WHY CATS EAT UNCOVERED MEAT

Why Cats Eat Uncovered Meat

By Peter Fredson

October 26, 2006

Recently Australia’s senior Muslim cleric Sheik Taj Din Al Hilaly gave a controversial sermon in Arabic to 500 worshippers in Sydney, independently translated by an SBS Arabic expert, part of which follows:

“When it comes to adultery, it’s 90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years.”

“But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it.”

“If you get a kilo of meat, and you don’t put it in the fridge or in the pot or in the kitchen but you leave it on a plate in the backyard, and then you have a fight with the neighbor because his cats eat the meat, you’re crazy. Isn’t this true?”

“If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park, or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, then whose fault will it be, the cats, or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the disaster. If the meat was covered the cats wouldn’t roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won’t get it.”

“If the woman is in her boudoir, in her house and if she’s wearing the veil and if she shows modesty, disasters don’t happen.”

“Satan sees women as half his soldiers. You’re my messenger in necessity, Satan tells women you‘re my weapon to bring down any stubborn man. There are men that I fail with. But you’re the best of my weapons.”

“...The woman was behind Satan playing a role when she disobeyed God and went out all dolled up and unveiled and made of herself palatable food that rakes and perverts would race for. She was the reason behind this sin taking place.”

The Sheik apologized for any offence caused by his comments, saying:

"I unreservedly apologise to any woman who is offended by my comments," he said in a statement today.

"I had only intended to protect women’s honour, something lost in The Australian presentation of my talk."

"I would like to unequivocally confirm that the presentation related to religious teachings on modesty and not to go to extremes in enticements, this does not condone rape, I condemn rape and reiterate that this is a capital crime.

"Women in our Australian society have the freedom and right to dress as they choose, the duty of man is to avert his glance or walk away.

The Sheik’s comments were condemned as ’un-Australian’ and ’un-Islamic’ and ‘unacceptable” by the NSW Islamic Council. Many other groups condemned the remarks as un-Australian, and asked the Sheik to resign. Australian Prime Minister John Howard condemned the Sheik’s remarks, calling them “appalling and reprehensible.”

Of course, we here in the United States are more urbane in our treatment of women. Just the sight of about an inch of mammary gland tissue “accidentally” exposed by Justin Timberlake during half-time at a football game, incurred the serious rebuke of several hundred thousand dollars in fines by Colin Powell’s son to the offensive TV network because it caused several hundred thousand sex-starved fundamentalists and televangelists apoplexy.

It seems to me that we have been approaching the problem from the wrong end.

Chastity belts for women have been tried in other centuries, but has anyone suggested chastity belts for adolescent males and horny senators? This would lock the meat in the refrigerator until the proper time to expose it had arrived and allow women to go about without molestation by ardent moralists. Just a suggestion.