Fruits, Vegetables And Untruths

TMy rebuttal is about an article titled 'Islamic cleric bans women from touching cucumbers, bananas for sexual resemblance’, and whose excerpts are as follows:

“An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any ‘sexual thoughts’. The unnamed sheikh, said that ‘if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.’

He said that ‘these fruits and vegetables resemble the male penis and hence could arouse women or make them think of sex’ and added carrots and zucchini to the list of ‘forbidden foods for women’. When asked how to control women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them, the cleric answered saying ‘this matter is between them and God.’

Answering another question about what to do if women in the family like these foods, the sheikh advised the interviewer to ‘take the food and cut it for them in a hidden place so they cannot see it.’"

Who is behind it?

People these days will believe anything and everything that the mass media prints or beams at them. Most people did not find the time to research or ponder over a matter that came to light recently on the internet and which concerned Muslim identity. Thus ran an article’s headline: Islamic cleric bans women from touching bananas, cucumbers for sexual resemblance.

First, the cleric in question is neither a cleric nor a Muslim. Second, some female relative within his own unbelieving family might have ‘touched’ the said items in ways that one need not mention in this article. Third, believing Muslim women need not be compared with unbelieving women who, without the fear of God in their hearts, will readily revel in such perversions if the right price is paid.

Red faced Muslim women, who use circular bits of cucumbers only over their eyes to rid themselves of dark circles, were quick to condemn this bogus insinuation but the ones always lying in wait to malign Muslims found another reason to laugh out aloud.

Since God and the Prophets never forbade believers from touching fruits such as cucumbers and bananas or odd looking vegetables, who is this unheard of ‘Islamic cleric’ to prevent one from doing so? Is this the same kind of mind at work that launched the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad or wrote books such as ‘The Satanic Verses’? If one reads the headline under scrutiny (‘Islamic cleric bans women from touching bananas, cucumbers for sexual resemblance’) it is plain to see the kind of mind that was able to spin such news.

Programmers of mass ‘controlled’ media

The global media is controlled by a half a dozen conglomerates whose sole job is to mow down true public opinion and replace it with perversion and untruths. Journalists, the channels, websites, the talk-show hosts, all need that elusive ‘something’ to rocket their ratings skywards, and they will devour any lie, spin any fabric and do whatever it takes to serve the media moguls. Every little useless bit is featured as ‘headline’ or ‘breaking news’, trivia triggers worthless debates, and panels of covert spin-doctors work overtime to do the bidding of their invisible pay-masters who know how to ‘programme’ our thought patterns. One only has to stop and think: who is against Muslims in this global war of error (G-WOE)?

The answer is painfully obvious but even more painful is the fact that, leave alone Christians, even decent Muslims fall into deceptive Zionist traps. The root cause of instability in the world is the political climate of the middle east, in the middle east exists Israel which is a nuclear power fully financed by America, America is controlled by Zionists, and many from this ‘chosen race’ are bent upon forcing down our throats nothing but ‘peace’ (war) and ‘democracy’ (anarchy through instability). It is this group that supports pro-Zionists and Communists, and punishes anti-Zionists through the arm twisting tactics of public opinion. Through deception, they keep the public’s mind focussed on non-events and non-issues, and which helps keep all dissent and rebellion against the prevalent exploitive global financial system quite ineffective.

Freaks of Nature?

If one were to type the words ‘Muslim women, cucumbers’ into any decent search engine, what would one get? Loads of links referring to the same article, what else? Who, if not the destroyers of entire countries, the plunderers of Muslim wealth, the conspirators against Islam, are behind all of this?

But what, one may ask, is the reason for creating such sensationalism? The reason is the same that Satan uses against a God-ordained system: corruption of all that is good and wholesome. Because this media onslaught is directed against core human values of modesty, shame and other desireable virtues, it will remain largely unchecked if one only consoled oneself by asking ‘but what can I do?’
 
Apology

Many Muslim women today want more hijab (modest head-scarf), not more skin exposure. They want the exploitation of women to come to an end which the opposing camp helps perpetuate through child pornography rackets in central Europe and sex slave trade linking east European countries with Israel.

While investigating the recent accusation against Muslim women, I came across an apologetic editorial, whose excerpts are as follows:

“As a young news organization (www.bikyamasr.com) we are concerned over the manner of both our reporting on this issue and the way our article was used by a number of global organizations to promote their own partisan agendas.

It was my own editorial oversight that failed in allowing this story to be published. It was my duty to not publish this story before we could gather independent verification about the details behind the original Arabic article from www.assawsana.com.

The “Islamic cleric bans women from touching cucumbers, bananas for sexual resemblance,” article should not have run when it did; it should not have been run at all. We should not have published about an ‘unnamed sheikh’ in an unnamed European country unless we were able to garner more information on the issue, both on the sheikh himself and the news website the information was gathered from, independently.

We have an increased responsibility to not only verify our own material at the highest levels, but further investigate the quotes and articles of other news organizations before referencing their work. This is our error. We apologize for the poor judgment on the matter.

We recognize our pitfalls and their repercussions . . . error in judgment can have serious, detrimental effects. We apologize to our readers for the inadequate editorial judgment. We should not have sourced a piece published by a small website based on such limited, unverifiable information. We accept responsibility for doing so and are working to correct the aspects of our organizational culture which allowed this mistake to occur.

Reporting in a fair and accurate manner on Islam is a difficult process, and one that www.bikyamasr.com takes very seriously. We will continue to push for more information on this story in order to interrogate the accuracy of their original article. If we cannot uncover more information, then we take it as our duty to make this clear and do everything in our power to spread that revelation to those who have sourced and quoted it.

We apologize to our readers for letting them down, and will strive to assure them with our future work that we are making fundamental, institutional changes to assure that mistakes like this do not happen again.”

©Tahir Gul Hasan, 2011

References
English article: www.bikyamasr.com
Original Arabic article at http://www.assawsana.com/portal/newsshow.aspx?id=58893
http://bikyamasr.com/50403/islamic-cleric-bans-women-from-touching-bananas-cucumbers-for-sexual-resemblance/