At this point a great deal of the information about Ayesha age — both claims that she was 9 and claims that she was 17 — have been erased from the Internet by threats to publishers. But here is the synopsis … and, my dear, having been in Middle East studies for 35 years, I am neither woefully ignorant (as you apparently are about the entire history and structure of Qur’an and ahaditha) nor lying [s]. So tone down the ad hominem attacks so we can enjoy each other’s company and conversation.

So, here’s the synoposis for you.

Aisha’s age appears nowhere in the Qur’an. If it were important, it would appear there.

Shortly after Muhammad’s death, the whole fight between Sunni and Shi’a Islam began to occur. Ali, the Persian, was Muhammad’s favorite. Ali ran off to handle all the details of the Prophet’s funeral, and IN HIS ABSENCE, the Arabians (who became Sunnis) cast about for a legitimate form of claim on the keys to the kingdom.

FOLLOWING DESERT TRIBAL CULTURAL MORES TO THE LETTER, they found it in Aisha. Why? Because Aisha was Muhammad’s only VIRGIN wife. The first, Khadija, was a widow. The Jewish woman Muhammad took first as a captive and then married was also a widow. Making political marriage alliances, he married several widows … and then he marriage Abu Bakr’s daughter Aisha.

Now, watch carefully. Aisha’s age appears in the hadith from a Baghdadi source who was (1) old (late 70s) and had (2) a much-reported memory loss. Also, the case for disallowing this account follows from the problem with “Baghdadi sources” in that all their letters into Arabia were being censored or dictated by political factions at the time. Therefore, were Bukhari to have compiled his Salih today, he would never have included this account. Also, the man making the claim was too old to have heard it first-hand.

But the most major case AGAINST her being a child of 9 is that historical documents say that Abu Bakr was traveling in the East with her, and only returned with her when she was 17. It is speculated that Aisha was married off to Muhammad, not only because he really like her, but becuase, at 17, she was rapidly becoming considered “over the hill.”

Now, it doesn’t really matter on one hand, because sleazes will continue to quote her age as 9 for their own purposes.

The purposes of Sunni Islamic caliphs was to make the classical female purity claim on Aisha’s virginity, resting the entire weight of authority of Sunni Islam on this woman’s hyman. I kid you not.

But the historical evidence would not tend to support this claim, and that is important because Islamic feminists trying to free women from this crap can’t possibly get there without the historical claim. They are in that terrible Catch-22 that says that if you cannot make a claim on Qur’anic grounds or by historical efficacy, you cannot make it at all. Since it absent in the Qur’an, that’s a help. That it can countered on the basis of historical implication that she was 17 and on the flimsiness of the late, untrustworthy, and obviously political claim made from the cults in Baghdad, then Muslim women have a chance.

See?

“there is much more evidence that Muhammad married Ayesha when she was 17 than that she was 9, a number never found in the Qur’an or even in Salih Bukhari.”

This is blatantly false.

From Bukhari’s collection of hadiths, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 236:

Narrated Hisham’s father:
Khadija died three years before the Prophet departed to Medina. He stayed there for two years or so and then he married ‘Aisha when she was a girl of six years of age, and he consumed that marriage when she was nine years old.

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/058.sbt.html

More from Bukhari’s collection of hadiths, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88:

The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/062.sbt.html

More from Bukhari’s collection of hadiths, Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64:

Narrated ‘Aisha:

that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death).

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/062.sbt.html

[For the links given, simply scroll down or search key terms to find the relevant passage quoted]

Either Morgaan Sinclair is woefully ignorant, or lying. If it’s the former, she should not make claims that are blatantly false and easily disproven.

Seems that the writer of the article Morgaan Sinclair is gullible too (or thinks her reader is) when she wrote:

“…hadith that have overtaken any initial impulse within Islam that would have given women equality — an impetus lost, Bernard Lewis says, within 50 years of the Prophet’s death. Whatever was there effectively died as abrogation destroyed more and more of the spiritual side of Islam, replacing it with spurious hadith that pleased the Muslim male, to whose pleasure and control the entire religion has now been bent.”

This paragraph implies that Mohammed (wow, the writer even accords him the title “the Prophet”) was good and that only after his death did Islam begin to become bad. This is an unacceptable position. Anyone who has it in my book is unacceptable.

“BUT … Islam is, at base, disciminatory”

As is every religion darling.

And wow, where do you get your information from? Again, IDIOTS.

Now tell me is that Hadith or Quran?

Your little cuties are neither. Pathetic. Seriously.

The headscarf has and always will be worn dependant on the wearer.

Their intention is what matters, not what you think about the religion is telling them to do.

Seriously though, what you have written bothers me. It bothers me that people take religion into their own hands, and that has nothing to do with what imams are preaching in mosques, they are preaching modesty. Just like any priest would do.

Some people are idiots, but that is how it is in every religion.

The only thing that’s different is that these idiots do things in the name of their religion. But again, they do not and will not represent my religion ever. Because they are wrong, and you basing your theory on them doesn’t make you anymore right.

Please email me back on what you think. You have a right to think what you want to think, but as do I.

I am Muslim and don’t wear a headscarf, no one is forcing me to or not to.

A Feminist Islamic Reform in Turkey

[Originally published in The Washington Post]

“Women are imperfect in intellect and religion.”
“The best of women are those who are like sheep.”
“If a woman doesn’t satisfy her husband’s desires, she should choose herself a place in hell.”
“If a husband’s body is covered with pus and his wife licks it clean, she still wouldn’t have paid her dues.”
“Your prayer will be invalid if a donkey, black dog or a woman passes in front of you.”

In a bold but little-noticed step toward reforming Islamic tradition, Turkey’s religious authorities recently declared that they will remove these statements, and more like them, from the hadiths — the non-Koranic commentary on the words and deeds of the prophet Muhammad.

Hadiths are serious stuff. More than 90 percent of the sharia (Islamic law) is based on them rather than the Koran, and the most infamous measures of the sharia — the killing of apostates, the seclusion of women, the ban on fine arts, the stoning of adulterers and many other violent punishments for sinful behavior — come from the hadiths and the commentaries built upon them. Eliminating these misogynistic statements from the hadiths is a direct challenge to some of the most controversial aspects of Islamic tradition.

Modern Muslim intellectuals have long argued that the hadiths should be revised, but this is the first time in recent history that a central Islamic authority has taken the dramatic step of deciding to edit them. The media and intellectuals of Ankara and Istanbul largely welcomed last month’s decision, which the Turkish government supported. And although there were rumblings of discontent from ultraconservative commentators, they didn’t amount to a protest. Yet, despite the rhetoric about the need to make alliances with progressive Islam in the midst of the fight against terrorism, Turkey’s move toward reform has been widely overlooked in the West, and there has been little acknowledgment of it in other Muslim countries.

The proposed revision came from the Diyanet, Turkey’s highest Islamic authority, which controls more than 76,000 mosques in Turkey and other parts of Europe. Its president, Ali Bardakoglu, a liberal theologian appointed three years ago by the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (known as AKP), declared that a new collection of hadiths, free of such misogyny, would be prepared by 2008. He also announced that enlightened imams would be sent to the rural, conservative regions of southeastern Turkey to preach against practices such as honor killings.

Many Muslims view hadiths as sacrosanct, although their accuracy has been a major point of contention among scholars. The hadiths were compiled two centuries after the Koran, which was transcribed during the prophet’s lifetime and canonized right after his death in Medina in the 7th century. By the 9th century, people were constructing such strange stories from the prophet that scholars such as Muhammad al-Bukhari and Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj decided to evaluate and catalogue them. Focusing on the reliability of the chain of transmitters, these scholars created collections of sahih , or trustworthy, hadiths.

But some modern Islamic scholars have felt increasingly uneasy about the inconsistencies and narrow-minded assertions in these collections. There are other hadiths that explain Muhammad’s great respect for his wives, for example, and insist on the rights of women. The contradiction implies a need for revision. “I can’t imagine a prophet who bullies women,” said Hidayet Tuksal, a feminist theologian in Ankara. “The hadiths that portray him so should be abandoned.”

Similarly, in proposing to create its new standard collection, the Turkish Diyanet intends to look beyond the chain of transmitters to logic, consistency and common sense. In many ways, this is a revival of an early debate in Islamic jurisprudence between rival camps known as the adherents of the hadiths and the adherents of reason — a debate that ended with the triumph of the former.

The reawakening of this medieval debate and the consequent revision of the hadith literature could be a revolutionary breakthrough.

It is no accident that Turkey is the place where the traditional sharia is being reconsidered. The process of modernizing Islam, which dates in Turkey from the late Ottoman Empire, has accelerated since the 1980s, when Turkish society began to open. Since then, a flourishing Muslim bourgeoisie has emerged, and members are wittily called “Islamic Calvinists” for their religiously inspired capitalism. This has given rise to a new social atmosphere: In modern Turkey, you see models parading down the catwalk in fancy headscarves and Koranic courses promoted by clowns handing out ice cream. Muslim politicians such as Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul repeatedly stress the need for change in the Islamic world.

These reform-minded Muslims are not secularists who want to do away with religion. On the contrary, they want to reinterpret Islam because they believe that its divinely ordained, humane and generous essence has been eclipsed by mortal man’s erroneous traditions and ideologies.

This is crucial because only such godly reformists have a chance to appeal to more traditional members of their faith. Since the 19th century, traditional Muslims have felt forced to choose between their faith and modernity — a dilemma that has been fueling a reactionary strain of radical Islam. The Islamic world needs an alternative — a path between godless modernity and anti-modern bigotry. With its revision of the traditional Islamic sources and with its rising Muslimhood that embraces democracy and open society, Turkey may just be opening the way. The West should be taking notice — and encouraging other Muslim countries to take inspiration from Turkey’s moderate course.

Sorry guys, but shari’a law is 90% hadith. Included are some real cuties:

“Women are imperfect in intellect and religion.”
“The best of women are those who are like sheep.”
“If a woman doesn’t satisfy her husband’s desires, she should choose herself a place in hell.”
“If a husband’s body is covered with pus and his wife licks it clean, she still wouldn’t have paid her dues.”
“Your prayer will be invalid if a donkey, black dog or a woman passes in front of you.”

Sure men get special treatment. Do you think the people on this or any other forum don’t notice that in the Qur’an men are told that they can beat women, but the converse is not true? Hmmmmm? Do you think people don’t notice that women are stoned for adultery and men are just lashed for it? You think people don’t notice that men play sports but Iranian women can’t? You think they didn’t notice that this week women who signed the petition for women’s rights in Iran were charged with terrorism? You think they don’t notice that Saudi women can’t drive or vote and have to have a man’s permission to attend school, leave the house, leave the country, etc.

When people can raise a legitimate defense (for the indefensible), they scream Islamophobe and run. Meanwhile, you guys will not fix yourselves. As Asma Barlas has pointed out, you run the shari’a law on the hadith, on abrogational Qur’anic verses that NULLIFY women’s rights — and then when some kid gets her cervical spione crushed to pieces, you go running back to the Meccan verses that the Prophet (pbuh) may have believed, but which you certainly don’t.

And if you want to try “phobic” and “racist”, first get this: (1) I’m NOT afraid of you and I will NEVER shut up about this, so you can absolutely count on the fact that until the day I die I will keep screaming about this until people start listening with 48 women are butchered in Basra by creeps riding around in cars with no license plates and tinted windows … beating and burning them to death … for not wearing what THEY (self-appointed judges and executioners for God)… say they should wear. And (2) Islam is not a race — though God Almighty knows that if you can possibly get away with running that number, you’ll do it.

Notice it’s only MEN on this board bitching that a woman told them where to get off with this cruelty. Having a little problem, are we?

Well, what I do or any woman does is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

And BTW, if Muhammad were alive, he would be furious with every one of you who lets this stuff happen in the name of Islam and does nothing about it. The Prophet spends half the Qur’an trying to wipe out gynocide in Arabia and gave the quality to them that CURRENT MUSLIM MEN can’t wait to take from them. Everywhere radicalism rears its ugly head, women become trapped in their homes, thrown into cover, and treated like unpaid “house niggers” and sex slaves.

It’s beyhond me how you can get on this board and outright lie.

Yes, there’s domestic violence everywhere, but when some Christian nutjob kills a daughter, he DIDN’T get it from some church website that women are to be subjugated and beaten if they don’t get into cover.

Want to defend this??? Want to tell me or anybody else on this board that the Qur’an treats sexes the same? Well, it doesn’t. And the hadith are worse. Here’s a sampling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peFQWuk4nuo

No generation of Muslims has so failed Islam as this, and it’s the men who’ve done it, whether by direct violence, by the willingness to lap up the ill-gotten gains that have accompanied the fears attended by the debased violence of terrorist attacks, by the cowardly silence that says somebody else will deal with it, or by the simple joy of being able to subjugate woman without having anybody say anything to you about it.

You want me shut up? Fine, I’d love to. But until you go solve the problem that only you can solve, all I can do is keep relighting the flame so it doesn’t go out.

So tell me … what do you do with the following?

Numerous hadiths even have Muhammad informing a group of women that their gender will populate hell: “Once Allah’s Apostle went out to the Musalla (to offer the prayer) of ‘Id-al-Adha or Al-Fitr prayer. Then he passed by the women and said, ‘O women! Give alms, as I have seen that the majority of the dwellers of Hell-fire were you (women).’”

When they ask him why, he explains, “You curse frequently and are ungrateful to your husbands. I have not seen anyone more deficient in intelligence and religion than you. A cautious sensible man could be led astray by some of you.”

Muhammad’s assessment of their deficiencies comes from his Qur’an, as he explains further: “Is not the evidence of two women equal to the witness of one man? [cf. Qur’an 2:282, above]…This is the deficiency in her intelligence. Isn’t it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?…This is the deficiency in her religion” (Bukhari 1.6.301). The idea that hell will be filled with more women than men occurs frequently in the hadith. According to Muhammad, “I looked at Paradise and saw that the majority of its residents were the poor; and I looked at the (Hell) Fire and saw that the majority of its residents were women” (Bukhari 7.62.126).

If there’s “no difference” in Islam between the value of a man and a woman, why is it that under shari’a a woman’s like if worth one leg of a man? And why is it that a woman’s testimony is worth only half of a man’s.

And why is it that women rape victims are killed in Iran?

I know what you’ll say. You’ll say it’s not Islam? OK, then why are they preaching it in the MOSQUES?????????????????????

IF IT’S NOT ISLAM, THEN WHY ARE THEY PREACHING IT IN THE MOSQUES???????

IF IT’S NOT ISLAM, GET IT **OUT** OF THE MOSQUES.

And if it’s the culture, then stop using Islam to condone, continue and pass down Arabia desert tribal mores.

As I said … no generation in the history of the religion has so failed Islam as this one.

This case is called domestic violence. This nothing to do with Muslim or Christian or anything else. There are so many cases like this happens every day in Western world in Christian family, where nobody makes fuss about it.

Honor killing is not found in Quran or Hadiths. That is a fact.

All (every single one of them) nice quotes you pulled out from the Quran and Hadiths are about adultary or something else. In the case of adultary, both MEN and WOMEN get the same punishment. Men don’t get any special treatment.

Please see Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fatah on this issue. ISNA-related websites in Canada have been carrying all KINDS of admonitions against women, instructions to their fathers, and in general to men to keep control of them. Many of those websites — and in THOUSANDS of Friday sermons in the last 10 years — imams have admonished women and their male “masters” that hijab is obligatory. One Canadian commenter says that Muhammad Parvez is a victim, too. In one sense I would agree. Men make it impossible for each other on this one. One woman “steps out of line” and the man is practically a cuckold in the community, completely shamed. On the other hand, men are not, as Islam often paints them, so weak they can’t control their own sexuality, and they are not such damned children they can’t tell right from wrong.

When you have a situation in which a man’s personal sense of shame outweighs the basic goodness inside him, a goodness that SHOULD have prevented this man from killing another human being — seeing HER LIFE DOES NOT BELONG TO HIM, but to herself — and it did not.

That SCREAMS cultural problem, Ali.

Also, if you think it’s not a problem, then why are the Canadian imams trying SO HARD to get shari’a declared for Muslims in Canada — and why are Canadian Muslim women’s groups lawyering up to prevent it? I’ll tell you why: becuase they are already under siege at home and in the mosque, and they are hanging onto their civil freedoms by a thread.

And if things are the way in Canada they are in the USA, you have a problem. Becuase Muslims here tell me that somebody in their neighborhoods could be killed and it’s likely the police would never even hear about it. There is palpable fear of reprisal, and extra-judicial thugs operate — not quite the muttawiyin of Basra, but there ***IS*** enforcement of gender-based strictures, with Muslim women beaten, ostracized, threatened and otherwise controlled in every Islamic enclave in the world, bar none.

What passes for Islam now bears almost no relationship the brilliance of Islam at the time that, for just a moment, there was snow in the desert.

You people who agree with this article are either hysterical, bigots or ignorant. Domestic violence is common to all communities!

Keshi.

Top 10 Evil Children

Published on November 23, 2007 - 75 Comments

From time to time the unthinkable happens: children kill. Some decide to murder members of their own family in spite of their seemingly normal upbringing. Others do so because their upbringing was far from normal - often including beatings and abuse. Then there are misguided children who, from the sheer desire to kill, go on murder sprees ending the lives of purely innocent victims. Children are supposed to be innocent and pure; without malice, contempt, sinister anger, or desires to kill, yet every year many commit horrific crimes. Here are Ten of the Most Evil Children in History, with number One exclusively dedicated to one foul group. The age limit for this list is 17 years.

10. Brian And David Freeman / Nelson Byrdwell

David-Freeman-Skinhead150

Bryan Freeman, 17, and David, 16, who had shaved and tattooed their heads as a symbol of their neo-Nazi beliefs, were immediate suspects when their parents and younger brother were found bludgeoned to death in their Salisbury Township, PA, home. The boys had been terrorizing the family and, as a whole, the town. As the police told it, the triple murder uncovered in Salisbury Township, Pa., that week was every parent’s nightmare — the ghastly culmination of a long-running battle of wills between Brenda and Dennis Freeman and their loutish, hulking sons Bryan, 17, and David, 16.

9. Edmund Kemper

Kemper

In 1964, when Edmund Kemper was 15, he shot his grandparents, killing them both. He had been planning his repulsive act for some time and had no regrets later. The California Youth Authority detained him in Juvenile Hall so that they could put him through rigorous series of tests administered by a psychiatrist. Because the results suggested that he was a paranoid psychotic, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital for treatment. There he learned what others thought about his crime and worked hard to make his doctors believe that he had recovered. Although he was considered a sociopath, he worked in the psychology lab to help administer the tests to others. In the process, he learned a lot about other deviant offenders. Kemper was released after another five years and remained under the supervision of the Youth Authority. His doctors recommended that he not be returned to his mother’s care, but the Youth Authority ignored this. After Kemper murdered and dismembered eight women over the next five years, these same doctors affirmed his insanity defense. In fact, even as he was carrying parts of his victims around, a panel of psychiatrists judged him to be no threat to society.

8. Joshua Phillips

Phillips

In 1998, 14-year-old Joshua Phillips bludgeoned his 8-year-old neighbor to death and hid her body beneath his bed. Seven days later, his mother noticed something leaking from beneath the bed. Joshua claimed that’s he’d accidentally hit Maddie in the eye with his baseball bat causing her to scream. In his panic he dragged her to his home where he hit her again and then stabbed her eleven times. His story failed to convince a Florida jury, who convicted him of first-degree murder. His mother is still appealing his conviction based upon the fact that he was given an adult penalty for his crime.

7. Willie Bosket

Willie-Bosket

Willie Bosket, born on December 9, 1962, is a convicted murderer, whose crimes, committed while he was still a minor, led to a change in New York state law, so that juveniles as young as thirteen could be tried in adult court for murder and would face the same penalties. On March 19, 1978, Willie Bosket, then fifteen years old, shot dead Noel Perez on the New York subway, during an attempt to steal some money and a watch. Eight days later, Bosket shot another man, Moises Perez (no relation to his first victim) in another botched robbery attempt. Bosket was tried and convicted of the murders in the New York City Family court, where he was sentenced to five years in prison (the maximum for a minor). The short length of Bosket’s sentence caused a public outcry, and led the New York State Legislature to pass the Juvenile Offender Act of 1978. Under this act, children as young as thirteen years old could be tried in an adult court for crimes such as murder, and receive the same penalties as adults. New York was the first state to enact a law of this nature; many other legislatures have since followed suit. Bosket was eventually released from prison, but has subsequently been convicted of a number of other felonies, for which he has received a number of life sentences. He is currently in the New York prison system, in solitary confinement.

6. Laurie Tackett

Laurie-Tackett150

On the morning of Saturday, January 11, 1992, Indiana resident Donn Foley and his brother Ralph decided to do some quail hunting in a nearby Jefferson County forest. Just one mile into their trip, as Donn turned onto Lemon Road, Ralph spotted a strange object just a few feet from the road in a barren soybean field. At once it appeared to them that it might be a body, but the form was so badly burned and scarred that it looked to them to be a doll. Upon closer investigation, it became painfully obvious that it was not a doll. Upon investigation, it turned out to be the body of Shanda Sharer who would later be found the victim of a jealous lesbian love triangle. Her body, prior to the murder, had been slashed and stabbed with death eventually resulting from torching. Laurie Tackett was ultimately implicated along with Toni Lawrence and Hope Rippey.
Mary Laurine (Laurie) Tackett was born on October 5, 1974 in Madison, Indiana. Her mother was a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian and her father was a factory worker with two felony convictions and prison stints in the 1960s. Tackett claimed she was molested at least twice as a child, at ages five and twelve.

More after this message…

5. Brenda Anne Spencer

Spencer

On Monday, January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer used a rifle to wound eight children and one police officer at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, and to kill Principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar. The school was across the street from her house. She used the rifle she had recently been given for Christmas by her father. When the six-hour incident ended and the pretty teenager was asked why she had committed the crime, she shrugged and replied, “I don’t like Mondays. This livens up the day.” She also said: “I had no reason for it, and it was just a lot of fun.” “It was just like shooting ducks in a pond.” and “[The children] looked like a herd of cows standing around; it was really easy pickings.” Her lack of remorse and inability to provide a serious explanation for her actions when captured inspired the song “I Don’t Like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats, written by socialist musician Bob Geldof. Her quote “I don’t like Mondays” also appears written on a wall in the movie, The Breakfast Club.

4. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson

Bulger-Cctv-Image

Jon Venables and Robert Thompson (both 10 years old) had been stealing things all day at the shopping center — candy, a troll doll, some batteries, a can of blue paint, and other incidentals. Why did they decide to steal 2 year-old James Bulger? Was it a plot or a sudden, overwhelming compulsion? Once they had him, they didn’t know what to do with him. They could have easily discarded him, leaving him alone on the sidewalk by a shop where someone would discover the crying baby. But Jon and Robert, like children who would rather destroy their own possessions than give them to another, murdered the little boy. James’s parents would never see their baby alive again. The video cameras at the mall caught several images of James Bulger in the hands of his killers, frozen in time. He was to be taken on a long, aimless walk, cruelly tortured along the way. James was senselessly beaten to death by his ten-year-old captors, who callously abandoned him on the railroad tracks.

3. Jesse Pomeroy

Pomeroy

Jesse Pomeroy was 14 when he was arrested in 1874 for the horrific murder of a four-year-old boy. He was quickly labeled “The Boston Boy Fiend.” His horrible trek had begun three years earlier with the sexual torture of seven other boys. For those crimes, Pomeroy was sentenced to a children’s reform school but was released early. Not long after, he mutilated and killed a 10-year-old girl who came into his mother’s store. A month later, he kidnapped 4-year-old Horace Mullen, took him to a swamp outside town and slashed him so savagely with a knife that he nearly decapitated him. Because of his strange appearance (he had a milky white eye) and his previous abhorrent behavior, he was under suspicion. When he was shown the body and asked if he’d done it, he responded with a nonchalant, “I suppose I did.” Then the girl was found buried in his mother’s cellar and he confessed to that murder, as well. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Following a public outcry against condemning children to death, his sentence was commuted to forty years of solitary confinement.

2. Mary Bell

Marybell

Mary Bell was convicted of strangling a young boy, Martin Brown, on May 25, 1968, the day before her 11th birthday. She was, as far as anyone knows, alone on this occasion. On July 31, 1968, Mary and her friend (Norma Bell - no relation to Mary) took part in the death, again by strangulation, of three-year-old Brian Howe. Police reports concluded that Mary Bell had gone back after killing him to carve an “N” into his stomach with a razor, this was then changed using the same razor but with a different hand to an “M”. Mary Bell also used a pair of scissors to cut off bits of Brian Howe’s hair and part of his genitals. As the girls were so young and their testimonies contradicted each other, it has never been entirely clear precisely what happened. Martin Brown’s death was initially ruled an accident as there was no evidence of foul play. Eventually, his death was linked with Brian Howe’s killing and in August, the two girls were charged with two counts of manslaughter. Mary was released in 1980 with court ordered anonymity. In 2003, the courts awarded her and her daughter anonymity for life.

1. School Shootings

Columbine

The rise of school shootings has been staggering over the past 15 years and they still leave many people ultimately wondering why? Most of the kids involved had been ridiculed one way or another by not only school mates, but also family members at home. These murderous children acquired large caliber weapons in most cases; though in others, knives, hand guns, or the like were brought in to their schools and use just as effectively. Teachers, faculty, and students loose their lives each and every time this happens. Here are just a few of the incidents:

March 24th, 1998 - Andrew Golden (11) and Mitchell Johnson (13) gunned down 15 people in the Westside Middle School Playground.
April 20th, 1999 - Eric Harris (18) and Dylan Klebold (17) Columbine High School - 13 dead, 25 injured.
November 15th, 1995 - Jamie Rouse (17) Richland School Tennessee - 4 injured, 2 dead
February 2nd, 1996 - Barry Loukaitis (14) Moses Lake, Washington School - 3 dead, 2 injured
May 21st, 1998 - Kipland Kinkle (14) Springfield Oregon - 3 dead including parents, 8 wounded

This list is but the tip of the ever-increasing iceberg.

I don’t think I will ever be capable of understanding Islamic beliefs, nor how they see women as second (or lower) class people, nor how they can think that it’s ok to end a young girl’s life over a scarf.

I’m Catholic, too, Philip, and I bear witness to what I know. Women in the Catholic church do NOT, nor ever have, had equal rights. When women are priests, then they will have equal rights and not before. And don’t preach that “different roles” BS to me, either, because that’s EXACTLY how the Muslims phrase it, too. Men seem to believe that because we have the added *** responsibility *** of having children it’s OK for them to take absolutely everything else from us. No.

And I’ll tell you this, Philip. The first religion to give women equal rights —
REAL equal rights — not this BS that men USE to keep us out of our own natural power so they can control all money, all wealth, all inrluence, and all sexuality — will be the one that wins. And it doesn’t at this point look as if it’s going to be Islam or Catholicism. It looks as if it will be Protestantism.

Meanwhile, at least for me, NO SALE to your attempt to tell that because I have a womb, I can’t have everything else, too, and that only you can stand in the pulpits of the world.

You seem not to realize what you’re dealing with here. It was only in 1965 that the RCC recanted a basic doctrine that if a woman so much as stepped on an altar, it was permanently defiled and MUST BE DESTROYED. And the RCC has yet to apologize for its publication and use of the Malleus Maleficarum, a manual for how to torture women to get them to confess to being witches when they weren’t. Interesting how much money the RCC made off the inquisition. In matrilineal lands a woman’s property was siezed and turned over to the Church that would, ostensibly, “purify” of her poison. Then the church sold it for a pretty profit or turned ’round and gave it to some noble in exchange for titles and positions in the church. It was the tool of turning Europe from matrilineal to patrilineal inheritance, and that was one of its chief purpose.

To find Pope Joan …

(1) First go back to Anastasius the Libarian of the RCC (d.866).

(2) Scotus’ chronicles listed her as “AD854, Ltharii 14, Joanna, a woman, succeeded Leo, and reigned two years, five months, and four days.”

(3) Consult Thomas de Elmham’s official list of the popes. It says, and I quote, “AD 855, Jonaess. This one doesn’t count; she was a woman.”

(4) Papal historian and Vatican librarian Platina wrote in “The Lives of the Popes” that Joan was English, that she knew more of the sc riptures than any man, and that she was elected pope by disguising herself in men’s clothes and making herself a “monk” noted for scholarship. Or, where did Isaac Bashevis Singer get the idea for Yentl?

(5) In 1886, Emannuel Royidis published Joan’s biograph, Pasissa Joanna, stating in his introduction: “Ever sentence in my book and almost every phrase is based on the testimony of contemporary authors.” The RCC BANNED THE BOOK AND EXCOMMUNICATED HIM.

I am out of time for this, but I could on for at least two or three hours giving you citation after citation. But do also see3, Durrell, Chamberlin, Morris, Cavendish, Moakley, Gettings, Simons, and Brittanice on the Papcy.

Meanwhile, rave about Islam, but do it intelligently, not with the vicious little mouth you’ve got on you. You sound every bit as full of evangelism supremacism and haughty religious pride as any Muslim I’ve had the displeasure to debate lately.

AND, you are wrong about Pope Joan and you are dead wrong about the RCC and women. You are part of the problem, not the solution, on both counts.

BUT … Islam is, at base, discriminatory towards women. In fact, all the religions must deal with this issue - including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism.

And this is a problem, as what the Muslims — BY FAR THE WORST BY SO MUCH IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY IT — always try to do is draw a moral equivalence between the egregious Islamic assault on women — I would say a war against women — is far worse than the concepts of iconography in Orthodoxy or the specious rules in the Roman Catholic church.

In fact, I think that full equality for women on this planet will come ONLY when all religions, on whose tenets are based the punishments of women seeking their own power and freedom, are completely removed from all religious texts — and when women are allowed the fullest roles of the priesthood of all religions. Meaning, I suppose that Pope Joan (yes, there was once a female Pope) will not turn out to the last woman to head the Roman Catholic Church after all.

That said, the odious attempts by people like Sheila Musabi of the MAC to call for an “inter-faith” approach to the protection of women is pure hogwash, and I can think of worse terms for it, too. I’m sick and tired of Muslims trying foist their problems on people of other religions as there were an equality of abuse here. There most certainly is NOT.

There are many great Muslims, but the schools are run by very bad men, and 80% of all US and Canadian mosques are run by imams from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, and those imams are Wahhabi and Taleban respectively.

If most of the Muslims in the world were bad, the entire world would be on fire. And BTW, there is much more evidence that Muhammad married Ayesha when she was 17 than that she was 9, a number never found in the Qur’an or even in Salih Bukhari. Found earliest in Salih Muslim, who entered it from a source later to be found from a very old man with a poor memory who was under the “influence of Baghdad.” That means he was speaking under duress. In the following four compilations of hadith, the stories of Ayesha become more and more and more insane as men realized they could make up hadith to suit their positions.

Meanwhile, do not count out incredible people like Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fatah, both devout Muslims, who are quoted above — nor forget the thousands of Muslim feminists with boots on the ground in the most dangerous places in the world defending Muslim women from extreme shari’a law and the extra-judicial punishment of male relatives.

BUT … Islam is, at base, disciminatory

Larry Houle
http://www.godofreason.com
intermedusa@yahoo.com

Most Muslim apologists and also some gullible westerners want to argue that the ’so called “honor killing” is not Islamic and it’s a tribal/cultural vice.’ This statement is utterly untrue and only a wish full covers up. It’s true that in pre-Islamic Arab culture this heinous honor killing of women did exist; likewise, many other uncivilized practices like stoning, flogging, beheading, slavery etc also existed in the pre-Islamic Arab society. But Islam did incorporate entirely most of these inhumane/uncivilized practices of pagan society, which they now call them Allah’s laws.

Had it been the tribal/cultural practice, ‘honor killing’ would exist amongst the Arabs only. But honor killing does happen amongst the non-Arab Muslims also. Also Arabs belonged to all religions (Muslims, Christians, Jews, Bhai etc.) would practice honor killing with equal prevalence. Fact of the matter is-no Arab Christians, Jews or Bahai etc do practice this uncivilized act at all. Only Arab Muslims practice this heinous act with a regular pattern.
Honor killing does happen only amongst the Muslims and these honor killings get support and encouragement from the ethical teachings of religion Islam. In 1986 this kind of honor killing did happen in the United States of America in an Arab Muslim family. In 2003 honor killing happened in Sweden again in a Muslim family. However, some very rare, sporadic case of such killing might have happened in other society or people of other religion. But they are no where near to compare with the regular pattern, or routine feature of honor killings which do happen in the Muslim nations that I have mentioned. It has been reported that in Pakistan and in Jordan several hundreds of “honor killings” do happen every year. Perhaps, it will be more plausible to name this so called ‘honor’ as the “Islamic honor”, which Muslims stupendously try to save!

Dictums of Quran and Hadiths which may dictate/incite honor killing:

Quran- 4:15 “If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, take the evidence of four (reliable) witness from amongst you against them; if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them. Or God ordain for them some (other) way.”

Quran-24:2 “The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication-flog each of them with hundred stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the last day.”

Quran-17:32 ” Nor come nigh to adultery: for it is a shameful (deed) and an evil, opening the road (to other evils).

Quran-33:33 “stay quietly in your houses, and make not a dazzling display.”

Now some sahih hadiths:

Bukhari: Volume 7, Book 63, Number 196:
Narrated Abu Huraira: A man from Bani Aslam came to Allah’s Apostle while he was in the mosque and called (the Prophet ) saying, “O Allah’s Apostle! I have committed illegal sexual intercourse.” On that the Prophet turned his face from him to the other side, whereupon the man moved to the side towards which the Prophet had turned his face, and said, “O Allah’s Apostle! I have committed illegal sexual intercourse.” The Prophet turned his face (from him) to the other side whereupon the man moved to the side towards which the Prophet had turned his face, and repeated his statement. The Prophet turned his face (from him) to the other side again. The man moved again (and repeated his statement) for the fourth time. So when the man had given witness four times against himself, the Prophet called him and said, “Are you insane?” He replied, “No.” The Prophet then said (to his companions), “Go and stone him to death.” The man was a married one. Jabir bin ‘Abdullah Al-Ansari said: I was one of those who stoned him. We stoned him at the Musalla (’Id praying place) in Medina. When the stones hit him with their sharp edges, he fled, but we caught him at Al-Harra and stoned him till he died.

(See also Bukhari: Volume 7, Book 63, Number 195.)
Sahi Buchari: 8:6814:
Narrated Jabir bin Abdullah al-Ansari: “A man from the tribe of Bani Aslam came to Allah’s Messenger [Muhammad] and informed him that he had committed illegal sexual intercourse; and he bore witness four times against himself. Allah’s Messenger ordered him to be stoned to death as he was a married person.”

Sahi Muslim No. 4206:
“A woman came to the prophet and asked for purification by seeking punishment. He told her to go away and seek God’s forgiveness. She persisted four times and admitted she was pregnant. He told her to wait until she had given birth. Then he said that the Muslim community should wait until she had weaned her child. When the day arrived for the child to take solid food, Muhammad handed the child over to the community. And when he had given command over her and she was put in a hole up to her breast, he ordered the people to stone her. Khalid b. al-Walid came forward with a stone which he threw at her head, and when the blood spurted on her face he cursed her.”

Sahih Al-Bukhari Vol 2. pg 1009; and Sahih Muslim Vol 2. pg 65:
Hadhrat Abdullah ibne Abbaas (Radiallahu Anhu) narrates the lecture that Hadhrat Umar (Radiallaahu Anhu) delivered whilst sitting on the pulpit of Rasulullah (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wa Sallam). Hadhrat Umar (Radiallahu Anhu) said, “Verily, Allah sent Muhammad (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) with the truth, and revealed the Quran upon him. The verse regarding the stoning of the adulterer/ess was from amongst the verse revealed (in the Quraan). We read it, secured it and understood it. Rasulullah (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) stoned and we stoned after him. I fear that with the passage of time a person might say, ‘We do not find mention of stoning in the Book of Allah and thereby go astray by leaving out an obligation revealed by Allah. Verily, the stoning of a adulterer/ress is found in the Quraan and is the truth, if the witnesses are met or there is a pregnancy or confession.”

Al-Bukhari:
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Whoever guarantees me that he will guard his chastity, I will guarantee him Paradise”.

Al-Bukhari, Muslim, Abu Dawud, An-Nisa’i and others:
Abu Hurayrah reports that the Messenger of Allah said, “No one commits adultery while still remaining a believer, for faith is more precious unto Allah than such an evil act!” In another version, it is stated, “When a person commits adultery he casts away from his neck the bond that ties him to Islam; if, however, he repents, Allah will accept his repentance”.

Al-Bayhaqi:
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “O mankind! Beware of fornication/adultery for it entails six dire consequences: three of them relating to this world and three to the next world. As for the three that are related to this world, they are the following: it removes the glow of one’s face, brings poverty, and reduces the life-span. As for its dire consequences in the next world they are: it brings down the wrath of Allah upon the person, subjects him to terrible reckoning, and finally casts him in hell-fire.”

The above Quranic verses and authentic sahih hadiths clearly demonstrate beyond doubt that Prophet Muhammad, under Allah’s direction, stoned adulterers to death and flogged fornicators. Allah’s decree/choice of death for fornicators (Quran: 4:15) and flogging adulteress 100 times with no mercy (Quran: 24:2, which also could lead to certain death) has clearly sanctioned/dictated dreadful punishment for sexual intercourse outside marriage. It is from these scriptural divine spirits Iranian fundamentalist Islamic government practices stoning and flogging adulterers even today. The Iranian Supreme Court sanctioned that an adulteress should be buried up to her chest and stoned to death. Mullahs of Iran know the hadiths quite well. This august body is closely following Allah’s prophet. It is also quite prudent to consider that Muslim parents those who are practicing honor killing are directly motivated, or influenced by the above scriptural and historical (Hadiths) support; hence they are able to commit heinous crime called ‘honor killing’ with (almost) impunity, exultantly and with ample satisfaction that they are following the strict Islamic ethical code to guard chastity, as the holy Prophet repeatedly cautioned Muslims so seriously to guard their women’s chastity.

Islamic ethics for adultery:

The Arabic word ‘Zina’ means all extramarital sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. According to Islam “Zina” constituted social suicide-an entire society commits suicide over time if it allows fornication and adultery to go unpunished in the Islamic style. As per Islamic justice-unmarried fornicators receive a hundred stripes, but married adulterers must die by stoning, as described in the Quran and in hadiths.

Opinion of some famous Islamists about Zina

The Saudi Ambassador to London, Ghazi al-Qusaibi, says that stoning may seem irrational to the western mind, but it is “at the core of the Islamic faith.” An intellectual, the Saudi ambassador to London asserted that stoning adulterers to death is a legitimate punishment for society. He also says that Westerners should respect Muslin culture on this matter.

Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states: “Adultery in Islam is one of the most heinous and deadliest of sins. Its enormity can be gauged from the fact that it has often been conjoined in the Qur’an with the gravest of all sins: shirk or associating partners with Allah.
Hani Ramadan head of the Islamic Center in Geneva (Hani Ramadan is the elder brother of famed Swiss Muslim intellectual Tarek Ramadan, who are both the grandsons of Hassan Al-Banna, the founder of Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.) stated, “Islam has taken a firm and decisive stance against Zina (fornication or adultery). Allah, the Almighty, commands in explicit and unequivocal words: “And come not near unto adultery. Lo! it is an abomination and an evil way.” (Al-Isra’: 32).”

Mufti Muhammad Aashiq Illahi Muhajir Madani (Illuminating Discourses on the Noble Qur’an, Karachi, Pakistan, Zam Zam, 2003) also follows this tactic of describing society that does not undergo Islamic punishments for the two sexual crimes. Families fall into ruin, which means society also is ruined. Sexual sins also cause widespread disease (vol. 6, pp. 360-66).

Al Skudsi bin Hookah, (roving reporter and foreign correspondent for The Gaza Gajeera.): “I am very unhappy. Our way of life is under attack. And we are not fighting back. Deep down, we know that when a woman has disgraced her family, nothing will restore honor except by killing her. This is understood in Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Egypt, the Gaza strip and the West Bank. So why are we Arabs telling the Western press that honor killing is cultural, that it is not really part of Islam? Our way of life is based on maintaining our honor. And make no mistake about it: a woman does tarnish her family’s honor by engaging in pre-marital sex, or by getting herself raped, when she seeks divorce and when she marries against her family’s wishes. And keeping our women pure is a big part of our honor. So there’s no point saying honor killing isn’t really part of our religion. Honor and Islam are inextricably bound; they are what give our life meaning. A strong religion demands we choose to maintain our honor.”

Bassam al-Hadid, (A Jordanian with an American doctorate who spent 12 years as a hospital administrator in the United States): “I would do what I have to do,’ said, when asked whether he would kill a daughter who had sex outside marriage.”

Status of Women in Muslim society:

According to Islamic tradition the woman is an object owned by the man who assumes responsibility for her behavior and her life. The social and religious traditions lead to the isolation of the woman in her home. She is required to cover her entire body in order to maintain the honor of the man. In Qur’an, prophetic tradition and law, one finds a very strong presumption of women’s chastity along with numerous safeguards to prevent any imputation of un-chastity A Muslim feminist sexual ethics must help create the conditions for the Qur’anic and traditional values of modesty and chastity to be lived by Muslim women and men in ways that are faithfully chosen and equitably maintained.

A woman who is either raped or commits adultery becomes the source of shame to her family. People will not marry her because she has been spoiled; she and her family becomes the object of gossip of everyone in the society; hence the entire family can lose prestige. No one would give a daughter to the brothers of that girl in marriage and no one would marry her sisters.

The family and even the extended family are maligned and become outcasts. This can only stop if the family cleanses that stain with blood. The woman thus defiled must be killed even if she is a victim of rape.

Role of Misogynistic attitude in Islam:

Islam is dreadfully anti-women. This statement can be proven with 100% guarantee by the well known and established fact that-women folks in every Muslim country in general, and in every Islamic paradise (country where Islamic Shariaat is enforced) in particular, are severely subjugated, oppressed, and considered less than second class citizen. Women in Islam are considered half human and in the Quran women have half the rights of men, sister has half the rights of brother, and women are considered deficient in intelligence.

Practically and Literally Islam consider women as the sources of great shame. Prophet Muhammad said women are awrah which can be translated as object of shame. What is awrah? The Encyclopedia of Islam defines ‘awrah’as pudendum, which is the external genitals, especially of the female. The word Pudendum derives from the Latin pudor which means sense of shame and modesty. Therefore, awrah signify an object of shame that needs to be covered.

Interestingly, in the Indian sub-continent (Bangladesh-India-Pakistan)-women have another alternative name calling, in spite of having their usual name for the English word woman in the respective language. And this famous name calling is “Auraat” and common in all the three countries of the Indian sub-continent.

Obviously this common word “Auraat” for women came from the Arabic word Awrah. This common word “Auraat” is usually used as the synonym for woman with empathy, hatred, mercy and shame.

According to the following Hadiths, women not only have ten ‘awrah, but the woman herself is perceived as ‘awrah: “The woman is ‘awrah. When she goes outside (the house), the devil welcomes her” (Ihy’a ‘Uloum ed-Din by Ghazali, Dar al-Kotob al-’Elmeyah, Beirut , Vol II, Kitab Adab al-Nikah, p. 65. Reported by Tirmizi as a true and good Ahadith).
” Hazrat Ali (rightly guided Caliph) reported the Prophet saying: “Women have ten (’awrah). When she gets married, the husband covers one, and when she dies the grave covers the ten.” ( Kanz-el-’Ummal, Vol. 22, Hadith No. 858. See also Ihy’a).

In most fanatical Islamic nations when a woman loses her awrah by e.g. through rape, she becomes the object of shame for her entire family, and also for the society. Only way to remove that shame and restore the honor is to remove that defiled woman. It is practiced in most Islamic countries with a regular pattern. The more religious is a country, the more is widespread the honor killing. As for example, Pakistan a Muslim majority nation did not have practice of honor killing until the fanatic and despotic Military dictator General Ziaul Hoq came to power. This despotic ruler by his decade long dictatorship turned Pakistan into an Islamic Sharia country. Along with intense acceleration of making Pakistan into a hub of Talibans, and Islamic terrorist’s country, citizens of Pakistan also started vigorous practicing of honor killing on a regular basis.

Conclusion:

Judging everything described in this essay, one can very genuinely lead to the conclusion that ‘honor killing’ is indeed the vice of Islam. Islam has much to do with honor killing practices which only do exist amongst the Muslims of the world. Had it been un-Islamic practice, we would have seen some Muslim nations prohibiting such cruel practice by Sharia law. We have not seen any Muslim country did enact any such law to curve honor killing.
We have seen innumerable cases of fatwas by Mullahs to prohibit alcohol drinking, pork eating or listening western music; but never ever heard any such fatwa against honor killing. Rather, honor killing has silent support from the devout Islamists of all kinds. Islamists condone honor killing silently! No wonder that the Al Skudsi bin Hookah (reported of Gazagejeera) so passionately said: “So there’s no point saying honor killing isn’t really part of our religion. Honor and Islam are inextricably bound; they are what give our life meaning. A strong religion demands we choose to maintain our honor.”

One may argue that Quran does not say clearly about honor killing! Fact is there are plenty of things Muslims practice that are also not mentioned in the Quran. Stoning death also not available in the Quran. Yet Iranian Islamic government does practice stoning death by the decree of Islamic court. Afghan Taliban government did routinely practice stoning and flogging of adulterers. Most importantly, Quran did not create any scriptural instruction to ban the so called Arab tribal practice of “honor killing” either! Besides, if the honor killing was simply a tribal practice-then it would have been prevailed amongst the Arabs of all religions. There is no evidence to support that a Christian or Jewish family of Jordan or Palestine did practice honor killing.

Muslims who are stunningly devout and laden with Islamic superstitious beliefs do commit crime of Honor killing to fulfill their obligation of preserving Islamic ethics, and women chastity. The more a country gets fanatically religious the more frequent are honor killings (Pakistan is a perfect example).

Islam has incorporated many pre-Islamic practices of Arab pagans (stoning deaths, flogging the fornicators, slavery, war booty, beheading the criminals, cutting hands and foots of thieves, many rituals of animal sacrifice, annual pilgrimage to Mecca etc.) and readily called them Islamic or Allah’s laws. Honor killing is one such pre-Islamic practice of Arab pagans which has been practicing by some devout Muslim families of many good Islamic nations of the world.

Because of the fact that the “honor killings” do have silent support from Islam, the killers are given light sentences, sometimes with little or no jail time at all. The killers are primarily influenced by Islamic ethics, and mainly defend their act of murder by referring to the Koran and Islam. They usually justify their evil deeds by the directives set down in the Islamic ethical beliefs and principles. Koran is very strict and belligerent regarding how to control women’s sexuality, and Islamic Law; Sharia, rules harsh punishments including lashing and stoning to death for women’s voluntary sexual activities. And it is because of these Islamic elements of support, no Islamic government dares to enact any criminal law to ban this barbaric slaughtering of innocent family girls. Even then some Islamists will still say that “honor killing” has nothing to do with Islam; just the way they say “Islamic terrorism” has nothing to do with the so called peaceful Islam. Their hypocritical denial is utter nonsense and stupendously deceptive. I urge those Islamists to tell us why this “honor killing” never happens among the non-Muslim Arab families? They must also tell us-why no Arab and non-Arab Muslim government dare to make any strict law to ban honor killings in their land?

Denying the truth is tantamount to committing this heinous crime to humanity, and denying will never solve this chronic problem of Islamic nations. Only way honor killing can be stopped is to admit the truth (real cause), and stop controlling public lives by the draconian laws (Sharia) of Islam. Let there be a strict separation of ‘Mosque and State’ in every Muslim majority nation of the world. Honor killing will definitely cease to exist.

References:

1. Honor killing-maintaining family honor: by Al Skudsi bin Hookah, roving reporter and foreign correspondent for The Gaza Gajeera. Jan 20, 2003
2. The Seattle Times: ‘Honor killing’ shakes up Sweden after man slays daughter who wouldn’t wed: By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times http://www.sullivan-county.com/id4/honor_kill.htm).
3. Culture of death? Palestinian girl’s murder highlights growing number of ‘honor killings’. http://www.sullivan-county.com/w/cul_death.htm
4. Honor Killing: By Ali Sina http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina50128.htm
5. The Holy Qur’an, Translated by A. Yousuf Ali, Published by Amana Corporation, Brentwood, Maryland, 1983
6. Buchari Sharif, Bengali Translation by Maulana Muhammad Mustafizur Rahman, Sulemani Printers and Publishers, Dhaka, Second edition-1999.
7. “Crimes of Honour” Women’s Tragedy under Islam & Tribal Customs By Azam Kamiguian.

People in North America have no idea about islam. I wrote a piece into a local paper about the evils in islam and my name and adress wound up on an international web site - no other comments. Intimidation? You bet - and I’m not even close to islam where I live.

I also know muslims who have begun to question islam - and are leaving because they see the love of Christ in Christianity. They have told me that islam is a fear based, don’t-ask-questions religion. Also, it’s amazing that even here in North America, those who covert to Christianity sometimes do so undercover because they will lose family, especially children if they are women, in their home countries. That’s state law even in some so-called moderate counties.

Finally, I tell everyone who will listen NOT to believe me just because I say so. ANY serious study of islam past and present by an objective person will revel the truth of what we are saying.

Thank you. Very encouraging to see this morning. I do appreciate it. Many, many women and girls like Konca Kuris have died for nothing. And now, according to Farzana Hassan, the Canadian Muslim women’s activist (whose imam told her husband he’d “better get control of her”), Muslim girls as young and five and six are being forced to wear hijab by their parents. What kind of a choice is that? Zero. So these Islamic spokespeople — always MALE, right???? — telling us they have a choice is a bald-faced black lie.

Anyhow, Bruce, thank you so much.

Cheers,
Morgaan

Maybe we should write these words on a million wall and lamp-posts until we all get it …

“Remember Asqa Parvez!”

QUOTING TO END OF COMMENT:

Let me tell you, when I was a practicing Muslim, myself and other Muslim women certainly had difficulties with a chunk of the men in the community when it came to sexual harassment and domestic violence when attempting to bring up these concerns in our mosque.

There was a generalized hatred against feminists and women’s shelters because they were seen to push feminism, which many men (and women) in the community believed would further push women from their faith and their hijab.

It was wrongly understood and propagated, that all western women were feminists. Mixing with non-Muslim women was discouraged by a University professor who sat on the mosque’s all male board (that’s what got me to remove my hijab in protest).

After I left the practice I found out a close friend of mine - a Canadian convert - had been beaten by her husband for years but it was kept hush hush. She was even chastised by her best friend - another Canadian convert - for calling the police to one assault. This was highly discouraged in the Muslim community I was involved in, as it was discouraged to go to shelters.

I also found out when I left the community, a converted Canadian man had been assaulting his wife for years and using Islam to justify it. Yet he was the one who obstructed us women the most when we tried to encourage the Imam of our mosque to address how sexual harassment and domestic violence wasn’t acceptable to the faith to the congregation at Friday’s prayer. The Imam never bothered speaking to our concerns, despite the fact he was a professional in the community as well as a lecturer at an educational institution.

As for the hijab, I accepted it initially because of my belief. But then it turned to the irrational statements that I shouldn’t go out on my own because I “wasn’t safe” from predatory men. I wasn’t safe from those practicing Muslim men who assumed because I wasn’t married that I was sleeping around.

One of the reasons I was told that I should be wearing my hijab is that men are weak and cannot control themselves when they perceive beauty (and that could be just about anything).

Looking back, that was just dogmatic attempts at brainwashing constantly permeated by many in my Muslim community along with the propaganda that the Jews are running the media. I was actually told by my Canadian convert friend that I shouldn’t trust jews because the religion taught us not too. That feminists will turn our wives and daughters against religion, homosexuality is being taught in the schools, and a generalized hatred for the U.S., which is one thing in common between many Ontarians and Muslims, which have been exploited and manipulated by some politicians.

But are these same Islamic organizations that are addressing the media now giving the impression they don’t condone this behavior, addressing these issues privately within their communities?

To this day, I don’t think there is much effort…

That’s what I experienced and those are some of the reasons I left.

See Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fatah in National Post yesterday and the CTV interview with Sayyed, and you will find all the facts you need. And I have sources you don’t.

Mr. Lucas:

These aren’t single-instance crimes, they are crimes preached in the mosque and exonerated by Qur’anic verses, hadith, and mahdhab. They are a worldwide phenomenon. Today in Egypt an imam sued the government of Egypt to have FGM REINSTITUTED to curb women’s (natural) sexual desire. This is a level of religious control unheard of in these times, and whereas some nutjob of a Christian mother does something incredibly cruel, it is rare indeed that you find a church preaching it from the pulpit. However, you do find the entire Shafi’i school of Islam demanding circumcision for women. Please see the Dispatches film at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peFQWuk4nuo for further information. Please watch all six Dispatches films which were taken under cover. Then please find me an equivalent set of films on any Christian, Jewish, or Buddhist textl. These imams are the public enemy #1 for every woman in the world now, because everywhere they go, the first thing to fall is women’s righst for Muslim women, and then for Christian women and secular women. If you don’t think they are targeting the women you know, I think you’re not reading enough. Pay particular attention on these videos to the American guy who is the preacher here. Listen to what he says about what should happen to women. And then listen to the imam tell you how a child should be beaten if she’s not wearing jihab by the time she’s 10.

And BTW for all of you, I am a woman.

To all of you out there who know a girl like Aqsa…please don’t idly stand by and let another girl be brutally attacked. HELP HER…SAY SOMETHING…TELL SOMEONE….HELP HER TO HELP HERSELF. Please don’t let this young girls death be in vain. Let it be a wake up call. We all have a responsibility to speak up when someone we know is living under threats of death. Don’t politely look away when they turn to you for help.

I hope we all learn from this. ‘

Rest in Peace Aqsa.