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July 21, 2009

Girls "married" before being put to death

Engaged to Be ‘Married’
The Jerusalem Post has an interview with a member of the Basij, the teen militia that enforces the Iranian regime’s will. Even with what we knew about the Basij’s brutality, this is shocking:

>He said he had been a highly regarded member of the force, and had so “impressed my superiors” that, at 18, “I was given the ‘honor’ to temporarily marry young girls before they were sentenced to death.”
>In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a “wedding” ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard--essentially raped by her “husband.”
>“I regret that, even though the marriages were legal,” he said.
>Why the regret, if the marriages were “legal?”
>”Because,” he went on, “I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wedding’ night than of the execution that awaited them in the morning. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleeping pills in their food. By morning the girls would have an empty expression; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.
>”I remember hearing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over,” he said. “I will never forget how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her finger nails afterwards. She had deep scratches all over her.”
 

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Filed under  //   Iran   Islam  

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June 5, 2009

Yeah, Bush would never have done such a thing

Except of course he did. Repeatedly. It was a point he laboured again and again and again - that the vast majority of Muslims could not be besmirched because of the actions of a few.
I ...... applaud his efforts at reaching out to Muslims. GWB would never have done such a thing; he was content to broadly categorize every Muslim as a terrorist and call it a day.
Lisa Kern
10/17/2006:
The end of the Muslim month of fasting is ‘a good time to reflect on the values we hold in common,’ US President George W Bush said Monday night while hosting an Eid al-Fitr dinner at the White House.
 
The Muslim guests of the president and First Lady Laura Bush included police officers and medics who worked at the scene of the September 11 attacks five years ago in New York City, US diplomats, a military doctor, a Navy chaplain and other military veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
 
Bush welcomed the dinner guests with a greeting of ‘Ramadan Karim.’ Monday was the sixth White House observation of the event during his presidency.
 
‘On this special evening, we celebrate the millions of Muslims that we are proud to call American citizens. We honour the many Islamic nations that America is proud to call friends,’ Bush said.
 
‘And we renew the ties of friendship that should bind all who trace their faith back to God’s call on Abraham.’
 
The White House served a Middle Eastern-influenced menu including spiced carrot soup, mint pesto-crusted halibut and chocolate macaroons. Eid al-Fitr is a celebratory meal to mark the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting.
 
‘America is a land of many faiths, and we welcome and honour the Muslim faith in our nation,’ Bush said.
 
‘Our society is enriched by our Muslim citizens. Your commitment to your faith reminds us all of the precious gift of religious freedom in our country. America is a more hopeful nation because of the talents and generosity and compassion of our Muslim citizens.’
 
But the progressive Left, hostile to matters of religion, just never got it. They'd put Bush into a box marked "Christian loony extremist" and were never prepared to look, let alone think, outside of that box.
 
I well remember reading an article from an American newspaper in which the journalist's bewilderment at the opinions of school girls in Damascus was painfully apparent.
 
They were, despite being Muslims and not agreeing with many of Bush's policies, very positive about him because of his faith.
 

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Filed under  //   George Bush   Islam   Muslims  

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June 4, 2009

Some surprising reactions to Obama's Cairo speech

No one speech can ever do justice to everything at once or cover every point to everyone's satisfaction at once.

Mr Obama's speech to the Islamic world in Cairo is no exception.

Possibly the fairest summation is that while it could have been better, but could also have been a lot worse.

Predictably, many of the Right in the USA were never going to see anything positive in it and have trawled it for the negatives.

Though hotair.com's Ed Morrissey found it "surprisingly good."
...in most ways, it wouldn’t differ from a similar speech given by any recent American President.  In fact, the Cairo audience may have been a little surprised about the depth of the defense of Israel’s right to exist in peace, as well as the strong denunciation of 9/11 Trutherism that has been wildly popular among Arabs, even though Osama bin Laden claimed credit long ago for the attack.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak are praising it: Israel: We hope Obama speech heralds new era in Mideast.
The Israeli government praised U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech to the Muslim world Thursday, saying it shared his hopes for Middle East peace, but stressed that Israel’s security interests remained paramount.

Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs is a harsh critic of Islamism and the Palestinians, (and rightly so in my view), so he is no "shill" for the Muslim world.

Read the whole thing. It’s doubtful that this one speech is going to lead to a “new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” but it’s certainly going to give the Muslim world a lot to talk about. It will be interesting to watch their reactions.
However, over at the Lefty Huffington Post, he has taken some stick over a perceived failure to address the status of women in much of the Islamic world.

I think the writer, Peter Daou, is exhibiting the unrealistic expectations I alluded to above.

One speech of a general nature can do no more than gloss over a number of topics. It cannot deal with any at length or in detail.

Now, speaking of shills, people who know me know I 'aint no shill for Obama.

But I've just reread the part of his speech where he refers to the status of women and I can't see a problem with it.
"...but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous."

"Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity - men and women - to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams."
Okay, he doesn't particularly address Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow:
[only 13 years old when] stoned to death in Somalia by insurgents because she was raped. Reports indicate that was raped by three men while traveling by foot to visit her grandmother in conflict capital, Mogadishu. When she went to the authorities to report the crime, they accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. Aisha was forced into a hole in a stadium of 1,000 onlookers as 50 men buried her up to the neck and cast stones at her until she died. When some of the people at the stadium tried to save her, militia opened fire on the crowd, killing a boy who was a bystander.
But the people who tried to save her, including the boy who was killed by the insurgents, were Muslims.

Daou is right in another way though. Despite the strange silence of so many Western feminists, the inescapable fact is that in many parts of the Islamic world woman are treated as second class citizens or worse.

The Niqab (the black full body covering, showing only the eyes) is not liberating, irrespective of the dewy-eyed whitterings of naive young female journalists who put it on for not even a full day and swan about on public transport in Western cities like here in Perth.

The women of Saudi Arabia tell a very different story. The more they cover up the greater the obsessive attention of men there they tell us.

But Obama wasn't giving a speech about the status of women.

He has also been criticised by Gay Patriot for ignoring the terrible plight of gay men throughout the Islamic world.

This criticism is harder to ignore because Mr Obama did indeed say absolutely nothing at all about things like this:

hanged

Alright, Iran is one of the worst offenders in this regard and hangings of young gay men like this are put on as debased public entertainments, but the situation in most Muslim countries is not good. It is just worse in some compared to others.

Could not Mr Obama have at least made a passing reference to this?

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Filed under  //   Barack Obama   Islam   Middle East   Muslims   Obama's Cairo speech  

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May 29, 2009

Moderate Muslims Drive Out Al-Muhajiroun Supporters in Luton

In the British town of Luton today, members of the Muslim community confronted extremists and drove them from the streets.
Muslim extremists behind a protest against soldiers on a homecoming parade have been driven off the streets today by members of their own community.
 
Fights broke out and traffic ground to a halt when moderate Muslims confronted a group of about 12 men who regularly preach from a stall in Bury Park - the heart of Luton’s Muslim community. After Friday prayers, more than 200 members of local mosques turned on the group who sparked outrage in March when they disrupted a parade by the Royal Anglian Regiment through the town centre.
 
The extremists shouted ‘baby killers’ and ‘butchers of Basra’ at the returning soldiers as well as brandishing placards against the Iraq war. But today they were surrounded by a crowd as they began to set up their stall, shouting ‘We don’t want you here’ and ‘move on, move on’.
 
Angry words were exchanged and scuffles broke out between members of both groups, with the extremists shouting ‘Shame on you’ and ‘Get back to your synagogue’.
 
One police officer and two community support officers struggled to hold them apart until more officers arrived. Buses and cars were unable to move as the crowd spilled into the road.
 
Farasat Latif, of the Islamic Centre in Luton, which was firebombed after the protest against the soldiers, said moderate members of his community took action because police had failed to move the group on.
 
He said the extremists, who follow the militant group led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammed, had fuelled feelings against the Muslim community which led to a march last Sunday in Luton which was disrupted by white, right-wing extremists.
 
Mr Latif said: ‘We have been fighting these Muslim extremists for you. They represent nobody but themselves. The community decided to move them on because the police won’t. We have asked them, but they did nothing.’
 
‘I don’t know if they will be back. We have been the victims twice over - from the stupidity of Muslim extremists who metaphorically pour petrol and fan the flames of the right wing extremists.’
 
‘This was a peaceful demonstration and we hope they get the message that the law-abiding community is sick and tired of them.’
It's funny I suppose that Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (where this report was taken from) was regularly attacked as some kind of far-Right extremist when Mr Bush was president, especially because he was highly critical of Islamist extemism, (and quite properly so in my view), but is now taking flak from the Right because he doesn't want Mr Obama to fail, arguing (again quite properly) that it isn't in America's interests for Obama to fail, and calling attention to how some on the Right, in their rush to oppose Islamism, have jumped into bed with the racist neofascist far-Right in Europe, such as Vlaams Belang.
 
 

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Filed under  //   fascism   Islam   Islamism   racism   Vlaams Belang  

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