Posted on 02/05/2008 6:46:37 AM PST by 2banana
Thank you 2banana, your response is a keeper. I saved this posting to another file. I admire the clarity of your work. In March I’m attending the Mt. Hermon Writer’s Conference. Are you a published writer?
Sounds like she converted to college Islam, which is about as reflective of real Islam as college is of real life in general.
LOL
Then it looks like Islam has got to go.
Yet another liberal who failed to read the manual before buying...
Just some LTTE. I am actually an engineer and a military officer by trade.
What a sad state of affairs...that Islam would look like such a good deal!
Thanks, I’ll book mark that for when I’m somewhere near finished with my over 2 dozen untouched books.
Yet another meat head.
Muslim sisterhood eclipses feminism, says Brit convert
12:00AM Thursday July 28, 2005
By Julie Middleton
Journalist Yvonne Ridley in Auckland yesterday wearing her hijab. Picture / Paul Estcourt
Muslim women’s sense of sisterhood makes “Western feminism pale into insignificance”, says Yvonne Ridley, the tabloid journalist who converted to Islam after her experiences in a Taleban jail.
“I know I shouldn’t generalise, but Western women are always bad-mouthing each other, pinching each other’s husbands and boyfriends and trying to pull each other down,” says Ms Ridley, a dryly witty Brit in her mid-40s who is speaking in New Zealand this week.
“Muslim women pull each other up and are encouraging of each other. They pull together.”
That, coupled with her discovery that Islam was not the oppressor of women as she had believed, persuaded her to trade her Protestant faith for Islam in 2003.
Thrice-married and solo mum to 12-year-old Daisy, Ms Ridley exchanged a hedonistic life full of overwork and late-night boozing (”I used to be like a tightly coiled spring and I hated my own company”) for alcohol-free piousness, full-time hijab (hair coverings) and five prayer sessions daily.
“I’m much calmer now,” she admits. “Life is simpler. I’m happier and healthier.”
Ms Ridley, now political editor of Islam Channel, a London-based satellite service, enjoys the respectful behaviour that her conversion prompts in others. It’s a while since she has heard a really filthy joke and doesn’t miss them. Her hijab has provoked hostile glares in public. She is not disturbed, but wonders what stokes such aggression.
With a foot in both Western and Muslim worlds, Ridley is a frank and often amusing commentator on the gulf between. She hit the headlines in 2001 after the September 11 attacks. Then a Sunday Express journalist, she sneaked into Afghanistan, at the time ruled by the fundamentalist Taleban.
According to her darkly funny book In the Hands of the Taliban, she was burqa-clad and posing as a deaf mute when the donkey she was mounting moved. Ridley yelled “Flaming Nora!” and as she reached for the reins, her camera - a banned item - swung into the view of a passing Taleban soldier.
During her 10 days in captivity, Ms Ridley was treated respectfully. Although terrified, she decided to behave as badly as possible, spitting and swearing. There was, she says wryly, no chance of getting Stockholm Syndrome - a condition in which hostages begin to side with their kidnappers.
Once home, she started reading up on Islam and got a shock: “The Koran makes it clear that women are the equal of men. The image I had ... was that they were shackled to the kitchen sink.”
The Muslim women she met were welcoming. Still, it took her 2 1/2 years to convert.
Some friends “ran away, but they’re creeping back”. Her mum, a regular church-goer, was accepting; her father died two months ago still “in denial”.
In New Zealand for the first time, Ms Ridley has been impressed by the cohesiveness of New Zealand’s 40,000-strong Muslim community. Followers of different backgrounds mingle easily, something she says does not happen in Britain.
The openness reinforced what she had heard: that New Zealand “has a fantastic reputation for its humanitarian approach and welcoming refugees with open arms - and for refusing to get involved in an illegal war”.
She is now an fervent anti-war campaigner - “bombs don’t discriminate” - and admires New Zealand having the “guts to plough its own furrow”.
* Yvonne Ridley speaks at a free open-to-all event at 6.45pm this Saturday, July 30, at the Gandhi Hall, 145 New North Rd, Eden Terrace, central Auckland. Her website is yvonneridley.com
Careful, lady. Don’t lose your head by making public any doubts or criticisms.
She could have done all that without converting to islam.
I do feel sorry for her, giving her the benefit of the doubt. She trusted the Profs in the University system to teach her to find the truth, and instead they indoctrinated her into hating her country and culture.
There is a thread on FR somewhere entitled Stupid Left vs Satanic Left.
The former don’t know that they are being duped and that it will lead to misery, the latter know damn good and well what the results will be and work toward them anyway to advance an agenda.
Yeah, but where is the fun in that? Much more exciting to convert to Islam so you blame all the troubles of the world on Israel, Christianity, and the U.S. These malcontempts make me sick. They get the benefits of living in Western Civilization then go give aid and comfort to our enemies.
Your reasoned response would fall upon deaf ears. After all, she’s a moonbat. That’s what an educashun does for some people.
This should clear things up for her, and a lot of people here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/696408/posts
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