Yemeni girl, 12, dies in painful childbirth
By Mohammed Jamjoom
CNN
AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- A 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who was forced into marriage, died during a painful childbirth that also killed her baby, a children's rights group said Monday.
Fawziya Ammodi struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding at a hospital on Friday, said the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.
"Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening," said Seyaj President Ahmed al-Qureshi.
Born into an impoverished family in Hodeidah, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off to a 24-year-old man last year, al-Qureshi said.
Child brides are commonplace in Yemen, especially in the Red Sea Coast where tribal customs hold sway. Hodeidah is the fourth largest city in Yemen and an important port.
More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18 -- many times to older men, some with more than one wife, a study by Sanaa University found.
While it was not immediately known why Fawziya's parents married her off, the reasons vary. Sometimes, financially-strapped parents offer up their daughters for hefty dowries.
Marriage means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. And often, parents will extract a promise from the husband to wait until the girl is older to consummate the marriage.
Children's organization UNICEF issued a statement Monday saying: "Child marriages violate the rights of children in the most deplorable way. The younger the girl is when she becomes pregnant, the greater the health risks for her and her baby.
"Girls who give birth before the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. Child marriage denies girls of their childhood, deprives them of an education and robs them of their innocence."
"More must be done to address the underlying causes in order to prevent tragic deaths like those of 12-year-old Fawziya and her baby," the statement added.
The issue of Yemeni child brides came to the forefront in 2008 with 10-year-old Nujood Ali.
She was pulled out of school and married to a man who beat and raped her within weeks of the ceremony.
To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- the first time in her life -- to get across town to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.
After a well-publicized trial, she was granted a divorce.
The Yemeni parliament tried in February to pass a law, setting the minimum marriage age at 17. But the measure has not reached the president because many parliamentarians argued it violates sharia, or Islamic law, which does not stipulate a minimum age.
Showing posts with label sharia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sharia. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Sharia's Plump Target in Minnesota
A Minnesota food-processing plant and an employment agency just knuckled under in a religious-discrimination lawsuit brought by 156 Somali Muslims.
Trial lawyers strategize for just these kinds of advantages. They trawl for cases where the costs of litigation force defendants to settle even where there’s no likelihood a jury is going to find any wrongdoing.
Not only do the trial lawyers get an easy near -million in attorney fees, but the Muslim employees win an easy victory imposing Sharia rules in the American workplace.
Bias suits settled with Gold'n Plump, job agencyIt’s important to keep in mind that this was a settlement, not the result of a trial on the merits. The court’s opinion approving the settlement found that Gold’n Plump and the employment agency were forced to settle because the expenses of proceeding with the case would have risked financial disaster.
Muslim workers receive $1.35 million under a religious discrimination settlement.
Last update: March 31, 2009 - 11:00 PM
A federal judge gave approval for Gold'n Plump Inc. and an employment agency to pay $1.35 million to settle lawsuits alleging religious discrimination against Muslims at a chicken processing plant in Cold Spring, Minn.
The money will go to 128 Somali Muslims who claim that St. Cloud-based Gold'n Plump violated their religious rights by refusing to allow them prayer breaks during work hours, and to another 28 workers who said a St. Paul employment agency, the Work Connection Inc., required them to sign forms acknowledging they would be required to handle pork.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated the allegations and said it found cause to believe discrimination occurred, according to lawsuits filed last year.
In a settlement approved Tuesday by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeanne Graham, Gold'n Plump will add a paid break during the second half of each shift to accommodate Muslim employees who wish to pray. The break is in addition to one early in the shift and lunch breaks required by law.
The Work Connection has agreed to provide offers of employment to the 28 job seekers who were turned away for not signing the "pork form."
The $1.35 million settlement includes $985,000 for legal costs and $365,000 in cash payments to the 156 workers.
CHRIS SERRES
#
A major factor motivating TWC and Gold’n Plump to settle was the adverse effect of litigation costs on their insurance policy limits. Both Gold’n Plump and TWC had liability insurance for the types of claims asserted in this case, but the
policies contained provisions that reduced the amount of money available to pay a judgment as litigation expenses increased. Thus, as litigation proceeded, the assets of TWC and Gold’n Plump were increasingly exposed. Furthermore, TWC’s and Gold’n Plump’s attorneys’ fees were being paid from the same pool of insurance money that was potentially available to pay a judgment, and further litigation would have continually eroded this fund.
Trial lawyers strategize for just these kinds of advantages. They trawl for cases where the costs of litigation force defendants to settle even where there’s no likelihood a jury is going to find any wrongdoing.
Not only do the trial lawyers get an easy near -million in attorney fees, but the Muslim employees win an easy victory imposing Sharia rules in the American workplace.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
'The Gathering Storm'--The Sequel
Speaking of the Sharia Express, the UK is off to a roaring start on its Rush Hour Commute to Hell, “with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.” (“Revealed: UK’s first official sharia courts”).
According to the London TimesOnline,
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.
Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.
This is justified by using the UK’s Arbitration Act, which gives the rulings of arbitration tribunals the power of law, provided both parties in a dispute agree to be bound by the agreement. This is the brainchild of Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the new sharia courts.
But arbitration, which has been around for years, has only ever been used to resolve civil matters, like private lawsuits, business disputes, contract disputes, and the like, and not criminal matters. Arbitration has not been used to resolve criminal issues, because one party is the government, and consequently has the police power to enforce the most fundamental civil rights recognized by the nation.
But the new sharia courts in the UK, naturallement, are the exception.
. . .Muslim tribunal courts started passing sharia judgments in August 2007. They have dealt with more than 100 cases that range from Muslim divorce and inheritance to nuisance neighbours.
It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations.
We know from looking at “BRIDGE” programs what Muslims “working with the police” means. It means the police only act with Muslim leaders' permission. And now that the sharia courts have the enforcement power of British law, it means the cops have to enforce sharia decisions. Or, at least until the British get acclimated, at least drop criminal investigations after sharia courts have spoken.
Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of “smaller” criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases,” said Siddiqi, chairman of the governing council of the tribunal.
Domestic violence case are criminal matters. Since they have to do with violence, they can range anywhere from simple assault to murder. How’s that working out so far in the UK?
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.
In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.
Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.
Or, abusive husbands are given a second chance, while their wives are pressured by the larger community--or by naked fear-- to drop the matter.
I know, I know: why would any battered wife ever withdraw her domestic complaint against her husband--unless it was a completely free, voluntary decision, free of duress or fear?
But it's not only in criminal matters that the sharia courts are reaching disturbing decisions. They also apply a starkly different standard in civil matters.
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.
Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.
The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
In other words, the sharia courts do no apply British laws on inheritance, or provide what we over here call “equal protection under the law,” a principle we got originally from Great Britain. (Not to mention that these sharia rulings are discriminatory based on sex). No government agency, private employer, or any other private contract in the UK could discriminate this way without breaking discrimination laws.
The thing of it is, just because parties agree to arbitration doesn’t mean they get to make up their own laws. Wherever in the West arbitration is used it’s spelled out clearly which jurisdiction's civil laws--whether of the state, province, principality, or nation--will be applied in resolving the dispute. If the civil law forbids usurious interest on a contract, the arbitrator can’t legally award a usurious interest. If the civil law forbids applying an unlawful discriminatory standard, the arbitrator cannot legally apply a discriminatory standard. It's illegal everywhere in the UK.
But once again, Islam has carved out an exception for itself.
The UK sharia courts have already accomplished a true parallel system, official recognition of a separate system of law based on the Koran that does not afford the protections of the British Constitution--nor even respect them. And that is exactly what the Muslim leaders had in mind when they gouged out this chink for Islam.
That parallel system means if you’re a woman and you have the misfortune to be born into a segment of the British Muslim community controlled by such sharia courts, you can’t expect the same civil rights against violence, disinheritance, or any other discrimination that a British nonMuslim woman enjoys.
It also means that one legal system is mortally cracked, like a failing dam, and against it presses a sharia system with the force of an ocean.
According to the London TimesOnline,
The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.
Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.
This is justified by using the UK’s Arbitration Act, which gives the rulings of arbitration tribunals the power of law, provided both parties in a dispute agree to be bound by the agreement. This is the brainchild of Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the new sharia courts.
But arbitration, which has been around for years, has only ever been used to resolve civil matters, like private lawsuits, business disputes, contract disputes, and the like, and not criminal matters. Arbitration has not been used to resolve criminal issues, because one party is the government, and consequently has the police power to enforce the most fundamental civil rights recognized by the nation.
But the new sharia courts in the UK, naturallement, are the exception.
. . .Muslim tribunal courts started passing sharia judgments in August 2007. They have dealt with more than 100 cases that range from Muslim divorce and inheritance to nuisance neighbours.
It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations.
We know from looking at “BRIDGE” programs what Muslims “working with the police” means. It means the police only act with Muslim leaders' permission. And now that the sharia courts have the enforcement power of British law, it means the cops have to enforce sharia decisions. Or, at least until the British get acclimated, at least drop criminal investigations after sharia courts have spoken.
Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of “smaller” criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases,” said Siddiqi, chairman of the governing council of the tribunal.
Domestic violence case are criminal matters. Since they have to do with violence, they can range anywhere from simple assault to murder. How’s that working out so far in the UK?
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.
In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.
Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.
Or, abusive husbands are given a second chance, while their wives are pressured by the larger community--or by naked fear-- to drop the matter.
I know, I know: why would any battered wife ever withdraw her domestic complaint against her husband--unless it was a completely free, voluntary decision, free of duress or fear?
But it's not only in criminal matters that the sharia courts are reaching disturbing decisions. They also apply a starkly different standard in civil matters.
There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.
Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.
The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.
In other words, the sharia courts do no apply British laws on inheritance, or provide what we over here call “equal protection under the law,” a principle we got originally from Great Britain. (Not to mention that these sharia rulings are discriminatory based on sex). No government agency, private employer, or any other private contract in the UK could discriminate this way without breaking discrimination laws.
The thing of it is, just because parties agree to arbitration doesn’t mean they get to make up their own laws. Wherever in the West arbitration is used it’s spelled out clearly which jurisdiction's civil laws--whether of the state, province, principality, or nation--will be applied in resolving the dispute. If the civil law forbids usurious interest on a contract, the arbitrator can’t legally award a usurious interest. If the civil law forbids applying an unlawful discriminatory standard, the arbitrator cannot legally apply a discriminatory standard. It's illegal everywhere in the UK.
But once again, Islam has carved out an exception for itself.
The UK sharia courts have already accomplished a true parallel system, official recognition of a separate system of law based on the Koran that does not afford the protections of the British Constitution--nor even respect them. And that is exactly what the Muslim leaders had in mind when they gouged out this chink for Islam.
That parallel system means if you’re a woman and you have the misfortune to be born into a segment of the British Muslim community controlled by such sharia courts, you can’t expect the same civil rights against violence, disinheritance, or any other discrimination that a British nonMuslim woman enjoys.
It also means that one legal system is mortally cracked, like a failing dam, and against it presses a sharia system with the force of an ocean.
The Sharia Express
The assumption that you can hop on the Sharia Express and just ride a couple of stops is one almighty leap of faith. More to the point, who are you relying on t0 “hold the line”? Influential figures like the Archbishop of Canterbury? The politically correct bureaucrats at Canada’s Human Rights Commissions? The geniuses who run Harvard, and who’ve just introduced gender-segregated swimming and gym sessions at the behest of Harvard’s Islamic Society? (Would they have done that for Amish or Mennonite students?) The Western world is not run by fellows noted for their line-holding: Look at what they’re conceding now and then try to figure out what they’ll be conceding in five years’ time. The idea that the West’s multicultural establishment can hold the line would be more plausible if it was clear they had any idea where the line is, or even gave any indication of believing in one.
--Mark Steyn, Lecture at Hillsdale College, March 13, 2008.
--Mark Steyn, Lecture at Hillsdale College, March 13, 2008.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Fordson Principal Pile Drives the First Amendment
“DEARBORN -- A veteran wrestling coach at Fordson High School lost his job amid concerns that his one-time assistant, who is a local minister and parent of a wrestler, attempts to convert local Muslim youths to Christianity.” (“Fordson High coach let go after parent tried to convert Muslims”).
Discussion questions:
(1.) In what year did the practice of personal evangelism by American Christians toward nonChristians lose its protection under the First Amendment?
(2.) In what year did the United States adopt as our public policy that public school personnel are subject to termination for extra-curricular associations with evangelistic Christians?
Let’s get one thing straight: the fired coach, Jerry Marszalek, was not fired for using his public-school coaching job to try to convert Muslims. He was fired because he was friends with a local minister who sees his mission as winning all people to Christianity. And Fordson’s Islamic principal, Imad Fadlallah, and the Muslim parents at Fordson, (also know, with very good reason, as “Hezbollah High,” ), simply don’t like that.
Is this such a big deal?
Then try to imagine you’re the employee. I mean, I happen to be friends with a local minister or two, and many lay Christians, who are extremely zealous, and vocal, about trying to win people to Christ--and they wouldn’t make exceptions about talking to Muslims. Does that mean that someday soon we'll be reading the headline, “Hapless paper-pusher let go after pal tried to convert Muslims”?
Well, you say, that may be, Clancy, but you don’t let your friends come in an evangelize your workplace, do you? No I don't, and neither did Marszalek. Nor did the Christian pastor, Trey Hancock, who says he never spoke about the Lord while at the school or on school activities. (None of the stories offer any facts to the contrary).
That’s why the Detroit News headline, “Fordson High coach let go after parent tried to convert Muslims” while technically accurate, at a first glance is completely misleading. It comes across as if the coach was using practice time to browbeat his captive wrestlers into giving up their 72 virgins in exchange for a starry crown.
But that’s nowhere near what happened. What really happened is that Fadlallah hated Hancock because he talked to Muslim kids about Jesus Christ--(and not even during school activities, and not on school grounds--but apparently where Allah could still see him). Fadlallah ordered Marszalek to fire Hancock as assistant coach, and then to ban him from all the wrestling matches, even though one of the team stars was Hancock’s own son. Marszalek did let Hancock go as coach--three years ago. (News reports actually say that Hancock baptized a Muslim kid three years ago, in 2005, and wasn’t even a Fordson student).
That Marszalek didn't do. So Fadlallah earlier this month told Marszalek “he was being let go because he had ignored his earlier directive to keep the pastor away from the team.” (“Coach's firing draws praise from Muslims”). Fadlallah didn’t want Hancock anywhere near Fordson’s Muslim wrestlers with his Jesus talk, because Sharia strictly forbids that.
The only thing wrong here is we Americans haven’t quite finished transferring over from the U.S. Constitution to Sharia. So while hundreds of Muslim parents at a board meeting may have praised Allah for Fadlallah’s act of jihad, the principal clearly violated both state and federal laws against discrimination based on religion.
It isn’t clear if Marszalek’s going to do anything about it legally, but I hope he does. Some people are trying to say Marszalek's contract didn't have to be renewed, and he was only an at-will employee. But at-will status still doesn't justify an illegal firing, which is what this is. Fadlallah told him he was letting him go for refusing to ban Hancock based on Hancock's Christianity.
If Marszalek doesn't take any legal action, this story won’t be around long, just like so many of the others. We’re too used to this kind of thing now.
Why do we accept this stuff as so matter-of-fact? Why are the news articles expressing shock at what Trey Hancock may have done, instead of what hundreds of Dearborn parents just did?
I think that ever since Desert Shield in 1991, when we first stationed a lot of American military personnel in the Middle East, we’ve been told and told again that we have to be careful of Muslim senisbilities. We had to get along with Saudis, Kuwaitis, Afghanis, and Iraqis, all Muslim nations completely unashamed of demanding we comply with their Islamic proscriptions of evangelism--no Bibles or even necklace crosses for US military guarding Saudi Arabia--and of course we went along with it.
Then there’ve been all those hundreds of hours watching Muslims riot around the globe because some Westerner insulted the Prophet or offended Islam. And nothing’s more insulting to the Prophet than converting a Muslim to Christianity! We Americans have been so conditioned to see applying Great Commission to Muslims as a religious crime we’re almost as offended when it happens as the imams are. (If you think I’m exaggerating, read this and notice the tone of shock: “Iraqis say Marines handed out Christian coins.” You’d think the Marine was handing children DVDs of the R. Kelly sex tape instead of telling these poor people that God loves them.)
It's become second nature to us that Muslims simply aren’t going to tolerate evangelism on their turf.
But even if that made any sense for us to feel that way, it still raises the whole question, is Fordson High School Muslim turf? Or is it a state-financed, Dearborn-taxpayer supported, American public school?
These news stories seem to take for granted that Fordson is indeed part of the Ummah. The Detroit News’s Muslim Affairs Correspondent, Gregg Krupa, describes Fordson High as “a predominantly Muslim school,” not even bothering with the distinction that Fordson is really a public school with a majority of students who are Muslim.
Still, if Fordson’s “predominantly Muslim” parents don’t want their impressionable kids exposed to Christianity, why not just let them fire their Christian staff out of deference to cultural sensitivity?
Well, it looks to me as if that’s what we’re doing.
But don’t forget that it’s still against the law to fire people in this country because you don’t like their religion. And we’ve been serious enough about that historically to reinforce that part of the Constitution by passing a Civil Rights Act banning religious discrimination in the workplace.
Not that those laws mean anything if no one’s going to see they’re enforced.
Discussion questions:
(1.) In what year did the practice of personal evangelism by American Christians toward nonChristians lose its protection under the First Amendment?
(2.) In what year did the United States adopt as our public policy that public school personnel are subject to termination for extra-curricular associations with evangelistic Christians?
Let’s get one thing straight: the fired coach, Jerry Marszalek, was not fired for using his public-school coaching job to try to convert Muslims. He was fired because he was friends with a local minister who sees his mission as winning all people to Christianity. And Fordson’s Islamic principal, Imad Fadlallah, and the Muslim parents at Fordson, (also know, with very good reason, as “Hezbollah High,” ), simply don’t like that.
Is this such a big deal?
Then try to imagine you’re the employee. I mean, I happen to be friends with a local minister or two, and many lay Christians, who are extremely zealous, and vocal, about trying to win people to Christ--and they wouldn’t make exceptions about talking to Muslims. Does that mean that someday soon we'll be reading the headline, “Hapless paper-pusher let go after pal tried to convert Muslims”?
Well, you say, that may be, Clancy, but you don’t let your friends come in an evangelize your workplace, do you? No I don't, and neither did Marszalek. Nor did the Christian pastor, Trey Hancock, who says he never spoke about the Lord while at the school or on school activities. (None of the stories offer any facts to the contrary).
That’s why the Detroit News headline, “Fordson High coach let go after parent tried to convert Muslims” while technically accurate, at a first glance is completely misleading. It comes across as if the coach was using practice time to browbeat his captive wrestlers into giving up their 72 virgins in exchange for a starry crown.
But that’s nowhere near what happened. What really happened is that Fadlallah hated Hancock because he talked to Muslim kids about Jesus Christ--(and not even during school activities, and not on school grounds--but apparently where Allah could still see him). Fadlallah ordered Marszalek to fire Hancock as assistant coach, and then to ban him from all the wrestling matches, even though one of the team stars was Hancock’s own son. Marszalek did let Hancock go as coach--three years ago. (News reports actually say that Hancock baptized a Muslim kid three years ago, in 2005, and wasn’t even a Fordson student).
That Marszalek didn't do. So Fadlallah earlier this month told Marszalek “he was being let go because he had ignored his earlier directive to keep the pastor away from the team.” (“Coach's firing draws praise from Muslims”). Fadlallah didn’t want Hancock anywhere near Fordson’s Muslim wrestlers with his Jesus talk, because Sharia strictly forbids that.
The only thing wrong here is we Americans haven’t quite finished transferring over from the U.S. Constitution to Sharia. So while hundreds of Muslim parents at a board meeting may have praised Allah for Fadlallah’s act of jihad, the principal clearly violated both state and federal laws against discrimination based on religion.
It isn’t clear if Marszalek’s going to do anything about it legally, but I hope he does. Some people are trying to say Marszalek's contract didn't have to be renewed, and he was only an at-will employee. But at-will status still doesn't justify an illegal firing, which is what this is. Fadlallah told him he was letting him go for refusing to ban Hancock based on Hancock's Christianity.
If Marszalek doesn't take any legal action, this story won’t be around long, just like so many of the others. We’re too used to this kind of thing now.
Why do we accept this stuff as so matter-of-fact? Why are the news articles expressing shock at what Trey Hancock may have done, instead of what hundreds of Dearborn parents just did?
I think that ever since Desert Shield in 1991, when we first stationed a lot of American military personnel in the Middle East, we’ve been told and told again that we have to be careful of Muslim senisbilities. We had to get along with Saudis, Kuwaitis, Afghanis, and Iraqis, all Muslim nations completely unashamed of demanding we comply with their Islamic proscriptions of evangelism--no Bibles or even necklace crosses for US military guarding Saudi Arabia--and of course we went along with it.
Then there’ve been all those hundreds of hours watching Muslims riot around the globe because some Westerner insulted the Prophet or offended Islam. And nothing’s more insulting to the Prophet than converting a Muslim to Christianity! We Americans have been so conditioned to see applying Great Commission to Muslims as a religious crime we’re almost as offended when it happens as the imams are. (If you think I’m exaggerating, read this and notice the tone of shock: “Iraqis say Marines handed out Christian coins.” You’d think the Marine was handing children DVDs of the R. Kelly sex tape instead of telling these poor people that God loves them.)
It's become second nature to us that Muslims simply aren’t going to tolerate evangelism on their turf.
But even if that made any sense for us to feel that way, it still raises the whole question, is Fordson High School Muslim turf? Or is it a state-financed, Dearborn-taxpayer supported, American public school?
These news stories seem to take for granted that Fordson is indeed part of the Ummah. The Detroit News’s Muslim Affairs Correspondent, Gregg Krupa, describes Fordson High as “a predominantly Muslim school,” not even bothering with the distinction that Fordson is really a public school with a majority of students who are Muslim.
Still, if Fordson’s “predominantly Muslim” parents don’t want their impressionable kids exposed to Christianity, why not just let them fire their Christian staff out of deference to cultural sensitivity?
Well, it looks to me as if that’s what we’re doing.
But don’t forget that it’s still against the law to fire people in this country because you don’t like their religion. And we’ve been serious enough about that historically to reinforce that part of the Constitution by passing a Civil Rights Act banning religious discrimination in the workplace.
Not that those laws mean anything if no one’s going to see they’re enforced.
Monday, April 28, 2008
'Anatomy of Surrender'
The following excerpts are from a lenghty article in City Journal by Bruce Bawer, author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. Bawer’s article is entitled, “An Anatomy of Surrender.” It's well worth reading in ins entirety.
Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.
What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, KhoÂmeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.
The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.
Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission....
...The elite media regularly underreport fundamentalist Muslim misbehavior or obfuscate its true nature. After the knighting of Rushdie in 2007 unleashed yet another wave of international Islamist mayhem, Tim Rutten wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it’s because there haven’t been any.” Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration over economic injustice.
When polls and studies of Muslims appear, the media often spin the results absurdly or drop them down the memory hole after a single news cycle. Journalists celebrated the results of a 2007 Pew poll showing that 80 percent of American Muslims aged 18 to 29 said that they opposed suicide bombing—even though the flip side, and the real story, was that a double-digit percentage of young American Muslims admitted that they supported it. u.s. muslims assimilated, opposed to extremism, the Washington Post rejoiced, echoing USA Today’s american muslims reject extremes. A 2006 Daily Telegraph survey showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain—yet British reporters often write as though only a minuscule minority embraced such views....
...After each major terrorist act since 9/11, the press has dutifully published stories about Western Muslims fearing an “anti-Muslim backlash”—thus neatly shifting the focus from Islamists’ real acts of violence to non-Muslims’ imaginary ones. (These backlashes, of course, never materialize.) While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong’s hagiography of Mohammed as “a good place to start” learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito want to understand islam? start here.
Mainstream outlets have also served up anodyne portraits of fundamentalist Muslim life. Witness Andrea Elliott’s affectionate three-part profile of a Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006. Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive, even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn’t speak English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal particulars. “Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother’s voice”; “Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . . ‘She entered my heart,‘ said the imam.” Elliott’s saccharine piece won a Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism Review dismissed Pipes as “right-wing” and insisted that Shata was “very moderate.”...
...Then there’s the art world. Postmodern artists who have always striven to shock and offend now maintain piously that Islam deserves “respect.” Museums and galleries have quietly taken down paintings that might upset Muslims and have put into storage manuscripts featuring images of Mohammed. London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening; the official excuse was “space constraints,” but the curator admitted that the real reason was fear that the nudity might offend the gallery’s Muslim neighbors. Last November, after the cancellation of a show in The Hague of artworks depicting gay men in Mohammed masks, the artist, Sooreh Hera, charged the museum with giving in to Muslim threats. Tim Marlow of London’s White Cube Gallery notes that such self-censorship by artists and museums is now common, though “very few people have explicitly admitted” it. British artist Grayson Perry, whose work has mercilessly mocked Christianity, is one who has—and his reluctance isn’t about multicultural sensitivity. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art,” he told the Times of London, “is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”...
...This spring, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, actually gave two cheers for sharia. He contrasted it favorably with English common law, and described “the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law” as “bold and noble.”
With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it’s not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway’s embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, “Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists’ hostage.” As if that capitulation weren’t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi—a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children—to accept Selbekk’s apology. “To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was “tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.”....
...If you don’t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when “Undercover Mosque,” an unusually frank exposé on Britain’s Channel 4, showed “moderate” Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action—reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.) The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, “revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.” Only days after the “Undercover Mosque” broadcast—in a colossal mark of indifference to the reality that it exposed—Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced plans to share antiterrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders. These plans, fortunately, were later shelved...
...Even military leaders aren’t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America’s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that “whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito”; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. “That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered ‘controversial,’ ” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.” (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)
Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures....
Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war—holy war, jihad—to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists’ weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist’s bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.
What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, KhoÂmeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies’ basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies.
The cultural jihadists have enjoyed disturbing success. Two events in particular—the 2004 assassination in Amsterdam of Theo van Gogh in retaliation for his film about Islam’s oppression of women, and the global wave of riots, murders, and vandalism that followed a Danish newspaper’s 2005 publication of cartoons satirizing Mohammed—have had a massive ripple effect throughout the West. Motivated variously, and doubtless sometimes simultaneously, by fear, misguided sympathy, and multicultural ideology—which teaches us to belittle our freedoms and to genuflect to non-Western cultures, however repressive—people at every level of Western society, but especially elites, have allowed concerns about what fundamentalist Muslims will feel, think, or do to influence their actions and expressions. These Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.
Call it a cultural surrender. The House of War is slowly—or not so slowly, in Europe’s case—being absorbed into the House of Submission....
...The elite media regularly underreport fundamentalist Muslim misbehavior or obfuscate its true nature. After the knighting of Rushdie in 2007 unleashed yet another wave of international Islamist mayhem, Tim Rutten wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If you’re wondering why you haven’t been able to follow all the columns and editorials in the American press denouncing all this homicidal nonsense, it’s because there haven’t been any.” Or consider the riots that gripped immigrant suburbs in France in the autumn of 2005. These uprisings were largely assertions of Muslim authority over Muslim neighborhoods, and thus clearly jihadist in character. Yet weeks passed before many American press outlets mentioned them—and when they did, they de-emphasized the rioters’ Muslim identity (few cited the cries of “Allahu akbar,” for instance). Instead, they described the violence as an outburst of frustration over economic injustice.
When polls and studies of Muslims appear, the media often spin the results absurdly or drop them down the memory hole after a single news cycle. Journalists celebrated the results of a 2007 Pew poll showing that 80 percent of American Muslims aged 18 to 29 said that they opposed suicide bombing—even though the flip side, and the real story, was that a double-digit percentage of young American Muslims admitted that they supported it. u.s. muslims assimilated, opposed to extremism, the Washington Post rejoiced, echoing USA Today’s american muslims reject extremes. A 2006 Daily Telegraph survey showed that 40 percent of British Muslims wanted sharia in Britain—yet British reporters often write as though only a minuscule minority embraced such views....
...After each major terrorist act since 9/11, the press has dutifully published stories about Western Muslims fearing an “anti-Muslim backlash”—thus neatly shifting the focus from Islamists’ real acts of violence to non-Muslims’ imaginary ones. (These backlashes, of course, never materialize.) While books by Islam experts like Bat Ye’or and Robert Spencer, who tell difficult truths about jihad and sharia, go unreviewed in newspapers like the New York Times, the elite press legitimizes thinkers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11. The Times described Armstrong’s hagiography of Mohammed as “a good place to start” learning about Islam; in July 2007, the Washington Post headlined a piece by Esposito want to understand islam? start here.
Mainstream outlets have also served up anodyne portraits of fundamentalist Muslim life. Witness Andrea Elliott’s affectionate three-part profile of a Brooklyn imam, which appeared in the New York Times in March 2006. Elliott and the Times sought to portray Reda Shata as a heroic bridge builder between two cultures, leaving readers with the comforting belief that the growth of Islam in America was not only harmless but positive, even beautiful. Though it emerged in passing that Shata didn’t speak English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing, Elliott did her best to downplay such unpleasant details; instead, she focused on sympathetic personal particulars. “Islam came to him softly, in the rhythms of his grandmother’s voice”; “Mr. Shata discovered love 15 years ago. . . . ‘She entered my heart,‘ said the imam.” Elliott’s saccharine piece won a Pulitzer Prize. When Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes pointed out that Shata was obviously an Islamist, a writer for the Columbia Journalism Review dismissed Pipes as “right-wing” and insisted that Shata was “very moderate.”...
...Then there’s the art world. Postmodern artists who have always striven to shock and offend now maintain piously that Islam deserves “respect.” Museums and galleries have quietly taken down paintings that might upset Muslims and have put into storage manuscripts featuring images of Mohammed. London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery removed life-size nude dolls by surrealist artist Hans Bellmer from a 2006 exhibit just before its opening; the official excuse was “space constraints,” but the curator admitted that the real reason was fear that the nudity might offend the gallery’s Muslim neighbors. Last November, after the cancellation of a show in The Hague of artworks depicting gay men in Mohammed masks, the artist, Sooreh Hera, charged the museum with giving in to Muslim threats. Tim Marlow of London’s White Cube Gallery notes that such self-censorship by artists and museums is now common, though “very few people have explicitly admitted” it. British artist Grayson Perry, whose work has mercilessly mocked Christianity, is one who has—and his reluctance isn’t about multicultural sensitivity. “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art,” he told the Times of London, “is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”...
...This spring, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, writing in the New York Times Magazine, actually gave two cheers for sharia. He contrasted it favorably with English common law, and described “the Islamists’ aspiration to renew old ideas of the rule of law” as “bold and noble.”
With the press, the entertainment industry, and prominent liberal thinkers all refusing to defend basic Western liberties, it’s not surprising that our political leaders have been pusillanimous, too. After a tiny Oslo newspaper, Magazinet, reprinted the Danish cartoons in early 2006, jihadists burned Norwegian flags and set fire to Norway’s embassy in Syria. Instead of standing up to the vandals, Norwegian leaders turned on Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, partially blaming him for the embassy burning and pressing him to apologize. He finally gave way at a government-sponsored press conference, groveling before an assemblage of imams whose leader publicly forgave him and placed him under his protection. On that terrible day, Selbekk later acknowledged, “Norway went a long way toward allowing freedom of speech to become the Islamists’ hostage.” As if that capitulation weren’t disgrace enough, an official Norwegian delegation then traveled to Qatar and implored Qaradawi—a defender of suicide bombers and the murder of Jewish children—to accept Selbekk’s apology. “To meet Yusuf al-Qaradawi under the present circumstances,” Norwegian-Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi protested, was “tantamount to granting extreme Islamists . . . a right of joint consultation regarding how Norway should be governed.”....
...If you don’t find the dhimmification of politicians shocking, consider the degree to which law enforcement officers have yielded to Islamist pressure. Last year, when “Undercover Mosque,” an unusually frank exposé on Britain’s Channel 4, showed “moderate” Muslim preachers calling for the beating of wives and daughters and the murder of gays and apostates, police leaped into action—reporting the station to the government communications authority, Ofcom, for stirring up racial hatred. (Ofcom, to its credit, rejected the complaint.) The police reaction, as James Forsyth noted in the Spectator, “revealed a mindset that views the exposure of a problem as more of a problem than the problem itself.” Only days after the “Undercover Mosque” broadcast—in a colossal mark of indifference to the reality that it exposed—Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair announced plans to share antiterrorist intelligence with Muslim community leaders. These plans, fortunately, were later shelved...
...Even military leaders aren’t immune. In 2005, columnist Diana West noted that America’s Iraq commander, Lieutenant General John R. Vines, was educating his staff in Islam by giving them a reading list that “whitewashes jihad, dhimmitude and sharia law with the works of Karen Armstrong and John Esposito”; two years later, West noted the unwillingness of a counterinsurgency advisor, Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, to mention jihad. In January 2008, the Pentagon fired Stephen Coughlin, its resident expert on sharia and jihad; reportedly, his acknowledgment that terrorism was motivated by jihad had antagonized an influential Muslim aide. “That Coughlin’s analyses would even be considered ‘controversial,’ ” wrote Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad, “is pathognomonic of the intellectual and moral rot plaguing our efforts to combat global terrorism.” (Perhaps owing to public outcry, officials announced in February that Coughlin would not be dismissed after all, but instead moved to another Department of Defense position.)
Enough. We need to recognize that the cultural jihadists hate our freedoms because those freedoms defy sharia, which they’re determined to impose on us. So far, they have been far less successful at rolling back freedom of speech and other liberties in the U.S. than in Europe, thanks in no small part to the First Amendment. Yet America is proving increasingly susceptible to their pressures....
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Are These People Religious Hijackers?
Every American who cares about such things is already familiar with this story. “Sudanese call for teddy bear teacher's death”.According to the news agencies that took these pictures,
“Thousands of protesters, many brandishing clubs and swords, took to the streets of Sudan’s capital Friday, demanding the execution of a British teacher who let her students name a teddy bear Muhammad….Protesters waved sticks, knives, axes and swords.
“’Kill her, kill her by firing squad!’ they chanted. ‘No tolerance, execution!’”
“Others shouted, ‘Shame, shame on the U.K.’”
And now today’s Washington Post reports that
Gibbons was moved from the Omdurman women's prison to a secret location on Friday after thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and swords and beating drums, burned pictures of her and demanded her execution.
The Post also reports that
There was no overt sign that the government organized the protest, but such a rally could not have taken place without at least official assent.
The reason Ms. Gibbons had to be moved to a secret location is, obviously to protect her from being lynched by the people in the pictures and thousands more of their brethren. (More on lynching in another post. I wasn't going to blog this weekend, but I can't stand this.)
There isn't going to be any shortage of commentary on this highly unpleasant action by Khartoum, the Sharia Court, and the Sudanese people represented in these photos. There's no need for me to add to it here.
But my question here is going somewhere else, and I'm asking on behalf of myself and those others of us who are regularly branded as phobic, and bigoted haters because we identify Islam with violenct intolerance.
Are the Sudanese Muslim men we see in these pictures--burning newspapers, brandishing swords, and demanding Ms. Gibbons's execution because their Prophet was insulted by having his name given to a Teddy Bear, (given to the bear by someone else, no less, a seven-year-old Muslim boy named Muhammed)--
--are these people only a marginal extremist Islamic minority, or hijackers of a peaceful Islam, or are they truly performing their religious duty as Muslims?
I would really like to hear from anyone who believes that these demonstrators/rioters should not be considered representative of authentic Islam.
Please explain this.
--are these people only a marginal extremist Islamic minority, or hijackers of a peaceful Islam, or are they truly performing their religious duty as Muslims?
I would really like to hear from anyone who believes that these demonstrators/rioters should not be considered representative of authentic Islam.
Please explain this.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
A Strange Cure for Contempt
From today’s Daily News:
Teacher charged with inciting hatred over teddy
DAILY NEWS STAFF
Wednesday, November 28th 2007, 11:32 AM
A British teacher under arrest in Sudan was formally charged Wednesday with inciting hatred for allowing her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
If convicted, Gillian Gibbons, 54, could be sentenced to 40 lashes, a fine or six months behind bars. The case goes to court on Thursday.
State media reported Gibbons, from Liverpool, England, also faced charges of insulting religion and showing contempt of religious beliefs.
Only yesterday, according to a Guardian Unlimited story, ("Sudan plays down teddy blasphemy case")the Sudanese foreign ministry in Great Britain was trying to downplay the whole thing. On Monday night, “a spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in London said he believed the teacher would be cleared and the "minute" issue resolved amicably very quickly”:
Dr Khalid al-Mubarak told BBC Radio 4's PM programme the police had no choice but to follow procedure after a complaint from a parent.
"The police are bound to investigate just as is the case in any country in which there is rule of law. Our relationship with Britain is so good that we wouldn't like such a minute event to be overblown."
He added: "I am pretty certain that this minute incident will be clarified very quickly and this teacher who has been helping us with the teaching of children will be safe and will be cleared."
Asked about the potential punishments of six months in jail or 40 lashes, he said: "I hope people will not give their imagination free rein to think about such things."
Dr al-Mubarak has good reason not to want Britons, or other Westerners, to imagine a 54-year-old schoolteacher getting 40 lashes over nothing--nothing.
I hope people will give free rein and think about this unfortunate woman getting flogged by a Sudanese thug --I hope we all think about it very hard.
Sudanese authorities admit that no parent complained about this, and it wasn't even the teacher, but one of Ms. Gibbons’s students, a seven-year-old boy, who quite innocently gave the teddy bear the name, which happened to be the boy's own. Even some Muslim authorities asked about it were puzzled about why she was being charged, given there obviously was no malicious intent.
No one was harmed. No one, that is, except Allah, who happens to be the touchiest deity of all the world’s religions. And I thought I was hypersensitive.
Sudanese officials are behaving as if their hands are tied, shrugging and explaining how Sudanese law is based on Sharia, which is only another way of saying that punishment must not fit the crime so much as it must placate a splenetic and irrational god. When this is what is meant by "the rule of law," don't expect much in the way of prosecutorial discretion.
Dr al-Mubarak did say yesterday that police have to follow the rule of law and investigate, but that he thought the teacher was going to be cleared because the incident was “minute.” But I'll bet he already knew better, which is why he wanted to warn us in advance not to think about the awful image of a middle-aged schoolteacher being flogged by an Islamic thug. There's nothing we can do! When Allah’s feelings get hurt, somebody’s blood has to flow.
And so there's no surprise as today we learn that not only is Ms. Gibbons not being cleared of the "minute incident," but prosecutors managed to come up with at least three charges leading to harsh penalties: inciting hatred, insulting religion and showing contempt of religious beliefs.
Let's hope the British government can put together a stern enough package of behind-the-scene diplomatic threats to convince the Sudanese to let this poor woman go.
But if not, I have to wonder, if and when this punishment is actually carried out, how likely it will be to have the effect of causing large numbers of nonMuslims looking on in horror to hate Islam, insult Islam, and feel contempt for Islam?
Teacher charged with inciting hatred over teddy
DAILY NEWS STAFF
Wednesday, November 28th 2007, 11:32 AM
A British teacher under arrest in Sudan was formally charged Wednesday with inciting hatred for allowing her 7-year-old students to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
If convicted, Gillian Gibbons, 54, could be sentenced to 40 lashes, a fine or six months behind bars. The case goes to court on Thursday.
State media reported Gibbons, from Liverpool, England, also faced charges of insulting religion and showing contempt of religious beliefs.
Only yesterday, according to a Guardian Unlimited story, ("Sudan plays down teddy blasphemy case")the Sudanese foreign ministry in Great Britain was trying to downplay the whole thing. On Monday night, “a spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in London said he believed the teacher would be cleared and the "minute" issue resolved amicably very quickly”:
Dr Khalid al-Mubarak told BBC Radio 4's PM programme the police had no choice but to follow procedure after a complaint from a parent.
"The police are bound to investigate just as is the case in any country in which there is rule of law. Our relationship with Britain is so good that we wouldn't like such a minute event to be overblown."
He added: "I am pretty certain that this minute incident will be clarified very quickly and this teacher who has been helping us with the teaching of children will be safe and will be cleared."
Asked about the potential punishments of six months in jail or 40 lashes, he said: "I hope people will not give their imagination free rein to think about such things."
Dr al-Mubarak has good reason not to want Britons, or other Westerners, to imagine a 54-year-old schoolteacher getting 40 lashes over nothing--nothing.
I hope people will give free rein and think about this unfortunate woman getting flogged by a Sudanese thug --I hope we all think about it very hard.
Sudanese authorities admit that no parent complained about this, and it wasn't even the teacher, but one of Ms. Gibbons’s students, a seven-year-old boy, who quite innocently gave the teddy bear the name, which happened to be the boy's own. Even some Muslim authorities asked about it were puzzled about why she was being charged, given there obviously was no malicious intent.
No one was harmed. No one, that is, except Allah, who happens to be the touchiest deity of all the world’s religions. And I thought I was hypersensitive.
Sudanese officials are behaving as if their hands are tied, shrugging and explaining how Sudanese law is based on Sharia, which is only another way of saying that punishment must not fit the crime so much as it must placate a splenetic and irrational god. When this is what is meant by "the rule of law," don't expect much in the way of prosecutorial discretion.
Dr al-Mubarak did say yesterday that police have to follow the rule of law and investigate, but that he thought the teacher was going to be cleared because the incident was “minute.” But I'll bet he already knew better, which is why he wanted to warn us in advance not to think about the awful image of a middle-aged schoolteacher being flogged by an Islamic thug. There's nothing we can do! When Allah’s feelings get hurt, somebody’s blood has to flow.
And so there's no surprise as today we learn that not only is Ms. Gibbons not being cleared of the "minute incident," but prosecutors managed to come up with at least three charges leading to harsh penalties: inciting hatred, insulting religion and showing contempt of religious beliefs.
Let's hope the British government can put together a stern enough package of behind-the-scene diplomatic threats to convince the Sudanese to let this poor woman go.
But if not, I have to wonder, if and when this punishment is actually carried out, how likely it will be to have the effect of causing large numbers of nonMuslims looking on in horror to hate Islam, insult Islam, and feel contempt for Islam?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
