Stoned to death for loving a boy of the wrong religion

A 17-year-old girl has been stoned to death in Iraq because she loved a teenage boy of the wrong religion.
As a horrifying video of the stoning went out on the Internet, the British arm of Amnesty International condemned the death of Du’a Khalil Aswad as "an abhorrent murder" and demanded that her killers be brought to justice.
Reports from Iraq said a local security force witnessed the incident, but did nothing to try to stop it. Now her boyfriend is in hiding in fear for his life.
Miss Aswad, a member of a minority Kurdish religious group called Yezidi, was condemned to death as an "honour killing" by other men in her family and hardline religious leaders because of her relationship with the Sunni Muslim boy.
They said she had shamed herself and her family when she failed to return home one night. Some reports suggested she had converted to Islam to be closer to her boyfriend.
Miss Aswad had taken shelter in the house of a Yezidi tribal leader in Bashika, a predominantly Kurdish town near the northern capital, Mosul.
A large crowd watched as eight or nine men stormed the house and dragged Miss Aswad into the street. There they hurled stones at her for half an hour until she was dead.
The stoning happened last month, but only came to light yesterday with the release of the Internet video.
It is feared her death has already triggered a retaliatory attack. Last week 23 Yezidi workmen were forced off a bus travelling from Mosulto Bashika by a group of Sunni gunmen and summarily shot dead.
An Amnesty International spokesman in London said they receive frequent reports of honour crimes from Iraq – particularly in the predominantly Kurdish north.
Most victims are women and girls who are considered by male relatives to have shamed their families by immoral behaviour.

For the full story go to the Daily Mail.

Aishath Aniya facing the Inquisition by The Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs

In 1632 Galileo Galilei, an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher published his book "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems". Pope Urban VIII stopped its distribution and reffered the case to the Inquisition.
In 1633 Galileo was summoned to Rome and formally interrogated for 18 days. Galileo confessed that he may have made the Copernican case in the Dialogue too strong and offered to refute it in his next book. Unmoved, the Pope decided that Galileo should be imprisoned indefinitely. Soon after, with a formal threat of torture, Galileo was examined by the Inquisition and sentenced to prison and religious penances. In a formal ceremony Galileo recanted. He was then put in house arrest in Sienna. Galileo remained under house arrest until his death in 1642.
In 1983 the Church finally accepted that Galileo might be right.

I am not comparing Aishath Aniya in any way to Galileo Galilei. What I am saying that The Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs is like the Papacy of the 15th century. Aishath Aniya is now facing an Inquisition by The Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs for writing an article criticising the buruga. She has been arrested and dragged before the inquisitors. If Aniya broke any laws, she should be prosecuted in a court of law. Why this "Inquisition"?
After her article was published in Minivan Daily, Aniya was told to “repent or resign” from her post as Deputy Secretary General for the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP), and chose to resign. Now she has to hide for her own safety- there are too many elements within the public at large who will carry out some violence that they believe she should undergo because some 7th century Arab ideology says so.
Thirty years ago what is now The Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs used be a small office called the Department of Religious Affairs in the Ministry of Home Affairs.

Aniya arrested and taken to Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs

Aishath Aniya was arrested on Thursday morning in connection with an article she wrote criticising the wearing of the veil.
She was apprehended by police at around 9:40am outside the offices of Minivan Daily newspaper as she parked her motorcycle. Aniya was lifted into the back of a police van and taken to Police Headquarters, before being transferred to the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs for questioning.
She refused to answer questions without a lawyer present and arranged to return to the Supreme Council on Sunday at 10:30 with a lawyer.
Religious scholars at the Supreme Council told her that the article, which objected to the concept that a veil must be worn because men cannot control their temptations, was “against Islam,” and “against Islamic principles.”
The Supreme Council has been seeking to question Aniya since publication of the article on March 20.

With thanks to Will Jordan. Full article here on Minivan News

"I know how these terrorists are inspired"

"I recall my Islamist days when my mind was closed to an alternative argument: there was only one way - my group's way. All others, including fellow Muslims, were wrong and heading for hell. To argue that dialogue will win over extremist Islamists is a myth; theirs is a mindset that is not receptive to alternative views, and does not recognise the sacred nature of all human life.
Wahhabism and segments of Islamism are defined by their rejection of mainstream Muslim teachings and age-old spiritual practices, literalist readings of scripture devoid of scholarly guidance, and a hell-bent commitment to confronting the West. Moderate Muslims have common cause with the West to extinguish extremism in our midst."

To read the whole article by Ed Husain go to Telegraph

Norway imports "female cicumcision"

The police fear that women from Somalia and Ethiopia come to Norway on tourist visa to perform illegal circumcision on young girls, and have already investigated two concrete cases. The Labour Party demands health checks of young girls.
Somali and Ethiopian sources confirm that such illegal circumsicison is taking place, NRK reports.
- Investigations into such cases are very difficult. Persons who have been here on a visitor's visa, have left again before we have been able to prove anything, says Chief Inspector Finn Abrahamsen of the Oslo Police.
However, most parents still chose to send their daughters to private clinics abroad, in France, England and the Netherlands, or to countries in the Middle East. Against these, Norwegian police can do very little.
- School nurses, teachers or others close to the child say nothing. The police cannot examine the girls on their own initiative, Abrahamsen says.
Labour Party spokesman for immigration policy, Arild Stokkan-Grande, says the Government must introduce a health check for young girls in order to reveal cases of illegal circumcision.
With thanks to Islam in Europe

Britain under siege."We definitely want to see Sharia law in place here"

Islamic supporters of six Muslims arrested in London earlier this week today staged a rowdy demonstration outside the top security police station where they are being held.
Dozens of angry demonstrators branded Tony Blair a "terrorist" while carrying banners stating "Sharia Law - the future, free our Muslim brothers" and "Crusade against Islam".
More than 100 Muslim men, women and children gathered outside Paddington Green Police Station in west London where the six suspected Islamic extremists - including firebrand Abu Izzadeen - are being detained on suspicion of inciting terrorism and raising funds for terrorism.
The group, dressed in traditional Muslim clothes including veils, chanted in Arabic: "God is the greatest! There is only one God, Allah, and Mohammed is the final messenger of Allah!"

Continue reading Lifestyle Extra..

Malaysia's deadbeat dads. Dhivehistanis know this story too.

Many Malaysian Muslim men who divorce their wives are ignoring their responsibility to provide for their children because the Islamic legal system fails to punish them, a women's rights group says. Sisters In Islam said women who were unable to get their ex-husbands to pay child support comprised nearly one-third of the 214 complaints it received in the first three months of 2007, adding that those cases constitute "only a small fraction of what is happening." "Mothers are forced to beg from their children's fathers so that their children have sufficient food, clothing, shelter and education," the group said in an April 21 statement. Sisters In Islam said Malaysia's Muslim women are suffering a lack of legal protection in a wide range of issues such as polygamy, where men who take multiple wives sometimes neglect the economic and emotional welfare of their families. Some Muslims interpret Islamic teaching as allowing a man to marry up to four women. The Islamic Shariah Court is the legal authority in disputes involving families, morality and religion for Muslims, who form nearly 60 percent of the 26 million people in Malaysia, which has Buddhist, Christian and Hindu minorities.
From DESERETNEWS.COM

Monkeys gather and stone female monkey for adultery

Zoology lesson in madharusa?

a culture of pent-up sexual frustration

Up to 70% of files exchanged between Saudi teenagers' mobile phones contain pornography, according to a study in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.
The study quoted in Arab News focussed on the phones of teenagers detained by religious police for harassing girls.
The same researcher also found that 88% of girls say they have been victims of harassment using Bluetooth technology.
Saudi Arabia has toughened penalties for misuse of mobile phones which challenge its strict social traditions.
"The flash memory of mobile phones taken from teenagers showed 69.7% of 1,470 files saved in them were pornographic and 8.6% were related to violence," said report author Professor Abdullah al-Rasheed.
He presented his study at a seminar organised by the King Fahd Security Academy, Arab News reports.
Public social contact between genders is banned in public in Saudi Arabia, which enforces a strict interpretation of Islamic law and morality.

From BBC NEWS

The Dresstapo strikes again: Pakistan bans staging play satirising burqa

“Burqavaganza” played earlier this month during an arts festival in Lahore, the eastern city regarded as Pakistan’s cultural capital, and home to some of the most liberal and most puritanical parts of the Muslim nation’s society.
“The burqa is part of our culture. We can’t allow anyone to ridicule our culture,” Culture Minister Sayed Ghazi Gulab Jamal told the National Assembly.
The minister announced that the government had barred the play, which had already ended its run in Lahore, from being performed in other Pakistani cities.
Veiled female parliamentarians and Islamist lawmakers cheered Jamal and thumped desks in approval, while trading barbs with women from both the ruling party and liberal opposition parties.
Described by critics as a romp, the play sought to highlight the impact of the veil on society, by showing how wearers use it as a way to hide what they want to keep private.
In the play, young men and women wore the burqa to go out on secret dates, and it featured a character called Burqa bin Badin.
The play also showed a burqa-clad married couple put to death for making love in public.
Predictably, religious conservative Pakistanis did not find it funny, going as far as to describe the play as blasphemous, a crime in Pakistan that can carry a death sentence.
“They have committed blasphemy against the Prophet (Mohammad),” Razia Aziz, a female lawmaker from the Islamist opposition alliance, told the National Assembly.
She demanded the government take action against people responsible for staging “Burqavaganza”.
Mehnaz Rafi, a lawmaker for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League from Lahore, opposed the government giving in to the Islamists.
“A few people cannot dictate affairs of the state. Every person has the right to lead his life his own way. A few people cannot snatch freedom from society,” Rafi said.
Shahid Nadeem, the director of the play, told the weekly Friday Times that the play aimed to raise awareness about a trend to force women to wear the veil.

Read it all at Kaleej Times Online

Amnesty report says Arab women singers complicit in rape

While African women in Darfur were being raped by the Janjaweed militiamen, Arab women stood nearby and sang for joy, according to an Amnesty International report published yesterday. The songs of the Hakama, or the “Janjaweed women” as the refugees call them, encouraged the atrocities committed by the militiamen.
The women singers stirred up racial hatred against black civilians during attacks on villages in Darfur and celebrated the humiliation of their enemies, the human rights group said.
“[They] appear to be the communicators during the attacks. They are reportedly not actively involved in attacks on people, but participate in acts of looting.”
Amnesty International collected several testimonies mentioning the presence of Hakama while women were raped by the Janjaweed. The report said:“Hakama appear to have directly harassed the women [who were] assaulted, and verbally attacked them.”
During an attack on the village of Disa in June last year, Arab women accompanied the attackers and sang songs praising the government and scorning the black villagers.
According to an African chief quoted in the report, the singers said: “The blood of the blacks runs like water, we take their goods and we chase them from our area and our cattle will be in their land. The power of [Sudanese president Omer Hassan] al-Bashir belongs to the Arabs and we will kill you until the end, you blacks, we have killed your God.”
The chief said that the Arab women also racially insulted women from the village: “You are gorillas, you are black, and you are badly dressed.”
The Janjaweed have abducted women for use as sex slaves, in some cases breaking their limbs to prevent them escaping, as well as carrying out rapes in their home villages, the report said.
The militiamen “are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish”, a 37-year-old victim, identified as A, is quoted as saying in the report, which was based onmore than 100 testimonies from women in the refugee camps in neighbouring Chad.
To read the whole article by Jeevan Vasagar in Nairobi and Ewen MacAskill got to Guardian Unlimited

Fashion Police Pre-Summer Crackdown continues in Iran

Those women who appear in public like decadent models endanger the security and dignity of young men,’ prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi was quoted as saying by the Etemad newspaper.
In what has become a regular occurrence ahead of the warm summer months, police on Saturday launched a campaign against the growing numbers of young women testing the limits of the law with shorter, brighter and skimpier clothing.
Under sharia, Islamic law, imposed after Iran’s 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise their figures and protect their modesty.
Violators can be given lashes, fines and imprisonment.
‘If primary punishments are not effective, repeat violators may receive up to five years exile from Teheran,’ Mortazavi said.
Since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005, promising a return to the values of the revolution, hardliners have pressed for tighter controls on ‘immoral behaviour’.
.....
A Teheran police spokesman said that since Saturday 3,242 people had received a warning for breaching the dress code in the capital, the semi-official Fars news agency said. The code also covers men who are not allowed to wear shorts.
Police have also stopped foreign tourists, who have to respect the dress code, Iranian media reported.
From Khaleej Times Online. To see photos of this activity go to Publius Pundit.

Aniya - harrasment and intimidation continue...

"Wednesday morning, police arrived at Aishath Aniya's home and said she needed to attend the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs for questioning in relation to comments she made about the veil in a Minivan Daily article in March. Aniya said she did not believe the Supreme Council had the right to compel her attendance, and told police they would have to arrest her and “take [her] in handcuffs.”

The Supreme Council has since publicly denied they demanded Aniya appear before them. "

......"Media Coordinator Najeeb did confirm to Minivan News that the Supreme Council had asked to question Aniya when her article was first published in March, and remained interested in doing so. "

From Minivan News

Ibn Batuta the famous Moroccan traveller and former Chief Justice of Maldives records that he failed in his attempts to put Maldvian women in veil. According to him the veil was an object of derision and riducule to the women.

Today the Islamists are much more powerful. The power that women once enjoyed has eroded under continual pressure from the mullahs. Only a few women like Aniya have the courage to stand up to them.

buruga for kurumba?

"al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders,"

Extreme Sharia alert by Todd Pitman for The Associated Press

What your local Medina Sheik don't tell you - Part One

"We had heard stories of the abduction of women from taxis by sex-deprived Saudi youths. At a Saudi friend’s wedding at a luxurious hotel in Jeddah, women dared not step out of their hotel rooms and walk to the banqueting hall for fear of abduction by the bodyguards of a Saudi prince who also happened to be staying there.
Why had the veil and segregation not prevented such behaviour? My Saudi acquaintances, many of them university graduates, argued strongly that, on the contrary, it was the veil and other social norms that were responsible for such widespread sexual frustration among Saudi youth.
At work the British Council introduced free internet access for educational purposes. Within days the students had downloaded the most obscene pornography from sites banned in Saudi Arabia, but easily accessed via the British Council’s satellite connection. Segregation of the sexes, made worse by the veil, had spawned a culture of pent-up sexual frustration that expressed itself in the unhealthiest ways.
Using Bluetooth technology on mobile phones, strangers sent pornographic clips to one another. Many of the clips were recordings of homosexual acts between Saudis and many featured young Saudis in orgies in Lebanon and Egypt. The obsession with sex in Saudi Arabia had reached worrying levels: rape and abuse of both sexes occurred frequently, some cases even reaching the usually censored national press.
My students told me about the day in March 2002 when the Muttawa [the religious police] had forbidden firefighters in Mecca from entering a blazing school building because the girls inside were not wearing veils. Consequently 15 young women burnt to death, but Wahhabism held its head high, claiming that God’s law had been maintained."

The above is from an interesting article by a British jihadi who saw the light after a stay in Saudi Arabia as a teacher. To read the whole shocking story click here.