Thread: Targeting girls' schools in the name of the 'Religion of Peace'

Targeting girls' schools in the name of the Religion of Peace
May 31, 2007 03:45 PM

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...=World_2871148

All throughout the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan's impoverished western border with Afghanistan, lie the ruins of barbershops and music and video stores – symbols of Western-oriented life that religious extremists have destroyed in a growing wave of violence.

Now Islamist militants have a new target, and if they are successful, observers say their campaign could be disastrous for Pakistan's future.

In what appears to be an escalating spree over the last year, extremists have bombed at least four girls' schools and circulated violent threats warning girls to stay at home.

How come we never hear Rosie O'Donnell or Jane Fonda or Helen Thomas talking about these girls?

Or protesting the persecution of Lina Joy?

Or playing videos like this one on The View? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66h5kAKg5g&eurl=

playing videos like this one on The View? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66h5kAKg5g&eurl=

Read http://www.bigbigforums.com/news-inf...ght=repression

Or protesting the persecution of Lina Joy?

Last August, I wrote about the plight of an ex-Muslim woman in Malaysia named Lina Joy. She had converted to Christianity and wanted to marry a Christian man. As the Abdul Rahman case made chillingly clear to the world, there are dire consequences for leaving Islam. Joy bravely went to court to stop being identified as a Muslim--and earned death threats and family disavowal for her apostasy. Now, the verdict is in. Sharia wins, Lina Joy loses: http://www.abcnews.go.com/Internatio...ory?id=3224695

"You can't at whim and fancy convert from one religion to another," Federal Court Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim said in delivering judgment in the case, which has stirred religious tensions in the mainly Muslim nation.

Muslims cheered: http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...626300,00.html

The ruling was greeted by shouts of "God is great" from many in the assembled crowd outside the Palace of Justice in Kuala Lumpur...The Joy verdict, which will likely become a precedent for several other pending conversion cases, is seen by many in Malaysia as evidence of how religious politics are cleaving the nation, with a creeping Islamization undermining the rights of both non-Muslims and more moderate adherents to Islam. Last November, at a party conference for the Muslim-dominated United Malays National Organization ruling party, one delegate vowed he would be willing to "bathe in blood" to defend his ethnicity — and, by extension, his religion.

In several Malaysian states, forsaking Islam is a crime punishable by prison time.

The Becket Fund has analysis here http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/case/107.html
and here http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/article/668.html

"This decision violates international law and stands in wrongheaded defiance of the universal human right to religious freedom," said Angela Wu, International Director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, who attended a hearing for Ms. Joy and has testified before the United States Congress on anti-conversion laws. "International law and the Malaysia Constitution guarantee the right to choose your own religious beliefs and change those beliefs according to your conscience. Today the Federal Court made it clear that if the state says you are a Muslim, those rights don't apply to you. Unfortunately, for Lina Joy, a universal human right has been trumped by the state's insistence that she bow to sharia law."

I ask again, as I asked last summer: Where are the feminists? Oh, and how about CAIR? Or our State Department?

Or shall we all just pretend Lina Joy does not exist and sing "Kumbaya?"

Saudi religious police face backlash
By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 14 minutes ago

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - As the car stopped outside a Riyadh amusement park, two bearded men dragged the driver from the wheel and took the three women on a wild ride of more than an hour, bouncing over sidewalks and finally abandoning them on a darkened street.

The women at first thought they had been kidnapped by terrorists. The two men however, said they were religious police.

It might have gone down as just one more excess of zealousness by the forces charged with upholding Islamic modesty, except that Umm Faisal, the senior of three women, did something that is believed unprecedented in Saudi Arabia: She went to court.

On Monday, four years after the incident, the latest chapter of the legal battle being waged by this 50-year-old mother of five reopens before Riyadh's Grievances Court, which handles damages suits for abuses by government and public figures.

The unusual publicity surrounding Umm Faisal's story comes on top of two cases involving the death in religious police custody of two Saudi men — one arrested for allegedly consuming alcohol, another for being alone with a woman not of his family.

A trial opened Sunday against three religious police officers and a fourth man in the death of Ahmed al-Bulaiwi, the man detained for being alone with a woman. Relatives demanded the death penalty against the defendants.

Taken together, the cases threaten to undermine the authority of the force's employer, the powerful, independent body called the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Since the commission's creation more than six decades ago, there has been no known public legal action taken against its members despite complaints they occasionally overstep their boundaries. The public view has tended to be that whatever their faults, they are acting in Islam's name to defend morality.

But things may be changing.

The National Society for Human Rights, a nongovernment body, has issued a report which, according to the daily Arab News, levels a string of allegations at the religious police: abusive language, unsubstantiated accusations, humiliation of people during interrogation, beatings, unnecessary body searches, forced entry into private homes and coerced confessions.

The report, as well as the extensive coverage the cases have received and editorials calling for the commission's reform, suggest the government may act to regulate the force.

Another setback for the commission came in the appointed Consultative Council, the nearest thing to a parliament in Saudi Arabia. It rejected proposals to build more commission centers and give its members a 20 percent salary raise. While the council's actions are not binding, they reflect a general desire to curb the religious police's power.

"Society has developed and the relationship of other governmental bodies with the people has developed and become more human," said Dawood al-Shirian, a Saudi journalist. "Yet the commission has not changed."

"Society in principle doesn't reject the commission," he added. "But the commission's problem is that it doesn't have a proper job description."

Several media outlets have conducted informal surveys asking Saudis whether the commission should be dissolved. Some have said yes. While the polls may be unscientific, simply asking the question is significant.

Ibrahim al-Ghaith, the commission's head, dismissed the polls, saying the commission is "one of the oldest governmental agencies ... and not a cooperative that can be eliminated because of individual mistakes," according to the Al-Jazira newspaper.

The Saudi government is reluctant to tamper with its religious establishments for fear of angering conservatives and weakening its credentials as custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines. The conservative impulse has lately been illustrated by a request from 14 faculty members of King Saud University's medical school to ban male students from treating women and vice versa, on the grounds that handling bodies of the other sex is un-Islamic.

But there are signs the commission is acting to limit the damage to the religious police's reputation. It now has a spokesman and a legal department to guide its members.

Umm Faisal — her full name is withheld in reports on the case — says she, her 21-year-old daughter and her Indonesian maid went to pick up her two teenage sons from the amusement park in the family's new Chevrolet Caprice.

"I kept asking the men, 'Are you terrorists?' They finally said they were members of the commission," she said. "When I asked what they wanted, they called me names, including adulteress."

Umm Faisal said the men drove so fast and badly that smoke came out of the car.

The men stopped the car, called their friends and asked them to pick them up. The women, who don't know how to drive (and can't anyway, under Saudi law), were left to the mercies of passers-by.

Umm Faisal headed to the police to lodge a complaint. "When questioned, the commission members claimed we were indecently covered," because her daughter's veil didn't cover her eyes, she said.

In early 2004 she filed suit at Riyadh's General Court, but says several judges pressed her to drop it and late last year the case was dismissed.

She then turned to the Grievances Court, which fined one official $540 for mistreating the women and acquitted the other.

Umm Faisal isn't satisfied, and her appeal opens before the court on Monday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070702/...mej0altnqs0NUE

Schoolgirls in Afghanistan continue to face threats, attacks
Wed Aug 25, 8:52 am ET

Fifty-nine Afghan schoolgirls and 14 teachers were hospitalized this morning after an apparent gas poisoning, CNN reported. The attack occurred at a girls' high school in Kabul.

Ultra-conservative elements in Afghan society oppose female education and have a history of setting fire to girls' schools, threatening teachers and attacking students. Some even earn money for doing so. Although these extremists aim to terrify girls back into isolation and ignorance, many young women refuse be intimidated.

In 2001, only 1 million Afghans were enrolled in school, all of them boys, The New York Times reported. Today, approximately 7 million Afghan children attend school, of which 2.6 million are girls. However, schools for girls still remain closed in Taliban strongholds, particularly in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Two years ago, Shamsia Husseini was walking to school when a man on a motorbike drove up and asked if she was going to school. He then pulled the scarf away from Shamsia's head and threw acid in her face. Five other girls were also badly burned in the attack. Shamsia is now back at school, even though she fears the man on the bike will return to hurt her again.

"I still have nightmares," she told CBS Evening News. "I will fight these people by continuing to go to school. Last time they threw acid to stop me, but even if they hit me with bullets, I will not stop going to school."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynewspoint/2...wspoint_ts3472

‘ISLAM OR DEATH’: Jihadi Leader Reportedly Gives Christians a Dire Choice On Egyptian TV

Posted on December 19, 2012

Jewish News One (JN1) http://jn1.tv/breaking-news/jihadi-l...ans-on-tv.html has a disturbing report about Ahmad Al Baghdadi Al Hassani, a supposed jihadi leader who has some less-than-favorable views about Christians. In a recent Egyptian television appearance, he purportedly dismissed believers as polytheists and supporters of Israel, noting that they must choose between “Islam or death.”

It is reported that Baghdadi Al Hassani lives in Syria and that he is supporting the opposition there. Because there are a limited number of Christians in the war-torn area, JN1 reports that the impact of his words may not reverberate. That said, the network notes that the comments showcase a “growing trend of anti-Christian sentiment in the Muslim world.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=28HqnAEmzZk

AsiaNews.it corroborates these claims and has more about the religious leader’s statements and the way in which they will likely be processed in the region: http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=e...dtofriend=9319

In an interview last December 13 on Egyptian television Al Baghdadia, the Shiite ayatollah Ahmad Al Hassani Al Baghdadi issued a fatwa against Christians in Iraq. Labeling them as “polytheists” and “friends of the Zionists”, the extremist leader stressed that they must choose “or Islam or death,” while “their women and girls may legitimately be regarded wives of Muslims.” Al Baghdadi is known for his “jihad” positions and for attacking Americans in the past during their presence in the country, and today he lives in Syria, supporting the armed opposition.

Catholic sources in the capital tell AsiaNews that it is “a very serious fatwa,” but “it is unlikely that people will be upset too much.” The government pays “attention” to these proclamations by extremists, however it is possible that such words could “create panic in some areas of the capital,” where there are now “very few” Christians.

This is one of the latest examples of purported extremist rhetoric to come from Middle Eastern faith leaders. The television interview can be found below (not in English): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=nOgsm8B6JJ0

http://endtimeheadlines.wordpress.co...n-egyptian-tv/

"Don’t kill me." "Don’t kill me," cries 13 year old Somali girl before she is stoned to death for being a rape victim
An innocent little girl, Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow, was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck then pelted with stones by more than 50 MUSLIM men until she died in front of 1,000 jeering spectators.



The girl had been accused of adultery in breach of Islamic law, but sources told Amnesty International that she had in fact been raped by three men, and had attempted to report this rape. None of men she accused of rape were arrested.

She was detained by militia of the Kismayo authorities, a coalition of Al-shabab and clan militias. Initial reports said she confessed to adultery before a Sharia court. Amnesty said it had learned she was only 13 and that her father had said she was gang raped by three men. Yes, that was her crime, she was raped by three savage Mulsim men! When the family tried to report the rape, the girl was accused of adultery and detained.

A human rights activist in the town told the BBC on condition of anonymity that he had received death threats from the Islamic militia, who accuse him of spreading false information about the incident. He denies having anything to with Amnesty’s report. Cameras were banned from the stoning in Kismayo, but print and radio journalists who were allowed to attend.

Court authorities have said the woman came to them admitting her guilt. She was asked several times to review her confession but she stressed that she wanted Sharia law and the deserved punishment to apply. However, a witness who spoke to the BBC’s ‘Today’ programme said she had been crying and had to be forced into a hole before the stoning.



A few minutes later more than 50 men threw rocks at her and stoned the poor girl to death. The witness said people crowding round to see the execution said it was “awful.” However, no-one tried to stop the Islamist officials, who were armed, the witness said. He said one boy was shot in the confusion.

According to Amnesty International, nurses were sent to check during the stoning whether the victim was still alive. They removed her from the ground and declared that she was’nt dead yet. So, she was replaced in the hole so the stoning could continue.

This story is a gruesome and horrific reminder of Islamic law! The killing of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow demonstrates the cruelty and the inherent discrimination against women in Islam. H/T Ali http://www.barenakedislam.com/2010/0...a-rape-victim/