Human Rights Alert from Iran Focus, with thanks to JE:
...A report released by the U.S. State Department described Iran as a “source, transit, and destination country for women and girls trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude”.The report cited cased of women and girls being trafficked to Pakistan, Turkey, the Gulf, and Europe for sexual exploitation.
“Boys from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are trafficked through Iran en route to the Gulf states where they are ultimately forced to work as camel jockeys, beggars, or labourers”, the report said.
“Women and children are trafficked internally for the purposes of forced marriage, sexual exploitation, and involuntary servitude”, it said, adding, “The Government of Iran does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so”....
“The Government of Iran did not improve its protection of trafficking victims this year”, it said, adding, “Child victims of commercial sexual exploitation reportedly have been executed for their purported crime of prostitution or adultery. For instance, one 16-year-old sex trafficking victim was hanged publicly by religious authorities who accused her of engaging in "acts incompatible with chastity." The governor of the town later congratulated the religious leader for his ‘firm approach’”.
And no one seems to have seen it as in any way incompatible with their religion.
Naseem, what is your comment about this issue?
"sexual exploitation"
They are sexually exploited, or as Bernard Lewis would say, they are "concubines."
Re: “…adding, “Child victims of commercial sexual exploitation reportedly have been executed for their purported crime of prostitution or adultery. For instance, one 16-year-old sex trafficking victim was hanged publicly by religious authorities who accused her of engaging in "acts incompatible with chastity." The governor of the town later congratulated the religious leader for his ‘firm approach’”.
Somehow I think this would only occur in the Religion of Peace. Screw and abuse the young children and if you are caught, well just hang the victim.
Much more attention should be paid, perhaps on that Iranian station in Los Angeles that beams into Iran, ot the subject of Iranian girls sold into sex slavery, by the Islamic Republic of Iran clerics either gain from it or at least ignore it, to Arab men in the Gulf.
What could madden an Iranian more? Those primitive Bedu, those desert Arabs, with whom we, the heirs of Cyrus and Darius, have nothing in common. Their lascivisousness. Their cruelty. Their crudity. Their demonstrating the fact, again and again, that "money can buy everything -- except civilization."
Have stories, if you can get them, of what is being done to the Iranian maidens snatched and sold into sex slavery in the U.A.E., in Kuwait, in -- above all -- Saudi Arabia. Blend it in with verses from Firdowsi on the Arabs. Invoke the names, and excerpts from the writings, of all kinds of celebrated Iranians -- writings on the Arabs.
And make sure to recall, in a kind of casual en passant manner, those other gifts of the Arabs:
There was Islam. That was a "gift" from a lower, more primitive civilization to a higher. Look at the results.
In 1979, there was another gift: the regime of the Islamic Republic, and all its woe. And Khomeini's chief and indispensable ally was Arafat, and Arafat's PLO, who supplied logistics support, training, even men, to help in the first stages of that "revolution" that brought down the Shah who, by comparison with Khomeini, strikes one as a combination of Winston Churchill, Peter the Great, and George Washington. Go to it, Iranians. You know how to pitch the appeal.
And you need only tell the truth. But start with those Iranian girls. And those Arab men. It's one way to win hearts and minds, not for the cause of Infidels, but by inflaming them, at least to get people thinking, in a patriotic fashion, of what Iran is about, and what the effect of Arab influence and intervention has meant to Iran and Iranians.
And keep that campaign going, on radio and through the Internet. Iranians will be unable to deny the truths stated. And mullahs, and Ahmadinejad, will remain tongue-tied in the face of the truth, a truth that merely needs to be repeated and repeated to have an effect.
Hugh:
Actually, today's Iranians would probably feel very proud that their daughters are sold to the brave, manly race to which Muhammad, Ali, Hassan, and Hussein belonged.
So much like this goes on in the world! In Europe they are trafficking eastern european girls into sexual slavery. I the Arab countries they are kidnaping children and women for slaves. Stuff like this is going on in USA too. People selling babies. Its a sick place we live in
I feel so sorry for all those kids sold into slavery in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, ect It seems like the west doesnt care and they probably don't as long as they sell us oil they get a pass.,,,
Sick world!
Young girls and boys as well as women being bought and sold throughout the Muslim world...
Grover Norquist is right. Islam IS compatible with capitalism and the free enterprise system!
Hardly. A free economic system is one in which economic activity proceeds by consent. Someone who is trafficked, ipso facto is not giving consent to the transaction but is the victim either of force or fraud.
Try reading Tocqueville. The famous passage on the difference between life on the two banks of the Ohio tells one all one needs to know: on the one bank, a dynamic booming society with commercial activity and social life flourishing; on the other, stagnation.
We're shocked, shocked that such things could occur in an upright Islamic nation! It's not like Islamic theology dictates that women are fungible livestock and children are disposable sex toys, both on earth and in Paradise.
If their transgressions are going to be overlooked by the administration because they are "allies", why stick to the charade of promoting democracy and freedom in the Islamic world?
I seriously doubt Naseem has the stomach for this. She knows all too well what goes on in her native Pakistan, and probably has a good idea of what's happening elsewhere in the Islamic world. She will probably dodge this thread and remain silent, as is appropriate for one of Allah's little dogs when the truth is too uncomfortable.
From Bilas: "Stuff like this is going on in USA too."
The really, really big difference is when the slavers are caught, western governments lock them up.
From Marwan's Daughter: "We're shocked, shocked that such things could occur ..."
Please, a few moments of silence in memory of Claude Rains. ...
Child sex slaves,
the logical end
of an evil doctrine
that calls one to be a slave
to a primitive vengeful moon god
and to follow the pattern
of a pedophile prophet
who made murder a sacred act.
I am so very disappointed to learn that a country which has instituted sharia law hasn't managed to wipe out decadence, given all those deluded Muslims in the west who imagine that if we were only ruled by Sharia law we would eliminate all the vices which ignorant Muslims imagine are due to western liberal democracies - among which their favorite bugaboos they cite sexual profligacy (lol!) and drug abuse (big lol! where iran is concerned). Meanwhile, Muslim countries are hard at work trying to bury the evidence for AIDS, and pedophilia etc.
But these idiot Muslims coming here to the west, escaping their destroyed countries, have the hubris to imagine that they have something to teach westerners about morality. They just cover all their sickness up while westerners expose their depravity to the light of day. Which permits Muslims, who come from countries which do not permit open discussion of their problems - to imagine that they actually have something to teach us westerners - if ONLY we would institute Sharia law in our countries.
Mark Humphrys, at his great blogspot, has an article which helps to explain this self-delusion among Muslims coming to the west (as well as the delusions of their fellow travelers here):
http://markhumphrys.com/laws.html#no.1
I quote:
"Paradox No.1 (The Paradox of the Fisks): The most criticised societies in the world will be the least criminal societies.
Let's say one has a planet with free societies, that commit minor crimes, and closed societies, that commit major crimes. Which will get more criticism? The answer, surprisingly, is the free societies.
Why is this?
Explanation
The closed society does not allow criticism of itself. The free society allows criticism of itself and of foreign closed societies. But people write about what they know, and what they are interested in is people like themselves. So the writing about their own society is an order of magnitude larger than about foreign closed societies.
The killing of a dozen protesters in a foreign closed society might rate one paragraph, one time. The killing of a dozen protesters in the free society would completely dominate news and analysis for months, and be strongly covered for years afterwards, even decades. There are all sorts of good reasons for why this is so. But the fact is, it is so. I am simply pointing out that the coverage is not equal.
Of course, in a free society the killing of protesters is a rare event. But even minor crimes - like bribery or lying to parliament - can dominate the news for weeks, even months. While actual massacres in foreign closed societies may be covered in "World News in Brief".
I am simply pointing out the obvious that minor crimes (bribery, embezzlement, lying to parliament) in the free world usually receive more column inches than major crimes (state repression, torture, executions) in the unfree world. There are good reasons for why this is so. But the fact is, it is so. The end result is that in the free press, the column inches given to criticism of free societies will be vastly greater than the column inches given to criticism of closed societies.
The societies singled out to be criticised are by definition those that are best-behaved. What did these societies do to be singled out for criticism? They were not ruthless enough. If they were ruthless, brutal and unfree, they would not be criticised so much. It is because their crimes are modest that they get criticised more.
And so we have a whole generation of journalists and polemicists like Robert Fisk and John Pilger, who write almost entirely about the crimes of the least criminal societies.
Moynihan's Law
This is really Moynihan's Law, which points out that the worst societies have the least domestic criticism. I am just pointing out that a free foreign press does not make up for this. The worst societies still have the least criticism.
Consequence
Finally, what is the effect on people of this imbalance?
In the closed society, the regime (happily) reprints the free society's criticisms of itself. No criticisms are printed of the closed society. Many people in the closed society, not knowing anything else, may even come to believe that the free society is more flawed than the closed society. For example, in the Arab Middle East, most criticism seems to be of Israel and America, rather than of their own societies, which are far more flawed.
And in the free society, naive young people read the criticisms of the free society, and don't read the (small) criticisms of (uninteresting) foreign closed societies. They too may even come to believe that the free societies are the worst societies. And so we see a thousand marches and protests against America, Israel and Britain in the west, while I personally cannot ever remember a single major protest against the Soviet Union, China, Iraq, North Korea, North Vietnam, Serbia, the Sudan or any of recent history's serious criminals.
Similarly, I have seen in my life an endless series of posters, banners, graffiti and cartoons comparing the free countries of America, Israel and Britain to Nazi Germany, and their leaders to Hitler. I'm not sure I have ever seen this about an unfree country.
By definition, the countries people protest about are the best countries. They get this abuse because they are not ruthless enough. If they really were imperialists and mass killers (like the Soviet Union), no one would protest about them."
Yojimbo,
I was being sarcastic. Norquist is the "Conservative Activist" who is responsible for most of the Muslims that Bush has appointed to mid-level positions in his administration. He wrote articles in several conservative magazines claiming that the Muslim vote gave Bush his win over Gore and claiming that Muslims would become conservative loyalists to the GOP just as many Jews were liberal loyalists to the Democrats.
Norquist, a former Executive Director of the College Republicans and current head of Americans for Tax Reform is, along with his devoutly Muslim new wife, Samah Al-Rayyes, the founder of the Islamic Insitute which advocates the compatability of Islam with free enterprise and capitalism.
'...where they are ultimately forced to work as camel jockeys...'
One can't say "camel jockey", can one? Isn't that.....perpetuating racial stereotypes?
How in the world did a government laborer get away with slipping that truth-in-packaging in???
"[Grover] Norquist, a former Executive Director of the College Republicans and current head of Americans for Tax Reform is, along with his devoutly Muslim new wife, Samah Al-Rayyes, the founder of the Islamic Insitute which advocates the compatability of Islam with free enterprise and capitalism."
-- from a posting above
Compatible with "free enterprise" if by "free enterprise" one means the seizing of money by those who first seize, or inherit power. It has been noted before that in the Western world, those who first make money then want something else -- fame, glory -- and to do enter politics. In the Muslim Middle East (and elsewhere as well) the only way to make money, real money, is to seize power, or be in the circle of those who have that power.
Mubarak's Friends-and-Family Plan distributes that American Jizyah, taking a large cut for itself -- for the Godfather and company. In Jordan, longsuffering American taxpayers used to pay all sorts of King Hussein's bills, the "plucky little king' who drove around in his sports cars, flew around in his planes, and in the West, in the best hotels, had the most expensive call girls visit him, seriatim -- all paid for by you, and me, dear taxpayer. In Qatar, the family that is now described, unironicaly, as the "royal" family -- as J. B. Kelly said, the whole lot of these locals were once called, by the British, merely sheikhs, or the "Ruler" as in --"The Ruler of Bahrain" -- but now they keep giving themselves promotions, so they are almost all of them now "royalty." Very funny, but not so funny is the way that the Al-Thani family in Qatar, the Al-Sabah in Kuwait, the Maktoum (buying all that New York real estate, on enotes) of the United Arab Emirates, and all the others, including the late Sheikh Zayid and his descendants in Abu Dhabi, appropriate much of whatever statelet they pretend to be the head of through some presumed venerable dynasty.
Of course the most egregious and comical example is that of a country named after a single family by that family: Saudi Arabia, named after the Al-Saud. How much is raked off the top, bottom, and sides (and please, trim the eyebrows as well), by the princes and princelings and princelettes, and all their numerous courtiers and consorts (Khashoggis, Bin Ladens, the lot of "contractors" and "defense consultants" who serve the all-important role of being conduits for bribes to assorted Al-Saud family members, who don't want everything to be official).
"Compatible" with "free enterprise"? Not so far.
And inshallah-fatalism does not exactly, as an attitude, encourage all that industry and enterprise that modern economies require.
But let's pretend. Let's pretend that Grover Norquist, Muslim (for he cannot marry a Muslim woman and remain a non-Muslim) and friend of the Good and Great in Washington (that he is not looked upon with great suspicion, not shunned, is itself telling about official Washington, and its wilful misunderstanding of Islam), is right.
Let's pretend that "capitalism" and "Islam" go together.
So what?
The real question is: can Islam and non-Islam, can Believers and Infidels, "go together" or co-exist, in a spirit in which Muslims are not constantly striving to deny those Infidels their laws, their customs, their understandings, their ways of doing things, their pluralism (I don't mean the "pluralism" that Muslism exploit as long as they need to -- I mean "pluralism" everywhere, including the Muslim countries), their relations between the sexes, their attention to the individual and abhorrence of the Muslim emphasis on the collective, their free speech, their freedom of conscience, their art, their music, their everything that makes them them.
Since Islam uncompromisingly divides the world between Believer and Infidel, and the former are instructed "not to take" the latter as "friends" but rather to show implacable hostility to them, and even to show murderous hostility to them, and since, in the Muslim view, the world's land is also dividied, between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, the Lands of the Believers and the Lands of the Infidels (the "House, Domain, Abode of War"), and Muslims have a duty to strive, in whatever way they can, using whatever instruments of Jihad prove most effective and are available, to make as much of Dar al-Harb part of Dar al-Islam, until Islam covers the globe, and dominates everywhere, and Muslims rule.
This is not a fantasy. This can be found in the texts. This is taught. The fact that not all Muslims act upon it should be no consolation. Some are too busy making a living. Some wish to pretend those texts and teachings do not exist, for as residents of the West, they have no way to explain them, and just hope that they can keep on distracting Infidels, avoiding the real questions, and keep on reproducing at a rate that will eventually make the answering of such questions, or the pretense of answering them, unnecessary. That this is not understood is a failure at least as colossal as that of the Western world with Adolf Hitler in the 1930s, or with the Bolsheviks in the period of the Russian Civil War, when they might have been stopped.
Provoslavni:
And did he say anything about what they would ask in exchange if they were to become loyalists to the Republicans?
No, forget it: silly me for asking.
I'm sure there must be people like this in all the major parties right across the West. What a mess!
Well put, Hugh!
Unfortunately, many in the Bush White House and in the GOP seem to believe Grover's fantasies about Islamic capitalism. But these are also the same people who believe we should bring "democracy" to the world's Muslim hoardes.
Yojimbo,
I'm sure Grover isn't the first man to sell his soul for the love of a young woman.