Category Archives: Honour Killings

More on Ottawa’s ‘honor killing’ trial

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From the Ottawa Citizen May 9 2009 hat tip grace

Tearful mother speaks of abuse at ‘honour killing’ trial

OTTAWA — A hostile encounter between Hasibullah Sadiqi and his sister’s fiancé, Feroz Mangal, occurred in a shopping mall months before Mangal and Sadiqi’s sister, Khatera, were gunned down, an Ottawa court heard Friday.

The testimony emerged during the emotional second day of Sadiqi’s trial.

The 23-year-old faces two first-degree murder charges, accused of shooting his sister and Mangal with a revolver while they sat in a car at the Elmvale Acres shopping plaza shortly before 1 a.m. on Sept. 19, 2006. Khatera was pronounced dead at the scene, while Mangal was taken off life support 10 days later.

The Crown’s theory is that the slaying was an “honour killing” sparked by anger over the couple’s engagement.

Sadiqi’s defence lawyers, meanwhile, do not deny that their client is responsible for the deaths, but are expected to argue he was provoked, which could reduce a murder charge to manslaughter.

The trial has started to hear evidence of the complex web of culture, tradition, history and relationships thought to be at the centre of the case.

The first civilian witness to testify was Sadiqi’s mother, Nasima Fayaz.

As she took the witness box, metres away from her son, she began to cry.

Fayaz said she and her former husband, both from Afghanistan, came to Canada in the 1980s with their son, Hasibullah, who was five months old. They settled in Ottawa and had two daughters, Khatera and Aurezo.

Fayaz called herself open-minded, but said her former husband was very traditional and abusive. They divorced and she moved to the Vancouver area in 1999, she said. After some court proceedings, the children were left with their father.

Six years later, Khatera tracked her down through other relatives, Fayaz said.

“The abuse was getting worse for my daughters in the house,” she said. Fayaz said she sent tickets to her children and her daughters eventually moved in with her.

Sadiqi did not move to live with his mother, citing work and then college, she said.

He protected his other family members from the alleged wrath of his father, his mother and 15-year-old sister, Aurezo, told the court. When things got bad and Khatera tried to commit suicide by taking pills, it was Sadiqi, not their father, who tried to get her to go to hospital, they said.

After learning that her daughter wanted to marry Mangal, Fayaz said she thought they were young, but wanted to support them.

Fayaz and Hasibullah Assadi, a close friend to Sadiqi who knew Khatera and Mangal, both testified that Sadiqi did not appear to be angry when he learned of the engagement.

Assadi said Sadiqi seemed happy about the news, and thought Mangal appeared to be a nice guy.

Sadiqi had asked the couple to wait for a week or so, so he could talk to his father about it, Assadi said. In earlier testimony, Fayaz said Sadiqi had asked for a week to “check out” Mangal.

Although Khatera wanted her brother involved in the engagement, she wanted nothing to do with her father, Fayaz said.

Khatera went to Ottawa, likely in late January or early February 2006, but didn’t tell her brother about her return, Fayaz said. Khatera lived with an aunt and eventually moved in with Mangal and his family, the court heard.

That seemed to anger Sadiqi, Assadi said.

The brother “was really upset about this because Khatera is his sister, instead of coming up to him, like living with him, she’s going to Feroz and his house, living there. That’s not right,” Assadi said. Sadiqi was also upset that Mangal had spent time with Khatera in Vancouver, Assadi said.

Assadi said he and Sadiqi were in the St. Laurent Shopping Centre in early or mid-spring 2006 when they saw Khatera and Mangal.

Khatera tried to speak to her brother, but Sadiqi told her to leave, Assadi said.

Mangal confronted Sadiqi about the way he spoke to Khatera, Assadi said, but Sadiqi said he could talk to his sister how he liked.

Mangal started to take off his jacket, as if preparing to fight, and the pair were separated, Assadi said. Sadiqi “wasn’t really happy” about Mangal’s actions, Assadi testified.

He said the engagement had unfolded in a non-traditional way. Although some in the Afghan community saw it as OK, others “wouldn’t see this as the right way.”

That could have affected the Sadiqis’ reputation, Assadi said.

Assistant Crown attorney Mark Moors asked Assadi what Sadiqi told people about the engagement.

Assadi said Sadiqi told them the couple wouldn’t be happy anymore. Pushed further by the Crown, he paused, appearing to choke up.

“That it’s not going to last long,” he said.

The trial, before a jury, continues Monday.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Phyllis Chesler on the Ottawa honor killing trial

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From Pajamas Media:

In the fall of 2006, in Ottawa, Canada, an Afghan brother, Hasibullah Sadiqi, shot his 20 year-old sister, Khatera Sadiqi, and her fiance, Feroz Mangal, while they sat in a parked car. Both victims died.

Now, three years later, Sadiqi is on trial. According to the Ottawa Citizen, “The defence is expected to advance the argument of provocation, which could reduce a murder charge to manslaughter…The Crown, meanwhile, intends to prove that Sadiqi’s actions were planned and deliberate.”

In other words: Sadiqi will argue that the alleged “dishonor” his sister brought upon her family by choosing her own husband was a “provocation.” This is similar to Zein Isa, the Palestinian terrorist father who, together with the sixteen year-old girl’s mother, Maria, stabbed their allegedly “too-western” teenage daughter, Palestina, to death in St. Louis in 1989. Zein Isa insisted that he did this in “self-defense.”

Tellingly, Hasibullah shot his sister Khatera “in the head and torso” while he shot her fiancée, Feroz, “in the neck and chest.” True, Hasibullah did not behead Khatera, but he did shoot her—and only her–in the head. This suggests that he wanted to assassinate her way of thinking; it also suggests that this was a political execution.


Feroz Mangal and Khatera Sadiqi

In 2006, another news source, CBC, quoted Khatera’s boss at a clothing store in a Mall. “Her manager, Jenny Jeffrey, said the young woman was gorgeous, both in looks and personality. She was fun. She was bubbly. She was pleasant. It was a real shock that something could happen to somebody that’s so young,” she said.

Khatera was not cowering, she was not cowed, nor was she obedient and subordinate. She grasped her happiness with both hands. For this, her brother, (and perhaps her family), decided she deserved to die.

In the photos of honor murder victims, (I keep the smiling photos of the Said sisters, Amina and Sarah, near me), the young girls seem so vivacious, so alive, so lively, so happy, that perhaps, this very fact offends and threatens the same people who are offended by the pro-life vitality of Israelis and Westerners.

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For the second time, a sharia defence is used in Canada for pre meditated murder

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Not long ago, a Canadian defence lawyer used Islamic religious freedom as a defence in a terrorism trial arguing that a defendant was within his religious rights to council advise and commit terrorist acts. Now we have honor killing being used as an actual defence in a Canadian Murder trial in Ottawa. Both of these cases are of extreme importance as they may set precedents which allow Islamic values to be mitigating factors in serious crime and hence make sharia a de facto law of the land. This, as is the previous case, is serious.

From the Ottawa Citizen May 8 2009: Hat tip Grace

Not a whodunit, so much as ‘why did he do it?’ defence says

Lawyers to argue Ottawa man not guilty of 2006 murder of sister, fiancé because he was provoked

By Neco Cockburn, The Ottawa CitizenMay 8, 2009

The flashes were quick, far in the dark distance at the rainy shopping plaza parking lot where Khatera Sadiqi would soon be found barely breathing, slumped against her fiancé in a car.

There are four flashes on the video footage caught by a bank’s ATM camera, then a pause as a car’s headlights sweep a nearby area. Then another flash. All within 37 seconds.

The footage was played during the first day of the murder trial of Hasibullah Sadiqi, where assistant Crown attorney Mark Moors told a jury they are expected to hear that the now 23-year-old man killed his sister and her fiancé in an “honour killing” rooted in anger over their engagement.

Sadiqi’s defence lawyers have indicated they will not dispute that Sadiqi was responsible for the killings, but will argue that he is not guilty of murder because he was provoked.

During his opening statements, Moors told the court that Sadiqi shot his 20-year-old sister, Khatera, and her fiancé, Feroz Mangal, with a .44 Magnum revolver while they sat in a parked car at the Elmvale Acres shopping plaza, at St. Laurent Boulevard and Smyth Road, just before 1 a.m. on Sept. 19, 2006.

Sadiqi, a Canadian of Afghan descent, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The court is expected to hear he was upset because his sister got engaged without the permission of their father and had moved in with Mangal’s family, Moors told the five-woman, seven-man jury. Continue Reading →

Another artist murdered in Peshawar thanks to the religion of peace

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As music is strictly forbidden in Islam it isn’t surprising to see more artists murdered as Pakistan becomes more and more Islamic. If there is a twist to this story it’s that her own broethers murdered her for bieng a singer, whereas typically brothers murder their sisters in Islamic areas such as Pakistan Germany and England for dating a fellow of their own choosing.

From The Daily Times PK.

Pashto female singer killed

PESHAWAR: Pashto female singer Shamim Aiman Udas was killed on Sunday, police said. Her husband Usman reported at Paharipura Police Station that the singer’s brothers Alamgir and Ismaeel were not happy with her having singing profession despite their disapproval. They (allegedly) opened fire on her near Koochi Plaza and killed her. Police registered a case against the two accused. staff report

Young love, Spring time and Sharia

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young-love

Afghan Taliban execute eloping pair: official

From yahoo news

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) – Taliban militants publicly executed a man and girl on Monday for eloping when she was already engaged to marry someone else, an official said, in a sign of the grip the Islamists have over parts of Afghanistan. Hashim Noorzai, head of Khash Rud district in southwestern Nimruz province, said the two were executed by gun shots in front of a crowd of villagers.He said he had no details on how the Taliban had come to be involved in passing judgment on them but that much of the mainly desert district was under control of the militants. Nimruz is a sparsely-populated area near the Iranian and Pakistani borders where foreign or government troops have little presence. Like much of the south of the country, it has become a stronghold for Taliban fighters who were driven out of Kabul by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001 but are making a comeback in the south and east.A Taliban-led insurgency against Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government has grown in recent years, and the militants have occasionally carried out their form of justice, including public executions, in towns and villages under their control. Taliban spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.

Best Geert Wilders speech yet! L.A. April 2009

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Shari’a Infiltrates German Courts, Schools, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs

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pigman-above-the-law-sharia-law-4-blog-598x640from the Canadian Free Press By Dr. Sami Alrabaa 

Once again a German court ruled by referring to Shrai’a (Islamic law), which predominantly incites to denigration of women, hatred, violence. 

Most recently, Lisa, a German woman (46) married to an Egyptian, called the police seeking protection for herself and her 17-year-old daughter from assaults by her husband. Magdi, Lisa’s husband, threatened to kill their daughter who had been raped by a man. Magdi, a practicing Muslim, believes that his daughter committed “Zena” (adultery). He told his wife that he was always suspicious of his daughter who clandestinely had a German boyfriend. Lisa filed a divorce case against her husband, and requested deporting him.

The judge, Matthias Rau, at a court in Hanover, Germany, ruled (Jan. 21, 2009), Lisa had to wait for at least one year before she is legally divorced. Her husband cannot be deported. “He must be re-educated, in hopes he would renounce his Islamic understanding of “Zena”, the judge said.

The German judge argued, “Muslims have a different understanding of rape than Europeans, and this must be taken into account.” Continue Reading →

British judge gets one right. But is it too little too late?

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Lord Justice Wall said the 'time had come to re-think the phrase From The Daily Mail UK

Lord Justice Wall said ‘time had come to re-think the phrase “honour killing” ‘

A senior judge yesterday condemned the notion of honour killings as an affront to English law.

Lord Justice Wall declared that ‘they are acts of simply sordid criminal behaviour’ and ‘had nothing to do with any concept of honour known to English law’.

In an Appeal Court test case he ruled that the welfare of children should not be put at risk because of the ‘honour’ idea held in some Muslim families.

The judge added: ‘Arson, domestic violence and potential revenge likely to result in abduction or death are criminal acts which will be treated as such.

The case, involving three children of a Pakistani family who were removed by social workers and taken into care, is the first childcare case touching on honour issues to reach the level of the Appeal Court, which sets precedents to be followed in other courts.

The 41-year-old father of the children asked for the right to have contact with them, but was refused.

He also asked that the children, who have been put in the care of white non-Muslim foster parents, should be sent to live with a Muslim family.

The children were removed from the family following the death of another child and violent incidents connected to the role of a woman in their extended family.

Their 32-year-old mother is serving a five-year jail sentence for arson.

Violence in the family began when an uncle of the three children now in state care contracted a marriage to a woman from Pakistan, who was pregnant with her first child when she came to England in 2003. The child died at the age of 27 months after suffering multiple injuries.

The dead child was said in court to have shown injuries that may have been caused by sexual abuse.

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Mark Steyn: Exceptional essay on Islam, the west, the UK

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From Jewish World Review Feb. 23, 2009 / 29 Shevat 5769

Going wobbly in the West

By Mark Steyn

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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | ‘It is hard to understand this deal,” said Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special envoy. And, if the special envoy of the so-called smartest and most impressive administration in living memory can’t understand it, what chance do the rest of us have?

Nevertheless, let’s try. In the Swat Valley, where a young Winston Churchill once served with the Malakand Field Force battling Muslim insurgents, his successors have concluded the game isn’t worth the candle. In return for a temporary ceasefire, the Pakistani government agreed to let the local franchise of the Taliban impose its industrial strength version of sharia across the whole of Malakand Region. If “region” sounds a bit of an imprecise term, Malakand has over five million people, all of whom are now living under a murderous theocracy. Still, peace rallies have broken out all over the Swat Valley, and, at a Swat peace rally, it helps to stand well back: As one headline put it, “Journalist Killed While Covering Peace Rally.”

But don’t worry about Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of “extremists”: The Swat Valley is a good hundred miles from the “nation”‘s capital, Islamabad — or about as far as Northern Vermont is from Southern Vermont. And, of course, Islamabad is safely under the control of the famously moderate Ali Zardari. A few days before the Swat deal, Mr. Zardari marked the dawn of the Obama era by releasing from house arrest A. Q. Khan, the celebrated scientist and one-stop shop for all your Islamic nuclear needs, for whose generosity North Korea and Iran are especially grateful.

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Some links for February 21 2009

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Phyllis Chesler has been writing recently on Islam and so called honor killings and domestic violence. She is quite probably the first and certainly one of the most knowledgeable authors on this subject who comes from a western background. This new article by Ms. Chesler is quite exceptional and brings into focus other lesser known femicides by Muslim men and details some of the reasons the western media as well as western feminist organizations have been ignoring Muslim killing of women. For those of you who have read her material on the Buffalo beheading of the TV station owner’s wife, don’t think you know this already and skip it. This is very good and needs to be read by all in my opinion.

Use the search tool to the right for ‘Phyllis Chesler’ to see other articles such as this one on Islam and global jihad she has done and links to her various sites.

Here is an article about the numbers of dead and so on in operation cast lead, the Israeli defense action in Gaza recently. The article gives hard numbers and deals with the Hamas propaganda machine and how they manipulated world opinion with fabrications. The damage however has been done. I came within moments of an actual fist fight at a local bar recently because my opponent, a regular middle aged white Canadian male, had bought the Palestinian party line hook line and sinker without question. The facts as he had accepted them, being entirely baseless made no difference. the damage was done. At one point I asked him how fe felt about the Israeli’s having bombed the UN school in Gaza. His answer was the predictable foaming outrage. When I pointed out that this event never actually happened and the school was never bombed even according to the UN itself it made no difference whatsoever except to enrage him further. So I post this link more as an example of how little difference the truth makes in the end as well as a mild catharsis for those of us who know the difference between right and wrong and truth and fiction.

Next, a link to a National Post article on the ‘new antisemitism’. It’s a worthy read but I really like this quote from Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaking on the holocaust…

“this genocide was so premeditated and grotesque in design, so monstrous and barbaric in scale and so systematic and efficient in execution that is stands alone in the annals of human evil.”

“Unfortunately in some countries,” he went on, “hatred of the Jews is still preached from religious pulpits and still proclaimed from political podiums. There are still people who would perpetrate another Holocaust if they could.”

What do you know, the prime minister of Canada actually understands the issues facing the world today. This makes Canada and the Czech republic with possible seconds of Denmark and Italy and one lone voice out of Holland, pretty much all that’s left of western secular multilateral liberal democracies that have visited an opthamologist in the past 20 years.

Also this quote from page two on Canada’s reasons for withdrawing from Durban I

We withdrew from a process that sees Iran sitting on the organizing committee, a country whose president has repeatedly engaged in inciting genocide against the Jewish nation; a conference in which Libya plays a central role on the organizing committee; a conference where many of the key organizing meetings were set on Jewish High Holidays to diminish the participation of Israeli and Jewish delegates; a process which reinvited all of the NGOs that turned the original Durban conference into a notorious hatefest, including those responsible for circulating copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and organizations which outside the conference venue held up portraits of Adolf Hitler.

This really is a good article and worth the few minutes to read. I must say, since Stephen Harper became Prime Minister of Canada I have felt more pride in my Canadian heritage than I have ever felt in my life.

Eeyore for Vlad

No to sharia

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” Equality and respect are for real, live human beings, not for beliefs and certainly not for inhumane, political movements. Sharia is why so many of us have fled and continue to flee Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere; opposing sharia law in Britian as in Afghanistan or elsewhere is not an attack on people’s right to religion: it is a defence of people’s human rights”.

Those words were spoken by Maryam Namazie, a Muslim woman living in Britian. Countless others like her who dare oppose the stifling oppression, inherent misogyny and violence of Islamic law and seek it’s eventual demise do so at tremendous risk, often surrounded either by direct shunning or threats of violence from their own community or an ignorant, host polulace willing to concede to Islamists under faulty multicultural policy and religious relativism.

I do not write this to convice those of us already fully aware of sharia’s incredible cruelty but rather to the many more who have convinced themselves it as only a benign form of religious arbitration. For the women who have fled to nations seeking refuge from the barbarism, it is anything but benign and for the young girls and women left behind, a reminder of the need to challenge and disrupt the flow of hatred.

The following three stories illustrate sharia’s capacity for violence and death. All three crimes were committed in western nations. The first details the fifteen hour beating of the twenty-two year old wife of vice consul at the Afghanistan Consulate in Queens, New York. Mohammed Fagirad told police that his wife was ‘a dog and that he would treat her as such’. The beating resulted in hospitalization.

The second is the account of the trial of German-Afghan Ahmed-Sobair O, who has been convicted of the murder of his sixteen year old sister Morsal O. He stabbed her twenty three times for living her ‘western lifestyle’. After calling the judge a whore, Ahmed-Sobair O stated that ” if this trial had taken place in Kabul, I would have been released long ago”. Present at the trial were his family and relatives and in solidarity they wailed, threatened and assaulted a journalist, criticized the judge and claimed the girl bore the guilt for her own murder.

The third is the account of the beheading of thirty seven year old Aasiya Hassan wife of  ‘moderate’ Bridges t.v. founder Muzzami Hassan. She asked him for a divorce resulting from ongoing domestic violence in which she sought to escape. Her decapitated body was found by police on the studio premises. Mr. Hassan has confessed to the slaying. She leaves behind two children 4 and 6.

I read this morning on www.islamqa.com a query from a Muslim man seemingly at wits end with his defiant wife. Seeking counsel from a scholar in sharia he asked ” what do I do with a woman who will not cover her hands? The scholar’s reply was simple: if persuasion does not work, reject her from your bed and if that fails, beat her”.

It is bad enough that sharia exists in Middle Eastern countries and clerics advise such fatwas, but it is wild beyond comprehension why western nations would entertain it’s existence, even in it’s most modest form. There is simply no place for sharia in any civilized society, regardless of the ribbons apologists  and activists would dress it with.  Movements across Europe, North America and to a lesser degree, the Middle East  have sprouted by those who have fled sharia’s oppressive and dangerous nature with many speaking out against it’s further inception. Aayan Hirsi Ali, Noni Darwish and Phyllis Chesler are among those who would warn us of it’s dangerous consequence, particularly for the lives of girls and women. It is time to pay attention and to ultimately say a resounding no to sharia.

Grace

Phyllis Chesler examines another US honour killing.

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Phyllis Chesler has written some of the very best material about feminism and Islam. I must say, that the mainstream feminist machinery is really disgustingly quiet on the matter of Islam which is without question the greatest threat to women’s rights and lets face it, safety overall. Phyllis as I understand it, was largely ostracised by the mainstream feminist community when she began to write on this subject some years ago. I find her work to be inspirational and important. Her article here on Vlad titled, ‘How Afghanistan Shaped my Feminism’ is truly an excellent work and should be read by all.

Here she examines an older honour killing in the US. She has of course been following the recent murder by decapitation of a women by her husband, a Muslim who ironically owned and operated a Buffalo NY TV station for the purpose of improving the image of Islam in the eyes of the west.

Please search this blog for Chesler’s work and visit her blog and sites she contributes to. She deserves recognition as truly one of the first feminist writers to deal with the reality of the threat to women by Islam and has suffered as a consequence.

Eeyore for Vlad

Beheadings and Honor Killings

By Phyllis Chesler

FrontPageMagazine.com | 2/20/2009

She was an accomplished, professional woman, in her late thirties, a wife, and a mother. But her husband beat her. Terribly, and for a long time. Finally, after much suffering, she worked up the courage to leave him. That’s when, acting on his own, he killed her.

No, I am not talking about Aasiya Z. Hassan in Buffalo. I am talking about the 1999 St. Clairsville, Ohio case of Dr. Lubaina Bhatti Ahmed.

I know: All the major Muslim organizations, and the mainstream media, continually say that these deaths are examples of domestic violence. They say that domestic violence is a plague that afflicts women of all cultures and religions and which has nothing to do with Islam.


To continue reading, press HERE.

Women’s group in UK working to end sharia in England

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I recieved an email from a woman’s group and I am of course delighted to see women, certainly the largest and most commonly victimized groups by Islam, outwardly fighting this barbarianism. Below I reproduce the whole of the article and here is a link to the web site and various connected web sites such as this petition for ‘one law for all’. Please note, this group appears to be women from Islamic nations profoundly frustrated with western nations capitulation to political Islam.

Here is the audio podcast version of this article.      

Eeyore for Vlad

Transcript of Thought For the World’s thought for the day

Maryam Namazie

18th February 2009

One year on, the Archbishop of Canterbury has once again defended his comments on Sharia law.

Just the word itself is for me like a kick in the stomach. I find myself trying to catch my breath every time I hear it being uttered.

I mean Sharia is why so many of us have fled and are fleeing Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

To get as far away from it as possible.

Only to have it repackaged and sold to us by the US-led ‘liberators’ in Iraq and Afghanistan or by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Britain as the next best thing to sliced bread.

Contrary to claims of promoting social cohesion and ‘minority rights,’ Sharia in Britain is actually a capitulation to political Islam. Just as the Pakistani government’s agreement to allow the imposition of Sharia in the north-west this very week is an attempt to placate and appease the Islamists. It has nothing to do with freedom of religion and belief, or rights and choices. In fact, the stronger and more pervasive its hold, the less freedoms, rights and choices people – and particularly women – have.

Yes of course there is a difference between letting Islamic courts and councils decide on civil matters rather than criminal ones. But the difference is a matter of degree; the fundamentals are the same. Losing custody of your child at a pre-set age irrespective of the child’s welfare, being told to remain in an abusive relationship or having your forced marriage at 13 stamped with the approval of these sham courts can be just as destructive. In fact, discriminatory family and personal status codes are important pillars in the oppression of women in Islamic states. And much of the struggle for women’s rights is taking shape in countries like Iran against these very aspects of Sharia.

Moreover, rather than promote ‘minority’ rights and social cohesion, Sharia law promotes fragmentation and social conflict. It imposes different standards and norms for ‘different’ people. It denies universal and equal rights fought for and established by progressive social and working class movements over centuries. It gives precedence to the most regressive cultural and religious norms of the ruling elite rather than to human beings and their rights and lives.

Opposing Sharia law in Britain, as in Afghanistan or elsewhere isn’t an attack on people’s right to religion; it is a defence of people’s human rights.

After all, rights, equality and respect are for real live human beings not for beliefs and certainly not for inhumane political movements.

Phyllis Chesler: On the ‘honor killing’ recently in Buffalo

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For anyone not familiar yet with Philis Chesler, she is the author who wrote the most excellent article on Islam and feminism titled ‘How Afghanistan Shaped my feminism’ which is a must read. Written some time ago, Phillis married an Afgani and moved with him to Afghanistan where she discovered some of the more fundamental differences between cultures. A truly worthwhile read.

Chesler Chronicles

On February 13, 2009, in Orchard Park, a suburb of Buffalo, 44 year-old Muzzamil Hassan, a prominent Muslim businessman was arrested for having be-headed his wife, 37 year-old Aasiya Z. Hassan. Yes, he beheaded her. Aasiya’s crime? She dared to obtain an order of protection which forced her violent husband out of their home.

We are now sadly familiar with some high profile Islamic beheadings of infidels in Muslim lands; Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, immediately come to mind. Sadly, we are also familiar with the practice of beheading, dismembering, burying alive, and stoning Muslim (and sometimes Christian) women to death in Muslim lands. But this took place in a suburb of Buffalo, New York, in America, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. What can this mean? Why behead a wife who wanted a divorce and who wanted to live free of daily violence? Why didn’t Hassan just agree to a divorce?

Because this foul murder is very probably an honor killing, a crime which has little to do with western-style domestic violence. Erie County District Attorney Frank A Sedita III has it all wrong. He commented: “Obviously, this is the worst form of domestic violence possible.”

To continue reading, press here, Chesler Chronicles