"Islam Is Peace"
Robert Spencer deconstructs the propaganda:
Islam is peace? Tell that to this girl, whose Muslim father tearfully begged her to come home...so he and the men of her family could have her raped, beaten, and murdered. The chilling story of yet another "honor killing" in the Times/UK by David James Smith. An excerpt from the story, which opens on the girl's uncle:
Ari Mahmod held his head up when he went to prison. He felt no embarrassment. And why should he? After all, he said, it was not as if he was locked up for something as inconsequential or shameful as theft. He was sure that, back in the real world of suburban Mitcham, south London, among his own people, they would be thanking his family for what he had done, taking pride in the decisive way he had acted.Many people might find it hard to comprehend that any man could take pride – pleasure, even – in the brutal murder of his niece. Banaz Mahmod had been beaten, probably raped, and finally strangled with a bootlace in the living room at home. Her uncle Ari had not been there, but he had planned it, knew exactly what was happening, and had been waiting nearby, waiting for his family reputation to be restored.
As he liked to say, in his culture, reputation was more important than life itself. That was why it had to be done – why his brother’s daughter had to die.
...Mahmod had five girls and one boy. His only son, Bahman, had accumulated a minor criminal history in the 10 years since the family arrived in the UK as asylum seekers. Bahman’s nickname among those who knew him outside the family was Tony Montana, as in the Al Pacino character in the gangster movie Scarface. But despite his misdeeds, Mitcham’s answer to Tony Montana had not apparently brought shame into Mahmod’s home – a modest semidetached house on Morden Road, with gnomes on the flat roof over the front door. No, as his nephew Azad told me, it was the girls who were the problem: people looked at Mahmod’s family and said they produced whores. Mahmod could not control his daughters. Though he had tried. Before coming to the UK he had arranged for his daughters to be circumcised – a shocking, traumatic ritual carried out by the girls’ grandmother, with their heads wedged in her lap while two other female relatives helped pin them down.
Bekhal, Mahmod’s third daughter, who was about 10 at the time, had accidentally found the clitoridectomy kit beforehand – a sharp knife, a bottle of alcohol and some cotton wool – not knowing what it was for until she peered in through the window and saw what was going on, and ran away, only to be dragged back to take her turn. Her grandmother had cataracts and couldn’t see properly. Bekhal recalled a cut nerve and torrents of blood. It was supposed to dampen their sexual pleasure, apparently, but if that was the case, it had not been a complete success. Bekhal, two years older than Banaz, had been the first daughter to make life hard for Mahmod. She was lucky not to be dead too. Now 23, she would remain in police protection for many years – to save her from harm at the hands of her own family.
As she described it, life had not been much fun back in Kurdish Iraq. As a girl – indeed as a woman – all you were supposed to do was cook, clean and shut up, and she had no idea there was anything more on offer until she arrived with the family in the UK in her early teens.
Bekhal and her sisters were not allowed out like “normal” children, even back in Iraq, so did not learn much about the ways of the world except what filtered through from the family. Bekhal heard stories of honour killings – a boy and girl shot in the head in the park after they were caught sneaking out to spend time together; a girl who vanished after being discovered passing notes under the door to a boyfriend.
As Bekhal well knew, Kurdish society was patriarchal and based on the repression of women. The rise of Islam had only made matters worse – nobody was in any doubt that a stricter Islamic faith had contributed to an increase in the incidence of honour killing.
A blurb at the end, and a snippet within the story says that Hindus and Sikhs do this, too. Awful if anyone does it, but the fact remains, this is yet another bit of barbarianism to chalk up to followers of "the religion of peace," that Robert Spencer shows, again and again, is really anything but.
And while the Koran apparently does not specifically sanction "honor killing," with its treatment of women as something between dogs and inanimate property, it certainly contributes to it.
link to Times story via Norm
Interesting article!Islam is a disease, suffered by 1.5 billion people, with no choice to go anywhere.Hindu and sikh communities practice on similar lines.But, not with circumsing females, but more of honor violence.
Hinduism does not say all men are born equal! which is against UN charter on human rights.I do not know, if people in CA must be knowing Text book issue that has caused lot of controversy with hindu groups and others.
It is the same.. as in the video ' they try to paint the picture or rather whitewash islam with peace''.Hindu groups are no less, when the text book issue has come up. They tried to present 'caste system' with different kind of perspective.However, their attempts were thrashed by courts there..
Sikhism is born rejecting hinduism, little of islam, christianity!!
Pras at November 19, 2007 3:22 AM
I guess, because of this Hindu caste system we have all the trouble in this world.
FYI:There are four castes in India.. and the fifth consisting of people outside of this caste system called untouchables. It was so horrible for them.
So, they changed to buddhism before and when Islam came, they took this faith.So, there is Pakistan and Bangladesh as muslim countries having racist India in the middle.
I did ask a Bangladeshi women once.. 'was your family muslim all through your generations? She said, Yes, I further asked, what about before coming of Islam? She dint answer, but, I paused for a moment and asked her, 'what made people to convert to islam? She simply said, 'We realised'
India,no matter how appealing to people is a racistic nation, as 90% of muslims in this indian sub-continent were once from the casteless or outside of caste system or called by'Untouchables'.
Pras at November 19, 2007 3:32 AM
Islam is a very vile sickness.
Flynne at November 19, 2007 5:53 AM
Here's my proof:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/08/08/gingrich/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
Flynne at November 19, 2007 6:01 AM
By the way, it seems terrorists are not poor and disenfranchised; or, as economist Alan Krueger puts it:
http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/what-makes-a-terrorist
Amy Alkon at November 19, 2007 7:09 AM
His book:
What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Lionel Robbins Lectures)
Amy Alkon at November 19, 2007 7:10 AM
There is no better evidence that religion is or leads to mental illness. In mutilating others, these people declare that the Creator they claim to worship built us wrongly, and presume to improve upon that work.
Radwaste at November 19, 2007 7:20 AM
I have to stop reading you in the morning, because I need to get to work, and yours links were really engrossing.
However, just to show what a jerk I am, wow, Robert Spencer who has written some really intriguing posts, must have the longest ears I've seen in a video.
jerry at November 19, 2007 7:50 AM
That's really funny!
And thanks -- that means a lot.
Amy Alkon at November 19, 2007 8:00 AM
So why is this clown and his lovely family still in the UK? Break a major law, he goes to jail and the rest of them get shipped back to whatever hellhole they spawned from.
Kate at November 19, 2007 2:16 PM
But Islam IS peace -- peace being defined by Muslims as the absence of resistance to Islamic rule.
cpabroker at November 20, 2007 11:22 AM
I learned about this from another blog that I read occasionally:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/21/saudi.rape.victim/index.html
The husband of the sentenced woman states that "Saudi society is respectful of women." I think this case proves that it is very much not.
Amy at November 21, 2007 9:51 AM
I blogged about that as well. Saudi society respects women like we respect dogshit on the sidewalk.
Amy Alkon at November 21, 2007 10:01 AM
No offence, but it was not that long ago when women here in the US were burned at the stake and murdered for stupid Christian morals too!!
Me! at November 23, 2007 5:03 PM
Not long ago? Uh, check your watch, Mel, it's 2007. The Salem Witch Trials took place in 1692, not 1962.
Amy Alkon at November 23, 2007 7:18 PM
In the grand scheme of things, 1692 really isn't that long ago. If you want to be fussy about time, it was in the 20th century when a man was legally allowed to beat and rape his wife in the US. It was public policy to turn a blind eye to such things.
Also, the good chiritian people of the south often murdered - just for the fun of it!!! Between 1889 and 1918, a total of 2,522 black Americans were lynched, 50 of them women. These people were hanged, burned alive, or hacked to death.
Do you think Islam is to blame for that too??
Me! at November 24, 2007 7:48 AM
Mel, we aren't talking about "the grand scheme of things." In the grand scheme of things, a million years is a drop in the bucket. This is 2007 and Muslims are behaving like savages.
Amy Alkon at November 24, 2007 8:04 AM
This is 2007 and Muslims are behaving like savages.
What's you point? My point is it really wasn't long ago that WE were behaving like savages. You have to be careful to judge...just because their society hasn't changed they ours has. "Savage" is pretty harsh...our society hasn't been much better for long! And in history I would say that white people have behaved MUCH WORSE. I'd be shy to pass judgement on another people after looking at white hisory of violence and barabaric behavior.
Me! at November 24, 2007 9:19 AM
I do pass judgment on them because they are behaving like that right now. I have no control over what happened in the past. Had I been alive then, I'm guessing I would have been burned at the stake for speaking out about it. As it was, in the less distant past, a guy in my building in Ann Arbor (when I was going to University of Michigan) threatened to burn me at the stake. I went to the police, who said they couldn't do anything until he actually lit a fire.
Amy Alkon at November 24, 2007 10:55 AM
P.S. I suspect he was mentally ill. I don't think he attended a mosque where they preached to kill the redheads and/or infidels.
Amy Alkon at November 24, 2007 10:56 AM
It boggles the mind that theft is more shameful a crime than murder, especially the murder of a female family member.
Nothing is more precious in this world than life. It is time to cease hiding behind political correctness and to stand up for the victims of familial murder crimes. There is no honor in killing your daughter, sister, niece -- ever.
Karen Tintori, author
Unto the Daughters: The Legacy of an Honor Killing in a Sicilian-American Family
Karen Tintori at November 26, 2007 9:59 AM
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