Imams To Rape Victims: Just Close Your Eyes And Think Of Pakistan
Am I intolerant of people's religious and cultural practices? Absofuckinglutely. Take the charming way imams condone rape, and treat women like possessions, like two-legged dogs that belong to the men they're with. Here's one example, from a Times Of London story by Richard Kerbaj:
It wasn't love that brought Aliya and Hassan together, but a couple of childhood photos he'd seen of her. For Hassan, Aliyah - then a 20-year-old from Manchester - was a ticket out of Pakistan to join his brothers in England in the hope of kick-starting a lucrative career in medicine.As for what Aliyah thought of Hassan? Well, no one cared. Not her mother, who threatened to kill herself if Aliyah didn't go through with the marriage. Not her father, who had routinely molested Aliyah in her formative years, and not her siblings, who desperately wanted to uphold their parents' honour and obey their demands.
For three years after her wedding in Pakistan in 1998 Aliyah - a practising Muslim raised in northern England, who wears the hijab - was raped and emotionally abused by her husband. "He wanted to do things in the bedroom that I didn't want to do," she told The Times. "And in the end he forcefully got what he wanted."
Aliyah, who worked as a factory-hand to support her unemployed husband, went to her local cleric to raise her concerns of being subjected to sexual abuse after her mother refused to listen to her complaints.
"I told my imam that I was suffering and that my confidence was broken," she said. "The imam told me to be patient. And I couldn't say no to him because I was raised to fear men and put up with their decisions."
Aliyah didn't go back to the imam because he was a close friend of her family and she was afraid that he would relay her complaints to her parents. She couldn't seek the advice of another imam because clerics don't usually deal with females that aren't their students or known to them through family links.
"I totally lost faith in spiritual leaders after that," Aliyah said. "I lost faith in imams because they refuse to discuss issues such as rape and abuse and refuse to speak up against it. It's seen as an embarrassing issue for them and they won't get involved because they think their reputation will be ruined and so would the reputation of the community." Aliyah also accused her mother of ignoring her complaints about her sexually abusive father.
Here, via JihadWatch, from Robert Spencer on FrontPage, is abuse closer to home:
Last Sunday Chaudhry Rashid, a Pakistani immigrant living in Clayton County, Georgia, strangled his daughter to death. According to police, Rashid explained to them that he had killed his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal, in order to restore his family's honor, which she had sullied by planning to divorce the husband to whom she had been given in an arranged marriage. Clayton County Police spokesman Tim Owens explained: "Apparently she and the father had argued over the marriage and the fact that it was arranged, and at some point during the altercation he did end up killing his daughter."The family appears to have adhered to traditional Islamic mores. A neighbor noted: "I would see the young lady outside every once in a while dressed in the traditional Muslim gear." Added another: "The father, he would pray at certain times of the mornings and evenings." And indeed, honor killing most commonly occurs among Muslims. While there is no direct sanction given in the Qur'an or Islamic law for it, the practice is encouraged by the shame/honor culture that Islam has created. A transgression of the moral law is not seen only as a sin to be somehow expiated by the individual who committed it, but as a blot upon the honor and purity of the family of the victim - and that blot inheres in the sullied purity of the victim, not the perpetrator.
...Ignoring the clear and close link between of honor killing and Islamic culture, however, the mainstream media searched for explanations elsewhere. CNN consulted Ajay Nair, associate dean of multicultural affairs at Columbia University, to see if honor killing was a "South Asian" problem. Certainly not, explained Nair: "My immediate reaction was that this is an anomaly in the South Asian community. This isn't a rampant problem within South Asian communities. What is a problem, I think, is domestic violence, and that cuts across all communities."
Also ignoring the incidence of honor killings in Jordan, Egypt, Iran, Gaza and elsewhere (including among Muslim immigrants in Germany, Britain, Canada, and Texas), the Chicago Tribune attributed it to the cultural rigidity of Pakistani and Indian immigrants, and even dragged in the crowned heads of Europe: "Such cultural unions serve as social contracts among South Asians and other communities, where a marriage agreement is more about families joining forces than about two people finding love--akin to the arranged marriages of European royalty..."
To this Warner Todd Huston of NewsBusters trenchantly responded: "Last I checked my history books common Europeans didn't go around killing their daughters for marrying 'wrong' and neither did their ages old Monarchs."
If there are women in the world who truly need rescue, it's Muslim women. Especially with the advent of Sharia law in the UK -- supposedly a choice for Muslims, but really not a choice for the broken, mistreated slaves of Islam, women -- there should be special phone lines to deal with their issues and to rescue them from the barbarians, if the women are up for it.
Another disgusting story here mentions The Henna Foundation. Apparently, they're a service organization for Muslim women, but Tuesday night I tried their website (on Safari and Camino) and it was a big white field with nothing in it, just their name and some colored fields on top.
> they're a service organization
> for Muslim women, but Tuesday
> night I tried their website
> and it was a big white field
Metaphor! Metaphor!
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at October 1, 2008 1:28 AM
In any sane universe Islam would be treated as a mental illness. I recall as a child whenever we did something wrong and as excuse we offered that Johnny did it as well, some adult or teacher would always mock us by asking, "If Johnny jumped off a cliff would you follow him?"
Of course we would always sanely answer, "No."
People who have succumbed to Islam would always insanely answer yes. Ask any Muslim boy or girl, "If Abdul blow up a bus, would you?" The answer of course would be not only "Yes!" but "Gladly for the sake of Allah!" or "If only it were packed with Jews!"
Honor killing, vaginal mutilation, rape of wives, etc. may not be directly instructed in the Quran, but nowhere in the book does Allah ask mockingly "If Mahmud jumped off a cliff would you follow him? Of course you wouldn't and of course you shouldn't." That's the problem with Islam - no moral compass.
bernie at October 1, 2008 3:42 AM
I say deport them all, if they want to live under islamic law they can live in a country that follows it
lujlp at October 1, 2008 3:55 AM
> I say deport them all
Which all? How will you know one when you see one?
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at October 1, 2008 11:23 PM
See my post on the next blog article
lujlp at October 2, 2008 5:12 AM
This is so deplorable! Muslim women are subject to extreme physical and psychological torture. No wonder that many people in the Muslim world grieve when they have a babydaughter born. Perhaps they sense what is going to be her fate.
Ernest Dempsey at October 6, 2008 8:50 PM
The first thing I would do is start calling it The Dishonourable Murder instead of the honour killing as those who perpetrate it would prefer. Words are power.
Thanks for this post. I have often said that we need to be offering help to these poor, broken creatures that say they "willingly" wear the hijab. At the leas we should be offering helplines specifically aimed at those who wish to escape from their enslavers.
Alison Dennehy at September 21, 2009 12:13 AM
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