On Obama in Cairo

My friend, Avrum Rosensweig has a wonderul blog, with a very thoughtful piece today on President Obama's speech in Cairo - Obama’s Cairo Speech: Half the Room is Standing:

President Obama’s speech today was as powerful and groundbreaking as one could have expected. His presentation made for outstanding TV and his mastery with words, phrases and sentences will go down in history and no doubt grant him a place in the Oratory Hall of Fame.

The outcome of his words – which after all are only words according to some – will become evident one day – or they won’t. It is too early to tell. It is obvious however that there is not one universal response to the man’s speech in Cairo, nor one conclusion.

Once again the Middle East and American’s first Afro-American president are centre stage with an audience that is only partially giving them a standing ovation. Something new has been tried today, something possibly refreshing which may, like the war on Iraq, cast a new light on a region and people who have for years refused to grow with the rest of the globe and used this inability to perpetrate some very destructive and hurtful things.

Stay tuned, the best is yet to come! Peace might be around the corner. Or it may be way down the block, off to the left and then circling around to the right. Let’s wait and see.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Tarek Fatah on The Agenda

See Steve Paiken's interview with moderate Islamic author, Tarek Fatah, online here.

Mr. Fatah discusses his new book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, on TVO's The Agenda.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Maryland Court Denies U.S. Legal Validity of Islamic Divorce

From the Baltimore Sun:

Saying "I divorce thee" three times, as men in Muslim countries have been able to do for centuries when leaving their wives, is not enough if you're a resident of Maryland, the state's highest court ruled yesterday.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeals rejected a Pakistani man's argument that his invocation of the Islamic talaq, under which a marriage is dissolved simply by the husband's say-so, allowed him to part with his wife of more than 20 years and deny her a share of his $2 million estate.

The justices affirmed a lower court's decision overturning a divorce decree obtained in Pakistan by Irfan Aleem, a World Bank economist who moved from London to Maryland with his wife, Farah Aleem, in 1985.

In 2003, Aleem's wife filed for divorce in Montgomery County Circuit Court. When he filed a counterclaim, he did not object to the court's jurisdiction over the case, according to the ruling. But before the legal process could be completed - and without telling his wife - Aleem went to the Pakistani Embassy in Washington and invoked the talaq, in effect attempting to turn jurisdiction of the case over to a Pakistani court that later granted him a divorce.

Maryland's highest court {held]...

"If we were to affirm the use of talaq, controlled as it is by the husband, a wife, a resident of this state, would never be able to consummate a divorce action filed by her in which she seeks a division of marital property," the judges wrote in their decision. They said the talaq "directly deprives the wife of the due process she is entitled to when she initiates divorce litigation."

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Belarus Publisher Jailed over 'Prophet' Cartoons

MSNBC reports that the publisher of a now-defunct, independent Belarus newspaper has been jailed three years for publishing the 2005 Danish 'Prophet" cartoons.

The 12 cartoons portraying the founder of Islam, including one showing the prophet with a bomb in his turban, outraged Muslims who saw them as blasphemous. More than 50 people died in protests across the world the following year.

...Editor Alexander Sdvizhkov was sentenced to three years in jail in a closed session of the court for incitement of religious and national hatred.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Police Investigating "Muslim Enemies" Facebook Group

In our post yesterday, Disturbing Facebook Group Targets Moderate Muslim Leaders, we reported on a now-deleted Facebook group, Remember The Enemies Muslims!!!.

The group directly targeted specific, moderate Muslim leaders with threats of public confrontation over their moderate religious beliefs.

Our sources now advise that Toronto police are "looking into" the matter.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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