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The Fourth Approach sounds like the winner to me. I believe many would move to Mecca if we took it.

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Hello Friends,

I read the below article and was impressed with the thought process and the conclusions Daniel Greenfield reached. It's a very interesting read and well worth the time spent reading it.

Shalom,

Peter

A Fourth Approach to the Muslim World

Posted: 21 Jul 2010 08:47 PM PDT

American policy toward the Middle East has been traditionally split between the Stabilizers and the Radicals.

The Stabilizers were old foreign policy hands in the State Department, the Pentagon or the CIA, sometimes tied in with the oil industry. They advocated maintaining stability in the Middle East by putting American support behind "our friends", the dictators. The US would supply them with weapons and military backing in case they were ever invaded or overthrown, and in exchange we would have reliable access to oil. From the Eisenhower interventions to the Gulf War, the United States protected Arab Muslim tyrannies in order to maintain stability in the region.

The Radicals were often academics, part time journalists or old line leftists. They insisted that everything wrong in the Middle East was caused by Western colonialism and imperialism, and the healing could only begin when the United States stopped backing the tyrants and began backing Marxist and Islamist terrorists in taking over their respective countries. The Radicals believed that if the United States would only abandon the dictators and throw their support behind the Marxists and the Islamists, a wonderful new age would dawn in the Middle East.

Until the Carter Administration, the Stabilizers held sway over foreign policy. With Carter though, the Radicals had their first taste of power. Following the doctrine of the Radicals, the Carter Administration helped bring Islamists to power in Iran, and began providing aid to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. Its Green Belt strategy was focused on creating an alliance of Islamists to ally with the US against the Soviet Union. The real result was the same one you get when you try to breed poisonous snakes in order to get a bear off your land. You might succeed in getting rid of the bear, but now you'll have a whole other problem on your hands. That's exactly what happened with the US and the Islamists.

Neither the Stabilizers nor the Radicals were utilizing new ideas in their approach to the Middle East. The Stabilizers were echoing the British Empire's attempts to maintain control of the region through puppet sheikdoms and princedoms. The problem was that it hadn't worked too well for the British, who found themselves entangled in internal Arab and Muslim conflicts and coups. Like the British had before them, United States diplomats and oil company executives would cultivate a tyrant or two, only to discover that they were also completely untrustworthy. The House of Saud wound up seizing the same oil companies, and reversing the power relationship by doling out the oil on their terms, and using the money to begin the Islamization of the United States and Europe, while bribing half the foreign policy establishment to do it.

The Radicals meanwhile were fueled by left-wing anti-Americanism, which translated into a foreign policy of "America is Always Wrong" and "Radical Terrorists are Always Right". Their claims that backing Marxist and Islamist terrorists would lead to freedom and candyland proved to be wrong every time, yet did nothing to prevent them from enabling the horrors of the Mullahs in Iran or the PLO in Israel. True to the same ideological heritage that had turned Russia red with blood, yet insisted that things were going swimmingly-- they were never capable of acknowledging a mistake.

With the Carter Administration, the Radicals increasingly began winning the argument, and the Stabilizers moved to accommodate them. Portions of the Radical agenda were incorporated into that of the Stabilizers. This was easily enough done, since the Stabilizers had never cared too much about who was in power, so long as there was no chaos or unrest. That was why the Eisenhower Administration had backed Nasser over its former allies in England and France. It was why Bush Sr could casually dismiss massacres by the Kuwaitis in the aftermath of the invasion. These were just means of imposing stability.

But the Radicals made very little headway after the Mullahs took over Iran. They could do little to shift US foreign policy away from the old line Arab regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia-- who had strong backing from the Stabilizers. Occasional nods toward democracy would come from the White House or Capitol Hill, and were immediately ignored. But they did find one weak spot. Israel.

The Stabilizers had inherited the old British antipathy toward Israel. They viewed as a country that should never have existed, but had now become a necessary evil. The Stabilizers had commitments to the House of Saud, and to the Kuwaiti Royals, but they had none toward Israel. They had been forced to support Israel as leverage against Soviet backed Arab regimes in Egypt and Syria. But the Camp David Accords had drawn Egypt onto the American side of the board, and the end of the Cold War made many of the old red and white maps seem irrelevant. Which meant that in their eyes, and that of their Muslim overlords, Israel was becoming a nuisance.

To the Radicals, Israel was something much worse. It was Western. It was a colony. It was an alien entity in what should have been a pure Arab-Muslim region. And if their obsession with Israel seemed downright Nazi-like at times, it was because they shared an obsession with making a part of the world Judenrein, not for practical reasons, but for ideological ones. If the Stabilizers had imbibed the Saudi contempt for Jews, the Radicals drank of a deeper and uglier well. If the Nazis had viewed Jews as genetically tainted, the Communists and the Left viewed Jews as politically tainted, contaminated by religion and seperatism. The Nazis had wanted to solve a genetic problem by wiping out the carriers of those genes. The Left wanted to solve a political problem by wiping out Jewish identity.

Israel was the intersection of the left's hatred for the reactionary Western Civilization and the even more reactionary notion of a Jewish identity. Much like Archie Bunker asked Sammy Davis Jr, why if he was already black, did he also want to become Jewish-- the idea of a Jewish state modeled on modern Western states triggered two obsessive streams of hatred from the Left. On the one hand there was H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw screeching that Jews had better give up being Jews, or go rot in Palestine, and on the other hand there was every leftist critic of Western imperialism crying out against US foreign policy in the Middle East. The results were and are almost unfathomably ugly-- as people's deepest prejudices merging with self-righteous political fanaticism tend to be.

The Stabilizers were more than willing to give Israel to the Radicals, so long as the House of Saud and the Mubarak clan and every tinpot tyrant was allowed to do whatever they wanted. And so there was finally a point of agreement between the Stabilizers and the Radicals. But into this pastoral scene, came a third party with another proposal. The Neo-Conservatives.

The Neo-Conservatives represented a break with both the Stabilizers and the Radicals. They were opposed to the status quo in the existing Muslim regimes, like the Radicals. But they were also opposed to the pet terrorists that the Radicals wanted to replace them with. What they wanted to do was to dredge the swamp, reform and democratize the region. The Neo-Conservatives were naive about the realities of the Middle East and the resources such plans required-- but for the first time a group with significant influence on foreign policy had managed to articulate something resembling a moral policy for the Middle East.

The Stabilizers and the Radicals both reacted about the way you would expect when after 9/11, Neo-Conservative ideas about America's relationship to the Middle East gained a great deal of influence. The Stabilizers reflected the panic of their Saudi masters at the prospect of bringing democracy to the region. The Radicals rejected the idea that the Muslim world needed to become civilized, instead they just wanted the Islamists to take over. The one thing both the Stabilizers and the Radicals agreed on was that the Neo-Conservatives were the devil. Which of course they were. After all unlike them the Neo-Conservatives had a proposal that didn't involve America groveling to one bunch of thugs or another.

Of course no foreign policy that was even loosely pro-American could survive for very long. The Bush Administration was undermined from the inside. The reconstruction of Iraq was painstakingly sabotaged within the military, the State Department and the intelligence community, until it dissolved into a proxy war between Baathists and Sadrists, with Al Queda bomb throwers adding spice to the sauce. The old hands like Rumsfeld, Bolton and Cheney were sent packing. Condoleeza Rice took control of foreign policy and turned it back into exactly what it had been under George Bush Sr. Appeasement. Any worries by Arab tyrants were put to rest. Roasting Israel became the top priority. The Stabilizers were back in charge. But not for long.

Obama's ascension marked the return of the Radicals to power. Outreach to the Muslim world was now the top priority. Covert contacts with Hamas and the Taliban were quietly opened. Israel was now truly enemy number one. But so was America. Iran's post-election riots were met with the same shrug that the left had used on pro-Democracy protesters in the USSR. The Arab dictators began growing nervous, as the Obama Administration took a hands off approach to Iran. And Obama's outreach had failed to win any new allies, but only alienated existing allies. Which was inevitable as Radicals are never very good at alliances, especially those that required them to think along the lines of national interest.

Where do we stand today? We've seen the three basic approaches, that of the Stabilizers, the Radicals and the Neo-Conservatives-- and all are fundamentally flawed. The Stabilizers support tyrants who covertly make war on the United States. The Radicals support terrorists who openly make war on the United States. What is even more absurd is that there is really not that much distance between the tyrants and the terrorists, since the tyrants fund the terrorists to increase their own power and popularity, and the terrorists aspire to become tyrants in the name of Islam. And both sides are laughing at the Stabilizers and the Radicals for selling out their country.

The Neo-Conservatives however dramatically underestimated the amount of effort and energy needed to reform entire cultures. Their excessive optimism led to introducing democracy in countries where the only real opposition parties that had managed to survive, were Islamists. The Bush Administration in particular treated democracy as a totem that could do anything, because it had adopted a simplistic model in which the Muslim world was not bad, only its leaders were. And once the people had a chance to vote for peace and prosperity, better leaders would emerge. Where these leaders would come from, and did people in the Muslim world really want peace and prosperity, in the American sense, were questions that went unasked. The Radicals and the Stabilizers both understood this quite well, and knew that with a few pushes in the right places, their whole project would come crashing down.

Those are the three. Which means what we now need is a fourth approach that avoids the flaws of these three. What is the primary flaw of all three? They all sought to determine who would rule in the Muslim world. The Stabilizers thought that the best way was to keep the Muslim world as it is. The Radicals and the Neo-Conservatives wanted to remake it. And all three of these approaches tangled them in the political chaos and instability of the Muslim world. But there is a fourth way.

The Fourth Way is Accountability and it is simple enough. Stop arguing over who will rule in which Muslim country. That is a decision that only the inhabitants of that country can make. And they won't make it through elections, so much as through dealmaking among their oligarchy, tribal leaders and occasional outbursts of armed force. It would take a massive project of decades to have any hope of changing that. But we don't need to. What we need to do is make very clear the consequences of attacking us to whoever is in charge.

Rather than trying to shape their behavior by shaping their political leadership, we can use a much more blunt instrument to unselectively shape all their leaders. A blunt instrument does not mean reconstruction. It doesn't mean Marines ferrying electrical generators. It doesn't mean nation building. It means that we will inflict massive devastation on any country that aids terrorists who attack us. If they insist on using medieval beliefs to murder us, we will bomb government buildings, roads, factories and power plants to reduce them back to a medieval state. We will not impose sanctions on them, we will simply take control of their natural resources and remove the native population from the area, as compensation for the expenses of the war.

Accountability means no more aid to tyrants or terrorists, and no grand democracy projects either. It means that we stop trying to pick a side, and just make it clear what happens when our side gets hurt. We gain energy independence and never look back. And when we've done that, the Muslim world will no longer be able to play America against Russia, against Asia and Europe. Instead it will suddenly find itself stuck with a predatory Russia looking for an energy monopoly, a booming China expanding into their part of the world, and no Pax Americana to protect them from either one.

America has provided the stability that kept many Muslim countries from imploding. It has protected others directly and indirectly from being conquered more times than anyone realizes. All the treachery and terrorism that has been carried out, has been done under an American umbrella. Now is the time to furl up the umbrella, and let the rain fall where it may.

It will be a cold day indeed, when Russia and China realize that they can do what they like in the Muslim world, without the US to stop them. And a colder day still, when European countries realize that there is nothing standing the way of deporting their insurgent Muslim populations, because the US will not lift a finger to protect them, as it did in Yugoslavia. That is accountability. And in both its active and passive forms it will exact a high price from the enemy, and none from us. To employ it, we must be prepared to use massive force casually without considering any collateral damage. We must achieve energy independence at any cost. And we must be prepared to realize that everything else we have tried has failed. Only by disengaging from the Muslim world, can we ever be free of it.

Hello Friends,

I don't know how many times I wrote about Jihad in all its forms being in your back yards. This is fact not fiction and it's creeping up in all its ugly directions.

A New Jersey court found that a man that sexually abused his wife not guilty cos Islam's Shariah law forbids a wife to refuse sex on demand.

There are many other examples of how Shariah law is being recognized above Federal and State laws and yet the sheeples remain silent. In this case as you'll see below the Appellate Court overturned this decision.

Read the below article and weep. This is the religion that B Hussein wants you to respect.

Shalom,

Peter

Sharia (Islamic) Law in New Jersey Court: Muslim husband rapes, beats, sexually abuses wife, judge sees no sexual assault because Islam forbids wives to refuse sex

Here. Now. Sharia law in New Jersey. When Obama went to Al Azhar University to speak to the ummah (worldwide Muslim community) last June and made the outrageous statement that "the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life," little did we know what a warning it was. How prescient. It's here, the degradation and subjugation of women under the sharia. Foreign law, the most vile, in our nation's courts.

Luckily, the appellate court overturned this decision, and a Sharia ruling by an American court has not been allowed to stand. This time.

"Cultural Defense Accepted as to Nonconsensual Sex in New Jersey Trial Court, Rejected on Appeal," by Eugene Volokh in The Volokh Conspiracy, July 23 (thanks to CameoRed):

Robert posted this:

Sharia in New Jersey: Muslim husband rapes wife, judge sees no sexual assault because Islam forbids wives to refuse sex

Muhammad said: "If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning" (Bukhari 4.54.460).

He also said: "By him in Whose Hand lies my life, a woman can not carry out the right of her Lord, till she carries out the right of her husband. And if he asks her to surrender herself [to him for sexual intercourse] she should not refuse him even if she is on a camel's saddle" (Ibn Majah 1854).

And now a New Jersey judge sees no evidence that a Muslim committed sexual assault of his wife -- not because he didn't do it, but because he was acting on his Islamic beliefs: "This court does not feel that, under the circumstances, that this defendant had a criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault or to sexually contact the plaintiff when he did. The court believes that he was operating under his belief that it is, as the husband, his desire to have sex when and whether he wanted to, was something that was consistent with his practices and it was something that was not prohibited."

More here.

Further, I wanted Atlas readers to get David Yerushalmi's take. David is my outstanding lawyer in my Detroit free speech case and a leading expert on sharia law. Here are his observations:

OK, the court didn’t actually say Shariah, but “his culture” and “his perception of his religion”. Here’s the story in a nutshell (the lengthy appeals court decision is attached and I’ve excerpted it below):

Young Moroccan couple wed in arranged marriage (remember Morocco is supposed to be super modern with super reformed Islam with super benevolent western educated king [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_VI_of_Morocco]). Almost immediately, the young couple come to America where husband (H) is accountant. Apparently his doting mother is here already or comes with the young couple (if you read the opinion, you’ll see this is one classy mother-in-law who was very much a part of the abuse). H immediately begins “punishing” his wife (W) and sexually assaulting her during intercourse. In effect, he sexually assaults her (the term for raping your wife) because she refused to be abused during relations and said “no”.

During the sexual assaults and beatings, W is given refuge by Pakistani nurse from hospital where she was treated. The nurse subsequently initiated a reconciliation between W and H through the couples’ imam when she learns of W’s pregnancy. The very day W reconciles and returns to H, the beatings continue and imam takes in W. At that time, but all within a few weeks—the marriage lasted only a few months, H tires of W and “divorces” his wife per Shariah via witnesses [DY: H had earlier that day divorced W via oral declaration alone but this type of Shariah divorce must wait until the now pregnant W gives birth; thus, divorce is redone with witnesses w/the imam to have it take effect immediately].

While criminal complaint is pending, W brings action in civil court per NJ statute protecting women from domestic violence and seeks restraining order. Evidentiary hearing is held.

Trial court finds: [1] man sexually assaulted wife but [2] court will issue no restraining order because man did it thinking he could abuse his wife if she misbehaved and refused his sexually demands per Islamic law.

In other words, the court held that man’s religious beliefs were sufficient to avoid the effects of NJ law to protect battered women. Nice, huh?

The kicker: during the trial, H’s attorney apparently called the Imam as H’s witness (what would you expect, an Imam to testify for this beaten/raped woman?) but apparently the trial judge was not happy with W’s attorney’s cross examination and asked a few of his own questions. Here is how the appellate court describes the Imam’s testimony to the judge’s queries:

At the conclusion of this testimony, in response to the judge's questions, the Imam testified regarding Islamic law as it relates to sexual behavior. The Imam confirmed that a wife must comply with her husband's sexual demands, because the husband is prohibited from obtaining sexual satisfaction elsewhere. However, a husband was forbidden to approach his wife "like any animal." The Imam did not definitively answer whether, under Islamic law, a husband must stop his advances if his wife said "no."

[Note: I am willing to bet W’s attorney knew nothing about Shariah and was afraid to penetrate this line of questioning or to provide any expert of his own.]

Now, I believe I know why per Shariah the imam equivocated if you assume he was not just hiding the ball from the court (a big assumption I grant you but I’m feeling charitable this evening). Thus, giving the imam the benefit of the doubt, per Shariah a women is obligated to satisfy her husband’s sexual demands: “It is obligatory for a wife to obey her husband as is customary in allowing him full lawful [DY: there are times when Shariah prohibits marital sex—e.g., relating to menstrual cycle] sexual enjoyment of her person.” (See, e.g., Reliance of the Traveller, Marriage, m10.12 and commentary from Jordanian Mufti, Sheikh Nuh ali Salman, at N(3).)

An obligation or wajib is the highest order or rubric of affirmative Shariah dictate (there are the less affirmative duties, which fall under the category of ‘praiseworthy’ and the Shariah-neutral rubric of ‘permissive’ as well as the prohibitive rubrics of ‘forbidden’ and ‘disliked/abhorred’). Insofar as the woman has a wajib/obligation to satisfy her husband, the resulting ruling follows per Shariah’s fiqh (jurisprudential rules): a wife is “rebellious” if she refuses her husband’s sexual demands (because she refuses to comply with a wajib) if she if physically able and there are no Shariah-based impediments. The next step in the Shariah rulings also flows logically from the antecedent ruling that a wife must obey her husband even to the point that a wife may leave the home only with the husband’s permission (Reliance, Marriage, m.10.3-10.4). Finally, Shariah’s fiqh combines the two concepts (the wife’s wajib and the man’s control over her) into one by providing a husband some leeway if not encouragement to beat his “rebellious wife” to bring her into compliance (note that neither the husband nor court may force a wife to “service” her husband through cooking and cleaning; only sex is obligatory). (Reliance, Marriage, m.10.12 (commentary N [Jordanian Mufti Nuh] (4)(c)))

Again, granting the imam a sizable benefit of the doubt, his equivocation on the question whether the husband is allowed to force himself on his wife I believe stems from the fact that there is no explicit source in Shariah for “permitting” a husband to force sex on his wife (at least not one I can find—although there are some individual fatawa [Shariah rulings from individual imams] that permit it—but there is nothing approaching ijma or consensus so these fatawa are just individual rulings that the Shariah faithful can accept or not). However, it is clear that there is no penalty for it which of course is the source of authority for the fatawa I have seen permitting marital rape. You can see the same equivocation more clearly in the form of misdirection represented here in this IOL response to the straightforward question posed whether Shariah recognizes marital rape or sexual assault. http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/
FatwaE&cid=1119503545650 Bottom line: no, there is no penalty for marital rape. (The IOL answer is presented as a “good Shariah marriage should never come to this” but in truth the answer remains, no. A man cannot be punished for raping or otherwise sexually assaulting his wife as long as it is “permissible sex” under Shariah [e.g., not during menses].)

On the policy/legal aspects. Note for those of you who know of my firm’s work on drafting state laws we call Void as Against Public Policy which make explicit that courts cannot rely on foreign laws that violate fundamental federal or state constitutional liberties, this case would have been easier for the appellate court had our draft legislation been law in NJ (at the very least Shariah’s permission for a husband to rape his wife is an Equal Protection violation if not a violation of her own Free Exercise liberty). I am pleased to say our draft legislation has become law in Tennessee and Louisiana. I am hopeful soon in Florida and other states. However, let me be very clear. Our draft legislation would not be necessary under any serious analysis of the First Amendment. The NJ trial court erred grotesquely and the appellate court, while reaching the correct result, also erred in even suggesting this Free Exercise argument (i.e., the state may not punish Ahmed for raping his wife because he was acting w/in the dictates of his religious law, Shariah) was of any merit whatsoever.

Thus, …

On the appellate court’s constitutional analysis: I think the court’s analysis of First Amendment Free Exercise law, while technically correct, was absurd and wholly out of place. It takes all of five seconds to analyze whether a free exercise claim would prevent the state (through the court) from imposing a restraining order on a violent husband. This is not akin to a polygamy or peyote free exercise claim where there is no third party victim (in polygamy cases of old there was typically no claim by an earlier wife of harm—all parties were practicing Mormons). This would be akin to a court analyzing whether our good friend and champion Andy McCarthy’s prosecution of the Blind Sheikh violated the imam’s free exercise rights because the Sheikh was religiously obligated to do what he did. Absurd. (State imposed criminal punishments and civilly imposed restraining orders would pass muster even under the so-called Strict Scrutiny analysis: a compelling state interest and a narrowly tailored law to achieve the state interest.) I assume this court felt it necessary to go through this absurd exercise because it was ruling against Shariah and Muslim custom and wanted to liken it to Mormons and polygamy and American Indians and peyote, another sign of the PC gymnastics we as a defensive society/nation go through to impose our own mores/values (assuming they exist any longer in concrete form). Thankfully, the appellate court reached the right result.

On a lengthy note bene in the form of a short comparative law analysis: it should be stressed that this is another classic example where Islam/Shariah departs radically from the Judeo Christian tradition. Now, I cannot speak directly to Catholic canon on this subject or Christian Ecclesiastical law (although we do know that English common law, carried to the US, has long had a spousal rape exception—that is, husbands cannot be charged with raping their wives), but at least the Judeo portion of the Judeo Christian tradition is absolutely clear.

According to Jewish law, any form of coerced sexual relations between married couples is absolutely forbidden. (Talmud Bavli, Eruvin 100b: Rami b. Hama citing R. Assi further ruled: “A man is forbidden to compel his wife to the [marital] obligation, since it is said in Scripture: ‘Without consent the soul is not good; and he that hurries with his feet sins’” (Prov. 19:2). (Ba’ailei ha-Nefesh, Sha’ar ha-Kedushah; Code of Jewish Law, Hil. De’ot 5:4; Even ha-Ezer 25:2.)

Thus, even if the wife is not forced outright, as long as she is not amenable to intercourse, sexual relations are prohibited. (From authoritative Ashkenazi ruling on the Code of Jewish Law: Magen Avraham, Orah Hayyim 240, no. 7; from the leading Jewish mystical source, Kabbalah, Zohar, Bere**** 49b, 148b, Va-yikra 225b.) The greatest Jewish legal authority, the Sephardic Maimonides (known by his Hebrew acronym to Jews as the Rambam), rules, “[Her husband] should not coerce her [to have relations] when she does not desire to do so. Rather, [they should engage in intercourse only] when there is mutual desire and pleasure.” (Maimonides’ Code of Jewish Law, the Mishne Torah, Hil. Ishut [Laws of Women] 15:17.) Further, even if the wife is ambivalent about her desire, relations are forbidden. (Masekhet Kallah Rabbati 1:11; Tur, Orah Hayyim 240 and Even ha-Ezer 25.) Keep in mind that Maimonides is from the 11^th-12^th centuries and even the most recent of these (Code of the Jewish Law) is from the 15^th-16^th centuries. Old law is not necessarily bad law and “progressive law” is not necessarily good law. Shariah is not bad because it is old. It is bad because it is bad.

[An important digression: I make this latter point about old vs. new law because we often hear the criticism of Shariah that it is bad and primitive because it is “Medieval law” as if that is enough to condemn it. But by implication, the person who makes this criticism, is in effect embracing the “progressivist” or Hegelian teaching that Time/History is the one transcendence that saves us from the nihilism of relativism (all morals are relative except that a new moral is better than an old one), which allows the Leftist/Elites to clamor on about “progress” and the latest version of this, “hope and CHANGE”. And, if you give it a half-second’s worth of thought, you’ll realize why the progressivism of the Elite is tyranny [hint: there are no transcendent boundaries only time as a measure of progress]. It also impacts our constitutional jurisprudence. If old is bad simply, then granting the Supreme Court the authority (to which Marbury v Madison effectively opened the door) to “re-interpret” [read: re-write or amend by judicial fiat] the Constitution to mirror the “progress” and “change” in society must be a good thing. That kind of hollows out the originalist/conservative view of the Constitution, no?]

One of the most authoritative Jewish legal minds of the 12^th-13^th centuries, also Sephardic, was Nachmanides (common Hebrew acronym, Ramban), who wrote this stirring “Holy Letter” (Iggeret HaKodesh) on the question of conjugal relations:

When a man has relations [with his wife] he should not do so against her will and he should not rape her; the Divine Presence does not abide in such unions in as much as his intentions in opposition to hers, and she does not consent to his desire. He should not quarrel with her or strike her concerning marital relations. Behold, the Sages said ([Talmud Bavli] Pesahim 49b), “Just as a lion tears [his prey] and devours it and has no shame, so an ‘am ha-‘aretz (ignorant boor) strikes and cohabits and has no shame.” Instead, he should entice her with kind and alluring words and other appropriate and reputable things. He should not have relations with her while she is sleeping because their intentions are not united and they are not of the same mind. Rather, he should wake her and arouse her with conversation. The bottom line is this: when a man is sexually aroused he should make sure that his wife is aroused as well [before having intercourse].

[Note: I highlight the fact that the two legal and Jewish philosophical giants, Maimonides and Nachmonides, were Sephardic because they lived among Muslims at a time when Islam was ascendant and indeed when Islam was undergoing its own version of “reformation” in large parts of the Muslim world toward a greater adherence to Shariah. This serves to highlight the fact that Shariah, as a philosophic and legal matter, is of no kin to Jewish law/dogma.]

Now, what is interesting, is that there is a concept of a “rebellious wife” in Jewish law. But once again, like martyrdom, lex talionis, and other subjects I have written on in the way of comparative law between Shariah and Halachah, the Shariah authorities turned the earlier extant Jewish legal concept on its head and distorted it to the point of evil perversion (e.g., a Jewish martyr may not commit any of the three cardinal sins [idol worship, murder, sexual offense] and must be willing to die in passive resistance rather than commit one of these sins—but there is no martyrdom for death in battle or even self-defense—which if done justly are called heroic (the person is not a martyr but a gibor). Thus, the first thing to note is that in Jewish law, unlike in Shariah, there is a parallel concept of a “rebellious husband”. (See, e.g., Code of Jewish Law, Even ha-Ezer 77:1.) The principle at work in the “rebellious husband/wife” concept is that a marriage includes implied mutual promises, one of which is a free and loving conjugal relationship. Thus, according to most Jewish legal authorities, Jewish law empowers a couple (husband and wife equally) to negotiate almost every aspect of their relationship and, for example, set as a condition of marriage that they will have no financial responsibilities or household obligations to each other. However, they cannot set as a precondition to marriage that they will not engage in intimate relations. (Talmud Bavli, Ketubot 56a; Code of Jewish Law, Hil. Ishut 6:10; Even ha-Ezer 38:5 and 69:6. See, however, authorities that hold that a marriage is valid under some conditions even if there is an agreement to abstain from conjugal relations; see, Teshuvot Tashbetz I:94; Ramban to Baba Batra 126b; Havot Ya’ir to Rif, Baba Mezi’a VII, 54a.)

According to Maimonides, a woman who tells her husband that she no longer permits him to have conjugal relations (as a permanent condition) is classified as a “rebellious wife” (“moredet”). But now look at the difference between Jewish law and Shariah. In Shariah, this state of rebelliousness grants the husband the right to beat his rebellious wife and even to rape her with impunity. In Jewish law, according to Maimonides:

If a woman prevents her husband from having sexual relations with her, she is called a rebellious wife. [The court] inquires of her as to why she rebelled. If she said, “I am repelled by him and cohabitation with him is impossible for me,” [the court] forces him to divorce her [if she demands a divorce] because a wife is not a prisoner who must consort with a person whom she despises.

Mishne Torah, Hil. Ishut 14:8. Cf., Code of Jewish Law, Even ha-Ezer 77:2 (where the Jewish court attempts first to effect a reconciliation and then grants a divorce).

In no case is the woman who refuses to have conjugal relations with her husband forced to do so. Maimonides’ view in this matter is controlling. Thus, R. Moshe b. Yosef of Trani, known as Mabit, states that a woman cannot be compelled to submit to her husband because “she is unlike a captive woman who can be compelled to submit to sexual relations with a man she does not desire.” He compares her conjugal rights to those of food and clothing which her husband is also obligated to provide, and which she can also reject. He also points out that the Torah speaks of “her conjugal rights” (Bible, Book of Ex. 21:10) and not simply of “conjugal rights;” those rights are hers and not her husband’s. (Kiryat Sefer to Hil. Ishut 14.)

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Hello Friends,

When I saw today's Dry Bones the absurdity of MSM's reporting or more correctly non reporting really comes to life. The fact that MSM is biased against Israel is obvious to all or should be but it's come to a point of being totally ridiculous.

The so called humanitarian flotillas to Hamasland is being covered from every direction with misinformation and disinformation. But when there is a chance of a nuclear attack by the North Koreans cos of war games being held by the USA and South Korea is almost a non event in the MSM. If Israel isn't there then it's considered to be a non event I guess. This is not only pathetic but shows the inclination and bias of MSM.

Shalom,

Peter

Sea story one.
According to the Voice of America:

Israel Urges Lebanon to Block Gaza Aid Ships
"Israel is bracing for another attempt to break its blockade on the Palestinian-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israel has appealed to the United Nations to prevent two ships in Lebanon from sailing to Gaza, in defiance of the Israeli blockade. In a letter to the U.N. secretary-general and the Security Council, Israel accused organizers of trying "to incite a confrontation and raise tensions" in the Middle East. The letter called on the Lebanese government "to demonstrate responsibility" and stop the ships from departing." -more

Sea story two.
According to ABC NEWS:

North Korea threatens 'sacred' nuclear war
"The Korean peninsula is on high alert today, with Pyongyang threatening a nuclear response to massive war games being held by the United States and South Korea.

Hundreds of war planes, dozens of ships and thousands of military personnel are taking part in the four-day drill designed as a show of force to North Korea after the sinking of a South Korean corvette four months ago."

-more

-Dry Bones- Israel's Political Comic Strip Since 1973