Monday, April 10, 2006

Thus spoke Hasan At-Turabi. I wrote to you (friends, enemies and others) about the recent statements of Hasan Turabi. There is a huge uproar; and the clerical establishment of Sudan (puppets of the Bashir dictatorship) has officially condemned him, and stated that his views amount to "zandaqah." If Hasan Turabi is Zindiq, I must be super-Zindiq. And this sudden enlightenment by Turabi is quite suspicious: he is over 70, and never ever revealed any inkling of "liberal" leanings. And I wonder: did he also discuss his views with Bin Laden when they used to meet and drink tea during Bin Laden's stay in the Sudan? Of course, Turabi is right: there is absolutely no Qur'anic text that justifies the current veiling system, and no text that justifies the ban on Muslim women's marriage to Jews or Christians. The clerical establishment in Sudan was also upset because Turabi also said that Jesus is not returning. Al-Arabiyya had a debate: Jamal Al-Banna versus a most reactionary expert (Chairperson of the Department of fanaticism and misogyny) from the Islamic Action Front in Jordan. The expert told Muntaha Ar-Ramahi to cover her face and breasts, as if she was unclothed. I wish she told him off, but she merely smiled. When one angry caller suggested the same to Al-Jazeera's anchor, Jumana Nammur, she simply hung up on him, and responded angrily. Jamal Al-Banna is a progressive but he is a lousy debater, and he was too old and seemed too sick to offer a forceful rebuttal to the fanatic. Islamic fundamentalist fanaticism in Jordan (and Palestine), by the way, is all the work of the Hashemite family that cultivated those types to undermine the nationalists and leftist from the 1950s onward.