Youth in Asia

Euthanasia. It's such a pretty word. But someone claims it's a euthanism (heh - euphemism - heh) for sumfin else:

The Dutch government is furious after an Italian minister this week branded the country's euthanasia laws as akin to the policies of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis....

Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende is expected to raise the matter with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi next week at a European summit, ANP said.

"This is scandalous and unacceptable... it is not the way to get along in Europe," Balkenende said on Friday.

Italian Parliamentary Relations Minister Carlo Giovanardi told a radio program on Thursday that Nazi thinking was re-emerging in Europe through Dutch euthanasia laws and a debate on the killing of children with deformities.

He has refused to apologize.

And he doesn't welcome every single solitary immigrant with open arms:

Calls for Italy to stem the tide of foreigners do not just come from the far-right Northern League Party, but also from some of the more moderate government coalition members.

Carlo Giovanardi is minister of parliamentary affairs and a member of the centre-right Christian Democrat party.

He says Italy just cannot cope with any more immigrants and this includes asylum seekers.

"These people aren't real political refugees," he says.

"A political refugee is someone who suffers political or religious discrimination in their country and their lives are in peril.

"This just isn't the case for Somalia, for Eritrea or for central Africa. If we give asylum to people from poor countries with dictators then we will have to give asylum to millions of people."

Back to euthanasia. While Wesley J. Smith believes that the "Nazi" comparison is stretched, he's not thrilled with the Dutch law:

I am not a big fan of raising the Nazi specter, partly because nothing we are talking about today matches that mother of all death cultures in scope or magnitude, and partly because, ironically, bringing up the Nazis allows people deserving of strong criticism to deflect the reproach....

Not that there isn't a rough analogy: German doctors were hanged at Nuremberg for having committed infanticide, an act some Dutch doctors do today with near impunity, and which will soon be formally legalized. The apologists for the Dutch claim that their infanticide and the German euthanasia program were different: The former, they claim, is based in compassion and patient welfare, the latter was steeped in bigotry.

Well, a killed baby is a killed baby, but even beyond that point, the Dutch defense doesn't exactly hold water: The German euthanasia program was considered a "healing treatment," and seen as a compassionate act that was best for the killed infant as well as the family and society. Moreover, it was driven by doctors and not by "the Nazis."

In an attempt to see how the Muslims are reacting to this story, I instead found this baby seal clubber criticism of the danged Communists:

Curiously gone now is the tolerance; the sensitivity in which the liberal elites have given Islam safe harbor since 9/11.

Which begs the question--why the sudden backlash against Islam by the elite liberal media?...

The main thing that the self-absorbed liberal elite hold dear, above all else, is their personal freedoms (i.e., freedom of expression, freedom of debauchery, freedom of perversity, freedom of infanticide). The Muslim uproar against the cartoons are simply a threat to their personal freedom of expression.

The beheading of innocents? All in a day's work. Suicide bombings at weddings, funerals or a crowded marketplace? Justifiable homicide to end an unjust imperialist occupation.

But when muslims start messing with their freedom of self-expression??

All bets are off!

Back to euthanasia (again). IslamiCity is definitely anti:

The Shari'a ( Islamic Law) listed and specified the indications for taking life (i.e. the exceptions to the general rule of sanctity of human life), and they do not include mercy killing or make allowance for it. Human life per se is a value to be respected unconditionally, irrespective of other circumstances. The concept of a life not worthy of living does not exist in Islam. Justification of taking life to escape suffering is not acceptable in Islam. Prophet Mohammad taught: "There was a man in older times who had an infliction that taxed his patience, so he took a knife, cut his wrist and bled to death. Upon this God said: My subject hastened his end, I deny him paradise." During one of the military campaigns one of the Muslims was killed and the companions of the prophet kept praising his gallantry and efficiency in fighting, but, to their surprise, the Prophet commented, "His lot is hell." Upon inquiry, the companions found out that the man had been seriously injured so he supported the handle of his sword on the ground and plunged his chest onto its tip, committing suicide. The Islamic Code of Medical Ethics endorsed by the First International Conference on Islamic Medicine (Islamic Organization of Medical Sciences, Kuwait, 1981, p.65) includes: "Mercy killing, like suicide, finds no support except in the atheistic way of thinking that believes that our life on this earth is followed by void. The claim of killing for painful hopeless illness is also refuted, for there is no human pain that cannot be largely conquered by medication or by suitable neurosurgery...".

There is still another dimension to the question of pain and suffering. Patience and endurance are highly regarded and highly rewarded values in Islam. "Those who patiently preserve will truly receive a reward without measure" (Qur'an 39:10). "And bear in patience whatever (ill) maybe fall you: this, behold, is something to set one's heart upon" (Qur'an 31:17). Prophet Mohammad taught "When the believer is afflicted with pain, even that of a prick of a thorn or more, God forgives his sins, and his wrongdoings are discarded as a tree sheds off its leaves." When means of preventing or alleviating pain fall short, this spiritual dimension can be very effectively called upon to support the patient who believes that accepting and standing unavoidable pain will be to his/her credit in the hereafter, the real and enduring life. To a person who does not believe in a hereafter this might sound like nonsense, but to one who does, euthanasia is certainly nonsense.

When the Dutch passed their euthanasia law, Muslims opposed it:

A pan-Islamic medical organization on Monday condemned a Dutch parliament decision...accepting the practice of euthanasia – mercy killing for those suffering from incurable life-threatening ailments - stating it was not acceptable in Islam.

"Any direct interference on the part of a doctor towards terminating the life of a patient is not Islamic, whether this is called mercy killing or dignity death," said Abdelrahman al-Awadi, president of the Islamic Organization for Medical Sciences (IOMS).

IOMS said in a statement released Sunday that putting a patient to death does not conform to the teachings of any religion. "This is first degree pre-determined murder," said the statement.

Awadi said that a doctor's main job is to try to preserve human life and not end it.

"The first oath a doctor takes is to attempt to maintain human life," he said. "How about when this doctor turns into a murderer? Terminating a patient's life is not permissible in Islam even if the patient's family asks for it."

The organization said that putting a patient to death signified a loss of trust in God and said that there were many cases in which doctors had given up hope on patients recovering, where, in the end, they end up recovering from their ailments.