Oumkheyr is a French Muslim woman in her 40s. Of Algerian origin, she is divorced and has a daughter. She tells CNN why she’s proud to wear the burqa, also known as the niqab or full veil, and what she thinks of the law proposed by the French government to ban the burqa. A French parliament report has called for a ban on the burqa in schools, hospitals, government offices and public transport.

(CNN) — I wear the burqa for the simple reason that I am a Muslim and the Koran says that I must wear the full veil in order to be modest.

I am proud of my Muslim faith and my modesty. I am proud to follow God’s law.

Nobody ever forced me to wear the full veil and I have been wearing it for around 10 years now.

In fact, very few of my friends actually wear one. There are, of course, situations in which some men force their wives or daughters to wear the burqa but, believe me, these cases are a very, very small minority.

For those of us who are believers, we just want to do God’s will and live by the sacred text, so what any man says has nothing to do with that.

I am testament to that as I don’t have a husband and I practice my religion freely, that’s why I’m always shocked when people say it’s the husband who forces his wife to wear a burqa.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

France has denied citizenship to a man because he allegedly forced his wife to wear a full Islamic veil, the French immigration minister said in a statement Wednesday.

The man was applying for citizenship in order to join his French wife in France, Immigration Minister Eric Besson said. The man was refused citizenship because he was depriving his wife of the liberty to come and go with her face uncovered, Besson said.

The decision, made Tuesday, came exactly a week after a French parliamentary commission recommended a partial ban on any veils that cover the face — including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women.

The ban — which has not yet come up for a vote — would apply in public places like hospitals and schools, and on public transport, the commission announced.

Foreigners may become French citizens if they marry French nationals and meet certain criteria, including integrating well in French society and having “good morality,” Besson said. It is on the criteria of morality that the man’s citizenship request was denied, Besson said.

“This individual imposes the full veil upon his wife, does not allow her the freedom to go and come as she pleases, and bans her from going out with her face unveiled, and rejects the principles of secularism and equality between man and woman,” Besson said he told Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

France’s top court denied a Moroccan woman’s naturalization request in 2008 on the grounds that she wore a burqa.

Sarkozy controversially told lawmakers six months ago that the traditional Muslim burqa was “not welcome” in France. He said the issue is one of a woman’s freedom and dignity, and did not have to do with religion.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

The Prussian system of education, on which the US model was based, was designed to crank out good, obedient soldiers, loyal to the state.  Well, that’s all well and good for the state but not necessarily good for the family, is it?

Uwe and Hannelore Romeike are not like other asylum seekers, people fleeing war or torture in places like Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. They’re music teachers from a village in southern Germany. And yet, in what appears to be the first case of its kind, the couple and their five children were granted asylum in the U.S. last week by an immigration judge who ruled that they had a “well-founded fear of persecution” in their home country for engaging in what has become a popular albeit somewhat controversial American practice – homeschooling their children.

The Romeikes, who are Evangelical Christians, took their three eldest children out of school in the town of Bissingen in 2006 because they were concerned about the impact the government-approved curriculum and the public-school environment would have on their social development. “Over the past 10 to 20 years, the curriculum in public schools in Germany has been more and more against Christian values, and my eldest children were having problems with violence, bullying and peer pressure. It’s important for parents to have the freedom to choose the way their children can be taught,” Uwe Romeike said in a statement provided by the couple’s attorney, Michael Donnelly of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA).

But here’s the problem: in Germany it’s compulsory for children to attend school, and the Romeikes soon found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Local authorities slapped the couple with a $10,000 fine, and police even took their children to school when the Romeikes refused to send them. Fearing that they could lose custody of their kids or even be put in jail, the Romeikes fled to the U.S. in 2008, looking for a community where they could educate their kids as they saw fit.

That’s exactly what they found in Morristown, Tenn., a town of about 27,000 deep in the Bible Belt. Donnelly says the Romeikes flourished in the environment, becoming “very disciplined” teachers tackling subjects like math, history and social science with the help of textbooks and other teaching materials, all in accordance with state law. The couple also joined a local group that organizes activities and field trips for homeschooled children in the area. Once they were settled in their new community, they applied for asylum in the U.S., claiming they’d be persecuted if they were sent back to Germany. (See pictures of Detroit school kids’ dreams of the future.)

Memphis judge Lawrence Burman’s ruling sparked outrage in Germany. Authorities in the state of Baden-WÜrttemberg, where the Romeikes had lived, angrily dismissed suggestions that the couple had been persecuted. “We have compulsory schooling, and this law applies to everyone, including the Romeikes,” says Thomas Hilsenbeck, a spokesman for the state Education Ministry. “If parents don’t want to send their children to a public school, they can send them to alternative private schools.”

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

These people from The Freedom from Religion Foundation obviously have no valuable, productive work to engage in whatsoever and they end up wasting their time on silliness such as this.

An atheist organization is blasting the U.S. Postal Service for its plan to honor Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp, saying it violates postal regulations against honoring “individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings.”

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is urging its supporters to boycott the stamp — and also to engage in a letter-writing campaign to spread the word about what it calls the “darker side” of Mother Teresa.

The stamp — set to be released on Aug. 26, which would have been Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday — will recognize the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her humanitarian work, the Postal Service announced last month.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

Most people in Britain hold a critical opinion on the veils worn by some Muslim women, according to a poll by Angus Reid Public Opinion. 67 per cent of respondents say that garments that conceal a woman’s face represent an affront to British values, while 25 per cent disagree with this notion.

However, 58 per cent of respondents believe the government should not be allowed to tell individuals what they can and cannot wear.

About 1.5 million Muslims currently reside in Britain.

	Agree	Disagree	Not sure
Garments that conceal a woman’s face are an affront to British values	67%	25%	8%
The Government should not be allowed to tell individuals what they can and cannot wear	58%	36%	6%

Source/Full Story: Angus Reid Global Monitor

French lawmakers Tuesday recommended a partial ban on any veils that cover the face — including the burqa, the full-body covering worn by some Muslim women.

The ban on the “voile integrale” — which literally means “total veil” — would apply in public places like hospitals and schools, and on public transport, a French parliamentary commission announced.

It would also apply to anyone who attempts to receive public services, but it would not apply to people wearing the burqa on the street, the commission said.

The commission stopped short of recommending a full ban because not all of the 32 commission members could agree on it.

They will now recommend that Parliament pass a resolution on the partial ban. Such a resolution, if passed, would not make the wearing of a full veil or burqa illegal, but it would give public officials support when asking people to remove it.

Commission members began their work six months ago after French President Nicolas Sarkozy controversially told lawmakers that the full veil was “not welcome” in France.

Sarkozy said the issue is one of a woman’s freedom and dignity, and did not have to do with religion.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

In Canada, abortions are provided on request to Canadian citizens and permanent residents, and are funded by the health care system. Which of these statements comes closer to your own point of view?

	Jan. 2009	Jul. 2008
The health care system should fund abortions whenever they are requested	43%	43%
The health care system should only fund abortions in the event of medical emergencies	41%	44%
The health care system should not fund abortions at all	7%	4%
Not sure	9%	8%

Source/Full Story: Angus Reid Global Monitor

I don’t know which god these people have been given over to as subjects, but the God of the Holy Bible doesn’t go around asking people for change.   Rather, He curses and inflicts punishment on those who break His Law-Word, and blessings on those who keep it.  Iniquity IS lawlessness. 

There is no “new path” to YHWH.  There is only one way, and it’s the same as it’s always been.

Deeply religious Haitians see the hand of God in the destruction of Biblical proportions visited on their benighted country. The quake, religious leaders said Sunday, is evidence that He wants change.

Exactly what change He wants depends on the faith: Some Christians say it’s a sign that Haitians must deepen their faith, while some Voodoo followers see God’s judgment on corruption among the country’s mostly light-skinned elite.

And then there’s American evangelist Pat Robertson, who said Wednesday that Haiti had been cursed by a pact he said its slave founders made with the devil two centuries ago to overthrow their French rulers and become the world’s first black republic. The White House called his remarks “stupid.”

As desperate believers gathered to pray Sunday across the shattered capital, the Rev. Eric Toussaint told a congregation gathered outside the ruined cathedral that the earthquake “is a sign from God, saying that we must recognize his power.”

Haitians, he said, “need to reinvent themselves, to find a new path to God.”

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

As you may know, there have been a lot of discussions lately about health care reform in the United States. An amendment to the proposed health care reform bill would ban abortion coverage in any health insurance plan using federal subsidies. Overall, do you agree or disagree with banning abortion coverage in any health insurance plan using federal subsidies?

Agree:       44%
Disagree:   42%
Not sure:   14%

Source/Full Story: Angus Reid Global Monitor

This is something for all those ‘christian’ people who are duped by people like John Hagee into sending their money to the Jews.  This is what you are funding, in part.  You’re funding the enemy, idiots.

Globally speaking, the most serious new tension dividing Jews and Catholics is Pope Benedict XVI’s decision just before Christmas to advance the sainthood cause of Pius XII, the wartime pontiff whose alleged “silence” on the Holocaust has long been a subject of polarizing historical debate.

On the ground in Jerusalem, however, Jewish/Christian animus has a much more prosaic cause: Spitting.

Recently, the Jerusalem Post carried a piece quoting Rabbi David Rosen, a veteran of Catholic/Jewish dialogue, acknowledging that incidents of ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at priests, nuns and other Christian clergy is “a part of life” in Jerusalem. Such incidents have been occurring for the last twenty years and are now on the rise, according to the story, although they appear to be limited to Jerusalem.

The piece quoted a Texas-born Franciscan, Fr. Athanasius Macora, who heads the Christian Information Center inside the Jaffa Gate, who said that he’s been spat upon by ultra-Orthodox Jews as much as fifteen times in the last six months – not only in the Old City, but also outside his Franciscan friary.

The Rev. Samuel Aghoyan, an Armenian Orthodox cleric, said he’s been spat upon fifteen to twenty times, most recently in November.

“I was walking back from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and I saw this boy in a yarmulke and ritual fringes coming back from the Kotel, and he spat at me two or three times,” Aghoyan said.

“Every [Christian cleric in the Old City] who’s been here for awhile, who dresses in robes in public, has a story to tell about being spat at,” Macora said. “The more you get around, the more it happens.”

Source/Full Story: National Catholic Reporter

Secular campaigners in the Irish Republic defied a strict new blasphemy law which came into force today by publishing a series of anti-religious quotations online and promising to fight the legislation in court.

The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).

It defines blasphemy as “publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted”.

The justice minister, Dermot Ahern, said that the law was necessary because while immigration had brought a growing diversity of religious faiths, the 1936 constitution extended the protection of belief only to Christians.

But Atheist Ireland, a group that claims to represent the rights of atheists, responded to the new law by publishing 25 anti-religious quotations on its website, from figures including Richard Dawkins, Björk, Frank Zappa and the former Observer editor and Irish ex-minister Conor Cruise O’Brien.

Michael Nugent, the group’s chair, said that it would challenge the law through the courts if it were charged with blasphemy.

Source/Full Story: guardian.co.uk

It’s quite the accomplishment indeed for N.H. to legalize the intrinsically fruitless union of fags and lesbians.

Jubilant gay couples have rung in the New Year in New Hampshire with wedding vows to celebrate the state’s new law legalizing same-sex marriage.

At midnight, New Hampshire joined Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut and Iowa in allowing gay marriage.

About 15 couples braved the cold to exchange vows outside the New Hampshire Statehouse in Concord. Others planned private ceremonies around the state.

The law grants no new rights to gays but eliminates the separate status for civil unions.

Couples already in civil unions have three options to convert their statuses to marriages. They can have marriage ceremonies, file marriage paperwork with their town clerks to convert their statuses during 2010 or wait until the unions are automatically converted in 2011.

Source/Full Story: FOXNews.com

 Leviticus 20:13 (New International Version)
‘If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”

The BBC today asked users of its news website “Should homosexuals face execution?” on a talkboard discussion for a World Service programme for African listeners.

Posted on a BBC News premoderated talkboard, the thread was designed to provoke discussion ahead of the latest edition of interactive World Service programme Africa Have Your Say.

“Yes, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question, but this is the reality behind an anti-homosexuality bill being debated on Friday by the Ugandan parliament which would see some homosexual offences punishable by death,” the post said.

Source/Full Story: The Guardian