It just doesn't compute...
No pictures or links on this one, just pure outrage.
I've been following the story of the "honor Killing” captured on cell phone video over in Iraq and just the mention of it turns my stomach. I can’t watch another replay of the video no matter how much they edit it, especially since I was unfortunate enough to see it in its entirety and unedited.
With the passing of Jerry Falwell, I’ve read and written many a blog comment about how I won’t miss having the miscreant around anymore. I loathe intolerant guys like Falwell and Pat Robertson as much as any right minded American. But this despicable act which played out recently reminds and affirms for me that the Islamic faith in it’s orthodox form is stratospherically more worrisome and far more dangerous than what the Christian right’s current doctrine of idiocy perpetuates. Yes, the crusaders killed countless thousands going back a couple of hundred years ago, but this shit just happened this week. Men dragged a teenage girl into a courtyard ( her own fucking family I might add) kicked her, dropped huge cinder blocks on her skull until she was dead, while bystanders and police stood by and watched. This plays out with some frequency all over the ME.
These stonings might be the extreme, but what about how women are treated as a whole? Iran has taking to beating women who dress “provocatively” lately in an attempt to shore up the mullahs weakening political hold on it’s populous. How is this not social behavior worthy of condemnation of the highest order? I’ll say it again: There is so much that squarely fits the definition of the words heinous, systemic, despicable, and reprehensible about Islamic society and the persecution of the ENTIRE female sex is a big one. It CANNOT be rationally defended and should warrant severe scorn by the free world at large.
Amnesty International wants to write scathing reports about America’s alleged atrocities in this world and something far worse shows up on the nightly news and where’s the outrage? Nope, just fucking crickets chirping. Oh, the poor terrorists in Gitmo are having to stand for hours at a time boo hoo, yet their stoning rape victims in Pakistan in the name of honor. This is what’s wrong with the world, and America for that matter. The absence of rationale when it come to focusing our collective outrage. So people tell me, what’s more worthy of our collective outrage, Jerry gasbag Falwell blathering his bigotry to the few that listen to him, or dropping a rock on a defenseless girls head in the name of family honor? Well, I’m not afraid to go out on a limb here: People(s) who carry out, support, or otherwise believe there is some kind of rationale for stoning this girl deserve to NOT live amongst the rest of us on this planet. I have ZERO pity for what might befall them as a result. Call me what you want, I am drawing my line here. Where’s yours?
posted by Tony Alva @ 2:47 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
.....more crickets......
OK, should we eliminate every Muslim? As someone who has had, for the last 15 years or so, a very close and dear Islamic friend, I draw my line at your call for genocide.
Yep, I'm back.
(btw, females are not another "species". Both male and female humans are of the same species. The word you're looking for is "sex".)
I think it's fair to say that an entire region of the globe, and entire societies with strong ties to the Islamic faith find it acceptable to ENSLAVE an entire sex (thanks for your correction).
Have you ever considered what life is like for a women in Saudi, Iran, Pakistan, etc... They wake up EVERYDAY with NO HOPE. No hope of ever being able to be free, and we never talk about this in these terms. I don't care if it's culturally entrenched, IT'S WRONG to enslave women, in fact it's dispicable and reprehensible.
We're so spoiled in this country. We waste so much time arguing about a small leak, when the entire dam is collapsing. Why aren't we calling for an end to this wide spread atrocite like we did for an end to aparteid? WHAT IS THE DIFFERNCE HERE? Why is this not worth the breadth of our efforts to eliminate? Why do Muslims who practice and teach this inequity get a pass?
No, I'm not calling for mass genocide, or the death of your friend, as a matter of fact, I be surprised to discover that you'd want to hang with someone who'd support such ideolgy. I'm calling for an end to the pass that any culture or faith currently gets that ENSLAVES women. The case of this poor girl just makes it clearer to me.
Pardon my typing/spelling, I'm working with five stitches in my thumb this week.
BTW, welcomwe back to the madness...
Five Stitches? Wha' happend?
Maybe if America hadn't played the stupid card in 2003, we might have some credibility on the world scene, and might be able to do something about it, but we did, and we can't.
And what of the Catholic Church - doesn't it's position on birth control amount to the enslavement of women?
Again, before we can sit in moral judgment of anyone, we have to sort out our own issues.
What's your plan anyway?
How do we curtail this affront to decency? I do agree that the practice is appalling. But where do you start?
That's my point my friend, I will agree that the Christian based faiths position on something like abortion is oppressive to women, but here's the kicker, that's far from being ENSLAVED. Any Catholic in the free world can choose to leave said faith and live FREE. Using western Christian silliness (the single leak) as an example is nothing in comparison to what women in the ME suffer through everyday of their lives (the overflowing dam). Syrian women for example, would LOVE the opportunity to be able to just leave their abusive husbands and their oppressive lives to worship as they see fit, but they can’t without fear of public scorn at best or death at worst. It's an unbelievably bad situation.
I will look for the link, but I recently read a piece about one of the few female Iranian lawyers who does nothing but buy the freedom of jailed prostitutes. See in Iran, a father can sell his daughter to a 'husband'. Since polygamy is acceptable in the Islamic faith, a pimp can buy as many ‘wives’ as he wants. Once the women gets old or causes enough trouble the pimp/husband simply has the women arrested for adultery ( the men she slept with avoiding any charge of course). The women are either sent to prison, or are stoned to death. If and when they do get out, they are scorned for life. This lawyer women spends all of time and money attempting to gain these women their freedom and tries to get them educated somehow.
This IS NOT something U.S. foreign policy created. This is something born of Islamic based culture going back thousands of years. It's a horrible, backwards, fucked up reality for most women living in the ME.
I don’t know what all the answers are, but the first step is for the free WORLD to call it what it is: SLAVERY. From my recollection of S. Africa's march to freedom, keeping attention focused on the explicit nature of what is being done is what is most effective. P.W. Botha could never come up with a rationale for apartheid when the facts were front and center. What explanation could he offer that made sense to anybody in the free world? This universal world wide condemnation played a big hand in finally drawing S. African apartheid to a peaceful end. At least that’s how I remember it.
Maybe it’s because I have a daughter who will have the opportunity to do whatever she wants to do with her life that this issue has touched such a nerve with me over the last few years. I guess I can make sure she knows exactly how lucky she is to live in America, “home of the oppressed”.
The stitches… I was shaking a red wine glass dry when it broke at the stem and drove into my thumb. I feel like a girly man whining about it, but it feels like someone smashed my thumb with a hammer. It’s amazing how hard it is to live without the use of one’s thumb. Darwin was onto something…
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