Women and Islam?

Several news reports about the Palestinian elections talk about the big voter turnout, but only one mentioned that most of the women who tried to run for local offices were discouraged from doing so. Why? Nothing said. It can only be the mentality or the religion of the people which puts women in a lower than low class. I can only compare it to the Taliban in Afghanistan who prohibited girls from going to school and women from walking around unless they were covered, head-to-foot, with a big robe that made them look like walking blobs.
Why would women be treated like that? Based on all I can see, it can be traced to radical forms of Islam, the same radical forms that called for and actually did destroy that ancient statue of a Budda in Afghanistan and call for religious police to monitor the morals of people in places like Afganistan and Saudi Arabia.
I remember a few years ago an American Air Force officer, a woman, complained about being required to cover her head to please the religious authorities in Saudi Arabia. I don't recall exactly how it came out, but I think there was some relaxtion of the rule as it related to her and others in the American military. That probably has riled the religious people in Saudi Arabia and has them gunning, literally, for Americans or anyone who goes against their views.
Why would a relgion call for such strange things? I don't think it is the relgion at all. I believe it is the men who are afraid of their own urges, particularly when looking at a female form. So, the purpose, especially regarding women, is not to protect the women or uphold a religious rule or law. It is to protect the men from themselves! Wild! Yes, but that can be the only explanation.
The rules the extremists Mulims want to enforce do not stop the excesses committed by even those who believe as they do.
I have this haunting memory of a segement of a television program of several years ago based on a film made in Afghanistan by a woman who did so without the authorities in charge at the time, the Taliban, knowning about it. The segement that still haunts me showed three young girls, they might have been 10 or 11 years old, sitting in front of a house in beautifully colored dresses--crying. They cried the whole time the camera played on their faces, and the narrator explained that some Taliban soldiers had been there recently, and they had done terrible things to those little girls!
What a crime, and they probably did those terrible things (rape, no doubt) while shouting, "God is great! God is great!" as they are wont to do when they cut off the heads of innocent people or blow up bombs that they know will kill many more innocent people.
Religion can be a good thing. It can also be a terrible thing. The Muslims have let it become a terrible thing in some parts of the world.
Sad.

72 Virgins! You've gotta be kidding

I several times over the years, or I should say over the last few years, have heard that bit about Muslims dying and going to heaven to find 72 virgins waiting for them.
I know little about the Muslim religion, but I do know my own limitations. I mean I like pretty girls, and I would enjoy looking at 72 of them. But, well, er, doing what the Muslim religion suggests, now someone has to be kidding. Or nuts. In my mind someone would be trying to make the Guiness Book of World Records to make love to 72 virgins. Me? I'd be trying for a heart attack--and probably get one.

A Man Among Men

History is really a compilation of stories, and an interesting story on Ohio history I ran across the other day follows.
It seems three men paddled a canoe along an Ohio river sometime in the late 1700s or maybe early 1800s. Then from the bank, Indians opened fire with their muskets. One of the three men in the canoe was mortally wounded. Yet, he had enough strength and concern for the other fellows that he had them lie flat in the canoe as the Indians continued their attack. He, the badly wounded man, then paddled the canoe to safety. Once safely away from the Indians, he pulled over the to river bank and died soon there after.
The two surviving men buried him there where he died, and sometime later they returned and erected a monument in his honor.
Grand story. I'm checking to see if the monument is still there.

Friday Night Lights: the movie

If you want to know what it is like to live in west Texas and eastern New Mexico, see this film. It will definitely take you there. If you want to know what it's like to play high school football in west Texas or eastern New Mexico, you will learn from this film. Though the movie is set in 1988, it could easily be set anytime in the last 30 or 40 years. Football, that area of the country and the life there does not change that much.
It is an unusual movie in that there are several good guys and several bad guys, not just one of each. There also are several bad girls and several good girls, though not as many as guys.
Rating, four stars, four being high: ***

Saving a life

It's not every day (rather night) one can save a life, but I did once. I think.
At the time, I worked for a newspaper that came out mornings. That meant a lot of us had to work late at night getting the paper out.
This one particular night, a Friday as I recall, at about 12:45 a.m. the telephone on my desk rings. I answer it, a little distrubed to have to do it as we'd had a heavy night and were finally getting things wrapped up for the final deadline at 1 a.m.
I put the telephone to my ear and said, "Hello."
A woman responded, almost screaming, "I'm going to kill that bastard!"
I thought a second, ask her, "What?"
I'd heard right the first time because for the second time she said the same thing: "I'm going to kill that bastard!"
I glanced at the clock on the wall. The big hand clicked another minute closer to the 1 a.m. deadline.
"Lady," I told the woman, "You can't do that right now. You're going to have to wait."
The moment of silence followed by an incredulous, "Whaaat?"
"Lady," I said again, "I know you've got your problems, but if you kill him right now you have no idea the problems you are going to cause for us!" I was already imagining chasing the details and looking for a name after hearing of the shooting on the police "squawk box" or radio tuned to the police department radio frequency. There were two newspapers in the town. The other paper had the afternoon slot, and we were competitive. So I knew we'd have to have the story before the other paper had a whack at it! Sounds nutty? Yes, it was.
The woman on the phone kept saying, "Whaaat? Whaaat? Whaaat?"
She obviously thought she had a true nut on the telphone.
I just repeated once again, "Lady, I know you have problems, but you will create a lot, I mean a lot of problems for us if you shoot the bastard (I purposely used that term, even though for all I knew he might have been a fine fellow with a pain-in-the you-know-what for a wife) now...You just can't do it."
Another, slow, "Whaat?"
"I tell you what," I said as an idea to mollify her hit me, "If you wait until tomorrow evening at six and call me, I'll get a reporter and a photographer out to see you shoot him."
"Whaaat?"
I didn't repeat myself. I didn't have, too. She just mumbled a few unintelligible words and hung up!
The next night when I came on duty, I had the police reporter check to see if anyone had been shot in the city about the time the lady called or anytime after. No one had.
I waited for the phone call to send the reporter and photographer out, but I never got it.
So, maybe I saved someone's life.
She may still be telling this story, too, all about the nut she got when she called a newspaper late one night!

No suicide US Soldiers

Some Muslim clerics preach that killing an "infidel" guarantees the party who kills--even with a car where the killer commits suicide--will go to heaven and have who knows how many virgins.
Believe me, there are no sucide US soldiers in Iraq.
The US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan just hope to stay alive until they can return home to their families and friends. They will wait on heaven.
Those US and other coalition soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan (sp) hope that, if they die, their deaths will eventually mean better lives for people in those two countries and people in many other countries, including the US, because they can live without fear of being killed, tortured or abused by terrorists.
So, everytime you hear of a US soldier being killed, know that that soldier has paid the supreme sacrifice and that his or her family has, too: a wife, children, parents.
Please thank them all for their sacrifices.