Why does this surprise anyone?

Sudanese mom sentenced to die for Christian faith is freed

 

Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman who gave birth in a Khartoum prison after being sentenced to death in May for allegedly converting from Islam to Christianity, has been freed.

Ibrahim, 27, refused to renounce her Christian faith in court in May, prompting a judge to sentence her to hang for apostasy. The case became an international cause, with several U.S. lawmakers and the State Department blasting the decision as barbaric. Sudan’s national news service SUNA said the Court of Cassation in Khartoum on Monday canceled the death sentence after defense lawyers presented their case, and that the court ordered her release.

“We are happy that Meriam is finally released,” said Al-Sharif Ali, a member of her legal team. “One thing I can say is that Meriam’s strong personality forced the Sudanese judiciary to respect religious freedom.”

Tina Ramirez, executive director for the Christian advocacy group Hardwired, which promoted Ibrahim’s cause, said Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir bowed to immense public pressure and forced the court’s hand.

“We are witnessing a historic moment – in the three decades of President Bashir’s brutal dictatorship millions have lost their lives, yet here stands one defenseless and innocent young pregnant woman who forced President Bashir to respect her dignity and religious freedom.”

Ibrahim’s husband, Daniel Wani, holds dual U.S.-Sudanese citizenship, and Ibrahim’s supporters argued that their children, including a daughter named Maya born in prison in May and a 20-month-old boy named Martin who was imprisoned with her, are U.S. citizens.

Sources close to the situation tell FoxNews.com that Ibrahim was whisked away to a confidential location and that her lawyers will be meeting with representatives from the U.S. Embassy on Tuesday.

“We obviously welcome the decision by the Sudanese Appeals Court to order the release of Ms. Meriam Yahya Ibrahim Ishag,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement. “Her case has rightly drawn the attention of the world and has been of deep concern to the United States government and many of our citizens and their representatives in Congress.”

“This is a huge first step,” added Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organization Subcommittee. “But the second step is that Ms. Ibrahim and her husband and their children be on a plane heading to the United States.”

Ibrahim and Wani were married in a formal ceremony in 2011 and operate several businesses, including a farm, south of Khartoum, the country’s capital.

Wani fled to the United States as a child to escape the civil war in southern Sudan, but later returned. He is not permitted to have custody of his son because the boy is considered Muslim and cannot be raised by a Christian man.

Ibrahim’s case first came to the attention of authorities in August, after members of her father’s family complained that she was born a Muslim but married a Christian man. The relatives claimed her birth name was “Afdal” before she changed it to Meriam and produced a document that indicated she was given a Muslim name at birth. Her attorney has alleged the document was a fake.

Ibrahim says her mother was an Ethiopian Christian and her father a Muslim who abandoned the family when she was a child. Ibrahim was initially charged with having illegitimate sex last year, but she remained free pending trial. She was later charged with apostasy and jailed in February after she declared in court that Christianity was the only religion she knew.

“I was never a Muslim,” she told the Sudanese high court. “I was raised a Christian from the start.”

Sudan’s penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims to other religions, which is punishable by death. Muslim women in Sudan are further prohibited from marrying non-Muslims, although Muslim men are permitted to marry outside their faith. Children, by law, must follow their father’s religion.

The American Center for Law and Justice, which gathered some 320,000 signatures in an online petition for Ibrahim, praised the decision but called for the U.S. to help her.

“Her release from a Sudanese prison is a critical step toward securing her freedom and safety,” said ACLJ Executive Director Jordan Sekulow. “We now call on the Obama Administration to examine all possibilities to ensure that Meriam and her two American children are granted safe passage and immediate legal status in the United States.”

 

Something to ponder…

It is widely accepted that the universe was created during what is known as the ‘Big Bang’ theory. Based upon the study of the oldest objects within the universe and how fast it is expanding, the age of the universe is calculated to be about 13.8 billion years old. Now comes the question… does the universe behave like a living organism? Is there a ‘life’ cycle to the universe? In other words, does the universe reach a point in which it slows down its expansion and the forces of gravity slowly cause everything to collapse upon itself… only to once again reach singularity (also known as the ‘Big Crunch) and then another ‘Big Bang’?

 

If it is true that the universe behaves like a living organism. birth… life… and then death, humanity has a definite end. Our sun only has another 5 billion years of life left. Colonizing other planets only allows the human species to outlive the lifespan of our sun. Our species obviously cannot outlive singularity.

 

Any thoughts?

Reposting an interesting article about intelligence…

Many thanks to Mr. Daniel Miessler for the well written article below!

 

http://danielmiessler.com/blog/25-facts-about-iq-you-probably-dont-accept/

 

One of the things that irks me is really smart people who still deny that the concept of IQ, the fact that it can be quite accurately tested, or it’s usefulness as a predictor of success.

As this article lays out pretty nicely, the basic moving parts of IQ and the testing of it have been decently understood for some time now, and anyone wanting to know what real scientists agree on can take a look at the following, definitive paper on the topic:

[ Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography ]

The interesting thing about this paper was that the paper represents a consensus on what science knew at the time (1997) about intelligence, signed by 52 experts in the field. And as the article above points out, the points of agreement haven’t changed since then among scientists, yet people still dismiss this knowledge as “myth”.

So here’s the content of the paper, and just as a point of interest, I think the most important section is the one on practical importance.

The Meaning and Measurement of Intelligence

  • Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings — “catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do.
  • Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments. They do not measure creativity, character, personality, or other important differences among individuals, nor are they intended to.
  • While there are different types of intelligence tests, they all measure the same intelligence. Some use words or numbers and require specific cultural knowledge (like vocabulary). Others do not, and instead use shapes or designs and require knowledge of only simple, universal concepts (many/few, open/closed, up/down).
  • The spread of people along the IQ continuum, from low to high, can be represented well by the BELL CURVE (in statistical jargon, the “normal CURVE”). Most people cluster around the average (IQ 100). Few are either very bright or very dull: About 3% of Americans score above IQ 130 (often considered the threshold for “giftedness”), with about the same percentage below IQ 70 (IQ 70-75 often being considered the threshold for mental retardation).
  • Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English well can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native language. The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little understood. Current research looks, for example, at speed of neural transmission, glucose (energy) uptake, and electrical activity of the brain.

Group Differences

  • Members of all racial-ethnic groups can be found at every IQ level. The BELL CURVES of different groups overlap considerably, but groups often differ in where their members tend to cluster along the IQ line. The BELL CURVES for some groups (Jews and East Asians) are centered somewhat higher than for whites in general. Other groups (blacks and Hispanics) are centered somewhat lower than non-Hispanic whites.
  • The BELL CURVE for whites is centered roughly around IQ 100; the BELL CURVE for American blacks roughly around 85; and those for different subgroups of Hispanics roughly midway between those for whites and blacks. The evidence is less definitive for exactly where above IQ 100 the BELL CURVES for Jews and Asians are centered.

Practical Importance

  • IQ is strongly related, probably more so than any other single measurable human trait, to many important educational, occupational, economic, and social outcomes. Its relation to the welfare and performance of individuals is very strong in some arenas in life (education, military training), moderate but robust in others (social competence), and modest but consistent in others (law-abidingness). Whatever IQ tests measure, it is of great practical and social importance.
  • A high IQ is an advantage in life because virtually all activities require some reasoning and decision-making. Conversely, a low IQ is often a disadvantage, especially in disorganized environments. Of course, a high IQ no more guarantees success than a low IQ guarantees failure in life. There are many exceptions, but the odds for success in our society greatly favor individuals with higher IQs.
  • The practical advantages of having a higher IQ increase as life settings become more complex (novel, ambiguous, changing, unpredictable, or multi-faceted). For example, a high IQ is generally necessary to perform well in highly complex or fluid jobs (the professions, management); it is a considerable advantage in moderately complex jobs (crafts, clerical and police work); but it provides less advantage in settings that require only routine decision making or simple problem solving (unskilled work).
  • Differences in intelligence certainly are not the only factor affecting performance in education, training, and highly complex jobs (no one claims they are), but intelligence is often the most important. When individuals have already been selected for high (or low) intelligence and so do not differ as much in IQ, as in graduate school (or special education), other influences on performance loom larger in comparison.
  • Certain personality traits, special talents, aptitudes, physical capabilities, experience, and the like are important (sometimes essential) for successful performance in many jobs, but they have narrower (or unknown) applicability or “transferability” across tasks and settings compared with general intelligence. Some scholars choose to refer to these other human traits as other “intelligences.”

Source and Stability of Within-Group Differences

  • Individuals differ in intelligence due to differences in both their environments and genetic heritage. Heritability estimates range from 0.4 to 0.8 (on a scale from 0 to 1), most thereby indicating that genetics plays a bigger role than does environment in creating IQ differences among individuals. (Heritability is the squared correlation of phenotype with genotype.) If all environments were to become equal for everyone, heritability would rise to 100% because all remaining differences in IQ would necessarily be genetic in origin.
  • Members of the same family also tend to differ substantially in intelligence (by an average of about 12 IQ points) for both genetic and environmental reasons. They differ genetically because biological brothers and sisters share exactly half their genes with each parent and, on the average, only half with each other. They also differ in IQ because they experience different environments within the same family.
  • That IQ may be highly heritable does not mean that it is not affected by the environment. Individuals are not born with fixed, unchangeable levels of intelligence (no one claims they are). IQs do gradually stabilize during childhood, however, and generally change little thereafter.
  • Although the environment is important in creating IQ differences, we do not know yet how to manipulate it to raise low IQs permanently. Whether recent attempts show promise is still a matter of considerable scientific debate. Genetically caused differences are not necessarily irremediable (consider diabetes, poor vision, and phenal ketonuria), nor are environmentally caused ones necessarily remediable (consider injuries, poisons, severe neglect, and some diseases). Both may be preventable to some extent.

Source and Stability of Between-Group Differences

  • There is no persuasive evidence that the IQ BELL CURVES for different racial-ethnic groups are converging. Surveys in some years show that gaps in academic achievement have narrowed a bit for some races, ages, school subjects and skill levels, but this picture seems too mixed to reflect a general shift in IQ levels themselves.
  • Racial-ethnic differences in IQ BELL CURVES are essentially the same when youngsters leave high school as when they enter first grade. However, because bright youngsters learn faster than slow learners, these same IQ differences lead to growing disparities in amount learnedas youngsters progress from grades one to 12. As large national surveyscontinue to show, black 17-year-olds perform, on the average, more likewhite 13-year-olds in reading, math, and science, with Hispanics inbetween.
  • The reasons that blacks differ among themselves in intelligenceappear to be basically the same as those for why whites (or Asians orHispanics) differ among themselves. Both environment and geneticheredity are involved.
  • There is no definitive answer to why IQ bell curves differ acrossracial-ethnic groups. The reasons for these IQ differences betweengroups may be markedly different from the reasons for why individualsdiffer among themselves within any particular group (whites or blacks orAsians). In fact, it is wrong to assume, as many do, that the reason whysome individuals in a population have high IQs but others have low IQs must be the same reason why some populations contain more such high (or low) IQ individuals than others. Most experts believe that environment is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too.
  • Racial-ethnic differences are somewhat smaller but still substantial for individuals from the same socioeconomic backgrounds. To illustrate, black students from prosperous families tend to score higher in IQ than blacks from poor families, but they score no higher, on average, than whites from poor families.
  • Almost all Americans who identify themselves as black have white ancestors — the white admixture is about 20%, on average — and many self-designated whites, Hispanics, and others likewise have mixed ancestry. Because research on intelligence relies on self-classification into distinct racial categories, as does most other social-science research, its findings likewise relate to some unclear mixture of social and biological distinctions among groups (no one claims otherwise).

Implications for Social Policy

  • The research findings neither dictate nor preclude any particular social policy, because they can never determine our goals. They can, however, help us estimate the likely

The following professors — all experts in intelligence and allied fields – have signed this statement:

  • Richard D. Arvey, University of Minnesota
  • Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr., University of Minnesota
  • John B. Carroll, Un. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Raymond B. Cattell, University of Hawaii
  • David B. Cohen, University of Texas at Austin
  • Rene V. Dawis, University of Minnesota
  • Douglas K. Detterman, Case Western Reserve Un.
  • Marvin Dunnette, University of Minnesota
  • Hans Eysenck, University of London
  • Jack Feldman, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Edwin A. Fleishman, George Mason University
  • Grover C. Gilmore, Case Western Reserve University
  • Robert A. Gordon, Johns Hopkins University
  • Linda S. Gottfredson, University of Delaware
  • Robert L. Greene, Case Western Reserve University
  • Richard J.Haier, University of Callifornia at Irvine
  • Garrett Hardin, University of California at Berkeley
  • Robert Hogan, University of Tulsa
  • Joseph M. Horn, University of Texas at Austin
  • Lloyd G. Humphreys, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • John E. Hunter, Michigan State University
  • Seymour W. Itzkoff, Smith College
  • Douglas N. Jackson, Un. of Western Ontario
  • James J. Jenkins, University of South Florida
  • Arthur R. Jensen, University of California at Berkeley
  • Alan S. Kaufman, University of Alabama
  • Nadeen L. Kaufman, California School of Professional Psychology at San Diego
  • Timothy Z. Keith, Alfred University
  • Nadine Lambert, University of California at Berkeley
  • John C. Loehlin, University of Texas at Austin
  • David Lubinski, Iowa State University
  • David T. Lykken, University of Minnesota
  • Richard Lynn, University of Ulster at Coleraine
  • Paul E. Meehl, University of Minnesota
  • R. Travis Osborne, University of Georgia
  • Robert Perloff, University of Pittsburgh
  • Robert Plomin, Institute of Psychiatry, London
  • Cecil R. Reynolds, Texas A & M University
  • David C. Rowe, University of Arizona
  • J. Philippe Rushton, Un. of Western Ontario
  • Vincent Sarich, University of California at Berkeley
  • Sandra Scarr, University of Virginia
  • Frank L. Schmidt, University of Iowa
  • Lyle F. Schoenfeldt, Texas A & M University
  • James C. Sharf, George Washington University
  • Herman Spitz, former director E.R. Johnstone Training and Research Center, Bordentown, N.J.
  • Julian C. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University
  • Del Thiessen, University of Texas at Austin
  • Lee A. Thompson, Case Western Reserve University
  • Robert M. Thorndike, Western Washington Un.
  • Philip Anthony Vernon, Un. of Western Ontario
  • Lee Willerman, University of Texas at Austin
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