So, what do you think the Islamic Caliphate of Palestine would look like? I think it would look something like this:
The Hamas-run Education Ministry has ordered an anthology of Palestinian folk tales pulled from school libraries and destroyed, reportedly over mild sexual innuendo, officials said Monday, in the most direct attempt by the Islamic militants to impose their beliefs on Palestinian society.
[…] The Education Ministry declined immediate comment. A senior ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the issue with reporters, confirmed that 1,500 copies of the book had been pulled from school libraries and destroyed.
[…] However, in recent months the Hamas-controlled ministries have begun forcing women to don headscarves to enter. And two years ago, Hamas officials in charge of the West Bank town of Qalqiliya sparked fears of a culture crackdown by banning a local music festival, arguing that the mingling of men and women at such an event was “haram,” or forbidden by Islam.
In a letter sent to the Nablus school district last month, the Education Ministry said ‘Speak Bird, Speak Again’ must be removed within a week, and asked school officials to notify the ministry once they had complied. The letter did not explain why the book was considered objectionable.
So, what is this fearsome book?
The 400-page anthology of folk tales narrated by Palestinian women was first published in English in 1989 by the University of California at Berkeley. It was put together by Sharif Kanaana, a novelist and anthropology professor at the West Bank’s Bir Zeit University, and by Ibrahim Muhawi, a teacher of Arabic literature and the theory of translation.
Just imagine what they’d do with “Heather Has Two Mommies.”
These are the people that the world expects Israel to deal with, ultimately. Shyeah. Because they’re so eminently reasonable, they have to destroy a children’s book because—well, they never did say, did they? But people made an educated guess.
Kanaana said that two of the 45 tales contained what some might consider vague sexual innuendo, referring to body parts in colloquial Arabic. “This is our heritage, this is our life,” he said of the folk tales.
Well, hey. You voted for them, people. You made your bed. Now lie in it. Segregated by sex, of course.
I will be waiting for the ACLU, ALA, and whatnot to reproach them for burning books, but then I have become very patient.
I stopped short at the idea of Palestinian folk tales. The Palestinian Arabs aren’t even a folk, except to the extent that they share the attribute of having been rendered stateless by their Arab brethren (most of them were Jordanian until Jordan disowned them).
But then the article makes clear that the book consists of folk tales “narrated by Palestinian women.” Hmmm. Suppose I were to retell some German folk tales. Would that convert them into Jewish-American folk tales?
The fundamental basis of Palestinian Arab identity is ferocious anti-Zionism. I wish they would stop disingenuously pretending otherwise. I’m not at all persuaded by the article’s “educated guess” about the reasons for banning the book. My “educated guess” is that there may have been a story or two in there about peacefully co-existing with people different from oneself.
I guess there’ll be no Perfumed Garden for that crowd.
Not enough stories urging the little tykes to kill Jews is my guess.
Seems like everything is haram in Islam except killing the infidel. If that is not the case, and if Muslims want us to think well of Islam, lest we start doing to them what the radical Muslim militants do to us, then they had better get rid of these bloodsoaked puritans, the militant Islamists.
Hmm, I may be wrong to call them puritans. The original Puritans were fun-loving, tolerant, peace-loving people by comparison.
Actually, the real Puritans were not the dour down-in-the mouth people that popular wisdom would have them. They were sincere, honest, and (dare I say it) fun-loving (though not like the current connotation which implies immorality).
The main difference between them and the terrorists is that they were honest, hard-working, and sincere believers. All things that the terrorists are not.