Category Archives: Sharia Law
Shut Up! feminists silent on honour killings, rape, oppression
Naomi Lakritz writes in the Calgary Herald on how feminists in the West prefer navel-gazing, book-promoting and self-interest to defending women who face extreme oppression, rape and murder in the name of honour’.
Feminists who don’t defend women
By Naomi Lakritz, The Calgary HeraldAugust 10, 2009 3:02 AM
All’s been quiet on the sisterhood front. Too quiet, considering how many horrifying stories about women have made the headlines.
There were the alleged honour killings of the three teenaged Shafia girls from Montreal, along with one of their father’s two wives. The father, the mother and the girls’ brother are charged with murder.
Then there was the eight-year-old girl in Phoenix whose Liberian refugee family disowned her after she was raped. They claim she had dishonoured the family.
And there was Saudi beauty pageant winner Aya Ali al-Mulla, who won her crown without anyone ever seeing her face; she was draped from head to foot in Saudi Arabia’s traditional black abaya. Pageant officials pronounced al-Mulla, 18, the Queen of Beautiful Morals. She had to pass rigorous quizzes on her morality, her obedience to her parents, and other such virtues, to win her title.
All of these incidents have as their theme oppression and the quashing of women’s right to autonomy and self-determination, by the males in their milieu. My question is, where are the queens of beautiful morals here in the West?
I checked out the websites of the usual suspects. Naomi Klein is busy tooting her own horn with an announcement that her book, The Shock Doctrine, won the Warwick Prize for Writing! (Exclamation point hers). I did a search for “honour killing” on her site and came up with “Your search yielded no results.”
It’s possible that my good old namesake is unclear on the concept of oppression.
Klein, who is Jewish, is calling for boycotts of Israel in support of the Palestinian cause whose leaders have declared they want to kill Jewish people. Maybe if she supported the Palestinian people via protesting their oppression by their terrorist Hamas leaders, she’d have a worthy cause.
Then I looked at Judy Rebick’s blog. Like Naomi, she’s preoccupied with flogging her own book, Transforming Power. One recent post, dated July 28, was titled: The Toronto Municipal Strike: Who Do We Get Mad At?
I don’t know who to get mad at about the garbage strike in Toronto, Judy. Living in Calgary, it doesn’t cross my mind that much.
But shouldn’t we all be even a teeny bit mad at the way women are being denied their selfhood by the patriarchal environments they live in, be it in Canada, Phoenix or wherever it’s happening?
Judy does have a post from June titled “Take action in solidarity with the indigenous people of Peru.”
What about a little solidarity with four dead women whose car ended up in the Rideau Canal near Kingston? How about a show of solidarity with that beauty queen in Saudi Arabia who’s obviously a brilliant girl because she plans to go to medical school, but who can’t show her face to the world because to do so might dishonour her family and lead to a fatal consequence?
And is there nary a tear to be shed or a word to be spared for that poor child in Phoenix whose family has tossed her aside like so much trash for something that was not her fault?
Meanwhile, on Rose’s Place, which bills itself as a blogsite for Canadian feminists, recent discussions centred around Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s birth certificate and U.S. health reform, with Toronto Star columnist Antonia Zerbisias complaining about Muslim-bashing regarding the alleged honour killings.
It is not Muslim-bashing to acknowledge that a crime has allegedly happened in a Muslim family.
It is not Sikh-bashing to say that some of the alleged honour killings in Canada in the past few years happened in Sikh families.
Shall we just ignore the United Nations Population Fund’s estimate that 5,000 women a year die in honour killings, to avoid casting aspersions on any culture? Shall we pretend it’s not happening in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Morocco and Pakistan, to name just a few countries?
There seems to be no problem with denouncing Christian culture for decorating trees at Christmastime, or displaying crosses on Remembrance Day, but when members of another culture engage in actual evildoing, we’re supposed to pretend it all just falls under the rubric of domestic violence. Since domestic violence occurs in all cultures, honour killings can be conveniently lumped into that category and we can keep pretending it’s not particular to certain cultures.
Nobody’s even mentioned the fact that Mohammad Shafia was living in this country with two wives, one of whom died with the girls. Let’s just pass completely over that form of oppression visited on these two women, for fear of offending someone.
As Judy Rebick says in another June blog posting: “The revolution will be tweeted or whatever.” Yeah, Judy. Whatever.
Naomi Lakritz writes for the Calgary Herald.
© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
Iraqi women’s wrestling team irks clerics–tribesman calls for their slaughter
Some young women in Iraq are wrestling– with each other–in the gym. Clad in Nike and Adidas they put the learned moves into practice and defy the rigid theological pressure by clerics who demand their subservience. Despite a call for their slaughter, these Iraqis are willing to move beyond the threats and embrace greater democracy and equality.
Diwaniya Journal
Female Iraqis Take on Tradition in Wrestling Ring
Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
Samah Hamid, 24, right, squared off against her 22-year-old sister Masar during wrestling practice at the sports club in Diwaniya.
By SAM DAGHER
Published: August 4, 2009
DIWANIYA, Iraq — It doesn’t happen much in the Arab world, but a coach here decided in January to start an all-female wrestling team, the first ever in Iraq. The wrestlers love it and already dream of competing in the Olympics.
Skip to next paragraph
Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
After a practice last month, Farah Shakir, 17, put on a traditional abaya over her wrestling clothes.
But there are many in this town south of Baghdad, which like much of Iraq is religious, conservative and governed largely by tribal tradition, who want the dozen girls and young women on the team to stop wrestling immediately. One tribesman has said they should be “slaughtered” if they continue. A Shiite cleric says the team should be banned because wrestling can lead to promiscuity and “transgressions” against Islam.
As a result of the pressure, four wrestlers have quit. But the rest, for the moment empowered by the post-invasion promise of greater democracy and equality, are defying the threats.
“They think we are loose girls just because we play sports,” said Ikram Hamid, 25, one team member.
Farah Shakir, 17, said, “It really is something different for Iraq, but I love the challenge.”
In fairness, it is not just female wrestling that troubles the traditionalists.
“I have information that male wrestling is problematic, too, because of all the friction that goes on,” said Sheik Hussein al-Khalidi, a turbaned cleric who sits on the provincial council.
But it is the women who have touched a nerve, perhaps partly because of their ambitions. Three other teams were set up in Iraq after Diwaniya’s was formed with the backing of Iraq’s wrestling federation. In June, all the teams took part in a championship, which the Diwaniya team won, qualifying for an Asian tournament in September in freestyle wrestling.
Some local people have become captivated by the female wrestlers and feel they are a fitting challenge to Iraq’s entrenched tribal and religious establishment, whose hold on society and people’s lives paradoxically became much tighter after the 2003 invasion. One supporter, Haidar Walid, 20, called the team a “sign of evolution and freedom.”
The controversy in Diwaniya underscores a fundamental struggle under way in Iraqi society as a whole. The grip of Sunni and Shiite armed groups that had compelled Iraqis to abide by what they considered moral behavior has loosened, and many people now feel free to express themselves in various ways. This was reflected during provincial elections in January, in which secular and relatively liberal parties did well.
On a recent scorching hot morning, the wrestlers, some veiled and others not, and dressed in shorts and soccer jerseys, filed into the wrestling gym at the Diwaniya sports club. They are allowed to use it only when male wrestlers have no practice.
A battered and dusty wrestling mat filled most of the room. The walls were adorned with framed photographs of male wrestlers, colorful posters of Shiite saints and the portrait of a local hero, Abbas Fadhel Jouda, an Iraqi wrestling champion killed two years ago by militiamen in Diwaniya because he was a police officer.
After a warm-up, Ms. Shakir and her teammates paired off and started practicing grapples and takedowns under the instruction of their coach and team founder, Hamid al-Hamdani, and his two assistants, all professional wrestlers.
Unlike Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling allows holds below the waist and legs to be used for a takedown. It is an internationally recognized sport, but women’s wrestling made its Olympic debut only five years ago at the Athens Games. Two other Arab countries, Egypt and Morocco, have female wrestling teams.
But Diwaniya’s team may face more than the usual obstacles on the road to gold. Iraq’s wrestling federation endorsed the team, but an official from that body refused to come to Diwaniya for the competition in June, fearing he would be killed, according to Mr. Hamdani.
In May angry tribal leaders petitioned the provincial council to ban the team after a television station showed one of the wrestlers practicing with her coach.
Since then the team has kept a low profile, abiding by local customs. During practice the girls are chaperoned by Ms. Shakir’s mother, Nawal Kadhim, and when they leave the club they are covered in head-to-toe black veils.
Still, many are taunted and cursed whenever they venture to the market. They are ostracized at school and constantly hectored by their teachers.
Mrs. Kadhim, who has five daughters on the team, was recently advised by relatives to leave Diwaniya and received threatening messages on her cellphone.
“Women will lose their femininity,” said a resident, Faris Abbas, 42, who like most opposes the female team.
A tribal leader, Gaith al-Kassir, 53, says the sport is against Islam and tribal traditions. “Women can do sports at home,” he said.
As with many other issues, Shiite religious leaders are divided on female wrestling. Some say there is no harm as long as the women are properly covered, while others say it is “absolutely forbidden,” according to one of the team’s coaches, who consulted the religious authorities in the city of Najaf.
Sheik Khalidi says he will continue to rally public opinion until the wrestling club is closed down. He is a member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is a religious party close to Iran and ruled the province until January’s elections, when it lost to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s party throughout the south. Although Mr. Maliki is an Islamist, his party has favored persuasion over coercion when it comes to shaping society’s values.
Despite the setback at the polls, Sheik Khalidi said his party was still convinced that Iraqis were becoming more conservative and attached to Islamic rituals and values.
Batoul al-Attiyah, a local physician, said she disagreed with Sheik Khalidi’s assessment of where Iraq was heading, even if she opposed female wrestling.
“Religion has become more about appearances than substance,” she said.
My week wearing a burka: Just a few yards of black fabric, but it felt like a prison
TimesOnline..Squatting next to me is my burka. It looks so innocuous: just a few yards of black fabric. But, my goodness, how oppressive it is, how suffocating, how transforming.
Moved by the plight of Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public, I decided to spend a week enveloped in what she should have been wearing.
Out shopping one day, I caught sight of myself in a Knightsbridge store window. Instead of me staring back, I saw a dark, depressed alien. A smudge.
A nothing.
On my first day, I was unaccountably afraid to put on my burka. When I did pluck up courage, I felt suffocated.
Driving to my local station, I felt blinkered, like a racehorse. Walking to the platform, I could hardly breathe: I kept getting my nose out from beneath its shroud for fresh air. I felt weak, and faint and itchy.
I walked to the kiosk to buy coffee, staring at my feet to avoid catching anyone’s eye.
‘Mumble mumble,’ I said to the young man serving.
To his credit – the station is in Somerset, so I’m pretty sure this was the first time he’d encountered the full burka – he didn’t bat an eyelid.
I automatically lifted the cup to my lips. Ah. How on earth do women eat or drink? Later that day, at a coffee shop in Fulham, I sat outside at a table, faced with an insurmountable sandwich.
An Arab man shouted abuse. I have no idea what he was saying – perhaps I shouldn’t have been out on my own, or perhaps eating is a sin – but the interesting point is that during my week in a burka, he was the only person who gave me any abuse whatsoever.
In fact, throughout my lonely journey, I was met with only helping hands and sympathy.
‘I have had so much abuse on the train,’ a British Muslim called Um Abdullah complained on Woman’s Hour. Well, she has obviously never travelled with First Great Western.
On one journey home, after a particularly hot day spent steaming like a suet pudding in Regent’s Park, trying to lick a 99, I wobbled to the buffet carriage and mumbled for a stiff gin and tonic. Continue Reading →
The Copts Gather in D.C. to Challenge Mubarak
This post unabashedly copied from Gates Of Vienna.
Voice of the Copts has announced a demonstration to be held in front of the White House on the occasion of Egyptian President Mubarak’s visit to the U.S. on August 18th – next Tuesday.
They are joined in this effort to hold a peaceful rally by the National American Coptic Assembly and the American Coptic Union.
Voice of the Copts describes their mission:
Our goal is to report news of discrimination and oppression of religious minorities in every corner of our planet. A special attention will be given to those taking place in countries ruled by the Arabs, as well as providing an in-depth explanation of their mentality, behaviour and their way of living.
Since we are Copts, events of interest to the Copts concerning issues in their homeland, Egypt, will be covered, Our website would be an open window on the Coptic culture, as well as a comprehensive source of information on the Copts’ suffering in their own land.
The Copts are an ancient people. In fact, the name in Arabic means “Egyptian”, or at least it did. The fact that they survive at all after a millennium of slaughter and persecution is testimony to the strength and determination of this people. Despite the ongoing, endless inequity they experience in their native land, they have managed to maintain a precarious existence in the face of hatred and mindless attacks.
Consider the Copts a safety valve the Arab usurpers use to keep their own people in line. The latter have to queue up for necessities like bread, even though their government receives large subsidies from the West. When government is as corrupt as it is in Egypt, people suffer hardships. Thus, the Copts are a handy distraction to keep the attention of the larger population focused on something besides Mubarak’s feckless governance.
Many people are not aware of the flowering of Christianity very early on in Egypt. In the second century, it had begun to spread through the region. The apostle Mark is credited with mission work in Alexandria, and it wasn’t long before Anthony (born c. 270 A.D.), founded the cenobitic monasticism movement in Egypt. Pachomius learned from Anthony, though he was more interested in an eremitic, communal monasticism. Centuries before Benedict founded monasteries in the West, Christian monastic communities were flourishing all over North Africa and the Middle East.
After the invasions of the Muslims and the beginnings of serious slaughter, any discernible level of North African Christianity disappeared. But this didn’t happen in Egypt. North African Christians (Bishop Augustine of Hippo was one) belonged to the urban areas and to the educated elite, who were Romanized. None of those Christian leaders envisioned their theology or ecclesiology as something that belonged to the rural areas. To the extent that they “evangelized” the message was directed to urban populations.
Coptic Christianity, in contrast, went all the way to the bone. There were churches in even the smallest villages and the numerous monasteries were centers of learning, not just of Greek scripture, but also of an indigenous Coptic language collection of scripture, sermons, and hermeneutic theses. These codices and scrolls were revered by those charged with their keeping. Eventually, the murdering hordes would attack and destroy the great majority of these works, but it would take many centuries to penetrate from the cities into the hinterlands of Egypt.
The invaders found the native Copts useful. They were intelligent and literate so the Copts established a precarious niche as the clerical staff for their unschooled rulers. This didn’t mean the persecutions ceased. Rather, it guaranteed that the Copts would be harassed, intimidated, killed or kidnapped here and there when the occasion presented itself, but there would be no outright Final Solution. The Copts were always too useful to dispose of entirely.
[Here are the other sections of this story: Part Two and Part Three]
Shafia trio appear in Kingston Court, request to speak with surviving children
Shafia family appears in court via video
Charged in Kingston canal slayings; Parents can communicate with children without presence of lawyer, judge rules
By René Bruemmer, THE GAZETTEAugust 7, 2009
Mohammed Shafia, Hamed Mohammed Shafia and Tooba Mohammed Yahya. Photograph by Marcos Townsend/Tyrel Featherstone, Canwest News Service
KINGSTON, Ont. – The couple charged with murdering their three daughters and the man’s first wife appeared briefly via video at a Kingston courthouse yesterday with one request: that they be allowed to speak to their three surviving children without lawyers present.
Their 18-year-old son, also charged in the murders, made the same request.
Clad in an orange prison jumpsuit, looking drawn and tired, Mohammad Shafia, 56, appeared in the courtroom via video from the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre.
Through his lawyer, with a Farsi interpreter translating, Shafia asked that an earlier regulation, which stipulated he could communicate with his children only with a lawyer present and with the consent of youth protection services that are caring for the children, be amended.
Shafia’s lawyer, Peter Kemp, asked that the requirement to have lawyers present by removed, and that any communication be allowed only if youth protection approves.
The judge agreed to the requests by the father, the mother and the son.
The three were remanded until their next court date, Aug. 14, when lawyers are to discuss the disclosure of evidence.
Mohammad Shafia and his wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 39, are charged with the murders of their three daughters: Zainab, 19; Sahari, 17; and Geeti, 13; and with the murder of Shafia’s first wife, Rona Amir Mohammad. Hamed Shafia, 18, faces the same charges.
Hamed Shafia and Yahya are staying at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee, Ont. Hamed Shafia appeared composed during the short video conference, but Yahya looked stricken, holding onto the wall to support herself, her other hand clutched to her chest.
In prison, Yahya sits and stares wordlessly through the bars of her cell, said Sara Chaloux, who spent a week in the same wing at the prison and was in court yesterday on an unrelated matter.
“I felt bad for her,” Chaloux said in an interview. “Other inmates would go up to her and make comments or threats, but she just sat and stared and never said a word.”
Yahya was escorted from her cell only after all other inmates were enclosed in theirs, Chaloux said.
Lawyers for the men reported Hamed was attacked while in jail, and his father was threatened.
Montreal lawyers were replaced this week by legal counsel from Kingston with strong backgrounds in criminal law. The new lawyers did not speak to the media yesterday.
The bodies of the four family members were discovered June 30 in a Nissan Sentra submerged in the Rideau Canal near Kingston.
The accused and the victims lived together in a duplex in St. Léonard.
After the bodies were found, Shafia and his wife told police Zainab had borrowed the keys to the car. They believed she had left without their knowledge with the other victims, and probably drove into the canal by accident.
Kingston police said they discount this theory and confirmed they are looking into the possibility the slayings were carried out as a so-called honour killing.
Zainab, had been in two relationships of which Mohammad Shafia did not approve, relatives had said.
rb*******@****************st.com
© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
Pak. police stood by and did nothing to stop attackers.
Pakistani Christians: Police did not stop carnage 
Found at TROP
Almas Hameed grabbed his 7-year-old daughter and stumbled out of their smoke-filled home as she pleaded in vain to bring her pet parrots. His wife, father and two other children did not survive.
Outside, hundreds of enraged Muslims called the victims “dogs” as they fired guns and burned house after house in the Christian neighborhood of this eastern Pakistani city. The weekend rampage left eight Christians dead. All but one were relatives of Hameed.
“We always live in fear,” said Hameed, 50. “I wonder if I will see a time in this country when I can live like an equal citizen.”
The attack, which Pakistani officials said was incited by a radical Islamist group, followed rumors that some Christians had desecrated a Quran — an act regarded as sacrilege by Muslims. The violence drew condemnation Monday from the prime minister and the pope, a chilling reminder of how religious extremism has left minority religious groups in this country increasingly vulnerable.
On Monday, paramilitary troops patrolled near the dozens of targeted houses, with their blackened walls, charred furniture, and twisted ceiling fans. Six people died in the fires, two by gunshots.
Authorities urged calm and promised that local police would be investigated for their inability to stop the violence, which spiraled even after an initial probe debunked the rumor that a Quran had been defiled.
“It was like hell. Nobody was coming to help us,” said Atique Masih, a 23-year-old Christian who was shot in his right leg.
Christian schools across the country closed for three days starting Monday.
“We are closing the schools to show our anger and concern,” Bishop Sadiq Daniel told The Associated Press, emphasizing the move was a peaceful tactic. “We want the government to bring all perpetrators of the crime to justice.”
In a telegram, Pope Benedict XVI said he was “deeply grieved” to hear of the “senseless attack.”
Benedict sent his condolences to families of the victims and called on the Christians “not to be deterred in their efforts to help build a society which, with a profound sense of trust in religious and human values, is marked by mutual respect among all its members.”
Christians — Protestants and Catholics among them — make up less than 5 percent of Muslim-majority Pakistan’s 175 million people, according to the CIA World Factbook. They generally live in peace with their Muslim neighbors.
Extremists, however, have made Christians and other minority religious groups a target. Earlier this summer in the Kasur area, for instance, Muslims set fire to dozens of Christian homes, according to local news accounts.
The anti-minority phenomenon seems to be getting worse as Taliban militancy has gained strength.
In March, the Taliban issued an ultimatum to the leaders of more than 25 Sikh families in a tribal region near the Afghan border: Convert to Islam and join the jihad or pay 5 billion rupees — roughly $62 million — for protection. Continue Reading →
Farewell Israel. Superb film. Must watch.
Link: 
In Lahore workers kill factory owner accused of blasphemy
According to an eyewitness, the owner was seen removing an old calendar with verses from the Qur‘an and that was sufficient for workers to kill him and two other men. The enraged mob also assaulted management employees and set the factory on fire. Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani travels to Gojra today to express solidarity to Christian victims of the previous massacre.
Lahore (AsiaNews/Agencies) – A factory owner and two other men were killed when workers from his plant attacked them along the Muridke-Sheikhupura Road, not far from Lahore, for allegedly desecrating the holy Qur’an, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday. However, another TV station said the owner, identified only as Najeebullah, and the two other men were killed over the factory administration’s failure to pay workers.
The incident began when a worker came into the factory at around 2 pm and saw that the owner had taken down an old calendar, which had verses from the holy Qur’an written on it, and put it on a table. The worker accused the owner for what he thought was “desecration” of the holy Qur‘an. When a guard tried to stop him, he ran out into the working area and started gathering his colleagues, claiming the owner had committed ‘blasphemy’.
When the group of workers surrounded Najeebullah, his guard tried to protect him by firing in the air, but this further enraged the crowd; shots were fired killing the owner and his guard.
In their rage workers attacked the factory administration, beat up several employees and set the plant on fire.
Police rushed to the site to bring the situation under control, but the angry mob turned on them and seized their weapons.
This incident follows a similar one in Gojra (Punjab) where a group of Christians was burnt alive just a few days ago for alleged blasphemy.
Today Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani visited the Punjabi town to express solidarity with the Christian community and reiterated his condemnation of the outrage which is currently under investigation.
CTV: Honour killings in Canada. Kingston Ont.
Islam: What the west needs to know
Link:
Expansion of Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia Approved, Outraging Opponents
I don’t think I will make many friends when I say, “It is official, Yanks are wanks”. Are you all so willing to sell out your futures for fear of offending the most offencive? The very type of Islamic teaching that puts all Americans at risk is welcomed in Fairfax? This should be making any American with a right mind break out in Tourettes.
FOX NEWS.. A controversial Saudi-funded academy that teaches strict adherence to traditional Islamic law has been given the green light to expand its Virginia campus — a decision by local officials that infuriates opponents who say the school’s teachings are anti-American.The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted 6-4 Monday to grant a zoning exemption to the Islamic Saudi Academy. The officials said the outcome was based strictly on zoning issues, not on what goes on in the school’s classrooms.That left some in the community outraged.
“How could they … say they are such fine students? They are fine students but they are learning the wrong thing,” academy critic Ruth Mizell said after the vote, according to MyFOXDC.com.
Jim Lafferty, another opponent, vowed political retaliation against the supervisors who supported the expansion.
“We need to resist these people, make it clear they may have bought six votes in there but they are not buying my vote,” said Lafferty, according to MyFOXDC. “We will support — even if it’s Pee-Wee Herman — we will support whoever is running against them.”
The academy was founded in 1984 and has some 1,000 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12. It is the only Saudi-funded school in the United States.
About 80 percent of its students are U.S. citizens from the area’s Muslim communities. Most students attend classes at a second campus in the Alexandria section of Fairfax.
The plans granted approval on Monday permit construction of a building that would eventually accommodate 500 students.
“The community will get an awful lot of development,” said supervisor Penelope A. Gross. “I think (it) will improve the community.”
The school has undergone a series of high-profile examinations of its religious curriculum, which has been revised repeatedly to remove passages that extolled militant jihad and martyrdom. In 2007, at least one textbook still said that the killing of adulterers and apostates was “justified.”
But students, parents and teachers say the school does not teach intolerance.
“Throughout my whole time in ISA, I’ve never been taught to hate anyone,” said Heba Rashed, 16, a junior at the school.
The school’s curriculum was revised at the start of the 2008-09 school year after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned its textbooks.
Critics of the academy say most of the offensive material has been taken out. But they say the textbooks clearly remain guided by Wahhabism, the fundamentalist school of Sunni Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia.
“The stuff about killing, it’s not there anymore,” said Ali Al-Ahmed, the head of the Institute for Gulf Affairs and a critic of the Saudi government, who got copies of the latest textbooks.
Al-Ahmed said references to jihad had been removed from the curriculum. He found that strange, because the idea — which in the Koran is described as “striving in the path of God,” and is not necessarily violent — was essential to Islam.
In the past, textbooks referred to the militant form of jihad. Al-Ahmed said he would have felt better if moderate references to jihad had been kept.
Attorney Lynne Strobel, who represented the academy, said she was pleased with the vote and said the school has undertaken efforts to reduce some of the potential traffic.
On honour killing– writers, experts and readers weigh in
Since news broke of the tragic Kingston Locks Ontario, honour killings, several articles have been written related to the story and on the broader issue of honour killing itself. They continue to pour in to a variety of newspapers across the country. Here is a small sample of what has been written:
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This first article written by Marian Scott describes the marked difference between honour killings and domestic violence.
Honour Killings are distinct experts say: from The Vancouver Sun, Gazette.
A distinct kind of violence: experts
Honour killings described as different from domestic violence
By MARIAN SCOTT, The Gazette July 25, 2009
Honour killings are distinct from other kinds of family violence – and to say so does not discriminate against minorities, say two experts on the phenomenon.
“Analysis of more than 50 reported honour killings shows they differ significantly from more common domestic violence,” Phyllis Chesler, emerita professor of psychology at City University of New York, says in the spring edition of Middle East Quarterly.
In her analysis, Chesler acknowledged that her position runs counter to many Muslim advocacy organizations that say honour killings have nothing to do with Islam, and that it is discriminatory to distinguish them from other forms of domestic violence. Continue Reading →
Blasphemy laws, a pretext to attack Pakistan’s religious minorities
by Fareed Khan-AsiaNews.it
The official death toll in the Gojra massacre now stands at eight. A 35-year-old man succumbs last night to injuries he sustained during the attack by Muslim fundamentalists. Rights activists and minority leaders believe the government condones such attacks by tolerating laws that punish offences against Islam. The Catholic Church of India and Geneva-based World Council of Churches express their solidarity with fellow Christians in Pakistan.
Lahore (AsiaNews) – Pakistan’s parliament has unanimously condemned the attacks against Christians as an inquiry gets underway to quickly find the culprits. Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari announces a compensation package for victims’ families. In spite of all of this Pakistani Christians continue to endure violence and discrimination as the death toll in Gojra rose to eight. For human rights activists and minority leaders blasphemy laws are the cause of the problem.Last night a private TV station announced that a 35-year-old Christian man succumbed in Gojra hospital to the injuries he sustained last Saturday, when a Muslim mob went out of control and attacked the local Christian community.
Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer handed a preliminary report to President Asif Ali Zardari on the recent riots in Gojra where a semblance of calm is in place following the massive deployment of security forces.
Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer handed a preliminary report to President Asif Ali Zardari on the recent riots in Gojra where a semblance of calm is in place following the massive deployment of security forces.
For his part President Zardari announced that families that lost a member would get 500,000 rupees (US$ 6,000) as compensation, whilst families that lost their homes, torched by Muslims extremists using a special fuel, would get 300,000 rupees (US$ 3,600). Continue Reading →
Vicious honour crime in London: Muslim man victim of attempted honour killing
A Muslim man of Danish citizenship, lies in a British hospital clinging to life after being savagely attacked in London by seven men. He was stabbed, his body doused in sulphuric acid, was forced to swallow the substance and was severely beaten with bricks. The unidentified man’s injuries are so massive that he is expected to die.
He was the victim of an honour crime for having a friendship with a married Muslim woman. One of two men charged in the attempted murder is the woman’s sixteen year old brother.
While most of us understand that the majority of the victims of these barbaric attacks and murders are women, honour killings against men are increasing. If they continue to rise to the same level as those perpetrated against women, perhaps we will see for the first time the only true example of Muslim equality.
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(thank you to the religion of peace)
A Horrific “Honor” Attack By: Stephen Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, July 28, 2009
It was as cold-blooded and vicious an honor crime as any the West has seen, but with one difference. This time, the victim was male.
A 24-year-old Asian man is clinging to life in a British hospital after seven men attacked him last week in London for having a friendship with a married Muslim woman.
The unidentified man, who is Muslim himself and has Danish citizenship, was stabbed twice in the back and beaten so severely with bricks that authorities report he is now blind in one eye and will probably lose sight in the other. Acid was also poured down the victim’s throat, damaging his tongue and throat so severely he will probably never speak again.
“The poor man got up and ran straight into a tree, then staggered back to his house, tugging at his burning clothes and banging on doors, shouting for water,” said one woman who witnessed the attack.
The victim’s body was also doused with acid, burning more than 50 per cent and leaving him in critical condition. News reports state he is not expected to survive. His assailants, police say, were all wearing gloves and masks for protection against the sulphuric acid, which was 92 per cent strength.
Police have charged two men in the attempted murder, one of whom is the woman’s 16-year-old brother. Underage male family members are often selected by their families to carry out honor killings in Western countries, since they receive lighter sentences. Some of these teen killers serve as little as three years in jail before being released.
The motive for the attack, British newspapers report, is that the woman’s family, which is from Pakistan, considered the man’s friendship with her “insulting” to the family’s honor. The woman has denied that the friendship was sexual.
The attack occurred almost at the same time police in Canada arrested three members of an Afghan family for the horrific honor killing of three daughters and the father’s first wife. But while the brutal reality of honor murders perpetrated against women, mainly from Muslim countries and India, is now largely recognized in the West, it is less well known that men are also victims. The reason for this probably lies in the fact that the number of females killed for reasons of “honor” is much higher than that for males.
Figures released at the Karachi Press Club in Pakistan earlier this month bear this out. Pakistan, which has the dubious distinction of being a world leader in this barbaric custom, had 79 female honor killings in one province alone between April and June this year, while 38 men were also slain.
A report published by the Pakistani Senate in 2004 stated more than 4,000 people died as a result of honor crimes in the previous six years, of whom about 2,700 were women and 1,300 were men.
And the situation does not appear to be getting better. It was reported last February that a young Pakistani couple, who married against family wishes, have taken up residence in a police station for fear of being killed if they venture outside.
The mainstream media’s liberal outlook constitutes another reason for the lack of attention regarding male honor killings. Some of the victims are murdered because of their caste, race or religion. In the liberal media’s eyes, only white, western cultures can be racist or intolerant and never those of visible minorities. Such an admission would damage the multicultural utopia they have long been advocating.
But what most victims of male honor crimes in the West, which include white males, have in common is that they were involved in a relationship, often secret or outright forbidden, with a Muslim woman. But while women are the ones usually attacked for their involvement in such liaisons, the list of men is growing longer.
Last year, a German teenager was murdered by two Muslim men armed with baseball bats for having had a relationship with a Muslim girl. In Munich, a Turkish father tried to kill both his daughter and her German boyfriend on a busy, downtown street because of their relationship.
Other prominent honor crimes against males reported in Europe in recent years include an Iranian man murdered in southern Sweden in revenge for his relationship with a daughter of an Afghan family. Six members of a Pakistani family in Denmark were also convicted for the shooting death of their daughter, who had married an Afghan man against her father’s wishes. The husband was severely wounded in the incident. A German also died in an “honor” attack from 40 stab wounds, inflicted by a Turkish man angered by the German’s relationship with his divorced sister.
The reason for such murderous rage is that some male Muslims regard female relatives as their property and themselves as the guardians of their “purity”, upon which the family honor depends. If caught associating with a man, such women would be considered “dirtied” and the family dishonoured. Thereafter, only the spilling of the offender’s blood is deemed acceptable for cleansing and restoring of that honor.
“The Islamic ‘law of revenge’ knows as atonement only pain or death in order to wash away the foulness,” said Necla Kelek, a Turkish-German feminist.
Incredibly, London police now expect the Pakistani family to attempt to further wash away more of that “foulness.” The woman, police fear, may be killed next and are trying to figure out how to protect her. But as the evil of honor killings becomes more endemic in the West, security officials will probably conclude the only sure protection for endangered men and women, like in Pakistan, is protective custody.
Stephen Brown is a contributing editor at Frontpagemag.com. He has a graduate degree in Russian and Eastern European history. Email him at al*****@*****il.com.