Sorcerer, Off With Your Head!

I beg God’s pardon if the king of a certain land is going to feel offended reading what I have written here.

In two of my older articles (Segregate Or Die, Fe-Male Without A Male Guardian), I narrated the sorry tales of women who got into trouble with the law; today we shall see how consulting horoscopes (I call them whore-oscopes) and predicting the future can land one straight in jail and beyond.

I have always maintained—in line with what the Qur’an states clearly—that predictions based on the movements of heavenly bodies is both a pseudo-science and a satanic deception. Allow me now to narrate the story of a man who predicted everybody else’s future but was unable to predict his own downfall.

Ali Hussain Sibat, a Lebanese man charged with sorcery, has now been sentenced to death in a certain land where opposing segregation of the sexes and standing up to question the authorities is punishable with death.

‘Sibat is scheduled to be beheaded next Friday’, May El Khansa, Sibat’s attorney told CNN.

Sibat's family came to know about the upcoming execution through an indirect source who knew the case well. So far, the Ministry of Justice has not commented on the matter.

El Khansa has gone as far as appealing to Lebanon's prime minister, Saad Hariri, and president, Michel Suleiman, to have the execution stopped. Amnesty International, the human rights group, has called on that certain country’s king to pardon Sibat.

What exactly did Sibat do? He is the former host of a popular call-in television show that aired on a Beirut-based satellite channel ‘Sheherazade’ and in which he predicted the future and advised his audience on many matters. In May 2008, while he was visiting a certain country to perform Umra (Islamic religious pilgrimage similar to Hajj), the religious police apprehended and charged with sorcery.

Sibat faced the court in November 2009, and which handed him a death sentence. He appealed the verdict in the Court of Appeal because he thought the initial verdict was premature.

Sibat’s attorney told CNN that ‘appeals court then sent the case back to the original court for reconsideration, stipulating that all charges made against Sibat needed to be verified and that he should be given a chance to repent.’

On March 10, the judges upheld their initial death sentence.

‘The court refused the sentence of the appeals court; my client will appeal the verdict once more,’ said Sibat’s attorney.

Let us stop right here and ponder over some questions.

How did Sibat—while living in Lebanon—harm the society of that certain land through his starry predictions?

Did he offend the royalty (Islamic royalty, if you do not mind) by predicting their not so rosy future?

Does the Qur’an stipulate death for sorcerers and blasphemers?

Is it right to arrest and condemn a person performing the Umrah?

Umrah and Hajj allow one to repent; since Sibat had applied to God for forgiveness, is it fair to ask him to repent before that certain land’s court?

And finally, I beg God’s pardon if the king of that certain land is going to feel offended reading what I have written.

May God help the king.

Fe-Male Without A Male Guardian

A woman in a certain land, that believes very strongly in segregating men and women, is to be lashed three hundred times and jailed for eighteen months for filing complaints against court officials and appearing in court without a male guardian.

Miss ‘S’ was convicted last month in a court after petitioning the officials and the monarch, over what she alleged was years of abuse by local judicial officials.

On January 25, she was convicted after a month-long trial before two judges, one of whom was a plaintiff in the case and the original target of Miss S’s harassment allegations. The NGOs have asked the higher authorities to quash the verdict.

Life for women is very harsh in such countries where they must wait for their husbands, brothers or fathers to return from work and then drive them to the shopping malls. There the women cannot drive around like they do in Pakistan or other countries that insist on calling themselves Islamic. Police states insist that driving invites sin, going out on foot encourages more sin and looking at strange men does even more of the same. Every action of a citizen has an unequal and opposite reaction. But that is their law and their country—may God have mercy on their religious scholars and rulers.

Three hundred lashes and eighteen months in prison for a woman is very disproportionate punishment. When I read such distrurbing news, I thank God for allowing me to breathe a bit more freely in my own country.

Spencer Tunick Says, ‘Take Off Your Tunics!’

Very odd things happen in this world in the name of Art, and down-under Australia will not allow itself to lag behind in the race to lose its national face. It took the shamelessness of an American photographer, Spencer Tunick, to look for Australians willing to disrobe on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, all in the name of Art.

All Pakistanis must feel threatened by this skin-terrorism and refuse to remain in awe of all things western. Warlords, drug barons, and paid assassins be damned, a vast number of Pakistanis taken their wealth and children to Australia because the terrifying cows reared by the Taliban are beginning to eat whatever green grass remains on our side.

These days, one can say or do just about anything under the garb of Art. Take for example, sexual openness of European and Hindu temple art, or the peculiar sexual fantasies penned by Marquis de Sade. Over the centuries, many civilizations have remained comfortable with nudity to the extent that they first divided the sole Creator into males and females who did all what humans did, then depicted them in nude and finally worshipped their idols or representations of private parts in public.

Tunick is infamous—or ‘famous’, as they would have one believe—for capturing hundreds of naked people against industrial or urban backgrounds. He now wishes to create a Sydney ‘installation’, involving up to 2,000 nude volunteers. The photo will be called ‘The Base’ and will coincide with the city’s annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, which attracts participants and audiences from around the globe.

“In a way, I’m making a base for the structure, a base for the architecture, and by combining straight and gay and lesbian people I’m weaving the different sexes and society together to form this wonderful fabric that holds up this gorgeous building,” Tunick told Australian radio.

The media will listen to anything and then stoop to broadcasting it in the name of freedom of expression, but being free does not mean one must be dumb (free-dumb). God has already clearly spelled out in His revelations what He thinks about the perverts, but the likes of Tunick are hell-bent on having everyone’s tunics come off in public.

Tunick has produced almost 100 ‘installations’ around the world, including one in Melbourne in 2001, and says his ‘work is not about exhibitionism or eroticism, but instead is about the vulnerability of life in a rough city landscape.’

If this mass striptease is not eroticism, what is? If he is so concerned about the ‘vulnerability of life’, he must head for places where humanity loses everything on a daily basis; what is point in remaining glued to rich cities where, at the slightest suggestion, the well dressed are willing to disrobe in public?

My criticism of Tunick may not impress him but even the authorities in the United States remain unimpressed with his argument, where he has been arrested seven times. Perhaps they expect him to include his mother, sister or daughter in one such immodest ‘installation’ to show how vulnerable they are in a rough cityscape.

UPDATE 10 July 2015:
Sea of blue behinds: 1000's of naked bodies gather in Hull for Tunick installation