Tweet Of The Day - Bryan Fischer

Fischer: U.S. Should Outlaw Blasphemy

SAUDI ARABIA: Man Sentenced To 500 Lashes And 5 Years In Prison For Gay Sex

A Saudi court has sentenced a man accused of having gay sex to 500 lashes and five years in prison.

The 27 year-old man, who was arrested by the kingdom’s religious police, was also convicted of publishing photos on the internet and on mobile phones of himself wearing women’s underwear, the newspaper reported without giving his name. The court fined him 50,000 riyals ($13,300), the newspaper said.

Hopefully this outrage will be denounced by Secretary Clinton.

Gay Saudi Diplomat Seeks U.S. Asylum

Saying that his life is in danger and that if he goes back to Saudi Arabia "they will kill me openly in broad daylight,” a gay Saudi diplomat has requested asylum in the United States.

The diplomat, Ali Ahmad Asseri, the first secretary of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, has informed U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials that Saudi officials have refused to renew his diplomatic passport and effectively terminated his job after discovering he was gay and was close friends with a Jewish woman. In a recent letter that he posted on a Saudi website, Asseri angrily criticized his country’s “backwardness” as well as the role of “militant imams” in Saudi society who have “defaced the tolerance of Islam.” Perhaps most provocatively of all, he has threatened to expose what he describes as politically embarrassing information about members of the Saudi royal family living in luxury in the U.S.

The United States granted it first asylum request based on sexual orientation in 1994, after a 73 year-old ban on homosexual immigrants was finally overturned in 1990.

STOP! Mecca Time!

In Mecca, Saudi Arabia is building the world's largest clock atop what will be the world's second-tallest building. The structure is meant to help further Saudi Arabia's goal to establish Mecca as the replacement for the global standard of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Bearing a striking resemblance to both St Stephen’s Tower, which houses the bell of Big Ben, and the Empire State Building, the Saudi upstart aims to outdo its revered British rival in every way. The clock’s four faces are 151ft in diameter and will be illuminated by 2million LED lights along with huge Arabic script reading: “In the name of Allah”. The clock will run on Arabia Standard Time which is three hours ahead of GMT. When a glittering spire is added, topped with a crescent to symbolise Islam, the edifice will stand at nearly 2,000 ft, making it the world's second tallest building. The clock of Big Ben, by comparison, is just 23ft in diameter, while its tower stands at a mere 316ft.

Residents of Mecca will also be reminded that it is time to pray when 21,000 green and white lights, visible at a distance of 18 miles, flash five times a day. But Islamic scholars hope the clock’s influence will stretch far further than the sands of Saudi Arabia, as part of a plan for Mecca to eclipse the Greenwich Observatory as the “true centre of the earth”. For the past 125 years, the international community has accepted that the start of each day should be measured from the prime meridian, representing 0 degrees longitude, which passes through the Greenwich Observatory. A standard time by which other clocks were set was needed to organise global travel and communications, but in the Islamic world the idea that it should be centred on a part of London is seen as a colonial anachronism.

Saudi Arabia's leading cleric contends that Mecca is the correct choice because "it's in perfect alignment with magnetic north." The world's scientists disagree.

Today In Islamic Fatwas

An Islamic cleric in Saudi Arabia has issued one of the most bizarre fatwas yet. Via Salon:

As many of us know, women and men in Saudi Arabia must be careful not to mingle, as the insanely strict Islamic law bans mixing between the sexes who are not related. Recently, the Saudis have issued a fatwa that forces women who come into contact with unrelated men on a regular basis to breastfeed them so that they can be considered “relatives” and not potential lovers. The strangest part is, this isn’t the actual issue at hand. The issue is, how do the men get the milk? I know, it just gets weirder.

According to the Gulf News, Sheikh Al Obeikan, a consultant to the Ministry of Justice and an adviser to the royal court stated, “the man should take the milk, but not directly from the breast of the woman. He should drink it and then becomes a relative of the family, a fact that allows him to come in contact with the woman without breaking Islam’s rules about mixing.” This fatwa applies to men who regularly come into contact with the same woman, or men who live in the same house with a woman. The woman has to pump her breast milk into a glass and give it to the unrelated male. Doesn’t that sound appetizing?

According to the story, Islamic women often breastfeed their nephews too, so that they and their daughters can be in the same room once they grow up. It makes them "breast milk siblings."

(Via - Dan Savage)