General Chat

May is right to be tight-lipped.

My curiosity is aroused Rollo. I am going to have to do some reading (between the lines methinks).

But it won't be this weekend as there's too much going on.

And I thought I was enjoying a leisurely retirement. A curious child never changes her spots. :-S :-D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRxIAnduy7c

Oh! I Googled ISL Recruitment - and came across a recruitment agency in Bristol.

Not a commonly used acronym, for ISIS or DAESH then.

acronym sometimes used for Islamic State of the Levant instead of ISIS.
often referred to as al Daesh.

Although ialways denied this organisation gets significant funding and political protection from the al Rashid clan in Saudi.

highly recommended :
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Kingdom-Robert-Lacey/dp/0099539055

Going back to the previous page, and Rollo's 'Statement' about the situation in Saudi I would like to point out that situations change, nothing is ever 'set in stone'.
My father lived in Saudi for over 10 years, mingled with the locals, and lived away from the 'Western Block'. He even became a follower of Islam and taught religion.
I also stayed out there from time to time, but will not pass comment, as, If I contradict Himself, he will probably, yet again try to dismiss me as 'bitter & twisted' - and what would I know anyway??
Women oppressed by men? Not just in the Middle East, but here, on GR!!

However I AM confused about his reference to ISL having any influence in Saudi.
Who is/are ISL?

for JL

The National Audit Office NAO has published a report on Portcullis House which gives the project a clean bill of health. Nevertheless MPs are complaining of all kinds of faults as well as no beer. Evidently the possibility of rain was not fully take into account.

In our mother of democracies access to P.H. is tighter than a duck's a-s but don't fret they have a virtual tour.

On the architect's side Henry Buxton was the go to man for finance.

Given the degree to which the UK is living on tick ( 8% balance of trade deficit, trillion £ mortgage bubble financed by foreign banks, Portcullis House, hospitals, schools financed by PFI, BOfE QE funny money, nice new train sets inc HS2, state of the art nuclear power stations and so on ) it is fascinating to see just how post Brexit UK will finance itself. No wonder May has become the soul of reticence.

Well, bless me, Dermot. :-0 :-D

I do know of a few who have transferred too but I have never known what their female relatives think.

I have edited my previous post, Rollo, to ask you another question.

I never ever hold my breath for anyone or anything. :-D

JoyLouise - There is one such fellow in our parish, settling in well to the RC way of life with one exception - his wife & two teenage children have also 'transferred over'.

A lovely bunch of people.

From AD 325 the Christian church was indubitably an instrument of opression against women. They only got a break when some mad monk banged his thesis on a church door in 1517 or thereabouts. That created a schism which endures to this day.

As rome has had 500 years to change its views without doing so don't hold your breath.

Dermot, I was indeed pulling your leg. :-D

I'd love to know what the mothers, wives and daughters think of the clergymen who defect to the RC Church. Aren't I a devil? :-S

JoyLouise - joking, aren't you! Not in my lifetime - whatever is left of it.

From the top down, the Catholic church continues to be run by a supposed celibate hierarchy from which women have been & still are excluded.

So nothing's changed then, Rollo. Usury still works in the way I learned many years ago.

I was just surprised to see UKGov take advantage of that kind of loan. But, as always, (I hope), it will be all down to money. Do you know who brokered the deal?

If my memory serves me right, the HSBC bank was the first in the UK to offer mortgages acceptable under Islamic law.

Before I retired I used to keep apprised of this kind of thing but when you don't have to keep up-to-date you tend to chill out completely .....

I recommend retirement. :-D

Dermot, has The Tablet yet said when we can expect to see the Roman Catholic Church ordain women priests?

I may have missed a statement owing to my snoozing through life after retirement.

The property is Portcullis House.

How sharia avoids usury
say you want to buy a car on credit; fine
the bank buys the car which it rents to you
with the final payment over, say, 24 months, you have the option to buy the car (from the bank) for £ 1.

and so on
apart from the stats being at the end of the day the same as classic interest charging loans the bank owns the car and thus makes sure it is serviced properly - if it doesn't you have a comeback against the bank.

It is fairly easy to get a sharia mortgage in the UK whatever your religious faith (if any). Mohammed was, first and foremost, a businessman. They compare pretty well with classic western mortgages. It is dramatically easier to get business finance from a sharia bank. The borrower is in the position of tenant and the lender of landlord.
.

'Oppression' can arise in many other spheres of life. (Excerpt from last week's 'The Tablet' - International Catholic Weekly publication.

‘Thirteen years ago, Jeffrey John, the then dean of Southwark Cathedral, had been named as Bishop of Reading. John was in a long-term, albeit celibate, relationship with another man.

Orchestrated protests from some evangelicals and African bishops over a period of weeks put considerable pressure on the then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, some threatening to leave the Anglican Communion if John’s consecration went ahead.

John was surreptitiously called in to Lambeth Palace one Saturday morning and forced to stand down, despite the protests of his current and appointing bishops at Southwark and Oxford.

The response to the current Bishop of Grantham’s recent announcement that he is gay reveals that the Church of England has shifted in its stance, particularly under Archbishop Welby

Perhaps the most surprising thing about last weekend’s Guardian interview in which Dr Nicholas Chamberlain, the Church of England’s suffragan bishop of Grantham, became the first member of the episcopate to announce he is gay, was how little upset it caused.

The conservative evangelicals, who are usually the section of the Church quickest to express outrage, were strangely muted. Even the African bishops of the Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon), the group set up especially to oppose any accommodation with gays in the worldwide Anglican Communion, confined themselves to a declaration that Chamberlain’s consecration 10 months ago had been a mistake.

No one had told them and so they had not noticed at the time. It was a fait accompli'.

Help please, Rollo, as it's a long time since I studied this.

If UKGov office has been funded by a Sharia loan how is that working since Islam forbids usury?

Saudi Arabia is to say the least of it atypical of Arabic countries. Afghanistan is not and never was Arabic. Neither is Iran. Kurds are not Arabs.

Sharia "law" has no legal basis in any European Union country or the USA.

In the UK people can if they wish enter into agreements under sharia law but only so far as there is no conflict with UK law. You do not need to be a muslim to enter into a sharia law agreement - for instance UKGov is using London office space funded from a sharia loan with the interesting condition that alcohol cannot be served in the said offices lol. It is commonplace in middle eastern countries for westerners to enter into sharia law agreements for buying cars, renting apartments and so on.

The degree to which such things as dress code and social freedom for wives and daughters varies a great deal with (a) the country in question and (b) the socio economic class of the person. Saudi Arabia restricts social interaction between Europeans and locals so far as possible typically by controlling where westerners may live and so on. Women cannot drive though this may soon change.

In say, Kuwait, westerners can live wherever they can afford the rent so that apartment blocks with a wide mix of nationalities and religions are commonplace. There is a large Roman Catholic cathedral on the seafront in Kuwait. At private "beach clubs" - all of which admit westerners as members - it is not in the slightest bit unusual to see muslim women wearing bikinis. The club counts as an extension of the home. Women are allowed to drive though whether this is a good road safety idea I am not sure. The right is certainly popular. Kuwait even has women MPs in parliament. Much the same is true of Egypt, Iraq and the Lebanon and used to be true of Syria. However those of a more liberal disposition are far more garded than they once were.

Several important islamic countries have a long history of not allowing islamic traditional practices an excessive role in secular life. These include Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Egypt. A great deal of the current troubles is due to the west not understanding that what it sees as political freedom ("Arab spring") is actually handing power to the fundamentalists. Only Russia seems to understand this and as a result what calls itself the west is rapidly losing out.

The burkha is obviously an odious way to imprison women. These days it is also dangerous as the person wearing a burka could be a terrorist with bomb belt - not an infrequent event in Kabul or Baghdad.

Other than that special case there is nothing unreasonable in requiring people to dress modestly. It is not oppressive. Middle eastern countries tend to be dry and dusty with horrors such as dust storms which can go on for days with a humid heat. A niqab and hood can protect clothes and hair from this which is something western women resident in the Gulf soon pick up. Veils can be endlessly sexy which seems to be a penny that has only recently dropped with the religious nutters. There is a an extensive eqtiquette of the veil and to see it as oppressive is wrong. I have never seen anybody wearing the veil indoors.

The Holy Qaran has mixed messages. On the one hand islam has no concept at all of division between the secular ( the state ) and Islam (submission to god) . The salafists / wahabis are determined to enforce this in a very cruide way as has happened in Saudi and under ISL. On the other hand it exhorts islamic people not to dwell longer in infidel countries than is needed to conclude business but while there to obey the laws of the country....

We must never criticise women just for excessive modesty - but we must defend their freedom of choice and not allow them to be forced to hide themselves from a mixed sex world with no independence and be told that anything else is a sexual sin. The burkini ban was preposterous!

Reading the beginning of this thread made me think about the Malleus Malefecarum which is available on-line if anybody who has not encountered it would like to have a look at it..

From the ignorant rantings of those with far too much power and far too little experience (think Mein Kampf as well) came immeasurable suffering of the innocent.