Posted on 05/06/2004 10:40:48 AM PDT by Francisco
Thank Allah for Little Girls
by Jonathan Tuttle
"The average woman is born into near slavery, leads a life of drudgery, and dies invariably in oblivion. This grim condition is the stark reality of half our population simply because they happen to be female." —Findings of a 1985 Pakistani governmental commission investigating the status of women in that country
It is disturbing that many Catholics have adopted a philosophical preference for Islam over Judaism. Furthermore, in some instances, some prominent Catholics have even made the unfortunate suggestion that there is much commonality between the true Faith and the religion of Islam.
I have to believe that in doing so, they have little or no idea what Islam preaches or how its followers manifest their faith in the real world. It's time for an expose of what the Koran and Islamic Law actually teach, and how that teaching is applied by its proponents.
It is not enough to simply say that life for Moslem girls is harsh and leave it at that. Catholics must come to some understanding of what life is really like for young girls in Islamic countries, so no reputable Catholic may ever again make the absurd claim of commonality between the Mohammedan religion and the one, true Catholic Faith.
Forced Mutilation
One grisly practice that is common in most Moslem countries is female circumcision, or, as the Western medical authorities have more aptly named the practice, female genital mutilation (FGM). Without going into graphic detail, this process involves the removal of female genitalia.
According to the World Health Organization, "female genital mutilation is normally performed by traditional practitioners with crude instruments, such as knives, razors, blades and broken glass, usually without anaesthetics." 1 This report finds that, though some girls are mutilated at birth, "most girls are mutilated between the ages of 4 and 12." 2
Not only is this practice completely medically unnecessary, barbaric, and unethical, it carries significant health risks. The WHO report continues:
"The practice of FGM often leads to complications. Short term complications include severe pain, shock, hemorrhage, urine retention, ulceration of the genital region and injury to adjacent tissue. Hemorrhage and infection can cause death. Long-term complications include cysts and abscesses, keloid scar formation, damage to the urethra resulting in urinary incontinence, dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse), sexual dysfunction, urinary tract infection, infertility and childbirth complications." 3
Why do Moslems promote a practice which is clearly so damaging? It is seen as a way of controlling sexual appetites. Since a girl who has undergone mutilation experiences no pleasure in the marital act, she has no reason to seek it; therefore, her virginity is preserved until her wedding night. In other words, Moslem men are willing to risk the lives of young girls for no other reason than to ensure the status of their young brides.
It is estimated that between 100 and 150 million women have undergone this dreadful practice, almost entirely within Moslem countries.
Western Moslems and Moslem sympathizers are quick to point out that female circumcision is not required by the Koran. That is true. However, it has long been maintained by many Islamic scholars that Mohammed himself did recommend the practice. Further, the Reliance of the Traveler, a classic manual of Islamic sacred law, states that circumcision is "obligatory for both men and women."
While the practice might ritualistically survive among tribes of other faiths, it thrives in Islamic countries. Many Islamic clerics view it as essential for women, and they tirelessly promote the procedure.
When Egyptian health authorities attempted to ban female circumcision in 1995, they met major opposition from Islamic clerics. Inter Press Service reported that Egyptian Sheikh Yussuf el-Badry, in an attempt to establish Islamic Sharia law, sued the health agency for ordering the ban. Eventually, Egyptian authorities overturned the ban and legalized the practice. El Badry saw this as a major victory for Islam.
Most Moslem women understand the danger of the practice, and it is routinely performed against their wills. Many of these women have attempted to escape before they were mutilated. The best known example of this is the case of Fauziya Kassindja, a Moslem girl from West Africa, who immigrated to the United States. 4 Due to her tribulations, the United States government now grants political asylum to those women who are fleeing Islamic authorities in order to avoid mandatory mutilation.
Sentenced to Hell
Another item which makes Islam reprehensible is the protection of men who forcibly violate women. Under Islamic Law, a man cannot be convicted on a charge of rape unless it happens in the presence of four male witnesses who are willing to testify against him. In the course of my research, I have not been able to discover a single instance in which four men testified against one of their own. A Moslem man can freely rape women without worry of conviction, and this happens constantly in Islamic countries. To make matters worse, if a Moslem woman charges a man with rape and she is unable to find four male witnesses to testify against him, she is then charged with fornication. In countries under Islamic law, the punishment for fornication is death.
Further, this situation of a woman facing a fornication charge for a rape committed against her is hardly rare. As a matter of fact, it has been estimated that a whopping 75% of women in Pakistani prisons are there on trumped-up fornication charges 5 —and many of them are under ten years old! Simultaneously, the real criminals, the rapists, walk free.
The term "living hell" is often overused. Yet, without an appeal to this cliche, it is difficult to summarize the predicament of young girls in Islamic countries. Had Hobbes' been referring to their lives, he would have been considered prescient with his quip that life is brutish and short. It is impossible to read about these young girls and not be moved by pity.
In many Islamic countries, other than the alleged crime of fornication, the most common crimes are insignificant or nonexistent violations of the Koran, and many of these crimes are punishable by death. A significant percentage of crimes in Islamic countries are capital crimes. Decapitation is common.
Young girls who are sentenced to death in Islamic countries present a problem for Islamic authorities. Islamic clerics and rulers, unsatisfied with a mere penalty of death for the accused, wish to ensure that these women will suffer eternity in hell as well. However, quite a number of the accused girls are virgins, and Islam teaches that virgins go to Paradise upon their deaths. As a solution this problem, in order to ensure the damnation of the accused, Islamic authorities will often order the prison guards to systematically rape female prisoners before they are killed. According to Amnesty International, this practice is widespread in Islamic countries. There is no way of knowing the exact number of such cases, but suffice it to say that under the Khomeini Revolution in Iran, twenty thousand girls and women were executed in the first three years of the Ayatollah's rule. 6 And Khomeini was a strict follower of the Koran.
During Khomeini's rule, the minimum age for the death penalty for girls was nine years old, and all these girls were systematically raped before they were executed.
All this to ensure damnation. All under the sanction of law. All because of the teachings of the Koran.
What this all adds up to is a very unpleasant picture. Those girls who are in prison on fornication charges are actually victims of rape. The remaining female prisoners are raped to ensure damnation. It is no exaggeration to say that Islamic countries are nations of rape victims.
Institutionalized Pedophilia
All practicing Moslems revere Mohammed as the great prophet—the greatest man who ever lived, or who could ever live. They seek to imitate him in every conceivable way. This is bad news for women in Islamic countries, for Mohammed had a penchant for little girls. When Mohammed was little over fifty years of age, and already had at least nine wives and countless concubines, Mohammed took a new six-year-old wife named Aisha, although Moslem historians claim that he did not consummate this marriage until Aisha had achieved the ripe old age of nine. 7
Of course, defenders of Mohammed and Islam will argue that it was a "long time ago," and girls used to marry younger then. Let's table that argument for a moment and fast forward to the Islamic world of today. There is an old saying: "Times change." In the case of the Islamic faith, it would be more accurate to say: "Times don't change." In imitation of the prophet Mohammed, Moslem men marry girls at the age of nine (and younger) all the time.
After the Revolution in Iran, girls as young as seven were allowed to be married, with the approval of a physician, who could testify to her sexual maturity. But even this minor stipulation was eventually dropped. Jan Goodwin reports on an interview she conducted with an Iranian physican regarding this situation:
"In villages where child marriage is most common, doctors don't even see the girl, she told me. "They just take the family's word that she is physically mature enough to marry. Consequently, we have had very young girls badly injured when they have had what amounts to forced intercourse. Infection sets in and they have died. Only with girls under seven did the Ayatollah say that sex was forbidden." 8
This problem of pedophila is not specific to Iran. Pedophilia is not an Iranian thing—it's an Islamic thing. Time magazine recently reported that in Afghanistan and Pakistan, they found that two-thirds of second grade girls "were either married or betrothed." 9
Second grade!
And they are not engaged to boys of the same age in a cute little arrangement ceremony. Typically, they are engaged or married to men four or five times their age. One ten-year-old girl in the camp was engaged to a man of sixty. 10
Partially due to the fact that these girls have already undergone the sexual mutilation of female circumcision, and partially due simply to their juvenile biological makeup, these children suffer immensely when they are married. In Egypt, honeymoon centers have been built outside communities "so that the screams of the brides will not be heard." 11
There is no nice way to say it: Moslems across the world are practicing pedophiliac rape, a most vicious form of child abuse, and nothing in their behavior contradicts "true Islam." Since 9/11, we have constantly heard Moslems tell us that people such as these "are not practicing true Islam." However, the men who pedophile nine year old girls are practicing true Islam. Anyone who would argue otherwise either does not understand the Islamic faith or is lying.
Slavery
Allah likes slavery, and he doesn't discriminate between little girls and anyone else.
The Koran teaches: "Blessed are the believers who...restrain their carnal desires (except with their wives and slave-girls, for these are lawful to them)." 12 Islam teaches: "For if a man purchases a slave girl, the purchase contract includes his right to have sex with her." 13 Islamists have for centuries preached that the rape of child slaves is perfectly commendable in the eyes of Allah.
In modern times, Islamic countries practice widespread slavery. In the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, child-slavery is common, as are slave raids. The revolutionary Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army practices child sex-slavery and military slavery on a wide scale. Although not technically a Moslem entity, the LRA receives military and logistical support from the Islamic country of Sudan. 14
In Sudan, slavery is a way of life. According to a recent report conducted by the American Anti-Slavery Group:
"Accumulated evidence suggests the re-emergence of two particular forms of slavery. The first is the women and child slaves used to look after cattle and perform domestic and sexual services for Arab tribesmen in regions bordering southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains; the second involves children who are captured and dispatched to military training camps or hard-line Koranic schools where, it is alleged, attempts are made to transform them into Muslims who are prepared to fight in the "holy war" against the south." 15
It would be imprecise to say that only Moslems practice slavery today. However, it would be precise to say that the Islamic authorities are obeying the their religion in taking slaves, beating them, mutilating them, and raping them. All this is blessed by their religion.
Conclusion
Imagine for a moment the life of a young Christian girl in an Islamic country, such as Sudan.
She is abducted from her parents in a slave raid at the age of four. She is given a new Islamic name and, under gunpoint, forced to pray as a Moslem. At age five, she is forced to undergo the torture of mutilation. At age six, she is engaged to a man ten times her age. At age nine, she is married and repeatedly forcibly raped. For the next year, she is beaten daily. At age ten, she is forcibly raped by another Moslem man, and is sentenced to death because of a charge of fornication. The night before her death, she is raped by a prison guard and assured that she will spend eternity in hell. The next day, she is whipped with lashes until she dies.
During her life, none of her perpetrators have once violated Islamic law. Everything she was subjected to was sanctioned by the "most merciful Allah."
This is not an overdramatization. This is real life. This is the biography of millions of girls. The fact that this is so horrific does not mean that it is not happening in numerous countries to thousands of girls as you read this right now.
Islam is the enemy of these millions of girls, and we do a supreme disservice to them by attempting to reconcile the Islamic faith with the true Catholic faith. Instead of trying to figure out how we can get Moslems more land, discussing how much we all have in common, and having interfaith services with Islamic revolutionaries, it is time we expose Islam for what it is: the sworn enemy of Jesus Christ.
***
ENDNOTES:
1 (World Health Organization Press Release, UN AGENCIES CALL FOR END TO FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION, April 9, 1997)
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Kassinjia, Fauyiza, Do They Hear You When You Cry, Delta, 1999.
5 Robert Spencer, Islam Unveiled, San Francisco: Encounter Books, p. 91.
6 Jan Goodwin, Price of Honor, Boston: Plume, 1995, p. 115.
7 Spencer, 47.
8 Goodwin, 113, 114.
9 Spencer, 48.
10 Spencer, 47.
11 Goodwin, 335.
12 quoted in Spencer, 63.
13 quoted in Cati, Married to Mohammed, Lake Mary, FL: Creation House Press
14 Amnesty International, 1 March 1999, Solidarity Action for Universal Rights: Uganda
15 The American Anti-Slavery Group, Slavery in the Sudan: A Challenge to International Law
No judgement has been forthcoming.... close to 40 years and the Church's hierarchy still refuses to judge the case.
It is one of the reasons that Mel Gibson refuses to recognize Vatican II as authoritative [binding].
Exactly! Hence my comment.
Funny thing is, while Vatican II gives salvation to those that hate the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. Catholicism, (per council of Trent), finds that anyone that believes that you can know that your salvation is secure (per authority of scripture) is a heretic and is accursed...(ie... Protestants)
I agree with your wife.
And I am glad I am not.
One has to be funny to be a comic. She admits she's a self-hating Jewish lesbian "married" to another woman who sympathizes with the Palestinians. On Colin Quinn's "Tough Crowd" show she blurted out that she had a penis. The other guests, who make their living being quick, didn't know how to respond to that.
If true, though, she may have a knowledgable opinion about circumcision.
they have little or no idea what Islam preaches or how its followers manifest their faith in the real world.
The Quran subordinates women as much as the Bible does, plus it gives them certain rights they do not have under the Bible. As compared to how women would live in a Biblical-law society, as women live in a Quranic law society today in those countries, the abuse is more a result of a male-dominated society and a cultural disregard for women.
One grisly practice that is common in most Moslem countries is female circumcision
This is not a Muslim practice. Islam took over many African countries long ago. As these people converted, they often brought into their practice of Islam their local beliefs and customs. Among these was female circumcision. IIRC, there is one disputed Sunnah that may be seen as allowing this out of tolerance for the old religions, but it does not encourage it. Actually, in Islam a woman has a right to enjoy her sexual relations within marriage. A female circumcision would kind of stop that, wouldn't it?
Under Islamic Law, a man cannot be convicted on a charge of rape unless it happens in the presence of four male witnesses who are willing to testify against him.
This is to stop the he says - she says date rape where a man's life is ruined because some girl had second thoughts about what she did last night. If there is physical evidence, the man can still be convicted just as in a U.S. court. In the case of rape, the woman is considered innocent of adultery. If she can't prove the rape (innocent until proven guilty, you know), then she's by definition guilty of either adultery (if married) or slander and immoral conduct (if not). The latter two do not carry the death penalty. Now that's how it's supposed to be according to Shari'a, who knows what these anti-woman governments and tribes do.
However, the men who pedophile nine year old girls are practicing true Islam. Anyone who would argue otherwise either does not understand the Islamic faith or is lying.
Yep, marrying young was common a long time ago across most cultures including Christianity. Islam just hasn't gotten with the times. BTW, it didn't mention that that young girl wife of Mohammed's grew up to be one of the greatest and most respected people in Islam, and even taught Islam and led troops into battle (see a woman doing that in 700AD Christianity).
In modern times, Islamic countries practice widespread slavery.
Again, just an example of Islam being behind the times, as now less than 200 years behind Christianity on this one. BTW, while the Quran, like the Bible, says it's okay to keep slaves and dictates the laws about it, the Quran also has many passages saying that freeing your slaves is a good thing right up there with giving to the poor (which is a Muslim requirement). IIRC, releasing a slave is punishment for some crimes.
During her life, none of her perpetrators have once violated Islamic law.
Actually, they have. Only it's not something that gets prosecuted often in these male-dominated Muslim societies.
I hope they'd have more sense than most Dims and see her for the evil she represents. Also, given the Dim platform, I can't see how a Muslim could possibly vote for one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.