"Ah, the beauty of blogging"

Don't try to confuse paranoids with the facts. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, thrust into the world spotlight thanks to the unanticipated outcome of last week's Palestinian elections, is demanding that Israel change its flag. "Israel must remove the two blue stripes from its national flag . . . The stripes on the flag are symbols of occupation. They signify Israel's borders stretching from the River Euphrates to the River Nile," says the history-challenged terrorist spokesman. In fact, the blue stripes of the Israeli flag are a reference to the Jewish tallit (background in photo), a prayer shawl that "probably resembled the 'abayah,' or blanket, worn by the Bedouins for protection from sun and rain, and which has black stripes at the ends." Like Democrat and Republican partisans, Islamist terrorists are "adept at ignoring facts."

"I seriously believe that behind every cool person, there's a blog they get to bitch their asses off in . . . Ah, the beauty of blogging." writes Sarooha of farah's sowaleef, "The everyday natterings of an exhausted, repressed, and bored 'Saudi' Arabian chick." Stephen Schwartz in his Weekly Standard "Blogging Saudi Arabia: Undermining the Wahhabis, one post at a time" [via The Intelligence Summit News] explains:

ON OCTOBER 21, A new message came out of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the land of Wahhabi Islam, with its commitment to financing jihad, its public beheadings, and its total subordination of women. But rather than the usual extremist preaching, promoting the bloody terrorist acts of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq or inciting hate against non-Wahhabi Muslims, Jews, Christians, and others around the world, the message was a call, in imperfect English, for "the first Saudi bloggers meet up." And with it, Saudi Arabia passed a milestone . . .

Men and women blogging together, of course, represents a total flouting of Saudi rules mandating sex segregation. And there can be no turning back. Saudi authorities cannot confiscate all the computers, Blackberrys, and cell phones in the kingdom. Nor can they forbid the use of the English language.

Saudi Blogs inventories more than 80 active sites, 67 of them in English or English and Arabic. Saudi women produce some of the most interesting sites. They are so daring in their freedom of expression that one congressional staffer who reads them regularly expressed complete bewilderment, asking, "How can this happen?" The globalization of American culture obviously has a lot to do with it, since many blog entries are written in the hip-hop, text-message idiom of Western teenagers.

The most startling and thought-provoking Saudi blog is "Farah's Sowaleef," sowaleef meaning "chitchat" . . . Writing in a generally readable mélange of English and occasional Arabic, the author, Farah Aziz, alias "Farooha," reveals herself to be a student at "KSU" -- King Saud University (not Kansas State), the kingdom's oldest university. Farooha is a "spoiled jingoistic" resident of the capital, Riyadh, as well as of Najd, the desert province from which Wahhabi radicalism and the royal house of Saud emerged.

"Blogging has also become a major phenomenon in theocratic Iran," notes Schwartz:

But in Saudi Arabia, the sudden explosion of blogging coincides with evidence of a very real move toward openness in religious thinking, guided by the new king, the octogenarian Abdullah. At a global Islamic summit at the end of 2005, Abdullah proclaimed the need for "moderation that embodies the Islamic concept of tolerance," adding, "I look forward to Muslim inventors and industrialists, to an advanced Muslim technology, and Muslim youth who work for their life just as they work for the Hereafter, without excess or negligence, without any kind of extremism."

That vision sharply conflicts with the obsessions of al Qaeda and Hamas, which exalt death over life. . .

"Saudi Blogs": For all its simplicity, the phrase has a revolutionary ring, like "Continental Congress" or "Polish Solidarity." For now, the Saudi authorities continue to block conventional websites maintained by reformists, like tuwaa.com, while permitting infamous Wahhabi hate sites, like alsaha.com, to operate. But the tyrants are falling behind and losing control of events. The spirits of the pamphleteer Benjamin Franklin and the great communicator Ronald Reagan must be tickled.

To life, to life, l'chaim!

Update:  'Just found this lovely detail from Eric Schwappach at The American Thinker:

The Torah commanded the israelites to dye threads of their tallit with an indigo dye which would represent the blue skies and remind them of God in Heaven.

Comments

[goomp]

Ideas and opinions flood the blogosphere, leading us to question the might and truth of MSM. Such diversity of opinion leads to some confusion and a certain lack of hubris, and there is the heart and soul of democracy. A plethoria of ideas and the freedom to express them.

[Laura Lee Donoho]

This is a timely post. I was checking my sitemeter today and someone from Iran was checking out my blog.

[Teresa]

Telling another country to change their flag!!! What utter gall. He thinks that just because he got elected... he can now go around telling other countries what to do? I'm waiting for Israel to say - Up yours buddy!

I wonder what decree he will send out to the US... the mind boggles.