Thanks for the update, Marisol.

The relevant links have just been emailed to my parish priest: Anila and Saba and their family are on our parish prayer list.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at September 11, 2008 12:42 AM

"the court has accepted expert testimony that she is over 16 years old, and therefore capable of marrying 'of her own will'."
i would like to know who the mud-lims bribed
s an adult, because she is over the age of 16. So her conversion and marriage to one of the kidnappers have been found to be "voluntary
funny how musklims(because imo they stink) consider conversion under the threat of death to be voluntary
its to bad we cant bring some of these kidnappers to the west were they would face real laws for there crimes not the mad up crap called sharia

Posted by: ISLAMSNOTFORME at September 11, 2008 3:43 AM

"the court has accepted expert testimony that she is over 16 years old, and therefore capable of marrying 'of her own will'."
i would like to know who the mud-lims bribed
s an adult, because she is over the age of 16. So her conversion and marriage to one of the kidnappers have been found to be "voluntary
funny how musklims(because imo they stink) consider conversion under the threat of death to be voluntary
its to bad we cant bring some of these kidnappers to the west were they would face real laws for there crimes not the made up crap called sharia

Posted by: ISLAMSNOTFORME at September 11, 2008 4:11 AM

I'm glad she was set free but was she raped? Muslims seal the deal with rape in these cases

Posted by: dennisw at September 11, 2008 4:11 AM

But in the case of the older one, while her relatives have official documents that put her age at 13, "the court has accepted expert testimony that she is over 16 years old, and therefore capable of marrying 'of her own will'."

Expert testimony??? WTF? It seems to me, her PARENTS ought to know how old she is! What a load of BS. Her kidnapper/rapist just doesn't want to give her up.

Posted by: ImNoDhimmi at September 11, 2008 6:58 AM

"Her relatives say that Saba is only 13, as shown by official documents, but the court has accepted expert testimony that she is over 16 years old, and therefore capable of marrying "of her own will"."

The "expert testimony" can be attributed to a single factor: the innate supremacy of a Muslim's word over that of a Christian in an Islamic court of law.

Posted by: Cornelius at September 11, 2008 7:47 AM

Cornelius - that's one of the fun things about Sharia Law! Justice is not the aim of the court, asserting the superiority of Muslims over all others is. It's not law! It's like a gigantic Boys Club, coming up with decrees that help the boys in their struggles against girls and other higher authorities.

Posted by: tanstaafl at September 11, 2008 8:43 AM

tanstaafl,

I hear you. Jim Crow

Posted by: Cornelius at September 11, 2008 8:53 AM

This is Pakistan, a country into which more than $30 billion dollars (military aid, economic aid, debt forgiveness) has been poured since 9/11/2001, with no understanding that the Pakistani I.S.I., that is the Pakistani military, that is the Pakistani government, was in up to its neck not only in A. Q. Khan's theft of Western nuclear secrets and their development into what the Pakistanis proudly call "the Islamic bomb" but also in allowing him to sell or barter those secrets to North Korea and to Iran. Nor is there any understanding that, as Dexter Filkin's article in The Times made clear, and as others, including Ahmad Rashid, have testified, Pakistan has been engaged in a shadow-play, a pretend-show of "fighting Al Qaeda" in the most minimal way, a drole de guerre intended only to keep the American money flowing, from the endlessly naive -- or so it must seem to the Pakistanis -- American government.

And to make matters worse, in the utter folly and futility of things, when even Admiral Mullen now confesses to Congress that the "war in Afghanistan" (which is indissolubly connected to what happens in Pakistan) is "not being won" but Mullen thinks, because he is an ordinary man, with ordinary abilities, in an environment full of ordinary men, that somehow the "war can be won" which shows he has yet to understand why Pakistan, with 150 million Muslims, can never take our side, and that to confuse the smiling and crooked Zardari or any of his zamindarish aides (including that charming spokeswoman from one of the richest zamindar families, the entirely anglophone Wellesley girl, and former Washington resident Mahnaz Ispahani) with the primitive masses or the sinister military who rule Pakistan is a great error.

Mullen, however, while recognizing that "things are not going well" in Afghanistan, does not know quite why, though he knows that Pakistan's failure to close down sanctuaries for the Taliban is part of it. He, and those around him, just cannot face up to the inextinguishable problem of Islam, and of the force of Islam, the hold it will always have over a considerable number of Muslims -- and that no amount of Infidel-supplied roads, and bridges, and schools and computers in every willage will do a thing about that, but will, by giving the means to spread, through enhanced movement, and through the ether, and making it possible for those no longer required to spend all their time in a hardscrabble existence to spend more of their time in promoting Jihad, spreading Jihad. Not prosperity, but a life of extreme hardship, and the need to survive at a subsistence level, is what keeps Muslim villagers from participating in Jihad, and also, at times, makes them slightly more amenable to Infidels whose good will they need. The more they have, the more dangerous, not less dangerous, they become.

But how can the Admiral Mullens of this world understand this? Even as they recognize, rhetorically, a "failure" of American policy, they still talk of "victory" and "getting it right" as if the Jihad were a finite thing, and all one has to do is kill a thousand, or a hundred thousand, or even five hundred thousand, "Jihadis" and that will be the end of the matter. That that can be said, that there is no recognition of what having more than a billion Muslims, with tens of millions of them now apparently ensconced deep within the Western world, with that ideology of Islam intact and allowed to spread -- shows the intellectual incapacity of so many.

Others must mock them. Others must show them up, and then push them out.

Posted by: Hugh at September 11, 2008 9:01 AM

Hugh:
So do you recommend that NATO dismember Pakistan into small constituents parts and create a region for the non-Moslems?

xavier

Posted by: xavier at September 11, 2008 10:22 AM

Hugh,

It hurts and angers me every time someone mentions the BILLIONS we continue to send to ME countries. I don't have a problem with disaster relief to people devastated by a natural event - it's all the military, economic, etc. aid that bothers me. The reason why is personal, but I'm sure it applies to Americans in other U.S. towns (and the principle involved in our situation should bother all Americans!).

I live in a small community (200 families), who are all American citizens. We can't get the funds to save our lives and homes from being buried by the hillside above us, which has become very unstable. The hillside needs to be terraced, just like other hills surrounding us have been terraced to protect the highway. But, we can't get the government to do the mitigation work (maybe 50 million) to save an entire community of Americans. However, they don't hesitate to send billions every year to foreign countries, who don't even like us. There's something very wrong with this picture! We're some of the tax payers, who are funding those billions! It's even more troublesome when I consider our community has veterans from every war living here. My neighbor was a WW2 pilot, who was shot down, and spent months starving in a German POW camp, before what was left of him was freed at the end of the war.

Posted by: OMGNowWhat at September 11, 2008 9:04 PM

OMGNovWhat to get aid from the government have your 200 people sent a requst for foreign aid to Iran station your problen and what aid you need, and after your mail is well on it way to the UN Iran Mission or Iran Foreign Affair Department in Iran let Washington D.C. know what you 200 people did remember this is than election year both party want your votes.

Posted by: DefenderofIslam at September 12, 2008 2:30 AM

Interesting idea, DefenderofIslam. I'll pass it on to the Chairman of our community organization.

But, seriously, a previous letter writing campaign to our state capitol netted us each a basic form letter - a whole page of words that says absolutely nothing.

Posted by: OMGNowWhat at September 12, 2008 4:19 AM