduced a subtitled edition of "Freej" to give non-Arab viewers a glimpse at a locally created animated series.

She said the episodes "actually reflect many local old ladies" in the Emirates, featuring their traditional dress, language and habits.

The show is a phenomenon, with Simpsons-esque merchandise, dreams of a theme park (on hold, though, due to the recession), and enough cultural penetration that the crown prince of Dubai himself is a fan, and who sent in a plot idea for an episode (set to air during the fourth season). It's even possible that Freej might have legs beyond the Gulf:

As for exposure in the United States, Mr. Harib said he had met with executives from Cartoon Network and Universal this summer.

If "animation exports the cultural values of the nation," as Mr. Harib put it, then he said he wanted "Freej" to continue to represent his native Gulf state, even abroad.

If the Arab cultural references can survive the dubbing process, then it might very well succeed. Maybe we will be watching Freej in the US next Ramadan?

Mike Licht breaks the news - it's time to start singing "Cold Hearted":

Entertainer Paula Abdul has been named to the Death Panel mandated under the new U.S. Healthcare Reform bill. We have been unable to confirm either of the facts in that last sentence, but that hasn't stopped anyone else from making statements on the healthcare reform issue, either, so we're going with it.

"Ms. Abdul is the perfect choice for this job," said an unidentified government source. "She is leaving her prior post on the American Idol panel at considerable sacrifice due to her strong personal commitment to public service."

According to the well-known medico-legal authority Mrs. Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, the Obama Death Panel will decide how she will next exploit her own family for the sake of publicity which "special needs" children and senior citizens will live or die. This will lower medical bills for surviving Americans. Cast members of "Survivor" were unavailable for comment.

I'm not worried, though, since Paula was always the "nice one" on American Idol.

Meanwhile, Palin is now calling for "civil discourse":

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is calling for civil discourse on President Barack Obama's health care proposal.

Palin's call on Facebook came just days after she characterized Obama's plan as "downright evil."

In her latest posting, Palin says there are many disturbing details in the bill. But she says people must stick to discussion of the issues "and not get sidetracked by tactics that can be accused of leading to intimidation or harassment."

The former Republican vice presidential candidate asked supporters not to give "proponents of nationalized health care any reason to criticize us."

Palin is a godsend to the Democratic Party. It's beautiful to see. Meanwhile, Palin's fellow Republican governors have been distancing themselves from Palin's comments. However, Newt Gingrich is defending them, in a transparent attempt to sacrifice whatever intellectual integrity he had left as he tries to position himself as the Mitt Romney "true believer" for the 2012 nomination. It's just sad to see how Newt has become Palin's poodle.

In a more serious vein, the deather nonsense has really provoked the media's conscience. The Associated Press has a remarkable fact-check story up which bluntly states regarding death panels that "Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision" and then goes on to rebut specific Deather and Republican talking points in Q&A format. There's a nice op-ed by Ryan Witt that also rebuts Deather in Chief Betsy McCaughey's disingenous oped in the New York Post - and also takes some deserved shots at Gingrich for good measure. Finally, Mike Madden notes in Salon thatdeath panels are already here - and are run by the insurance industry. It's precisely this that Obama's proposed insurance reform would fix.

Behold - a shocking video exposé of impending Islamist takeover in the United States! Amerabia is nigh! Aieeeeeeee!

(really, the last minute is the important part)

Now, I'm tempted to mock this mercilessly as I did with the Dawah Doll, but there are plenty of humorless jafis out there who tend to take me literally (for example, not realizing at whom I was laughing at in this post about Islam Day in Hawai'i). I'll leave the sober analysis and rebuttal to people with more patience for tiresome foolishness, like Matt Stroud at True Slant:

I vehemently dislike the idea that anyone should be denied the right to film or otherwise record an interview - especially during a public event (as it seems Dearborn's Arab Festival intends to be). And while it does, in fact, seem unfair that these people were turned away from the supposedly public Arab Festival because they supposedly wanted to assault question-seeking Muslims with answer-seeking Christian queries, Wood and Qureshi come to odd conclusions: First, that their video rejection means "Islam [will take] over the United States," but also that this kind of repressive response to video documentation is somehow limited to Muslims. I don't fully understand what their first conclusion intends to imply, really, but, in response to the latter, I wonder if Wood and Qureshi have ever been to a US political gathering of any type. I'll point out the "Don't Taze Me, Bro" fiasco as just one of many non-Muslim examples of well-documented oppression. And if they'd like more, perhaps they should look into President George W. Bush's "Free Speech Zones."

I'll just leave the video up above and let the viewer draw their own conclusions. This is clearly more of a free speech issue than a religious one, aside from the religious agenda of the video makers, that is.