The school had closed months ago, but that apparently wasn't enough. From Compass Direct News, October 14:
ISTANBUL, October 14 (Compass Direct News) – Taliban militants bombed a Catholic-run girls’ school in Pakistan’s war-torn Swat Valley as part of a larger effort to subvert women’s status in society through Islamic law, locals say.
On Wednesday (Oct. 8) the Islamic terrorist group bombed the Convent Girls’ School in Sangota, run by the Presentation Sisters, a Catholic religious order that has opened girls’ schools around the world. Militants have threatened the school frequently for offering education to females.
No one was injured in the attack. The school had closed a few months earlier due to deteriorating security in Swat, a source told Compass. Students and faculty left in July following threats.
“The Taliban said, ‘We have asked you so many times to close down the school but you are not listening. We are going to set it on fire,’” said Yousef Benjamin, a Lahore-based peace activist.
Militants had already attacked or blown up and forced the closure of many girls’ schools in Swat, said Cecil Chaudhry, executive secretary of All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. They told the nuns they would destroy their school if it weren’t closed. Following the bombing the militants ransacked the school’s adjoining convent.
The high school enrolled approximately 1,000 female students, nearly 95 percent of them Muslim.
The Santoga school has faced threats from Islamic extremists before. It closed its doors in September 2007 after received a threatening letter from extremists that demanded all teachers and female students wear the burqa. The letter claimed the faculty was working to convert Muslim students to Christianity.
The Taliban has not singled out the school for its Christian ties but instead wants to clamp down on all girls’ schools, which they believe encourage female participation in society, government officials claim.
In the last two years it has indiscriminately targeted more than 150 public and private girls’ schools in northwest Pakistan.
“For them it doesn’t matter if it’s a Christian school, government school or a private school,” Benjamin said. “Last week I was in [the northern city of] Peshawer and the Taliban told women to not even go to the market.” [...]
Located near the Afghanistan border, Swat has been a flash point between the country’s security forces and Islamic militants. The area used to be a thriving tourist haven with hotels and a ski resort but came under complete control of Taliban militants in September 2007.
Government security forces cleared out the Taliban from the valley in recent months, but the area came under their control once again three weeks ago.
With their re-asserted control, the Taliban has forced all Swat residents to live according to their strict lifestyle guidelines, whether Muslim or Christian.
Men have grown beards and adopted Islamic dress. Women are required to wear burqas and sit in the back seat of their own vehicles. Advertisements cannot feature pictures of women. [...]
The 70 or so Christian families scattered in the valley occupy the lower class, working as laborers and street sweepers.
What is wrong with these guys??????
When I was in Highschool, the Catholic Highschool Girls were the proof teenage boys needed that God does exist and He loves us! And then there was also Beer.
Why would anyone bomb their highschool? Probably because the Ctholic schoolgirl outfit gave the Taliban girls a complex.....as it should.
Ayo Gorkhali!
The Islamic world needs to be cut off like the gangrenous wound it had become upon the world. Freeze all aide, trade, travel and immigration before the gangrene spreads to the vital organs of western civilization.
Educate the girls and Islam dies.
It is Islam that must die if the girls are to be educated.
Yup!
The violence of islam would end if their women would hat the 'courage' 2 stand up and say!
But.............
@Dave
That wont happen!(in near future :'()
The beginning may happen sooner than you think.
The barbarity of these fanatics is beyond belief.
They have no relevance and place in civilised life.
Obviously, the more we let these fanatics into our countries, the worse things will become.
At least Catholic school girls have brains, something these jihadists will never acquire.
The Taliban want 'em barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the stove. No wonder so many of them live in caves.
Silent, faceless, unable to read, unable to write, locked in a house, beaten without justice, bred like an animal, whipped, stoned, starved, shot,
all to the endless background drone of the frothing, flea-bearded Imams smiling yellow-toothed over the submissive buttock-hoisting of the mighty male warriors.
"The Taliban has not singled out the school for its Christian ties but instead wants to clamp down on all girls’ schools, which they believe encourage female participation in society, government officials claim."
A religion that gets its panties in a wad because they fear participation by its women in society is a bad thing...
It appears Islam is the only religion that feels this way..
These are the barbarians our fearless leaders are now prepared to "negotiate" with in Afghanistan.
The entire exercise in Afghanistan has been a gigantic waste of life, money and time which would have been far better spent shoring up our defenses at home. And now these neanderthals are burning and killing their way into Pakistan. Just wait till they reach the nukes.
Marwan's Daughter,
That was some pretty damn good prose.
I believe that cave men were of a higher order of human intellectual advancement and intelligence than the Taliban, AlQaeda, and other associated Islamic organizations. In cave men days the Taliban types would have been killed and eaten like the animals that they are.
And just think, these guys are only a twenty hour plane ride away! CAIR must be so proud.
Islam is violence against women. Period. Stop.
The Taliban has not singled out the school for its Christian ties but instead wants to clamp down on all girls’ schools, which they believe encourage female participation in society, government officials claim.
Well government officials ought to know, given that Pakistan CREATED the Taliban.
They don't want female participation in society but they want the males to commit jihad and they encourage them to seek martyrdom. Who will be left, if not for the women?
FYI,its USA who 'created' Taliban through ISI(a Pakistani secret 'service' agency) to repel the soviets from Afghanistan!
FYI,its USA who 'created' Taliban through ISI(a Pakistani secret 'service' agency) to repel the soviets from Afghanistan!
Mohammadan attacks on Christians, are escalating in numerous places. Murders, rapes, destruction of churches...mob activity and mentality, are rampant. In some cases the Imam on the minaret called for rioting.
There are only three choices...
1. Christians can try to hold on, and wait till they are next.
2. Christians could abandon these cess pools, maybe with the help of other Christians.
3. The authorities could do their jobs, and be exceedingly tough on rioters and assaulter's.
Usually the police, if they show up at all, spend most of their time standing around picking their noses.
So... Let's see if I understand this article.
Taliban threatens; teachers and students leave.
Taliban blows up an empty (thank God, not Allah) building, and is mightily pleased with this "accomplishment".
Silly Taliban-- If it was a high school, the girls could already read and write.
Silly Taliban--you're a day late and a dollar short.
FYI,its USA who 'created' Taliban through ISI(a Pakistani secret 'service' agency) to repel the soviets from Afghanistan!
Posted by: XmarX
FYI...It was Allah who created the Taliban.
The CIA etc are merely Allah's tools.
The Taliban is comprised of the sons of Allah.
'They' know who created them and sustains them.
Allah laid it all out for them in his book, The Quran, way before the the USA even existed.
And they also have the living examples of Mohammad, the perfect man and role model.
So while American interests had a role in 'using' the Sons of Allah, they did not create them...
And, of course, there will be world-wide protests by "moderate" Muslims condemning all that the Taliban proposes and carries out in the name of Islam because the Taliban have gotten the Koran, the Hadith and Sharia all wrong, just as al-Qaeda has. Right?
I think with the right number of American Catholic nuns, we can turn the tide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU34iLemwdY
I'm still waiting for the Liberal Feminist outrage over this.
*Oh snap*
They are still pre-occupied by alleged, rumored, supposed oppression of women by Christians.
revparadigm: Your observation is correct. Liberal feminists don't fear the Taliban. Their ire at present is directed at the real manace as they see it-------conservative, Christian, traditional Sarah Palin. Yep, she's the real enemy for the modern liberal woman, whose ignorannce, foolishness and narcissism disallows her from seeing who the real enemy for women is-------radical Islam.
Notice, POTUS is quiet ahout his 'friends allies' Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, who have propped up Taliban.
Also notice, Secretary of State is unmoved too.
Muslim youths are angry, frustrated and extremist because they have been mis-educated and de-educated by the British schooling. Muslim children are confused because they are being educated in a wrong place at a wrong time in state schools with non-Muslim monolingual teachers. They face lots of problems of growing up in two distinctive cultural traditions and value systems, which may come into conflict over issues such as the role of women in the society, and adherence to religious and cultural traditions. The conflicting demands made by home and schools on behaviour, loyalties and obligations can be a source of psychological conflict and tension in Muslim youngsters. There are also the issues of racial prejudice and discrimination to deal with, in education and employment. They have been victim of racism and bullying in all walks of life. According to DCSF, 56% of Pakistanis and 54% of Bangladeshi children has been victims of bullies. The first wave of Muslim migrants were happy to send their children to state schools, thinking their children would get a much better education. Than little by little, the overt and covert discrimination in the system turned them off. There are fifteen areas where Muslim parents find themselves offended by state schools.
The right to education in one’s own comfort zone is a fundamental and inalienable human right that should be available to all people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious background. Schools do not belong to state, they belong to parents. It is the parents’ choice to have faith schools for their children. Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim teacher or a child in a Muslim school. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslim children are in majority. In my opinion, all such schools may be designated as Muslim community schools. An ICM Poll of British Muslims showed that nearly half wanted their children to attend Muslim schools. There are only 143 Muslim schools. A state funded Muslim school in Birmingham has 220 pupils and more than 1000 applicants chasing just 60.
Majority of anti-Muslim stories are not about terrorism but about Muslim culture--the hijab, Muslim schools, family life and religiosity. Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as a western community, not as an alien culture.
Iftikhar Ahmad
www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk
"...there is no place for a non-Muslim teacher or student in a Muslim school.Muslims in the West ought to be recognized a a community not as an alien culture." from above
Why on earth would you expect to be treated as anything other than alien when you refuse to assimilate or fit in in any manner?If you want separate Muslim communities and schools why do you relocate to other countries that are not primarily Muslim? Why do you expect your new neighbors to change their centuries-old traditions just to accommodate yours? Above all, how dare you expect your new "host" to pay for everything you are demanding?
And I'm sorry to bust your bubble, but stories about "family life, the hijab, religiosity, and Muslim schools" ARE stories about terrorism: Honor killings happen within Muslim families; Muslim schools are notorious breeding grounds for terrorism; your holy book teaches violence (religiosity); and the hijab is a perfect symbol of Islamic subjugation of women.
redundant.off topic.hypocritical.
*sigh*
"Muslims in the west ought to be recognised as a western community, not as an alien culture."
Sure...but why?
The last 1400 years tell a much differnt story.
...including the above school bombing.