A Black Police Officer asks why the serious problem of Black On Black Homicide is being ignored in the Black Community?

Facebook of Officer Jay Stalien

I have come to realize something that is still hard for me to understand to this day. The following may be a shock to some coming from an African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as Humans.

I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way to our 1 bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I used to be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each other.

It never sat right with me. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop the bloodshed.

As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me, spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it personally, I knew they were hurting. I remember the countless times I had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from the blood of another black victim…of black on black crime. I remember the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having watched another black male die in front me, having to start my preliminary report something like this:

Suspect- Black/ Male, Victim-Black /Male.

I remember the countless times I canvassed the area afterwards, and asked everyone “did you see who did it”, and the popular response from the very same family members was always, “F***  the Police, I ain't no snitch, Im gonna take care of this myself". This happened every single time, every single homicide, black on black, and then my realization became clearer.

I woke up every morning, put my freshly pressed uniform on, shined my badge, functioned checked my weapon, kissed my wife and kid, and waited for my wife to say the same thing she always does before I leave, “Make sure you come back home to us”. I always replied, “I will”, but the truth was I was never sure if I would. I almost lost my life on this job, and every call, every stop, every moment that I had this uniform on, was another possibility for me to almost lose my life again. I was a target in the very community I swore to protect, the very community I wanted to help. As a matter of fact, they hated my very presence. They called me “Uncle Tom”, and “wanna be white boy”, and I couldn’t understand why. My own fellow black men and women attacking me, wishing for my death, wishing for the death of my family. I was so confused, so torn, I couldn’t understand why my own black people would turn against me, when every time they called …I was there. Every time someone died….I was there. Every time they were going through one of the worst moments in their lives…I was there. So why was I the enemy? I dove deep into that question…Why was I the enemy? Then my realization became clearer.

I spoke to members of the community and listened to some of the complaints as to why they hated cops. I then did research on the facts. I also presented facts to these members of the community, and listened to their complaints in response. This is what I learned:

Complaint: Police always targeting us, they always messing with the black man.

Fact: A city where the majority of citizens are black (Baltimore for example) …will ALWAYS have a higher rate of black people getting arrested, it will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting stopped, and will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks getting killed, and the reason why is because a city with those characteristics will ALWAYS have a higher rate of blacks committing crime. The statistics will follow the same trend for Asians if you go to China, for Hispanics if you go to Puerto Rico, for whites if you go to Russia, and the list goes on. It’s called Demographics [...]

All of my realizations came to this conclusion. Black Lives do not matter to most black people. Only the lives that make the national news matter to them. Only the lives that are taken at the hands of cops or white people, matter. The other thousands of lives lost, the other black souls that I along with every cop, have seen taken at the hands of other blacks, do not matter. Their deaths are unnoticed, accepted as the “norm”, and swept underneath the rug by the very people who claim and post “black lives matter”. I realized that this country is full of ignorance, where an educated individual will watch the ratings-driven news media, and watch a couple YouTube video clips, and then come to the conclusion that they have all the knowledge they need to have in order to know what it feels like to have a bullet proof vest as part of your office equipment, “Stay Alive” as part of your daily to do list, and having insurance for your health insurance because of the high rate of death in your profession. They watch a couple videos and then they magically know in 2 minutes 35 seconds, how you are supposed to handle a violent encounter, which took you 6 months of Academy training, 2 – 3 months of field training, and countless years of blood, sweat, tears and broken bones experiencing violent encounters and fine tuning your execution of the Use of Force Continuum. I realized that there are even cops, COPS, duly sworn law enforcement officers, who are supposed to be decent investigators, who will publicly go on the media and call other white cops racist and KKK, based on a video clip that they watched thousands of miles away, which was filmed after the fact, based on a case where the details aren’t even known yet and the investigation hasn’t even begun. I realized that most in the African American community refuse to look at solving the bigger problem that I see and deal with every day, which is black on black crime taking hundreds of innocent black lives each year, and instead focus on the 9 questionable deaths of black men, where some were in the act of committing crimes [...]

I realized that the very reasons I became a cop, are the very reasons my own people hate me, and now in this toxic hateful racially charged political climate, I am now more likely to die,... and it is still hard for me to understand…. to this day.
click above facebook link for rest of article

Brooklyn Man Hangs Self — 26th New York Orthodox Suicide in Year

Forward   Brooklyn’s Orthodox community is mourning the apparent suicide of 22-year-old construction worker Yakov Krausz, whose body was discovered Wednesday in an elevator motor room, the Daily News reported.

His death marks at least the 26th suicide of a young adult in New York-area Orthodox community over the past ten months, according to Zvi Gluck, founder and director of the Orthodox social service group Amudim.

Members of the Boro Park Shomrim, a private Orthodox security patrol, organized a frantic search for Krausz on Wednesday afternoon after he missed a meeting with his wife, according to reports.

The Daily News reported that Krausz suffered from depression. [...]

Amudim’s Gluck, who has been tracking suicides among men and women under the age of 35 in the Orthodox community in the New York area since last Rosh Hashanah, said that the Orthodox community needs to cultivate greater awareness of mental health issues.

“Once we can, as a community, accept that mental illness, sex abuse and addiction is as big a problem as it is, we can create programming to provide services,” Gluck said. “We have to acknowledge that this is a problem that exists.”

Krausz’s suicide comes just weeks after Rebecca Wassertrum, 28, died after jumping off of the George Washington Bridge. That followed the July 2015 suicide of ex-Orthodox coder Faigy Mayer and the November 2015 suicide of Mayer’s sister, Sarah Mayer.

Gluck said that, until recently, any death of a young person was blamed on an “aneurysm.”

“It’s the shame factor that’s killing the next generation,” Gluck said. “That’s what we’re trying to take away.”

After Hasidic Suicide (Esti Weinstein), Israel Looks in the Mirror

NY Times   In death, Esti Weinstein has started a national conversation. A 50-year-old mother of eight, Ms. Weinstein disappeared on June 21 and was found dead in her car six days later in an apparent suicide. She left behind a note and a manuscript of a memoir. She also left a long list of questions that have rekindled animosity between Israel’s secular majority and its ultra-Orthodox minority.

Ms. Weinstein had been a member of the Hasidic sect known as Gur, Israel’s largest, and she came from a distinguished family within the community. She was married at age 17 by arrangement and thrown into a relationship that she ultimately decided she could not endure. She left her family and the closed-off community eight years ago to lead a secular life.

Her book — copies of which have been distributed by mail and social media throughout Israel — chronicles in detail some of the esoteric habits of the sect from which she escaped. (After I submitted this article, Kinneret-Zmora-Dvir Publishing, by which I am employed, acquired rights to the book.) The Gur sect is rigid in its approach to marriage and modesty, with the aim of reaching a higher level of “kedushah,” or holiness. As researchers have documented, and as newspaper reporters have further detailed, Gur Hasidim “have sexual intercourse only once a month” during which they aim “to minimize physical contact.” A Gur Hasidic man will not use his wife’s name and he will reportedly sometimes get prescriptions for antidepressants to suppress his sex drive.

Peeping into the bedrooms of the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, and mocking their habits — real or imaginary — has long been something of an Israeli national pastime. In Ms. Weinstein’s suicide story, the news media found a gold mine. But the issues go beyond mere voyeurism. [...]

Nonreligious Israelis are fascinated by the growing Haredi community — more than 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population and projected to be more than 20 percent in 12 years — and are apprehensive about its future impact on Israel. The ultra-Orthodox community already has political power. The popular minister of health is a Gur Hasid. The mayor of Jerusalem was elected largely thanks to the resounding neutrality of the Gur rabbi-leader. Israel’s ruling coalition is supported by the two Haredi parties.

After Ms. Weinstein walked out on her Hasidic life, her ties with her old community and her family, including six of her seven children, were severed. (One of her daughters also decided to leave.) A suicide is always complicated, and Ms. Weinstein’s story of personal agony that began long before her departure from the Haredi community is no different. However, following her death, many secular Israelis came to believe she had been a casualty of ultra-Orthodoxy’s unbending, fanatical ways.

Her family and the Hasidic community are telling a different story. At Ms. Weinstein’s funeral, one of her daughters gave a eulogy saying that her mother “abandoned” her young children without much explanation, and was a troubled soul whose unique and tragic story is now being used in a culture war against the ultra-Orthodox.

The eulogy was an unusual public act for a Hasidic woman. It’s highly unlikely that Ms. Weinstein’s daughter would have delivered it without being asked to by a man of authority in her community. The Gur sect worries about its image among Israelis. Like all Haredi groups, it wants to shield itself from secular society and its unholy habits. It feels unsteady behind its walls of separation as the lure of the outside world — especially one in which Jewish life thrives — makes the habit of seclusion harder to explain and maintain. Ms. Weinstein ripped a hole in these walls and allowed other Israelis to see what’s behind.

The level of criticism and ridicule by secular Israel on the ways and habits of the Haredi community will determine the long-term impact of Ms. Weinstein’s tragic story on the community from which she fled. The more mockery Haredim have to stomach over their religious customs — even sexual practices that may seem bizarre to many Israelis — the more they will close themselves off to the outside world. The more Israelis indict them as a community for the heartbreaking death of a heartbroken mother, the more they will raise their guard and resist taking part in a very necessary conversation about openness. The more Haredis are demonized because of their choice to have a different lifestyle, the less safe they will feel to keep “integrating” into Israel’s larger society, as Israel wants them to do.

Israel will better serve Ms. Weinstein’s memory by refraining from sensationalizing her story and judging her and her family. At the same time, her final act handed Israel’s Haredim a mirror. It is now their turn to decide what they want it to reflect.

Unveiling for Rabbi Maurice Lamm z"l July 29th 9 a.m. in Beit Shemesh

An immodest prohibition: Does a strong concern with modesty lead to an increased unhealthy awareness of sexuality?

JPost  by    SEYMOUR HOFFMAN

The writer is a supervising psychologist at the Marbeh Da’at Mental Health Center, Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center. He edited Rabbis and Psychologists: Partners or Adversaries (2014), Reader for the Orthodox Jewish Psychotherapist: Issues, Case Studies and Contemporary Responsa (2014) and authored Thinking Out of the Box: Unconventional Psychotherapy (2015).

‘...we no longer aim to produce a community of pious persons. Rather, we are striving to engineer a community where men simply never see women’ – Dr. Nachum Klafter

Jewish law insituted prohibitions, guidelines and safeguards regarding the interaction between men and woman – prohibitions of abiding alone with, touching and looking at a person of the opposite sex. It did not institute separate sides of the street for men and women to walk on, or separate hours for men and women in supermarkets. It did not obligate women to sit in the rear of buses.

Dr. Nachum Klafter, a prominent Orthodox American Jewish psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and academic, opines that “severe standards for modesty and gender separation have lowered the threshold for sexual stimulation, which has led to an increase in sexual problems. Gender separation, when it becomes so extreme, causes a shift in the locus of control from internal to external. With this approach, we no longer aim to produce a community of pious persons. Rather, we are striving to engineer a community where men simply never see women.”

Ultra-Orthodox publications do not include pictures of modestly dressed women and even altered the photograph of the new Israeli government so that the faces of the female ministers were either pixelated or removed entirely. In Beit Shemesh, the word “isha” [woman] was spray-painted over on a sign for a women’s health clinic.

In the article, “An immodest obsession: Vanishing Women,” (The Jerusalem Post, August 14, 2015), Shoshanna Keats- Jaskoll highlights the dangerous trend of erasing women from the public sphere in haredi communities in Israel and the US. In the article, Keats-Jaskoll interviews Menachem Schloss, a Beit Shemesh haredi psychotherapist. “A clear result of extremes in tzniut [modesty] is, ironically, pornography,” Schloss is quoted as saying.

“People with such mind-sets [that women should be hidden from view] are far more likely to perceive normal human drives as an addiction issue.”

As a result of this approach, young haredi men absorb the message that women are primarily sexual objects, and one has to be always on guard not to fall prey to their temptations. These men do not have the opportunity to learn how to interact respectfully with women or to appreciate and value them for their intelligence, personality traits, talents and contributions to society. Many young haredi men feel uncomfortable speaking to females, and they avoid looking at them even though these women are modestly dressed.

Recently, Rabbi Yitchak Zilberstein, a highly respected arbiter from Bnei Brak, in reply to a question raised by a haredi psychiatrist, recommended that limits for the sake of modesty should be placed on treatment by psychotherapists of patients of the opposite gender. Klafter, in an excellent article titled “Psychotherapy Treatment with Patients of Opposite Sex,” wrote: “It has been suggested to me that perhaps Rabbi Zilberstein’s advice is appropriate for a therapist who lives in the type of hassidic or haredi community where such efforts are made to prevent any interaction, public or private, between men and women.”

Keats-Jaskoll, in her article, points out that Rabbi Haim of Volozhin (18th century), one of the outstanding Torah scholars of his day, discusses the paradox of lustful thoughts, maintaining that when a man commits to never looking at a woman, his desire will burn like fire. “The very thing he seeks to avoid will come to dominate his mind,” she writes. [...]

In a responsum dealing with the inevitability of seeing and coming into contact with women in public places, the above author refers to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the most respected halachic authority of the last century, ruling that “one should be capable of riding on buses or subways in close contact with women without becoming sexually aroused.”

He adds that if an individual is not capable of doing so without becoming sexually stimulated, he would indeed be obligated to avoid being around women, but would also be obligated to take steps to change himself. “If one knows that he has a lustful nature and that he will become sexually aroused – then it is prohibited even if he needs to travel on buses and subways. But Heaven forbid that a person should be that way! This is a result of idleness.... therefore one needs to be involved in Torah study and in work, so he will no longer be like this.” [...]

A Reform Marriage, An Orthodox Divorce

Huffington Post

It’s not often that a reform Jew needs what’s called a get — a divorce decree that is usually reserved for the most observant Jews. But not long ago, Ellen, my ex-wife, asked me to give her a get. She isn’t suddenly going deeper into Judaism; she’s just dating a man who is conservative, which means that she will need a get before they can marry. (If they wish to. Eventually.) She had to ask me because tradition dictates that the ex-husband present the get to his ex-wife.

had no problem with this. Ellen and I are very close, still, and I didn’t want to stand in her way, whatever her plans may be... or whatever they become. We got the name of a rabbi in Lakewood, New Jersey, which has a very large orthodox population as well as Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest yeshiva in the United States (6,000 students). I texted him, and then we spoke and made an appointment.

What I pictured was that Ellen and I would walk in, sidle up to a window, answer some questions, say a few prayers, sign the forms, and then the get would be ours. I figured this was a sort of DMV for Jewish divorce.

Not so much.

What actually happened was rather more complex — and a great deal more emotional. [...]

Having been written, witnessed, and approved, now the get needed to be presented by me to Ellen. You guessed it: more ritual. We stood, facing each other, her hands cupped before her. The rabbi folded the get and handed it to me. I was prompted to recite several lines in English and Hebrew, then dropped the get into her hands. It had to be dropped, not placed. Maybe this is to assure that we are not touching the get at the same moment. Ellen tucked it under her left arm, to be near her heart, and walked several feet away, symbolizing her being apart from me, and then the get was sliced with a knife. I imagine this is to symbolize the death of the marriage, much in the way that observant Jews rend clothing when someone dies.

Believe me, the DMV for Jewish divorce this isn’t.

What surprised me was the ceremony’s emotional weight. Its gravitas. Eighteen months ago, Ellen and I divorced collaboratively. We did not need to appear together in court. Though emotional, our civil divorce was, well, civil. The getting of the get, while no more difficult in the practical sense, was harder on my heart. It felt much more... final. It felt like a divorce before God, far more meaningful than a sheaf of papers presented to a judge in New Jersey. When I told Ellen, in Hebrew and in English, that I released her and that she was free to move on with her life without me, I was unexpectedly moved.

Driving up to Lakewood, Ellen and I riffed on the word “get.” “We’re off to get a get.” “It’s getting late. We better get going.” “We’re going up to Lakewood. Can we get you anything?” We did that to lighten the mood, because in the end the get is serious business. It’s tradition. It’s meaningful. For two people who are more culturally and spiritually Jewish than Jewish in the religious sense, the get brought us an oddly calming sense of having, well, gotten to a new place.

Bloggers sued in Israel by Tel Aviv municiplaity and social workers for Incitement and Libel

Haaretz  The Tel Aviv municipality and a group of social workers are suing media giants Facebook and Google, and two bloggers who persistently criticize the judicial system and welfare authorities, alleging that they are guilty of libel, incitement and invasion of privacy.

In the suit, filed in Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court by the municipality and eight social workers against Facebook, Google, blogging website WordPress and bloggers Lory Shem-Tov and Moti Leybel, the plaintiffs asked the court to order the defendants to “stop the publication of libel, sexual harassment, violations of privacy and more” that target the plaintiffs.

They also want the companies to remove “all the website and/or Facebook profiles that are besmirching the plaintiffs.”

Shem-Tov and Leybel are well known for their online campaigns against social workers and welfare agencies who remove children from homes. In their blogs and on their Facebook pages, they sharply criticize judges and social workers by name, and their posts often use crude language against their targets.

The suit cites instances in which the websites refer to social workers as mentally ill, sluts, “the face of pure evil,” and more.

Every website and/or Facebook profile they operate gets wide exposure on the internet, such that the harm to the social workers grows every day,” the Tel Aviv municipality said in a statement. “Every time one of the employees’ names is typed into Google’s search engine, the surfer is exposed to abominable and hateful words.”

The suit challenges the claim by Shem-Tov and Leybel that they are journalists. “Defendants 7 and 8 [Shem-Tov and Leybel] see themselves as journalists, but their stories use malicious expressions that are sexual, abusive and crudely attack their rivals and the families of their rivals,” the suit states.[...]

Leybel told Haaretz that the suits against him were baseless and false.

"As of late, a number of different people, including lawyers and social workers, have begun undertaking actst of 'cast thy bread upon the waters,' filing baseless and hopeless lawsuits. In these suits, they blame me for advertisements on websites that I have no connection with, and written in a tone that I never thought I would be accused of using," he said.

"For example, there have been recent reports of one such suit for half a million shekel by lawyer Hava Klein against me, she and her lawyer immediately ran to the press to publish reports that she had won half a million shekels from me, but after less than a month the ruling was nullified and of course no one was interested [to report it].

"After reviewing all off the suit's articles, it became clear that once again people are suing me for things published in websites I have no connection with, and, according to the information I have, the suit is rife with lies to the court and in trial they will be proven as such. A libel suit will be filed in response to end this saga," he added.

Kaminetsky-Greenblatt Heter: Esav asked about maaser on salt - and also wasn't concerned about adultery

yeshiva world news reported a story found  Kikar HaShabbat

===================================

While Learning about Nazir last week in Cheder, two 12-year-old children almost Bar Mitzvah apparently found it fascinating, and declared to the class that they’re becoming a Nazir!

Some of the stringencies of a Nazir include not being allowed to drink grape juice, cutting your hair, or going into a Bais Hakvaros.

Though they reportedly announced it was just for a minute or a day, the minimum length of time for Nezires is 30 days, thus putting them in a sticky situation because their declaration came just before their Bar Mitzvah.

The Rebbe decided to ask a Shaila, and approached one of the Lakewood Poskim. The Posek took the matter very seriously, and took the Shaila to the Philadelphia Rosh Yeshivah Reb Shmuel Kaminetzky Shlita.

On behalf of TLS, a Talmid of Reb Shmuel Kaminetzky Shlita inquired from the Rosh Yeshivah as to the accuracy of the incident, and the Rosh Yeshivah confirmed it was indeed the case, and the Shaila was brought before him.

“The Rosh Yeshivah said that he had Paskened that the children should keep the Dinim of Nezires, and that the children would have to go to a Rav to be Matir Neder. However, the Rosh Yeshivah said the children should only go after Shabbos, so they have time to reflect on the seriousness of a simple declaration.”

The Clinton Contamination by Maureen Dowd

NY Times    IT says a lot about our relationship with Hillary Clinton that she seems well on her way to becoming Madam President because she’s not getting indicted.

If she were still at the State Department, she could be getting fired for being, as the F.B.I. director told Congress, “extremely careless” with top-secret information. Instead, she’s on a glide path to a big promotion.

And that’s the corkscrew way things go with the Clintons, who are staying true to their reputation as the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of American politics. Their vast carelessness drags down everyone around them, but they persevere, and even thrive.

In a mere 11 days, arrogant, selfish actions by the Clintons contaminated three of the purest brands in Washington — Barack Obama, James Comey and Loretta Lynch — and jeopardized the futures of Hillary’s most loyal aides.

It’s quaint, looking back at her appointment as secretary of state, how Obama tried to get Hillary without the shadiness. (Which is what we all want, of course.)

The president and his aides attempted to keep a rein on Clinton’s State Department — refusing to let her bring in her hit man, Sidney Blumenthal.

But in the end, Hillary’s goo got on Obama anyhow. On Tuesday, after Comey managed to make both Democrats and Republicans angry by indicting Clinton politically but not legally, Barry and Hillary flew to Charlotte, N.C., for their first joint campaign appearance.

Obama was left in the awkward position of vouching for Hillary’s “steady judgment” to run an angry, violent, jittery nation on the very day that his F.B.I. director lambasted her errant judgment on circumventing the State Department email system, making it clear that she had been lying to the American public for the last 16 months.

Comey, who was then yanked up to Capitol Hill for a hearing on Thursday, revealed that instead of no emails with classified information, as Hillary had insisted, there were 110, of those turned over to the State Department. Instead of Clinton’s assurances that the server in the basement in Chappaqua had never been breached, Comey said it was possible that hostile actors had hacked Clinton’s email account. Among the emails not given to State, he said at least three contained classified information.

Hillary had already compromised the president, who feels he needs her to cement his legacy. Obama angered F.B.I. agents when he was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last fall and undermined the bureau’s investigation by exonerating Hillary before the F.B.I. was done with its work, saying pre-emptively, “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.” [...]

After Bill Clinton crossed the tarmac in Phoenix to have a long chat with Lynch, the attorney general confessed that the ill-advised meeting had “cast a shadow” over her department’s investigation into his wife and that she would feel constrained to follow the recommendation of the F.B.I.

“I certainly wouldn’t do it again,” Lynch said, admitting it hit her “painfully” that she had made a mistake dancing with the Arkansas devil in the pale moonlight.

The meeting seemed even more suspect a week later, when The Times reported that Hillary might let Lynch stay on in a new Clinton administration.[...]

“You’ve got a situation here where the woman who would be in charge of setting national security policy as president has been deemed by the F.B.I. unsuitable to safeguard and handle classified information,” Bill Savarino, a Washington lawyer specializing in security clearances, told the Times.[...]

Comey’s verdict that Hillary was “negligent” was met with sighs rather than shock. We know who Hillary and Bill are now. We’ve been held hostage to their predilections and braided intrigues for a long time. (On the Hill, Comey refused to confirm or deny that he’s investigating the Clinton Foundation, with its unseemly tangle of donors and people doing business with State.)

We’re resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences of their heedless actions on others. They’re always offering a Faustian deal. This year’s election bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump’s short fingers on the nuclear button.

The Clintons work hard but don’t play by the rules. Imagine them in the White House with the benefit of low expectations.

A Saudi Morals Enforcer Called for a More Liberal Islam. Then the Death Threats Began.

NY Times

For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim al-Ghamdi worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — known abroad as the religious police — serving with the front-line troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices.

Some of that resembled ordinary police work: busting drug dealers and bootleggers in a country that bans alcohol. But the men of “the Commission,” as Saudis call it, spent most of their time maintaining the puritanical public norms that set Saudi Arabia apart not only from the West, but from most of the Muslim world.

A key offense was ikhtilat, or unauthorized mixing between men and women. The kingdom’s clerics warn that it could lead to fornication, adultery, broken homes, children born of unmarried couples and full-blown societal collapse.

For years, Mr. Ghamdi stuck with the program and was eventually put in charge of the Commission for the region of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Then he had a reckoning and began to question the rules. So he turned to the Quran and the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, considered the exemplars of Islamic conduct. What he found was striking and life altering: There had been plenty of mixing among the first generation of Muslims, and no one had seemed to mind.

So he spoke out. In articles and television appearances, he argued that much of what Saudis practiced as religion was in fact Arabian cultural practices that had been mixed up with their faith.

There was no need to close shops for prayer, he said, nor to bar women from driving, as Saudi Arabia does. At the time of the Prophet, women rode around on camels, which he said was far more provocative than veiled women piloting S.U.V.s.

He even said women had to cover only their faces if they chose to. And to demonstrate the depth of his own conviction, Mr. Ghamdi went on television with his wife, Jawahir, who smiled to the camera, her face bare and adorned with a dusting of makeup.

It was like a bomb inside the kingdom’s religious establishment, threatening the social order that granted prominence to the sheikhs and made them the arbiters of right and wrong in all aspects of life. He threatened their control.

Mr. Ghamdi’s colleagues at work refused to speak to him. Angry calls poured into his cellphone and anonymous death threats hit him on Twitter. Prominent sheikhs took to the airwaves to denounce him as an ignorant upstart who should be punished, tried — and even tortured. [...]

The primacy of Islam in Saudi life has led to a huge religious sphere that extends beyond the state’s official clerics. Public life is filled with celebrity sheikhs whose moves, comments and conflicts Saudis track just as Americans follow Hollywood actors. There are old sheikhs and young sheikhs, sheikhs who used to be extremists and now preach tolerance, sheikhs whom women find sexy, and a black sheikh who has compared himself to Barack Obama.

In the kingdom’s hyper-wired society, they compete for followers on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. The grand mufti, the state’s highest religious official, has a regular television show, too.

Their embrace of technology runs counter to the history of Wahhabi clerics rejecting nearly everything new as a threat to the religion. Formerly banned items include the telegraph, the radio, the camera, soccer, girls’ education and televisions, whose introduction in the 1960s caused outrage.[...]

For Saudis, trying to navigate what is permitted, halal, and what is not, haram, can be challenging. So they turn to clerics for fatwas, or nonbinding religious rulings. While some may get a lot of attention — as when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran called for killing the author Salman Rushdie — most concern the details of religious practice. Others can reveal the sometimes comical contortions that clerics go through to reconcile modernity with their understanding of religion.

There was, for example, the cleric who appeared to call for the death of Mickey Mouse, then tried to backtrack. Another prominent cleric issued a clarification that he had not in fact forbidden all-you-can-eat buffets. That same sheikh was recently asked about people taking photos with cats. He responded that the feline presence was irrelevant; the photos were the problem.

“Photography is not permitted unless necessary,” he said. “Not with cats, not with dogs, not with wolves, not with anything.”

The government has sought to control the flow of religious opinions with official fatwa institutions. But state-sanctioned fatwas have provoked laughter, too, like the fatwa calling spending money on Pokemon products “cooperation in sin and transgression.”

While the government seeks to get more women into the work force, the state fatwa organization preaches on the “danger of women joining men in the workplace,” which it calls “the reason behind the destruction of societies.”

And there are fatwas that arm extremists with religious justification. There is one fatwa, still available in English on a government website and signed by the previous grand mufti, that states, “Whoever refuses to follow the straight path deserves to be killed or enslaved in order to establish justice, maintain security and peace and safeguard lives, honor and property.”

It goes on: “Slavery in Islam is like a purifying machine or sauna in which those who are captured enter to wash off their dirt and then they come out clean, pure and safe, from another door.” [...]

The problem, he said, is that tolerance for opposing views is not taught in Saudi society.

“Either follow what I say or I will classify you, I will hurt you, I will push you out of the discussion,” he said. “This is anti-Islam. We have many people thinking in different ways. You can fight, but you have to live under the same roof.”

His wife had no problem with mixing or with women working, but did not like that Mr. Ghamdi had caused a scandal by making his views public. The royal family sets the rules, and it was inappropriate for subjects to publicly campaign for changes, she said.

“He has to follow the ruler,” she said. “If everyone just comes out with his own opinion, we’ll be in chaos.”[...]

The first irony of Mr. Ghamdi’s situation is that many Saudis, including members of the royal family and even important clerics, agree with him, although mostly in private. And public mixing of the sexes in some places — hospitals, conferences and in Mecca during the pilgrimage — is common. In some Saudi cities it is not uncommon to see women’s faces, or even their hair.

But there is a split in society between the conservatives who want to maintain what they consider the kingdom’s pure Islamic identity and the liberals (in the Saudi context) who want more personal freedoms. Liberals make cases like Mr. Ghamdi’s all the time. But sheikhs don’t, which is why he was branded a traitor.

The second irony is that this year, Saudi Arabia instituted some of the reform Mr. Ghamdi had called for.

It had been a rough year for the Commission. A video went viral of a girl yelping as she was thrown to the ground outside a Riyadh mall during a confrontation with the Commission, her abaya flying over her head and exposing her legs and torso. For many Saudis, “the Nakheel Mall girl” symbolized the Commission’s overreach.

Then the Commission arrested Ali al-Oleyani, a popular talk show host who often criticized religious figures. Photos appeared online of Mr. Oleyani in handcuffs with bottles of liquor. The photos were clearly staged and apparently had been leaked as a form of character assassination. Many people were outraged.

In April, the government responded with a surprise decree defanging the religious police. It denied them the power to arrest, question or pursue subjects, forced them to work with the police and advised them to be “gentle and kind” in their interactions with citizens. [...]

Esti Weinstein: Her mother writes an emotional goodbye

Arutz 7

Our dearest Esti,

I miss you every day, every hour and every minute. It's not natural for parents to bury their daughter, and it's hard. Very hard. We didn't know you were suffering so much. You would always call to tell us how happy you are and how good things are, because you put honoring your parents above all and you didn't want to cause us any pain. That's why we never thought to take steps and find the things that would help you stay with us. When you decided to leave the fold of religious observance we hoped a day would come that you'd come back. We prayed to live to see you as you were.

We just concluded the week of mourning. Hundreds of men and women came to our house to comfort us, and they told us such amazing stories. Stories about a lovely woman. With your heart of gold, you spent all your days giving to others. To my great anguish, we didn't merit having you stay with us.

Your departure caused a storm in the land, we paid the highest price. Hopefully it will help people understand each other better.

You once said that you were our right hand. Every day, every hour, not a week went by when you didn't call and say: "Mom and Dad, come to our house for a meal." When you heard one of us wasn't feeling well, you were there in a minute. You constantly sought what was good for us. Your love for us, and ours for you, cannot be expressed in words.

I write to you with a broken heart. I can't believe you're not here with us. You were a beautiful and wise woman, a woman of kindness and empathy. You built a wonderful family and were a dedicated mother who raised her children in the most positive manner possible. I promise you that we'll be a mother and father to your Tammy and take her son into our hearts just as you asked, and we'll always keep the hope that one day they too will return to our path.

Love,

Mother