September 21, 2009

Autumn Equinox


O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained

With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit

Beneath my shady roof; there thou may’st rest,

And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe;

And all the daughters of the year shall dance!

Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers.


—William Blake, “To Autumn,” 1783


Tomorrow is September 22nd, the first day of Fall.
I wish you all, dear readers, a pleasant and enjoyable Autumn Equinox!

Apostasy in Islam

The American Thinker has a piece today about the issue of apostasy in Islam. According to Andrew G. Bostom, both the preamble and concluding articles of the Cairo Declaration, or so-called “Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,” which was drafted and subsequently ratified by all the Muslim member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), make plain that that document is “designed to supersede Western conceptions of human rights as enunciated, for example, in the US Bill of Rights, and the UN's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Andrew G. Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad. Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, which is widely considered the first comprehensive collection of the major documents on the theory and practice of jihad, from Mohammed until today. Thanks: Sandra Kennedy.