Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Dame Edna creator gets CBE

Dame Edna creator gets CBE

What about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ershad Manji ?


--- In freeamericanow@yahoogroups.com, "union_faruque" wrote:

Salman Rushdie's sexual impotence and conversation with God earned him a knighthood! LOL. One must wonder the majesty of the sanctimonious British Royal System!


Dame Edna creator gets CBE

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June 16, 2007 - 12:15PM
Dame Edna EveragePhoto: Greg Gorman


Australia's First Lady, Edna Everage, has been a dame of the realm for years, but now her creator Barry Humphries has cracked it for a royal gong.

Comedian and satirist Humphries, one of Australia's funniest and most beloved performers, was today awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.



Dame Edna, Humphries' most celebrated alter ego, once welcomed the Queen at a concert in Buckingham Palace with the words: "The Jubilee girl is here, possums.'' It brought the house down.

Indeed, Humphries' royal connections are impeccable.


Another of his comic characterisations is a knight of the realm: Sir Les Patterson - Australia's lecherous, dribbling, hugely offensive 'cultural attache to Britain'.


Humphries's characters, especially Dame Edna, the self-confessed international gigastar, have earned him international renown.

He has appeared in numerous films, stage productions and TV shows.


In addition he is an award-winning writer and an accomplished landscape painter.
Humphries's fourth wife, Lizzie Spender, is the daughter of the British poet Sir Stephen


Salman Rushdie, the novelist who spent years under threat of death after an Iranian fatwa, received a knighthood in the birthday honours.


Oleg Gordievsky, the former Soviet spy who defected to Britain, is also honoured along with cricketer Ian Botham and fund-raiser and terminal cancer sufferer Jane Tomlinson.

The honours list contains the usual array of stars from sport, showbusiness, fashion, the arts, and industry.


They rub shoulders with hundreds of unknown "ordinary people'' honoured for voluntary work and charity fundraising at what Downing Street describes as the "sharp end'' of society.

It is "Arise Sir Beefy'', as Botham gets a knighthood not only for his cricketing prowess but for his long-distance walks which have raised millions for charity.


And there is a CMG (Companion of the Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George) in the Diplomatic List for Gordievsky, a one-time colonel in the KGB, who became the highest-ranking KGB defector ever. The citation is "for services to the security of the United Kingdom''.
Other big names in the list include:


Ryan Giggs, the Manchester United footballer, who has just retired from the Welsh national team; Teddy Sheringham, the West Ham striker and former England star; Last Of The Summer Wine actor Peter Sallis, along with actress Sylvia Syms, rock star Joe Cocker, TV historian David Starkey - once described as "the rudest man in Britain'' - and Nicky Clarke, hairdresser to the stars. But for the second list in succession, widespread speculation of a knighthood - or indeed of any honour - for David Beckham, proved groundless.

PA
Source: Free America Now

Irshad Manji: US shared values includes Muslims

Irshad Manji: US shared values includes Muslims


The Project For a New Israeli Century and 'Witch-hunters, censorship and the holocaust'


--- In freeamericanow@yahoogroups.com, "mukto_mona" wrote:
Re: Irshad Manji: US shared values includes Muslims

What is Anti-Semitism?Anti-Semitism is prejudice or discrimination against Jews, based on negative perceptions of their religious beliefs and/or on negative group stereotypes. Anti-Semitism can also be a form of racism, as when Nazis and others consider Jews an inferior "race."


--- In freeamericanow@yahoogroups.com, "austro_bangla" wrote:
Re: Irshad Manji: US shared values includes Muslims


Nice try Dingbat! Try these instead!!

"We Jews are going to bring war on Germany." - David Brown, President of American Hebrew, in 1934, quoted in Edmonson's I Testify, page 188.

"The Second World War is being fought for the defense of the fundamentals of Judaism." - The Chicago Jewish Sentinel, October 8, 1942.


--- In freeamericanow@yahoogroups.com, "bruceksim" wrote:

` A licentious, misfit, sex-maniac who does not have enough qualification or represents no one is getting publicity. Who is behind such publicity?'

I do not think it right and proper that you speak of muhammad in such terms!! You will find they have a fatwah on you!!
Cheers Bruce


--- In freeamericanow@yahoogroups.com, "union_faruque" wrote:
Re: Irshad Manji: US shared values includes Muslims


Spin at work! Zionist creation Ershad is polite Muslim now!! She will save Islam by submitting to Zionism and insulting Islamic teachings. What a conspiracy.


--- In freeamericanow@yahoogroups.com, "mamubhi" wrote:
Irshad Manji: US shared values includes Muslims

A licentious, misfit, sex-maniac who does not have enough qualification or represents no one is getting publicity. Who is behind such publicity? The modern day "Joseph Gobles"!

Why? Because it is a war against Muslims and their resources under the guise of `war on terror'.
mamubhi

Irshad Manji: US shared values includes Muslims
· Once again, America beats Europe on assimilation
· June 08, 2007

AGAINST the backdrop of civil war, Abraham Lincoln stirred Americans by appealing to their "better angels". Now some of those angels appear in an unprecedented study about Muslims in the US, and they may show us how to prevent civil war in Europe.


Muslim Americans, released by the Pew Research Centre, contains moments of bad news. For example, one in four respondents under the age of 30 accepts suicide bombing. As a reformed-minded Muslim, I say that honouring any religion of peace through violence is like preserving virginity through pre-marital sex. Think about it.


But the Pew report offers a lot more good news. Political Islam has not caught on in the US as it has in Europe because most Muslims in the US are - dare it be said - treated with dignity. The vast majority of those surveyed like their communities and describe their lives as "pretty happy" or "very happy". Which means lobbyists do not speak for Muslim Americans when they cry that the US hates Islam.


In Berlin recently, an audience buzzed nervously when I suggested Europe can learn from America about integrating Muslims. Afterwards, several people confided to me that they know the US is getting something right. What is that something?


As I engage with young Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic, I see three factors: economics, diversity and faith. For plenty of Muslims in the US, ambition and initiative pay off. The Pew survey reinforces this lesson, telling us that 71 per cent of Muslim Americans believe most people in the US "can make it if they are willing to work hard".


Meanwhile, in Europe, young Muslims face blatant discrimination in employment, educational and social opportunities, even when they are citizens. Many subsist on welfare, which only gives them time to stew and surf the web for preachers who spew a rigid identity.
This is the path that led Mohammed Bouyeri to murder Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
In much of the US, diversity is a reason to intermingle. The Pew study reveals that most Muslims are close friends with non-Muslims.


In much of Europe, diversity has become an excuse to self-segregate. Many of Europe's mosques, and the Muslims who attend them, refuse to communicate in the language of their new surroundings. As a result, young Muslim men drift away from moderate religious authorities and fall for online opportunists. That is how Mohammad Sidique Khan, mastermind of the London Underground bombings, fell under the sway of "Sheik Google", the collective nickname for Islamist websites.


To Americans, it is not the fact of having faith that invites scrutiny, but what one is perceived to be doing with that faith. Western Europeans, still steeped in a backlash against the Catholic Church, often show suspicion or outright contempt to people of faith. Such secular fundamentalism leads some Muslims to believe they will never be accepted by their adopted countries. So why integrate?



Small wonder that young Muslims in Western Europe whisper to me: "I wish I lived in the US." The honesty doesn't end there. Muslim men in their 20s have complained to me that in an effort to appear sensitive, Europeans downplay shared values. This confuses many Muslim young people and creates a vacuum that radical clerics can exploit.

Translation: a common aspiration such as the American dream is crucial to giving Muslims a sense of belonging to something larger and more dynamic than cultural enclaves.


But what about the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay? The answer always comes back that these are unfortunate and unjust exceptions. In the US, they say, you can be more than a Muslim. You are a member of the wider public.


Naive? Not according to the Pew study. More than half of Muslims in the US identify themselves as Americans first, easily eclipsing patriotism among Muslims in Germany, Spain or Britain.
Clearly, the US has retained its genius as a nation of immigrants.


To be sure, there is a long way to go in giving non-immigrant Muslims, especially African-Americans, a sense of belonging. Most are not among the better educated, wealthier and politically influential Americans that so many South Asian, Iranian and Arab Muslims are.


However, that gap is the product of America's persistent racial battle. It has almost nothing to do with a fear of Islam.


For the all the slogans, accusations and fulminations of the Islam industry's lobbyists, fear is not what mainstream Americans feel about Muslims. Just ask the 73 per cent of Muslims who told Pew that they have never been discriminated against in the US.


Europe, take notes. America, take a break from self-flagellation. Reformist Muslims, take your cue. In the US, you have the possibility of a voice. Islam's better angels depend on it.

Irshad Manji is author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith (St Martin's, 2005). This originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal.


Source: Free America Now
demand what they deserve!