Recently in women's rights in Islam Category

This is all the more disturbing following a similar recent incident in which a video conference with Salman Rushdie at a literary fair had to be called off.

Behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and society will be poorer for it as dissent becomes physically dangerous. "After Muslim protests, Kolkata Book Fair cancels Taslima Nasrin book launch," by Molly Driscoll for the Christian Science Monitor, February 2:

After receiving threats, the Kolkata Book Fair canceled the launch of Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin’s new autobiography "Nirbasan," which had been scheduled to debut at the fair this week. Muslim leaders had protested her appearance there because of one of Nasrin’s previous books, titled “Lajja” (translated to “Shame”), which has been viewed by some of the Muslim faith as offensive.

Nasrin has enraged them before by demanding women's rights. Two people died in riots over her article "Let's Think About the Burqa" in 2010. In that article, she called for women to burn their burqas, and noted:

"Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual's personal reasons that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it," and: "Why are women covered? Because they are sex objects. Because when men see them, they are roused. Why should women have to be penalised for men's sexual problems? Even women have sexual urges. But men are not covered for that."

The CSM report continues:

Tridib Chatterjee, the secretary for the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, which is in charge of the Kolkata Book Fair, told The New York Times that the launch was canceled not only because of threats received, but because the AC Hall, the space where the launch was to take place, was not prepared.

“We took the decision to cancel the book launch in the larger interests of the people,” Chatterjee told The New York Times. “We cannot jeopardize the safety and security of thousands of visitors to the book fair.”

The launch then took place at the stall of the People’s Book Society, the publishing company that was releasing Nasrin’s new book, though not in connection with the fair's organizers. Other authors at the book fair, including writer Nabarun Bhattacharya, launched the book at the stall unofficially. A rally occurred later at the fair, protesting the threats against Nasrin.

Nasrin was forced to flee her home country of Bangladesh in 1994 after the release of "Lajja" provoked attacks and death threats. She lived in Europe and North America for some time before moving to Kolkata, but after being attacked again and becoming the subject of riots due to a fatwa against her in the city, she moved to New Delhi, and then left India for Sweden after she said some members of the police force told her to leave the country.

Nasreen said she was taken aback that the cancellation had not prompted more outrage from the city’s residents.

“Are Kolkatans becoming cowards?” she asked the Times of India.

Shakila, the ex-Muslim living in a Muslim country who blogs at Liberated, has a new post up about Muslim men, Muslim women, and marriage:

Each time I see a Muslim woman dressed up in the complete Islamic burqa with only her dead expressionless eyes piercing through the black face veil, I cannot but help feel extremely helpless and distressed. It breaks my heart to see a woman being treated worse than an animal. On top of that, they actually feel they are doing the right thing by subjugating themselves to the tyranny of their husbands or fathers.

Read it all.

Nine. There's that number again. Now, everyone knows only the greasiest of greasy Islamophobes retail the notion that the practice of marrying girls as young as nine has something to do with Muhammad marrying Aisha when she was six and consummating the marriage when she was nine, and he was six times her age at fifty-four. So, all of these people continuing the practice in the remotest, most undeveloped areas Afghanistan and Yemen out of Islamic piety must actually be reading American or European blogs, right?

Wrong. For example, there is Sahih Bukhari 7.62.88: "The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with 'Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)."

It is Islam's own texts and traditions that cause the practice to persist in places far removed from one another, and to appear where it had previously been unimaginable -- for example, Britain. "Islington girls forced into marriage at the age of nine," by Pavan Amara for the Islington Tribune, January 27:

An alarming number of under-age girls – some as young as nine – are being forced into marriage in Islington, according to a leading campaign group.

The Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO) claim that at least 30 girls in the borough were forced into marriage in 2010.

The practice was condemned by the Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque, who said such marriages were against Islam and “unacceptable”.

He pledged to invalidate any marriage which he said were carried out by “back-street Imams”.

IKWRO, which made headlines last month when they revealed there had been almost 3,000 “honour-based” violence cases in 2010, has shown the Tribune records which revealed at least three 11-year-old girls and two nine-year-olds had been forced into marriage with older men within Islington. The oldest girls involved were 16.

They have warned that hundreds of Islington girls could be suffering sexual, emotional and physical scars as a result of the child marriages every year and are calling for teachers, social workers and police to be better trained to spot and manage the abuse.

Information from the Ministry of Justice, following a Freedom of Information request, revealed that 32 Forced Marriage Protection Order applications were made for children under 16 in Britain last year.

Six of these were made for under-16s within Islington at the Royal Courts of Justice, although these were not necessarily made for Islington residents.

At the Islington court, “five or fewer” orders were made to protect children between the ages of 9-11.

The orders are a form of injunction that threaten legal punishment if marriage takes place due to emotional or physical force.

In most cases, the children fear they will be killed if they reveal the truth to anybody, while others believe they will be separated from their families and taken into social services’ care.

Dianna Nammi, director of IKWRO, explained that the girls are married in a mosque’s sharia court. This means they are not legally married according to British law, rendering the Home Office unable to recognise or prove the abuse.

“They are still expected to carry out their wifely duties, though, and that includes sleeping with their husband,” she said.

“They have to cook for them, wash their clothes, everything. They are still attending schools in Islington, struggling to do their primary school homework, and at the same time being practically raped by a middle-aged man regularly and being abused by their families. So they are a wife, but in a primary school uniform.

That's not being "practically" raped. The practice will diminish when the law comes after the "husbands" and families with the force with which they would pursue child molesters and human traffickers. This is rape, and it is human trafficking.

“The reason it doesn’t get out is because they are too terrified to speak out, and also the control their families have over them is impossible to imagine if you’re not going through it. The way it is covered up is so precise, almost unspeakable.”

Ms Nammi said that one 13-year-old had to sneak out of a maths lesson to contact the group, because she was being monitored so closely by her family.

“Her teacher didn’t notice because she said she’d gone to the toilet, but when she got home that day she was beaten,” she said.

“Her father knew she hadn’t been in maths because he had sent an uncle to spy on who she was talking to through the classroom window.”

Ms Nammi said that the girls are married off to family friends or family members to stop them from losing their virginity to anyone not chosen by their father.

As young as nine. Heaven knows they're all going to become wild party animals at age 10.

However, the incentive is also often financial.

The financial aspect supports the human trafficking angle:

“The girl automatically becomes her husband’s property, so he takes financial responsibility for her,” said Ms Nammi.

“In fact, often the husband has to start contributing to the girl’s family, so it becomes a way of bringing in another salary.

“Who are girls going to tell? Often they feel like teachers at school won’t understand what their families are like. They will think they’re like Western families, and won’t understand that if they pass on anything at all that they’ve been told to the family, then the girl will be killed. So they just chose not to tell at all.”....

Those who wage jihad to impose Sharia push a circular argument: Sharia is the only way to peace and security because it is the only condition under which they will allow peace and security to take hold. They try to prove the supposed necessity of Sharia by attempting to create it, through harassment, sexual assaults, and acts of terrorism.

It is this man's mindset that also likely explains some of the reported surge in sexual assaults in the Maldives, and in Scandinavia as well. When you are a second class citizen, as women and unbelievers are under Sharia (women become perpetual minors, and unbelievers are dhimmis), you bear a disproportionate burden to keep the peace by knowing your "place." If you are found to be out of that place, you forfeit your protection, such as it is.

"'Strict Muslim' raped four women at knifepoint to 'punish them for being on the streets at night'," Nick Enoch for the Daily Mail, January 25:

A Muslim man who raped women to 'teach them a lesson' for being on the streets at night was jailed indefinitely today because of the danger he poses to women.

Sunny Islam, 23, who comes from a strict Muslim family, dragged his terrified victims - including a 15-year-old - from the street at knifepoint, bound and assaulted them during a two-month reign of terror.

Police fear that Islam may have attacked many more.

Three of the assaults took place close to his home in Barking, east London, while a fourth occurred in nearby Forest Gate.

Judge Patricia Lees, sentencing him to a minimum of 11 years, said: 'The harm you have done to your victims is incalculable.

'The nature and extent of these offences drives me to the conclusion that you represent an extreme and continuing danger to women, particularly those out at night.'

He was traced through the number plate of his girlfriend's car after he kidnapped and raped the 15-year-old in September 2010.

He grabbed her from behind as she walked home with a friend and bundled her into the car at knifepoint before driving to a secluded spot where he raped her twice despite her claiming she was only 11 years old.

Judge Lees said: 'You told her you were going to "teach her a lesson", and similar things were said to the other women.

'Those words are a chilling indictment of your very troubling attitude towards all of these victims.

'You seem to observe women out at night as not deserving respect or protection....

The common factor in the persistence of female genital mutilation outside of Africa is the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence, which holds the practice to be obligatory. The Maldives has been on a fast track here of late toward intensified observance of Sharia, and the government has already ruled with respect to Sharia's criminal punishments that "there is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam." As this report makes clear, that attitude threatens the bodily integrity of Maldivian girls and women.

"Female circumcision fear as fundamentalists roll back women's rights," by Ben Doherty for the Sydney Morning Herald, January 25 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

When the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, visited the Maldives late last year, she urged that the practice of flogging women for having sex outside marriage - while very rarely punishing men for the same - should be abolished.

''This practice constitutes one of the most inhumane and degrading forms of violence against women,'' she told local reporters then.

The response was as fierce as it was unexpected. The next day protesters rallied outside the UN building, carrying placards that read ''Ban UN'' and ''Islam is not a toy'' and threatened to ''Flog Pillay''. A website later promised to ''slaughter anyone against Islam''.

Similar protests have followed, and a growing religious divide between moderate and fundamentalist Muslims - constitutionally, all Maldivians are obliged to follow Islam - has led many to question the direction of religion in the Maldives and, in particular, the place of women in Maldivian society.

In an interview with the Herald, the Maldivian President, Mohamed Nasheed, conceded an emergent religious fundamentalism had changed the way women were viewed, and treated, in his country.

He said he was distressed by religious groups who campaigned for girls to be circumcised or to be kept home from school.

''We were a matriarchal society. Our inheritance, also, in the past was from women. But, with a new kind of radical Islam, the perceptions some of them have on women are not familiar to many Maldivians,'' Mr Nasheed said.

Once again, wherever Sharia enjoys a resurgence, the observable effect is that tolerance decreases, harassment increases, and respect for human rights decreases.

Anecdotal reports suggest female circumcision is undergoing a resurgence in the Maldives, particularly on the outer islands, where local imams hold significant influence.

Shadiya Ibrahim, member of the newly formed Gender Advocacy Working Group and a long-time campaigner for women's rights, said Maldivian society was growing more oppressive towards women.

''Being a woman is harder now. The religious Wahhabist scholars preach more forcefully than anyone else can. They have this backing of religion as a tool.

''No one can make the argument to have a more liberal, a more positive attitude towards women. Day by day, it is becoming harder for women to live in this country,'' she said.
Ms Ibrahim said women were excluded from positions of power, from taking jobs and even from education, particularly beyond primary level.

The practice of flogging women for extramarital sex was common across the Maldives, she said.

''It happens everywhere. Normally, this punishment is given when you give birth, which is why it is almost always women. If you have 140-odd women being flogged, you have only two or three men.'' The flogging is public and done with a paddle or a cane, and is intended more to humiliate than to cause serious injury.

Ms Ibrahim said flogging was accepted by many Maldivians, and there were other, more serious issues emerging, including a growing number of instances of sexual violence.

''This week, there have been two cases of a gang rape of [a] minor, one 16-year-old, one 12-year-old and, very often, while there is an effort to catch the perpetrators, eventually, the media will turn it into 'the girl was wearing this', 'the girl had gone there','' he said.

When you are a second-class citizen, if you are found out of your supposed place, you forfeit your right to protection. You are "asking for it."

Domestic violence is common. A nationwide survey done in 2007 found one in three Maldivian women had been abused, sexually or physically.

Aneesa Ahmed, president of advocacy organisation Hope for Women, said a domestic violence bill before the Maldivian parliament would raise awareness of an issue rarely discussed in the Maldives. But the legislation has been stuck in parliament more than 14 months. Only five of the Maldives' 77 parliamentarians are women.

Ms Ahmed said Maldivian women's control over their lives was being eroded. ''Men in the Maldives feel that the women's role is reproductive and in the home. That's what women should do and that's all we should do.''

Muslim men rape Muslim women because they do not dare to go to the police out of fear of their family's "honourable" reaction.

Muslim men rape non-Muslim women because it is their right.

Not only the women are hurt. Islam also perverts men's sexuality and destroys their ability to experience true love, which is based on equality. Violent frustrations and sexual perversion might often be the result.

In Oslo, Norway's capital, 100 percent of rapes are committed by 'non-Western' immigrants. As a result, the female staff at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Oslo has received training in martial arts, and all female employees are wearing alarms -- basically to be able to defend themselves against Muslim rapists.

The latest news is that in Stavanger, Norway's 4th biggest city, nine out of ten rapes are committed by 'men from minority groups'.

The amount of reported rapes in Sweden has increased 186 percent from 2001 to 2010.

The Liberated One, the apostate from Islam who writes from a Muslim country, is back with a blistering post on women in Islam:

Hello, friends. First of all I apologize for being out of sight for nearly a week, as I had been really busy at work, and also had my parents visiting me and my brothers from Pakistan. While they were here staying with me, I could not but help feeling really sorry for them, especially my mother. She covers herself in that black garb and thinks that those women who do not are committing a major crime in the eyes of Allah and Mohammed and those women (actually an indirect insinuation in my direction) will surely be the fuel of the hell fire. I really feel so sorry for my mom and most of my Muslim friends who don the hijab and consider women like us not completely Muslim, and most of the Muslim men consider non-Muslim women and non-hijabi women as mere whores. Believe me when I say that no one suffers as much in this world as the Muslim women, in fact the mother of all believers Ayesha said the exact same words. Islam is heaven for Muslim men, but a hell for the believing women…. I know this and so does every Muslim women on the face of the earth, whether she lives in Pakistan or Iran or Afghanistan or Indonesia or Saudi or Algeria or Turkey…

Engaging in their own form of Stockholm Syndrome, most Muslim women publicly defend the very laws that enslave them. Like my mother, some of my friends and colleagues do. They actually justify the evil misogynistic rules of Islam and say it is for the betterment of the Muslim women. Many Muslims claim that “Islam honors women,” just as they claim that Islam is a “Religion of Peace.” The truth however, is just the opposite. Islam does not honor women, but rather, holds their very lives in absolute bondage. There is no age limit for marriage of girls under Sharia. A man can pay a dowry and sign a marriage contract with the parents of a toddler girl and consummate the marriage at age 9 just because their pedophiliac prophet Mo did that, and they think in doing that, they are just following the Sunnah. According to the Shariah, the adulterer will be stoned to death, but not many people are aware that this rule applies mostly for women, because men are allowed to have sex with their sex slaves and concubines. Even if a man and woman are caught having sex and four witnesses are also present, the punishment for women is digging up a hole and inserting her in up to her chest and then stoning her to death, whereas a man is just stoned while he is standing. And if he manages to escape, he is lucky, but a woman is not even allowed a chance to escape.

Read it all.

Surprise! It's a self-serving, dysfunctional organization. "In memoir, ex-Muslim Sister paints an unflattering picture," by Noha El Hennawy for Al Masry Al Youm, January 16 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

As the Muslim Brotherhood strives to project the image of a moderate and democratic political organization, a book featuring the angry account of a former member has hit the market.

"The Memoirs of a Former Sister: My Story with the Muslim Brotherhood" is the testimony of Intissar Abdel Moneim, an Alexandria-based novelist and author. With a compelling style and sharp language, the book takes the reader on a journey exploring the internal politics of the 83-year-old organization, placing special emphasis on discrimination against female members.

Throughout her work, Abdel Moneim decries the sisters’ internalization of oppression as women are socialized in a way that compels them to accept male dominance within the organization — and the household.

Early in the book, Abdel Moneim condemns what could be interpreted as the Brotherhood’s exploitation of the permissibility of polygamy in Islam.

“One of the areas where the Brothers have exploited the idea of blind obedience and submission is polygamy,” she writes, adding that a brother would take second and third wives for no valid reason. “When the [first] wife complains, a session is held for her where other sisters would remind her of the importance of obedience, patience and submission to God’s will and to [the husband]’s will,” she writes.

To understand the roots of the subjugation of women, Abdel Moneim unpacks the writings of Hassan al-Banna, the group’s late founder. Here, the author summons her courage and puts forth a vehement critique of the group’s canonized leader, who is rarely questioned, even by the most vocal ex-brothers.

Banna's teachings sought to limit women to "catering to their husbands' desires and to reproduction," Abdel Moneim writes.

The book dismisses Banna's dictum that there is no need to invest heavily in girls' education and that women should be trained only to serve as housewives and mothers. Abdel Moneim feels that this sentiment is contradictory to true Islam.

“It is true that Islam says that a woman’s primary role is to raise children, but it does not say that this is her only role and that she should not do anything beyond it. Neither the Koran nor the Sunna [Prophet Mohamed’s sayings and deeds] nor the sayings of the prophet’s companions and successors barred her from learning any sciences. The matter has been left for her to decide, according to her needs and circumstances," writes Abdel Moneim.

Unfortunately, the situation does not need explicit statement in the Qur'an or Sunna for a critical mass of other parameters to make it the logical conclusion of certain attitudes and behaviors. For example, the obsession with control of women (Qur'an 4:34), and the paranoia in Muslim societies about purity and honor work against women's independence.

She goes on to criticize Banna's insistence that men and women should be separated. With a scathingly sarcastic tone, the author argues that Banna’s view portrays humans as if they are mere animals who have little control over their impulses.

“You cannot by any logic perceive all people as mere female and male sex organs that roam the streets looking for the moment of intercourse like cats," the book reads. Abdel Moneim attributes Banna’s rigid outlook to his rural background.

This outlook still shapes the group’s perception of women’s roles within the organization and in the society at large. It justifies why the Muslim Sisters' division cannot operate independently from the Brothers, why no woman is admitted into the group's highest bodies, namely the Shura Council and the Guidance Bureau, and why the group will not acknowledge a woman's right to rule, according to the book. [...]

... the author bashes the Brotherhood’s internal dynamics, arguing that it is based on nepotism rather than merit. To substantiate her claim, she refers to her personal experience recounting that she was not easily admitted into the group because she was not the daughter, the sister or the wife of one of the Muslim Brotherhood's heroic or wealthy figures. For both men and women, such family ties are required to facilitate one’s upward mobility within the organization, according to Abdel Moneim.

Meanwhile, the author coins the phrase “the Muslim Brotherhood’s classism” to describe the full submission of rank-and-file members to their leaders. She borrows the analogy put forward by a former Muslim Brotherhood leader who drew parallels between the organization and an electricity-providing company that needs lots of workers (rank-and-file members) and few engineers.

“It is illogical for a worker to bypass his master or demand that his position be improved even if he proves himself,” Abdel Moneim writes. “Otherwise, he will be violating the group’s charter and instilling divisions. This is probably the Muslim Brotherhood’s interpretation of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm.’” [...]

Yet the book has not failed to cause a stir. Earlier this month, the Muslim Brotherhood rushed to sue the privately owned Al-Fagr newspaper for running a sensational review of the book that accused the organization of abusing women sexually and politically....

"Somewhat unsurprisingly the threats perpetrated by extremist Muslims cover an array of appalling crimes including obscene sexual offences ... [the women] are frequently accused of 'destroying Islam' or “corrupting our women'."

Qur'an 4:34 makes violence against disobedient women lawful. Whatever other rationalizations one trots out, at the end of the day, Allah says you can hit (yes, hit) your wife. Here, again, is the allegation that any change to improve the lot of women will only serve to corrupt, create prostitutes, and so on.

The home is a microcosm of society. If one believes there can only be either tyranny and fear, or licentiousness, it is not the building block of a free and democratic society. "The New Muslim suffragettes of the United Kingdom," by Charlotte Rachael Proudman for the Independent, January 18 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

An increasing number of Muslim women activists are receiving death threats, fatwas and even hate-mail from extremist male and female Muslims. Their crime: Rescuing fellow Muslim women from violent and life threatening situations.

With heightened media sensitivity surrounding forced marriage, honour based violence and domestic violence we are all too aware of the suffering experienced by vulnerable and marginalised Muslim women. But we know little about the Muslim women activists who risk their lives to fight for the rights of oppressed Muslim women. These women are the New Muslim Suffragettes (NMS) of The United Kingdom.

As wives and mothers themselves, they stand alone in their communities and apart from other prominent Muslim organisations, in offering sanctuary and support for vulnerable and marginalised women. The NMS provide refuge, advocacy and access to the British legal and welfare system for women whose daily lives consist of beatings, imprisonment, torture and even marital rape, as well as the mental health ramifications that unfold over time.

In fact there has been an exponential growth in Muslim women activists in the form of charitable women rights organisations. These organisations have emerged post 9/11 as a response to misogynist and extremist views which are contaminating the Muslim community. Like the suffragette movement in the late 19th and early 20th century, Muslim women activists are collectively gaining momentum in fighting for women’s rights in oppressive and patriarchal contexts. But facing fierce patriarchal resistance - akin to that experienced by the early Suffragettes – sympathy for the NMS does not always convert to action.

In seeking justice for Muslim women whose human rights have been eroded through hyper-conservative interpretations of Islam, the NMS turn to British Law. But in affording marginalised Muslim women their rights the NMS are perceived by extremist Muslims as “feminists”, a term loaded in the Muslim world with connotations of modernity, resistance and westernisation, and perhaps more importantly a term which challenges the patriarchal underpinning of Islam dictated by extremist Muslims.

So they face a backlash in the form of persecution, intimidation and death threats. Fearing for their lives the NMS are forced into hiding and prevented from undertaking the very work they set out to achieve – to highlight and prevent the gross abuse of human rights many Muslim women suffer. Instead the NMS risk becoming the vulnerable and marginalised Muslim women that they originally set out to help and support. It’s time for the public to be aware of the plight of the NMS in the United Kingdom. This is their story.

My mobile phone rang, I could hear heavy breathing and a deep male voice – “I know where you live, I’m going to find you, and then I’m going to chop your legs off for taking my daughter away from me”. This NMS received this threat along with a threat to bomb her car after she rescued a young woman from forced marriage and domestic violence. Fearing for her life, this NMS must check her car for bombs each day and cannot leave her home without a panic alarm.

For the NMS, life has become intolerable. Sara Khan, from the counter-extremist and gender equality consultancy Inspire and Shereen Williams from the Henna Foundation spoke about the persecution perpetrated against them and work colleagues often directed at family members. According to Diana Nammi founder of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation (IKWRO), the main motive behind the death threats is an extremist belief that the work of the NMS is shaming and dishonouring the Muslim community, particularly in cases where women are supported by the NMS in seeking legal redress for the wrongs inflicted upon them often by their own family members.

Somewhat unsurprisingly the threats perpetrated by extremist Muslims cover an array of appalling crimes including obscene sexual offences, which have become an increasing problem in the blogosphere and according to Shaista Gohir (MBE) the NMS are frequently accused of “destroying Islam” or “corrupting our women” and like the Suffragettes over a century ago – they are accused of being “mad”. While these accusations may appear banal and mundane to secular ears, they are devastating to women activists of faith who are accused of being apostates. In this case, these accusations lead to threats of Shaista Gohir’s throat being slashed...

Sahar Gul's other option would have been jail, though police sent her back to her abusers. About 80% of the 115 or so girls known to be in Afghan jails are there for the "moral crime" of running away from home. It is a sick society where one can only hope to choose one form of punishment as sanctuary from another.

Many of those who resist enhanced legal protections for women will invoke Sharia. Above all, Allah has made striking (yes, striking) disobedient women lawful in Qur'an 4:34. The letter and spirit of that verse continue to cause and rationalize untold suffering.

"Tortured Afghan child bride slowly recovering," from Agence France-Presse, January 17 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

KABUL — The Afghan child bride who was tortured in an attempt to force her into prostitution is slowly recovering but is still hardly able to speak, a nurse told AFP during a visit to the girl's bedside Thursday.

Sahar Gul, 15, who was burned and beaten and had her fingernails pulled out was found last month in the basement of her husband's house in northeastern Baghlan province, where she had been locked in a toilet for six months.

"Since the past few days, Gul can walk very slowly, she can eat and talk in a frail voice," said nurse Latifa Mirzad at the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, as the bruised and battered girl looked on silently.

"She is hardly able to speak of her ordeal but sometimes she says in a weak voice 'my father in-law and mother-in law have beaten me'."

Gul's case was taken directly to President Hamid Karzai by a delegation from the Afghan Women's Network on Wednesday.

"The president assured his full support to strictly punish the perpetrators of the crime against Sahar Gul so that nobody can commit such a crime in the future," said the network's Lema Anwari.

Karzai pledged in a statement after the delegation's visit to take action against the "cowardly" perpetrators of violence against women.

The president said that he always took measures as soon as he heard about cases of violence against women, and would continue to take the issue seriously so that the culprits were brought to justice.

When? Sahar's husband was reported to be serving in the Afghan National Army. Why can't they find him?

According to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010.

This is not the first time Yemen's Saleh has been accused of allowing jihadists to gain a foothold to "prove" the country "needs" him. If true, that would make it the second alleged case of Munchausen Syndrome as public policy in Yemen. "Al Qaeda in Yemen captures town south of capital," from the Associated Press, January 17:

SANAA, Yemen – A band of Al Qaeda militants seized full control of a town 100 miles south of the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Monday, overrunning army positions, storming the local prison and freeing at least 150 inmates, security officials said.

The capture of Radda expanded already significant territorial conquests by the militants, who have taken advantage of the weak central government and political turmoil roiling the nation for the past year during an uprising inspired by Arab Spring revolts.

Authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh recently agreed to step down, but he remains a powerful force within the country and a spark for ongoing unrest.

The group had previously taken control of a string of towns in the mostly lawless south. But its capture of Radda is particularly important because it gives the militants a territorial foothold closer than ever before to the capital, where many sleeper cells of the terror network are thought to be located.

An Associated Press photographer who visited Radda on Sunday said the militants were armed with rocket-propelled grenades, automatic rifles and other weapons. He quoted residents as saying the black Al Qaeda banner has been raised atop the mosque they captured over the weekend.

The opposition accused Saleh, who is to step down this month in line with a power transfer deal, of allowing the militants to overrun Radda along with two other towns in southern Abyan province captured previously -- Zinjibar and Jaar -- to bolster his claims that he must remain in power to secure the country against the rising power of Islamist militants.

Some tribal leaders also accused Saleh of giving the "green light" to the militants to overrun the city.

"We are surprised by the silence of the security forces," said opposition activist Abdel-Rahman al-Rashid, who lives in Radda. "They have not moved, which only means that this is all arranged to spark chaos."...

The masks, they are a-slippin'. We tried to tell you. "Leading female figure in Muslim Brotherhood slams December's women march," from Al Masry al Youm, January 14:

A leading female figure in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has accused the women’s march to condemn military brutality against female protestors in December as being funded from abroad.

In December, Egypt witnessed its biggest women's march in history as 10,000 women marched through central Cairo to protest against soldiers who dragged women by the hair, stomped on them, and stripped one half-naked in the street during a fierce crackdown on activists.

"The [FJP women] refused to participate in the march because participants were funded and had a particular agenda,” said Manal Abul Hassan, the FJP women's secretary.

Speaking to the London based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper Saturday, Abul Hassan argued that "When a woman marches to defend her rights, this affronts her dignity."

She added that "Does she [female protestor] not have a husband, a brother or a son to defend her?"

"This march was a sectarian one, because all the groups of Egyptian society should defend women. She should not defend herself on her own. The man should stand beside the woman because on her own she will not be able to get her rights," said Abul Hassan.

That will only be a self-fulfilling prophecy if it is allowed to be.

In the interview, Abul Hassan said Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protest that toppled long-time president Hosni Mubarak in February, is no longer the same square.

Conspiracy-driven denial of the Maspero massacre of Christians:

“Tahrir is no longer purely for revolutionaries. Other elements infiltrated them; the same elements which caused the [violence at the] Balloon Theatre and Maspero tarnish the image of Tahrir."

Abul Hassan continued that "They stay in dirty tents [in which one can find] acts against the ethics of the revolution. It became a fertile atmosphere for the spread of all irregularities, and the revolution is innocent of them."

Whenever a society sets apart a second class of citizens, that group bears a disproportionate burden to keep the peace by knowing its "place." To have an altercation with the ruling class (no matter who started it) is to have been found outside of that place, and thus to forfeit any protection that remains under that social structure. That is the case with the rights of women and unbelievers (dhimmis) subjugated under Islamic law. Hence the blaming and shunning of the woman in the report below.

The courts have ruled against these state-sponsored sexual assaults of female detainees, but that has not improved conditions for the victim who dared to publicize what happened to her. "Egypt’s Women Find Power Still Hinges on Men," by David D. Kirkpatrick for the New York Times, January 9:

CAIRO — At first Samira Ibrahim was afraid to tell her father that Egyptian soldiers had detained her in Tahrir Square in Cairo, stripped off her clothes, and watched as she was forcibly subjected to a “virginity test.”

But when her father, a religious conservative, saw electric prod marks on her body, they revived memories of his own detention and torture under President Hosni Mubarak’s government. “History is repeating itself,” he told her, and together they vowed to file a court case against the military rulers, to claim “my rights,” as Ms. Ibrahim later recalled.

That case has proved successful so far. For the first time last month, an administrative court challenged the authority of the military council and banned such “tests.” Ms. Ibrahim will ask a military court on Sunday to hold the officers accountable.

But nearly a year after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, Ms. Ibrahim’s story in many ways illustrates the paradoxical position of women in the new Egypt. Emboldened by the revolution to claim a new voice in public life, many are finding that they are still dependent on the protection of men, and that their greatest power is not as direct actors but as symbols of the military government’s repression. It is not a place where Egyptian feminists had hoped women would be, back in the heady days of the revolution, when they played an active role, side by side with men, to bring down a dictator. [...]

At the same time, the revolution has opened the door for the ascendance of conservative Islamist parties, including religious extremists who want to roll back some of the rights women do have. The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood is poised to win nearly half of the seats in Parliament, when voting is completed this week, while the more extreme Salafis are on track to win more than 20 percent.

While Brotherhood leaders talk of encouraging traditional roles but respecting women’s career choices, many Salafis oppose allowing women to play leadership roles and favor regulating issues like women’s dress to impose Islamic standards of modesty. “We have major concerns because what they are proposing is very oppressive,” said Ghada Shabandar, a veteran human rights activist. [...]

But the stigma attached to victims of sexual abuse continues to force many to remain silent.

Six other women were subjected to “virginity tests” by the soldiers that night in March when Ms. Ibrahim was assaulted. The humiliation was so great, Ms. Ibrahim said, that she initially hoped to die. “I kept telling myself, ‘People get heart attacks, why don’t I get a heart attack and just die like them?’ ”

Her mother’s advice was to keep silent, if she ever hoped to marry, or even lead a dignified life in their village in rural Upper Egypt, Ms. Ibrahim said in an interview.

When she did speak out, Egyptian new media shunned her, she said, and only the international news media would cover her story. She received telephone calls at all hours threatening rape or death. But with the support of her father — an Islamist activist who was detained and tortured two decades ago — she persevered, and next week will go back to military court in an attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable as well....

Recently, The Telegraph disclosed what many already know, namely that "thousands of honour attacks" happen every year in the UK.

Also, CBN reported recently about "Islamic 'Honor Violence' Rising in the West."

But in many cases there is no attack, just pressure and threats. Not many killings, forced suicides, beatings, kidnappings, rapes etc. are needed to make the rest bow to threats. Nadia is a brave exception: "Threatened with beatings for not wearing Islamic scarf," translated from the Danish in B.T.:

Nadia has repeatedly received threats after she stopped wearing the Islamic veil and began to resemble and behave like a Danish girl.

- I have received threats of beatings because of my piercing, because I go to discotheques and because I took off the veil, Nadia explains.

- For example, once I was at a party. Some young Arabs came and threatened me with beatings. Luckily a friend of mine said, 'You can just try!,' and at the same moment a police car drove by, so nothing happened, Nadia says ...

Nadia was abducted by her father to Lebanon when she was eleven years old. There she lived with a distant part of her family, got married and had a child with the man.

About a year ago, Nadia came back to Denmark with her husband, from whom she is now divorced.

Her other option would probably have been prison. Up to 350 woman and about 114 girls are known to be locked up for "moral crimes" in Afghanistan. Among the girls, "80 per cent are serving sentences for either running away from home or extramarital sex."

As was the case with Gulnaz, the rape victim finally pardoned from a sentence for adultery (after agreeing to marry the man who raped her), there are undoubtedly others like the girl in this story, Sahar Gul, inside and outside of jail.

"Tortured Afghan child bride had been sent back to in-laws," by Jon Boone for the Sydney Morning Herald, January 3:

A 15-year-old Afghan girl who was nearly tortured to death by her husband and his family attempted to escape from her attackers more than four months ago but was sent back home by local authorities, it has emerged.

Sahar Gul, a child bride married off to a soldier called Gulam Sakhi who then tried to force her into prostitution, is being treated for horrific injuries in a hospital in Kabul after she was rescued last week.

During her ordeal several of her fingernails were ripped out with pliers and one of her ears was badly burned by an iron. Her husband is now on the run, and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law have been arrested.

Her case has caused uproar in Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai, the country's President, has vowed that those responsible would be punished.

But disturbing new details about how the local community and authorities responded to her abuse has highlighted the ambivalence many Afghans have over how far women should be able to exercise the most basic of legal rights.

"She ran away to her neighbour's house and told them that her husband was trying to make her become a prostitute," said local community leader Ziaulhaq. " 'If you are a Muslim, you must tell the government what is happening to me,' she told them."

The locals said they did take the case to the authorities. When the police arrived Sahar's mother-in-law tried to fight them off, screaming all the while that her son had "bought" the girl who therefore had to do what she was told.

She appeared to be alluding to the dowry paid by Sakhi's family, a sum thought to be about $4000.

Locals say the family simply promised to stop hurting her. Ziaulhaq also alleged that bribes were paid to government officials to hush up the affair.

Although she emphatically denied money was paid, Rahima Zarifi, the women's affairs chief in Baghlan province, said she could not remember the details of the case, or why Sahar was sent back home.

The abuse resumed and continued for months until a male relative visited. When he found the girl, who had been starved in a locked basement for weeks, Sahar was almost unable to speak.

Fauzia Kufi, an MP who campaigns on women's issues, said that even then local authorities attempted to resolve the abuse through "traditional means".

"Basically they wanted the relative to sit down with his sister's abusers and work out an agreement," she said.

Kufi also claims there was strong pressure not to publicise the case.

"Many people don't take these sorts of crimes seriously and don't think it should be reported," she said.

"Even the local authorities have blamed the department for women's affairs for not trying to solve it locally between families in the traditional way."...

It took a decree from the king himself to end an ironic consequence of the strict separation of men and women, whereby Saudi women actually had to buy lingerie from men because a total ban on female sales clerks. Unsurprisingly, the stores dragged their feet on hiring women, and a top Saudi cleric called the use of female clerks a "crime."

Absurdity begets absurdity, and so the lingerie department is now a frilly, lacy battleground of Islamic law in Saudi Arabia.

Hopefully, they'll have it ironed out in time for absolutely, positively no one to celebrate Valentine's Day. "Saudi to apply law for women only to sell lingerie," from the Associated Press, January 2:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia said Monday it will begin enforcing a law that allows only females to work in women's lingerie and apparel stores, despite disapproval from the country's top cleric.

The 2006 law banning men from working in female apparel and cosmetic stores has never been put into effect, partly because of view of hard-liners in the religious establishment, who oppose the whole idea of women working where men and women congregate together, like malls.

Saudi women - tired of having to deal with men when buying undergarments - have boycotted lingerie stores to pressure them to employ women. The government's decision to enforce the law requiring that goes into effect Thursday.

The country is home to Islam's holiest site in the city of Mecca and follows an ultra-conservative form of the religion known as Wahhabism.

The kingdom's religious police, under the control of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, enforce Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam, which prohibits unrelated men and women from mingling. Women and men in Saudi Arabia remain highly segregated and are restricted in how they are allowed to mix in public.

The separation of men and women is not absolute. Women in Saudi Arabia hold high-level teaching positions in universities and work as engineers, doctors, nurses and a range of other posts.

The strict application of Islamic law forced an untenable situation in which women, often accompanied by uncomfortable male relatives, have to buy their intimate apparel from men behind the counter.

A Time magazine writer's account of the awkwardness can be found here.

Over the past several weeks, some women have already begun working in the stores. Although the decision affects thousands of men who will lose their sales jobs, the Labor Ministry says that over 28,000 women, many of them South Asian migrants, have already applied for the jobs.

Saudi's Arabia's most senior cleric, Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh, spoke out against the Labor Ministry's decision in a recent sermon, saying it contradicts Islamic law.

Another dire warning that this will end in a whole lotta fornication:

"The employment of women in stores that sell female apparel and a woman standing face to face [niqab to face? - ed] with a man selling to him without modesty or shame can lead to wrongdoing, of which the burden of this will fall on the owners of the stores," he said, urging store owners to fear God and not compromise on taboo matters.

Islamic spokesmen in the West constantly assure us that Islam respects women -- I was not too long ago in a somewhat riotous debate with the Imam Moustafa Zayed on just that topic. And so it is extremely odd that in Afghanistan, a country where virtually everyone is Muslim, most Afghan men seem to misunderstand this important principle, and treat their women shabbily. Probably they misunderstand this Qur'an passage as providing some justification for wife-beating: "Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them" (4:34).

"Afghan woman cuts off father-in-law's private part," from AFP, December 31, 2011 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

An Afghan woman cut off her father-in-law's penis with a knife after he tried to have sex with her, a doctor in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province said on Saturday.

"One day when the husband was away from home he attempted to have sex with his daughter-in-law and she cut off his penis with a knife," the doctor from a private hospital in Ghazni said on condition of anonymity.

The man went for treatment at the private hospital but was sent on to the capital Kabul for specialist treatment, he added. The incident took place two weeks ago but has only just come to light.

According to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.

A crime. Not just unwise, or ill-advised, or imprudent. A crime.

What fun it will be when Sharia comes to Bergdorf's and Rodeo Drive. "Saudi Mufti Says Women Selling Female Accessories Is Crime: Hayat," by Donna Abu-Nasr for Bloomberg, December 31 (thanks to Block Ness):

Employing women in shops selling female accessories is a crime and disrespectful, Al-Hayat reported, citing Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh.

Al-Sheikh’s remarks came at a sermon yesterday at a mosque in Riyadh, the newspaper reported.

Saudi Arabia’s Labor Ministry issued a directive in July demanding that lingerie and cosmetics stores replace salesmen with women.

The Qur'an sanctions sex with captive and slave women: "And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess. It is a decree of Allah for you" (4:24). Al-Shabaab is acting barbarically, but as far as they are concerned, they are acting within their rights and not forbidding what Allah has made lawful. They are not at all alone among Muslims in endorsing or engaging in this behavior.

"For Somali Women, Pain of Being a Spoil of War," by Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times, December 28 (thanks to Bill):

MOGADISHU, Somalia — The girl’s voice dropped to a hush as she remembered the bright, sunny afternoon when she stepped out of her hut and saw her best friend buried in the sand, up to her neck.

Her friend had made the mistake of refusing to marry a Shabab commander. Now she was about to get her head bashed in, rock by rock.

“You’re next,” the Shabab warned the girl, a frail 17-year-old who was living with her brother in a squalid refugee camp.

Several months later, the men came back. Five militants burst into her hut, pinned her down and gang-raped her, she said. They claimed to be on a jihad, or holy war, and any resistance was considered a crime against Islam, punishable by death.

“I’ve had some very bad dreams about these men,” she said, having recently escaped the area they control. “I don’t know what religion they are.”

Somalia has been steadily worn down by decades of conflict and chaos, its cities in ruins and its people starving. Just this year, tens of thousands have died from famine, with countless others cut down in relentless combat. Now Somalis face yet another widespread terror: an alarming increase in rapes and sexual abuse of women and girls.

The Shabab militant group, which presents itself as a morally righteous rebel force and the defender of pure Islam, is seizing women and girls as spoils of war, gang-raping and abusing them as part of its reign of terror in southern Somalia, according to victims, aid workers and United Nations officials. Short of cash and losing ground, the militants are also forcing families to hand over girls for arranged marriages that often last no more than a few weeks and are essentially sexual slavery, a cheap way to bolster their ranks’ flagging morale. [...]

Somalia is a deeply traditional place, where 98 percent of girls are subject to genital cutting, according to United Nations figures. Most girls are illiterate and relegated to their homes. When they venture out, it is usually to work, trudging through the rubble-strewn alleyways wrapped head to toe in thick black cloth, often lugging something on their back, the equatorial sun burning down on them. [...]

At the same time, aid workers and United Nations officials say the Shabab, who are fighting Somalia’s transitional government and imposing a harsh version of Islam in the areas they control, can no longer pay their several thousand fighters the way they used to. Much as they seize crops and livestock, giving their militants what they call “temporary wives” is how the Shabab keep many young men fighting for them.

But these are hardly marriages, said Sheik Mohamed Farah Ali, a former Shabab commander who defected to the government army.

“There’s no cleric, no ceremony, nothing,” he said, adding that Shabab fighters had even paired up with thin little girls as young as 12, who are left torn and incontinent afterward. If a girl refuses, he said, “she’s killed by stones or bullets.” [...]

“You have no idea how difficult it is for them to come forward,” she said. “There’s no justice here, no protection. People say, ‘You’re junk’ if you’ve been raped.”...

Here's the latest from the Liberated One:

[...] I have three siblings and I am the eldest. I have two brothers and a sister; all are married and settled except me, not because no one ever proposed to me, but because I just could not make myself do it, I mean sign a lifelong bondage/slavery contract with some fanatic Muslim man. Muslim men are such morons, I swear; they are hypocrites in the first degree. They have a different set of rules for themselves and a different one for their women. Total male chauvinistic pigs... I was always fascinated with the idea of marrying a western non Muslim man who would love, honor and respect me as an equal instead of getting married to some clone of Mohammed. I am sure everyone is aware of his famous words “Women are deficient in their minds” or “I have been to hell and seen it full of women”. These and many other hadeeth and Quranic verses have proclaimed that women are inferior to men and that men have an upper hand on them. I never really liked the teachings of Islam and used to wonder deep down why is Islam so backward and why it could not be progressive like Christianity. I had so many questions but never had the guts to voice my thoughts aloud until recently, when I just had an epiphany one fine day and I knew that I had to do it, do the unthinkable, the impossible: I have to become an apostate. Then the journey began; months of studying and researching accompanied with sleepless nights and mental trauma and affliction which finally lead me to the unspoken truth that Islam is a hoax, a lie, and a make believe religion invented by Mohammed to fulfill his own carnal and self serving desires.

Even though most people have given me their absolute support on my apostasy, there are some who are still in a doubt that if I really exist and wonder if I am just a figment of Spencer’s imagination. Why someone who happens to be a famous, well established and distinguished celebrity like Mr. Robert Spencer need to create an imaginary character like Liberated? It really does not make sense and it really causes me a lot of pain that I am not getting credit where it is due. I have gone through a lot, and whatever I am writing here on this blog comes straight from the bottom of my heart. I am an apostate of Islam but let me make it clear, no one has brainwashed me, as some people like to believe. I am not some stupid, uneducated moron who would just get swayed away by someone. No one forced it on me, no one asked me to leave Islam. I did it on my own because I truly never believed in many of its teachings and backward 7th century doctrine, but I just needed a push in the right direction, which was given to me by my mentor Ali Sina, as well as by some great writers like Mr. Robert Spencer, Mr. Daniel Pipes, Ms. Pamela Geller and Mr. Raymond Ibrahim. These people have exposed Islam to the world like no one has ever done before, and I salute them all for their remarkable efforts....

Read it all.

The "virginity tests" are a sexual assault carried out by the state, designed to intimidate women into staying home. Authorities can then use the supposed "results" of the tests as one way of writing off those who do show up to protest as women of ill repute, and therefore as bad Muslims acting contrary to Sharia's principles, who have thus forfeited their right to protection.

The women victimized by this scheme could be charged with prostitution, or may have their reputations ruined and be set up for rejection by their family and friends, along with possible further violence.

An update on this story. "Egyptian court rules against virginity tests," by Mohamed Fadel Fahmy for CNN, December 27:

Cairo (CNN) -- An Egyptian administrative court issued an order Tuesday banning virginity tests for female detainees, months after several women alleged they were subjected to such examinations following a March protest in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

The ruling comes in the case of Samira Ibrahim, a 25-year-old marketing manager who took the country's military led-government to court in August, alleging she was among those subjected to the test after her arrest during the March 9 protest. She said she faced death threats after bringing the case.

"Justice has been served today," Ibrahim told CNN. "These tests are a crime and also do not comply with the constitution, which states equality between men and woman. I will not give up my rights as a woman or a human being."

But:

Aly Hassan, a judicial consultant affiliated with Ministry of Justice, said the order only affects the use of such tests in military prisons and on women in temporary detention.

"Those tests are not considered a crime or else the file would be in the Criminal Court," Hassan said. "It's the circumstances of the alleged test that may be in question here."

In March, the human rights group Amnesty International reported that Egyptian troops beat, shocked and strip-searched women arrested during the protest in Cairo and forced them to submit to virginity tests.

How many were abused in the custody of the army and police, and were then marked down as no longer being virgins? The treatment of Mona Eltahawy is not likely an isolated incident.

Egyptian authorities initially denied requiring virginity tests, but in May, a senior general who asked not to be identified acknowledged the practice.

The general said the tests were performed as a safeguard against the women accusing authorities of sexual assault, and he defended the tests.

Destroying reputations:

"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general told CNN at the time. "These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."

But Ibrahim said her treatment clearly showed the tests were meant to "degrade the protesters."

Sexual assault by the state:

"The military tortured me, labeled me a prostitute and humiliated me by forcing on me a virginity test conducted by a male doctor where my body was fully exposed while military soldiers watched," she said....

Surely there are things the Iranian government has decided it can't afford, but it can find the time and money for a "fashion show." Islamic morality policing is a cheap, lazy political tool with which to look pious and busy, while reminding the public who is boss.

Meanwhile, if the women still run afoul of some future crackdown, the woman hired by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to put on the show says "we want to put bar codes on officially approved dresses and provide those wearing them with written permissions in order to prevent them from being arrested."

Gee, there's nothing creepy about that or anything. What if vice police's bar code scanner is on the fritz that day? "Ahmadinejad steps into Iran’s dress-code debate," by Thomas Erdbrink for the Washington Post, December 26:

TEHRAN — In the Islamic republic of Iran, the law requires women to cover their hair and bodies in public. But how to do so remains up to them, and the result is persistent confusion in the streets.

Though leading Shiite Muslim clerics advise women to wear chadors — the traditional head-to-toe cloak, usually black — Iran’s urban fashionistas increasingly prefer tight-fitting coats and scant head scarves.

Now, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is stepping into the dispute. He wants to settle it by promoting government-approved apparel for women, garments intended to introduce an array of clothes that are “Islamic and beautiful” at the same time.

Hard-liners are not amused. They say that the new designs encourage “Western values.” But at a recent government-sponsored fashion show, young women and their mothers gazed approvingly at the plastic mannequins showcasing the new coats and scarves. [...]

To many of those attending the government exhibition, the middle road between the chador and some of the Lady Gaga-like creations that some women make of their obligatory coats and scarves seemed to offer a solution to their fashion dilemmas.

“Oh lord, isn’t this beautiful?” exclaimed Zahra Ranjbar, an expert on Islamic clothing, as she walked passed a mannequin showcasing a brown coat cut well above the knee. Ranjbar was hired by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the organizer of the fashion show, to advise young women on proper dresses. She wore a chador herself, but “only because I was told to by the ministry,” she admitted.

Ranjbar said more variations of Islamic dresses are needed to keep women interested in covering up. She fully supports “regulations” to clarify what can be worn and what cannot, she said, arguing that such clarity helps not only women, but also the police who enforce the dress code.

“We want to put bar codes on officially approved dresses and provide those wearing them with written permissions in order to prevent them from being arrested,” Ranjbar said. “We are doing this for the people, in order to protect them.”

But several fashion designers who sell dresses from their homes derided that idea, saying it would add even more permission slips to the already overprotected lives of Iranian women. Besides, they said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

“Again we will face a situation in which a small group will decide for all women what is allowed and what not,” said Kiana, 26, who makes manteaus costing up to $300 apiece and did not want to be identified by her full name....

With Hillary Clinton trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. "Clinton cleaning up after Obama’s Middle East policy," by Neil Munro in the Daily Caller, December 21:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is taking on a new role — patching fractures in President Barack Obama’s Muslim outreach policy.

Clinton’s role is highlighted by a new White House policy announced Dec. 19, which makes the roles and rights of women a central element of U.S. foreign policy. The policy is titled “The United States National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.”...

Her new role comes as she and other feminists increasingly voice their worries about the impact on Arab women of the burgeoning Islamist political movements that are religiously committed to the subordination of women.

“We’ve seen this already happening in countries where proposed legislation rolls back women’s rights,” said Jolynn Shoemaker, director of the Women in International Security organization. In Egypt and Libya, “it is a very critical time,” said Shoemaker, who is based at the Center for Strategic and International Studies....

But Obama’s initial outreach policy in 2009 invited the Islamist parties to pay a large role in the region’s politics. For example, he insisted that several members of the Muslim Brotherhood be allowed to attend his much-lauded 2009 speech in Cairo....

This year, however, Obama reacted to the growing role of the Islamists by offering some support for Western ideas. On May 19, for example, Obama declared that peoples’ rights “include free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders — whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.”

However, in that speech and since then, Obama has focused on pressuring Israel to make further concessions prior to hoped-for talks with Arab and Islamic advocates.

Also, Obama and White House officials have refused to condemn the Islamist parties’ political gains, or their advocacy of policies that subordinate women in the workplace, in politics and in family life....

“The White House warmly applauded the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and actively aided the one in Libya, while brushing aside abundant indications that each was powered largely by Islamic supremacists who would deny rights to women,” said Robert Spencer, an expert on Islam and a best-selling author. “By helping pave the way for pro-Sharia regimes in the ‘Arab Spring’ countries, they’ve become women’s worst enemy,” he said.

Clinton is now stepping into this gap, partly because Obama is focused on his 2012 election, and partly because U.S. policymakers need to influence the newly empowered Islamist governments and movements.

On Dec. 14, for example, Clinton subtly challenged Obama’s conciliatory approach to the Islamist parties.

She used a speech at a department-hosted conference on religious freedom to taunt Islamist advocates and governments about the possible weakness of their religious faith. “Everyone one of us who is a religious person knows there are some who may not support or approve of our religion, but is our religion so weak that statements of disapproval cause us to lose our faith?” she said to attendees, which included numerous officials from Islamic countries in the 57-national Organization of Islamic Cooperation....

Read it all.

As this story notes, resistance to stronger legislation against domestic violence has come from "religious parties" -- that is, those who will tolerate no limitations on the reach of Islamic law. Moving against domestic violence threatens to criminalize what Allah made lawful: the principle that a man can hit (yes, hit) a woman in his household from whom he fears disobedience (Qur'an 4:34).

Does the Qur'an say to disfigure one's wife with a razor? No. But this case is a consequence of the culture of tolerance toward and defense of domestic violence: the husband clearly felt he was justified in this act, and liked his odds of getting away with it.

Most tellingly, if he were simply hitting his wife, it would not have made the news. "Man chops off wife's nose and lips," from Agence France-Presse, December 19:

A teenage Pakistani woman on Monday told of her terror as her husband chopped off her nose and lips in a furious marital row, and threatened to kill herself unless the police brought him to justice.

The horrifying case underscores the brutal violence suffered by some women in Pakistan, where a domestic violence bill lapsed in 2009 after being held up in the Senate due to objections from religious parties.

Salma Bibi, 17, said her husband, 22-year-old Ghulam Qadir, subjected her to a beating, then bound her hands and feet with rope and hacked into her face with a razor in a remote village in the southwestern province Baluchistan.

"He repeatedly slapped my face and then went into the room and brought with him a locally made, sharp razor," she told AFP, speaking Baluchi in remarks translated by her uncle from a hospital bed in central Multan city.

"I started shouting in panic. He tied my hands and foot with a rope and chopped off my nose and lips," she added.

The teenager said police refused to register a case when her family complained about the attack, and threatened to kill herself without justice.

"I want justice and if it is not delivered to me, I will immolate myself in front of the Supreme Court.

"I will not sit in peace until my husband is brought to justice and gets punishment for the crime he committed," she added.

Ghulam and Salma married last year and live in the village of Karkana, 475 kilometres (300 miles) southwest of Islamabad.

Local officials insisted they were searching for Ghulam and would arrest him when caught.

"They often had quarrels as the girl used to spend more time with her parents," said Nadir Khan, an administration official in Musa Khel district, part of violence-torn Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has demanded action in the case, but many cases of violence against women in Pakistan go unpunished.

Human rights groups say Pakistani women suffer severe discrimination and widespread domestic violence, including so-called "honour" killings when a victim is murdered for allegedly bringing dishonour on her family.

Ali Dayan Hasan, Pakistan director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP that domestic violence is a "serious, endemic problem in Pakistan" and called on the government to revive efforts to outlaw domestic violence.

But he praised the current parliament for a "fairly impressive" record on passing other legislation designed to protect women's rights....

She supported the "transition to democracy." She's the Secretary of State -- she must have known that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacists were driving that transition. And now she is surprised?

"Clinton says women sidelined in Egypt transition," from AFP, December 16 (thanks to EH):

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that women were being sidelined in the hoped-for transition to democracy in Egypt, including during the current parliamentary elections.

"In Egypt, women have been largely excluded from the transition process and even harassed in the street," Clinton said in prepared remarks for a speech on women, peace and security.

"The best-organized political parties supported few women candidates in the recent elections," she added, referring to the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.

"And the positions of these parties on women's rights remain ambiguous at best."

The Brotherhood and other Islamists, who won more than two thirds of the vote in the first round, are projected to win all three stages of the country's first elections since a popular uprising ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February. The second round ended this week.

"They should recognize that Egypt's revolution was won by men and women working together, and its democracy will only thrive by men and women working together," Clinton said.

In July, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that has been running the country since Mubarak's overthrow announced that the women's quota in parliament established by the deposed leader would be abolished....

Ajeel al-Nashimi, who is "head of Sharia Scholars League in the [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries" and "a former dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Islamic Studies" makes some lame excuses about women's physical stamina, saying they are not cut out for the late nights. Of course, because after all, all children sleep through the night from birth.

Other rationalizations aside, this is really about the mingling of men and women, which is forbidden by Sharia. There is also Muhammad's own assessment of women as "deficient in religion and intellect," (Sahih Bukhari 1.6.301) because they can't pray while menstruating and their testimony is worth half that of a man (Qur'an 2:282), and because he said they are the majority of the damned (Sahih Bukhari 4.54.464).

"Top Islamic Scholar Objects To Women Running In Election," from Arab Times Online, December 14 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

KUWAIT CITY, Dec 14: Prominent Kuwaiti Islamic scholar Dr Ajeel Al-Nashmi has said that Islam does not allow women to run in elections, even as he approves of giving women the right to vote in elections, reports Al-Anba daily.

The Head of Sharia Scholars League in the GCC countries Dr Ajeel Al-Nashmi maintains that women have the right to participate in political issues by expressing their opinions or demanding their rights in the media.

Al-Nashmi who is also a former dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Islamic Studies noted that women may be given the chance to select their representatives for public offices in the ministries or National Assembly, but objected to women running in elections for appointment in similar positions because “during the era of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) and subsequent periods, history has not registered women appointments in government to manage affairs in any Islamic state.”

Women from the physical point of view are not fit to practice politics that requires debating, staying awake for long hours at night, appearing before men and mingling with them, Al-Nashmi indicated....

Savagery. And yet the world community is much more upset about the chimera of "Islamophobia" than it will ever be about this. "Taliban cut nursing woman’s breast, asked others to eat pieces: UN-backed report," from the Press Trust of India, December 16 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Islamabad : Pakistani Taliban fighters cut the breasts of a woman who was breastfeeding her child and asked other women to eat the pieces, in a gory incident highlighted in a report on the abuse of women in the militancy-hit tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

The incident occurred when five militants walked into a house and saw the woman breastfeeding her child, The Express Tribune quoted the report titled ‘Impact of crisis on women and girls in FATA’ as saying.

The report, released by the human rights organisation “Khwendo Kor” (Sisters’ Home in Pashto) with financial support from the UN, is based on case studies of women from the tribal belt living in camps set up in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for people displaced by militancy.

Women in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are more susceptible to abuse in a post-conflict scenario, whether or not they are part of the conflict, the report says.

Another revelation is that women in camps were forced to have sex in exchange for food and non-food items. Girls and widows were at greater risk of such abuse.

“A security officer forced me to have sex in exchange for cooking oil and pulses when I was collecting food at the main entrance of the camp,” a 22-year-old woman in Jalozai camp is quoted as saying.

The surveys conducted at relief camps at Nahqai and Jalozai showed that women were uncomfortable going to toilets because men constantly lurked around.

The report said there was also an increase in “honour killings” in which women who were raped were murdered because rape was considered a disgrace to the family....

Spousal abuse is universal across all cultures, but only in Islam is it given divine sanction, both in the Qur'an and in Muhammad's example:

"Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them." -- Qur'an 4:34

Muhammad "struck me on the chest which caused me pain, and then said: Did you think that Allah and His Apostle would deal unjustly with you?" -- Aisha (Sahih Muslim 2127)

Rafiqul Islam went farther than is Islamically sanctioned by these quotations, but he was working within a culture that sanctions murdering a spouse when she gets out of line (Muslims commit 91% of honor killings worldwide). All he did was cut off his wife's fingers, which must make him a moderate.

"Bangladesh man 'admits' cutting off wife's fingers," by Anbarasan Ethirajan for BBC News, December 15 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Human rights groups in Bangladesh have demanded a severe punishment for the husband of a young woman who allegedly cut off most of her right hand.

Police say Rafiqul Islam, 30, attacked her because she pursued higher education without his permission.

They say Mr Islam, a migrant worker, admitted to the crime shortly after returning home from the Gulf.

However there has been no independent confirmation from the suspect that he carried out the attack.

The incident is one of a number of acts of domestic violence targeting educated women in recent months.

Police say that Mr Islam, who works in the United Arab Emirates, tied up his 21-year-old wife, Hawa Akther Jui, earlier this month. He then taped her mouth and cut off the five fingers.

'Severe consequences'

Doctors say the fingers cannot be re-attached and it appears that Ms Akther will have to live with permanent disfigurement.
Rafiqul Islam Rafiqul Islam is reported to have confessed to the crime

"After he came back to Bangladesh, he wanted to have a discussion with me. Suddenly, he blindfolded me and tied my hand," Ms Akther told the BBC from the town of Narsingdi.

"He also taped my mouth saying that he would give me some surprise gifts. But, instead he cut off my fingers."

She said her husband, who is not well educated, did not approve of her enrolling in a college for higher studies.

During their earlier telephone conversations, she said, he warned her of "severe consequences" if she went against his word.

"Doctors said my fingers could be re-attached within six hours but he refused to give them. After that time, another relative of my husband threw the fingers in a dustbin.

"We finally recovered them but it was too late," said Ms Akther, who is still recovering at her parents' house....

The attack follows an incident in June in which a university lecturer lost one eye while the other was badly wounded in an attack allegedly carried out by her husband....

This from famous Egyptian preacher, Abu Ishaq al-Huwaini--who earlier said that Islam teaches Muslims to plunder, rape, and enslave infidels. A leader of Egypt's Salafi movement, which came in second only to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt's recent elections, Huwaini's comments are a reminder of what's in store for the nation.

"Face of a woman like her vagina," from Elaph, December 13:

Famous Salafi preacher Sheikh Abu Ishaq al-Huwainia likened the face of a woman to her vagina during a talk in front of a group of people on the necessity for women to wear the niqab [veil]. The sheikh's words provoked anger among women and Muslims in Egypt, even as his supporters defended him...

After more international embarrassment at the delay of her release, Gulnaz is out of jail. But there remain about 350 women and up to 112 girls known to be locked up for "moral crimes." "Afghan woman, imprisoned over rape, is free," from MSNBC, December 14:

An Afghan woman who said she would marry her rapist in order to get out of jail, where she was serving a 12-year sentence for having sex out of wedlock, has been freed, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Kimberly Motley, the woman's American lawyer, told NBC News that she was released from prison late Tuesday.

"Gulnaz is relieved, and trying to slowly figure out her next step," Motley said of the woman, who goes by only one name.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned her last week after she said she would marry her rapist - her cousin's husband.

In an interview with NBC News last week, Gulnaz said she had agreed to the marriage "even though I can't look at him."....

Gulnaz is not out of jail, even after the absurd exercise of having to be pardoned for being raped. Apparently the jail has not received the official pardon order, and to make matters worse, the rapist's father is attempting to intimidate her with repeated visits while she waits. An update on this story. "Afghan rape victim still in jail despite pardon: lawyer," from Agence France-Presse, December 12:

An Afghan woman who was jailed for adultery after being raped remains in prison more than 10 days after President Hamid Karzai ordered her release, her lawyer said on Monday.

Gulnaz, who has already served two years in prison after a relative raped her at her home, should have been released within 48 hours and there was "no good reason" for her to remain behind bars, Kimberley Motley said.

Her case highlights the poor state of women's rights in Afghanistan, 10 years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban who were notorious for their harsh laws against women.

Following an outcry over her situation, Karzai called a meeting where judicial officials decided to pardon her, presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi told AFP on December 1.

Hundreds of women and girls as young as 12 remain in jail for so-called "moral crimes." Gulnaz' pardon was a face-saving move, not reform, and for those prisoners, nothing has changed.

But the officials also advised that Gulnaz should marry the man who attacked her, due to fears she could be in danger if released because of the stigma surrounding her attack in ultra-conservative Afghanistan.

Motley said there were no conditions set on Gulnaz's release and she would need time to decide what to do. But she also voiced concern that her client was being visited in jail by her attacker's father.

"She's still locked up and there's no good reason for it," Motley said. "Since the president has announced that he is going to issue a pardon she continues to be visited by the attacker's father.

"That's not appropriate. It's very disturbing. He's not a blood relative."

Gulnaz has been raising the child she had by her attacker in a prison cell in Kabul.

"She's anxious to leave and to be free. She's anxious to know what's going on," Motley said.

"She was told by the committee she would be released within two days."

Given the institutions they are dealing with, they would have needed to specify which two days.

Officials said the order had been sent to the ministry of justice but was being processed through various offices.

"We have already sent out the pardon letter. It does take a while until the cycle and process is finished," a presidential spokesman said.

"We have not officially received the pardon order, but we know it is on its way," ministry of justice spokesman Farid Ahmad Najeebi said.

"It takes a while until it reaches us because it has to go to the president's public affairs department, and several other offices before it reaches us. But we are expecting it soon."...

Remember that the prison is in Kabul, where the government is. This document is not meandering out to Herat or Mazar-e-Sharif. Even so, it seems ridiculous that a fax or phone call could not speed the process along. Rather, it is likely a question of priorities.

Catch-22: Report the rape without four witnesses, and risk being thrown into jail for adultery. Try to hide it for fear of adultery charges and other reprisals, and get thrown into jail for "concealing" it. A similar charge was tacked onto the much more widely known case of Gulnaz in Afghanistan.

"Victim gets jail term for concealing rape," by Shabbir Mir for the Express Tribune, December 12 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A rape victim has been sentenced to six months in prison for ‘concealing’ the incident involving her own son-in-law in a remote village of northern Gilgit-Baltistan region.

The district and sessions court in Ghakuch Valley, the headquarters for Ghizer district and about 80 kilometres from Gilgit, also handed down a 15-year imprisonment to the rapist.

Local police has confirmed that the man is in their custody.

The case came to the police knowledge after the victim gave birth to a baby in a local hospital. She revealed during the course of investigation that she had been raped by her son-in-law Liaqat Ali, a businessman from Mansehra district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

She said that the rapist had bullied her into silence. “He had threatened to kill my family if I disclosed the incident.

“I had no option but to keep my mouth shut,” a source quoted her as telling the investigators.

Following her statement, the police registered the case and proceeded with legal action.

The intrepid mujahedin, keeping the world safe from physical fitness and independent access to information, at least for girls. Wherever Pakistan has ceded sovereignty, for all practical purposes, to the Taliban and other jihadist movements, it has written off the future of the girls living in those areas as collateral damage.

"Agents of change: Girls armed with education fight for their rights," from Pakistan Press International, December 9:

Armed with only a slightly used copy book sent by her aunt from Peshawar, Azeera Gul, 12, is fighting for the rights of girls to education. Although her school in Kabal in the Swat Valley is still in a ramshackle state after being burnt down during the Taliban insurgency in 2008, Gul insists she wants to become a schoolteacher and educate girls in her village.

Gul is not alone in wishing to bring change to her valley. One story that galvanised the international media is that of Malala Yousafzai.

In 2009, she began campaigning from her remote village in Shangla in Swat against the Taliban for the right to education for girls.

She was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize for her pioneering efforts to raise awareness on restricted access to education in her homeland. Her nomination brought home the problems of Swat to millions in the country and won her national recognition with an award from the prime minister.

She is not the only young campaigner. “I want to become a doctor,” said Ludia Bibi, 14, from Mingora. “That is the only way I can help people here and make sure women in particular get the care they need.”

Maria Toor Pakai, 19, grew up in South Waziristan, where women rarely venture out of their homes. She defied tradition by playing squash and now she is a top-ranking national player.

“I knew my daughter was different and I wished to encourage her,” said Maria’s father, Shamsul Qayyum Wazir, who took her to Peshawar in 2002, eager to grant her the opportunity she would have been denied at home.

“We had received threats from the Taliban warning us to stop her from playing,” he said.

Today, Pakai lives and trains in Toronto, her story an inspiration for others. “I always think of the hard rocks of my land, and how tough they made me,” she said.

But while these young women have fought back, others find it harder to do so. “I want my daughters to have a better life than I do, but it is hard,” said Ujala Gul, 40, a mother of three girls who lives in a village near Saidu Sharif. “I am afraid they will end up as powerless housewives just like me, subservient to their husbands.”

Even so, the girls seem more determined than boys given the harder struggle that lies ahead for them. “I feel I must do something with my life. Things must change otherwise girls and women will never have enough options,” Samira Ahmed, 12, told IRIN. She is helping to run classes near Kabal for girls who are not able to go to school.

“There are so many little girls here who could change the future. I have educated daughters and I know they can change the family’s destiny. That’s why I want to help all those I can,” said Mullahzai Tauqir, 65, a grandfather and retired teacher who now runs voluntary classes for out-of-school children near Mingora.

“I think my efforts and theirs will one day make a real difference and bring about change.”

I have taken feminists to task more than once not only for their failure to stand up for Muslim women, but for their active excuse-making for the oppression of those women. See, for example, my article in FrontPage, "Feminists Betray Muslim Women," on how the feminist writer Laura Briggs justifies the oppression of Muslim women.

See also "Two Women Stoned: Feminists Mum," by David Horowitz, Janet Levy and me; "A Response to Feminists on the Violent Oppression of Women in Islam," by David Horowitz and me; and my article "The Conservative Vanguard of the Feminist Movement" in National Review.

Other articles I've written in FrontPage on issues revolving around women's rights in Islam include "Covering Up the Plight of Muslim Women"; "There Must Be Violence Against Women"; "Muhammad Mended His Own Clothes!"; Open Season on Muslim Women"; "Women Are Treated Better in Islam?."

Also there are my articles in Human Events, "Unveiled Women and 'Uncovered Meat'"; "Media Ignore Abuses of Women in Islam."

I also coauthored the monograph "The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam" (available as a pdf here).

And they're still at it: "Feminists back women as possessions in Supreme Court case," by Barbara Kay in the National Post, December 9 (thanks to Jamal):

The Supreme Court must decide whether women may keep their faces covered in court. Or rather whether Muslim women can, but other women can’t.

A young Muslim woman in her thirties, known as N.S., claims that the psychological distress of testifying with her face uncovered against two male defendants, relatives she has accused of sexually assaulting her as a child, trumps the long-honoured right of the defendants’ lawyers to see her expression under cross-examination.

The case went to the Ontario Court of Appeal in June of 2010. There, irony was heaped on irony in the presentations of two intervening groups whose perspectives sum up the conflict – the ideology of multiculturalism versus the sacred tenets of democracy – that sits at the heart of this case.

The Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) – a bastion of feminist activists – argued that the alleged victim should be allowed to wear the veil if her religion demands it, stating that forcing a Muslim woman to uncover her face while testifying “could very well be seen and experienced as an act of racial, religious and gendered domination.”...

The “religious” argument does not hold. Islam does not “demand” face coverage, even if some Muslims do. Over the years we have heard from hundreds of imams and scholars on this subject. In 2009 Sheikh Muhammed Sayyid Tantawi, the grand Sheikh of al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s highest institution of religious learning, scolded a Cairo high school girl for wearing a face-veil: “The niqab is a tradition,” he said. “It has no connection to religion.”

But even if Islam did demand it – in which case women in Islamic countries like Pakistan would be covered, but aren’t – that is still no reason to offer N.S. special treatment. When a religious tradition or rite conflicts with our democratic values, democratic values must hold sway, as we just saw in the polygamy decision, another so-called religious demand.

In Europe more and more Muslim women have taken up the veil as a political statement of Islamist triumphalism. Which is why the niqab and burka have been proscribed in France and Belgium as a socially menacing statement that is incompatible with democracy, and in particular with gender equality. Multiculturalists and libertarians denounced the ban, but again it was a democratic Muslim, not a feminist, who came to the rescue of logic and democratic values. Dr Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, wrote in England’s Daily Mail: “The decision by the French government to outlaw all forms of public face-masking, including the burka and niqab, is welcomed by all thinking Muslims around the world.”

N.S. herself had a photo taken for her driver’s licence, which shows us that the issue is not one of religion, but of situational convenience. N.S. did not mind her face being uncovered so that she could drive a car. So clearly it is not the religion that is the problem, it is the claimant’s unwillingness to face her abusers without the psychological protection of the veil.

If N.S. is permitted to cover her face under the guise of religion, why shouldn’t all victims of sexual assault have that privilege under the guise of their freedom to “dress” as they choose? Fear is fear for all women. Why stop at women, though? Why not all fearful witnesses?

Legal minds should not allow multicultural correctness to blind them to potent symbols of inequality. No rhetorical legerdemain in the world can turn the dhimmitude of women represented by that dehumanizing mask into a charming mantilla of sexual modesty....

Lorena Bobbitt prepares lunch

It's all about controlling women, like so many aspects of Islamic law. Sharia Alert from Eurabia: "Islamic cleric bans women from touching bananas, cucumbers for sexual resemblance," by Manar Ammar for Bikyamasr, December 6:

CAIRO: An Islamic cleric residing in Europe said that women should not be close to bananas or cucumbers, in order to avoid any “sexual thoughts.”

The unnamed sheikh, who was featured in an article on el-Senousa news, was quoted saying that if women wish to eat these food items, a third party, preferably a male related to them such as their a father or husband, should cut the items into small pieces and serve.

He said that these fruits and vegetables “resemble the male penis” and hence could arouse women or “make them think of sex.”

He also added carrots and zucchini to the list of forbidden foods for women.

The sheikh was asked how to “control” women when they are out shopping for groceries and if holding these items at the market would be bad for them. The cleric answered saying this matter is between them and God.

Answering another question about what to do if women in the family like these foods, the sheikh advised the interviewer to take the food and cut it for them in a hidden place so they cannot see it.

The opinion has stirred a storm of irony and denouncement among Muslims online, with hundreds of comments mocking the cleric.

One reader said that these religious “leaders” give Islam “a bad name” and another commented said that he is a “retarded” person and he must quite his post immediately.

Good advice.

International embarrassment for Afghanistan got one rape victim, Gulnaz, pardoned, although she will still marry the man who raped her.

It is good to see reporting that focuses on those who are left behind after Gulnaz' pardon. Hundreds of women and girls remain behind bars not only for "moral crimes," but for what would be understood in countries where Sharia is not enforced (formally or informally) to be other people's moral crimes, including rape, forced marriage, and domestic violence.

These women's "crimes" often boil down to having somehow been found out of place, and therefore, forfeiting their right to protection. The legal deck is stacked against them to encourage them to choose to be prisoners in their own homes. Even the supreme court is against them, as noted in the report below.

Meet the new Afghanistan, same as the old Afghanistan -- only, this one smiles at the West while prosecuting rape victims. "Afghanistan's women languishing in prisons 10 years after fall of Taliban," by Ben Farmer for the Telegraph, December 4:

Figures disclosed to The Daily Telegraph show that half of the country’s jailed women — about 350 — have been sentenced for “moral crimes”. For girls aged 12 to 18 in prison, the figure rises to four-fifths.

The latest United Nations figures estimate that the women’s prison population has risen to 600, up from 380 two years ago.

A further 114 girls aged 12 to 18 are locked up, of which 80 per cent are serving sentences for either running away from home or extramarital sex, an Afghan justice official said.

The situation is predicted to get worse after a recent Supreme Court ruling that a woman who flees her home and goes anywhere other than the police or a close relative should be locked up as a precaution against illicit sex and prostitution.

The ruling has meant the number of women jailed has risen steadily.

The figures emerged as diplomats gathered in Bonn to review ten years of intervention in Afghanistan and make new pledges as Nato combat troops complete a withdrawal by 2015.

Western countries including Britain have poured tens of millions of pounds into the Afghan justice system and the women are often held in prisons built with international aid money.

But the lofty declarations made a decade ago in the same city to help women repressed by the Taliban have not, according to activists, been fulfilled.

The Afghan justice system remains heavily stacked against women in a deeply socially conservative culture.

Human Rights Watch, which has interviewed more than 50 female prisoners for a forthcoming report on the issue, found women who had tried to flee arranged marriages, beatings and husbands who had forced them into prostitution, only to be then prosecuted.

Heather Barr, the organisation’s Afghanistan researcher, said: “It’s devastating that these cases not only continue, but seem to be increasing ten years after what was supposed to be a new beginning for Afghan women.

“These cases call into question what progress has really been made for Afghan women and what type of future lies ahead for them as the international community departs.”

Many of the women said they were happy in prison because they were temporarily protected from vengeful relatives threatening murder to erase the stain left on their family’s honour. [...]

Human Rights Watch said the two biggest girls’ prisons, in Kabul and Herat, were almost exclusively populated by inmates convicted of moral crimes.

There is more.

Her household was only "moderately religious," and yet she still feels threatened enough to lead a double life. Apparently her parents are yet more Misunderstanders of the Religion of Peace. This girl has good reason to be afraid: Aqsa Parvez was murdered by her father for not wearing the hijab, and Rifqa Bary was slapped by hers for the same reason. Then there is Islam's death penalty for apostates: Muhammad said, "If anyone changes his religion, kill him." Some schools of Islamic jurisprudence, however, allow for the imprisonment of a female apostate until she recants her apostasy.

"IAmA 21 yr old Muslim girl who wears the headscarf but has led a double-life kept hidden from my family for the last 3 years," by Undercover 2011 at Reddit.com, November 26 (thanks to Just Kaafir):

I am 21 years old and was bought up in a moderately religious Muslim family. My mother wears the burkha and is extremely religious. She is very spiritually connected to God and encourages the whole family to be more religious but she is not violent or forceful. My father is quite strict but he is more culturally inclined (Pakistani) than religiously.

I am the eldest child and have had to fight for pretty much every ounce of independence in my life that most Westerners would not have to worry about e.g. going to college, going to university. Once I started university, I was not allowed to live there. I had to endure a two hour commute (four hours altogether to travel there and then return on a GOOD traffic day) four days a week for three years.

No one at my university knows I am a Muslim. I remove my headscarf and change my clothes. I kept this up for three years and graduated with a first class honours degree in Medicine. At home, my parents have no idea that whilst at university; I have changed a lot. I've become more confident, better-read (obviously) and I have come to the conclusion that there is no God. When the holidays roll around, I do not see friends or go out. I'm not allowed to leave the house or even work outside of my small town (a 'suburb' of [BLANKBLANKBLANK] I guess you would call it in American terms!)

None of my friends (all are from university and live all over the country or outside the country) know my home address, home number or home situation. I've never once partied with them or done any of the normal student things because I have always made excuses. They have no idea. In their minds, I'm very well-read, very studious and hardworking and the last person on earth who would have a religious faith (mainly because I have become more and more hardline atheist over the last three years).

I'm planning on doing a PhD in [BLANKBLANKBLANK] but my family have no idea. They do not support me in my career ambitions and I am pretty sure their long-term view is that I will settle in my small town, allow myself to be coaxed into some marriage and work at the local Walmart. I plan to leave without telling them. I just had to share this somewhere.

Oh, and before any Muslims rebuke me or call me a disgrace - understand one thing. I made a consenting, informed choice to leave my religion. The fact of the matter is, my parents are Muslims and they use the name of Allah to keep me chained to them and to make me submit to their plans for my life. This is not what the religion preaches but this is how some people who mix up culture and religion go about these things and my parents are an example. They would never support me not wearing a hijab (head covering) or saying I don't believe in God. It's all or nothing for them. They also have never understood me or my educational aspirations or my career aspirations. I've grown up feeling incredibly isolated and alone and I do not blame Islam or Muslims for any of it. Religion is a card many people play in order to justify crap.

UPDATE 4: As people have been asking me to tell more stories, I made a blog - http://uncovered2011.wordpress.com I will probably update that daily. I find it a more organised and coherent way of talking about my story and issues. Reddit is a bit confusing and often very repetitive!

The Daily Mail headline goes straight for the elephant in the room: this is largely a phenomenon within Muslim communities in Britain. Indeed, Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide; honor killings are encouraged by Sharia's inconsistency on whether parents can be held accountable for the death of their child. There is also the letter and spirit of Qur'an 4:34, which makes violence (yes, violence) an acceptable recourse for dealing with "disobedient" women.

Apologists are bound to point out that domestic violence exists in all societies, including the U.S. and Britain. That is true, but here is the difference: in those societies, it is actively denounced and combated, not covered over, denied, and excused, or even praised. In the report below, it is noted that the culprits are hailed as heroes in their communities.

The report, and reports about it, are sure to be denounced as "Islamophobic," even though it was an Iranian and Kurdish women's organization that compiled it. "Alarming rise of Muslim 'honour attacks' in the UK as police reveal thousands were carried out last year," from the Daily Mail, December 3 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Nearly 3,000 so-called honour attacks were recorded by police in Britain last year, new research has revealed.

According to figures obtained by the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation (Ikwro), at least 2,823 incidents of 'honour-based' violence took place, with the highest number recorded in London.

The charity said the statistics fail to provide the full picture of the levels of 'honour' violence in the UK , but are the best national estimate so far.

The data, taken from from 39 out of 52 UK forces, was released following a freedom of information request by Ikwro.

From the BBC report on this topic: "A quarter of police forces in the UK were unable or unwilling to provide data and communities have often been reluctant to talk about the crime, Ikwro said."

In total, eight police forces recorded more than 100 so called honour-related attacks in 2010.

The Metropolitan Police saw 495 incidents, with 378 reported in the West Midlands, 350 in West Yorkshire, 227 in Lancashire and 189 in Greater Manchester.

Cleveland recorded 153, while Suffolk and Bedfordshire saw 118 and 117 respectively, according to the figures.

Between the 12 forces able to provide figures from 2009, there was an overall 47 per cent rise in honour attack incidents.

Police in Northumbria saw a 305 per cent increase from 17 incidents in 2009 to 69 in 2010, while Cambridgeshire saw a 154 per cent jump from 11 to 28.

A quarter of police forces in the UK were unable or unwilling to provide data, Ikwro said.

The report stated: 'This is the first time that a national estimate has been provided in relation to reporting of honour-based violence.

'The number of incidents is significant, particularly when we consider the high levels of abuse that victims suffer before they seek help.'

'Honour' attacks are punishments usually carried out against Muslim women who have been accused of bringing shame on their family and in the past have included abductions, mutilations, beatings and murder.

Ikwro director Diana Nammi told the BBC that families often deny the existence of the attacks.

She said: 'The perpetrators will be even considered as a hero within the community because he is the one defending the family and community's honour and reputation.'....

If there were truth in advertising, it would be the "Free Sex for Me, But Not for Thee Act of 2011." Not all Iranian women are willing to see the bill sail through unchallenged, knowing how they will be victimized by it. An update on this story. "Iranian women fight controversial 'polygamy' bill," from Payvand News, December 1 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

On a summer night in 2008, the wives of some Iranian members of Parliament started receiving phone calls. “Would you mind if I married your husband - just for a week?” asked the female voice on the end of the line.

The callers argued that taking another wife is a Muslim man’s right. By allowing it, the MPs’ wives would be performing a good Islamic deed. Some of the wives hung up in shock.

But marrying the MPs was the last thing the callers actually wanted. In reality, they were women’s rights activists opposed to a controversial “Family Protection Bill” which the Iranian government proposed in 2007.

The activists say they discovered that at least 65 male members of the country’s 290-strong parliament had two or more wives. This is despite the fact that polygamy contravenes the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Iran has ratified. Article 23 stipulates that states must ensure that men and women have equal rights when marrying or at the dissolution of marriage.

If passed, “The Family Protection Bill” would reduce Iranian women’s rights even further, allowing men to take up to three additional wives without the consent or knowledge of their first spouse. Iranian law currently allows Muslim men to have up to four wives, but only after obtaining a court order demonstrating the permission of the first spouse and his ability to treat them all equally. For women who depend entirely on their husband’s income, sharing that with a second, third or fourth wife can mean severe financial hardship.

Qur'an 4:3 allows a man up to four wives. The existing arrangement was likely intended all along as a temporary accommodation to get a foot in the door for polygamy. It has served its purpose.

According to Shi’a Islam, Iranian men can already take any number of “temporary wives” without informing their first wife. The length of a temporary marriage is defined in advance and can last anything from hours to decades. Temporary wives generally face social ostracism, and their children may face difficulties in accessing public services such as education because if the marriage is unregistered, it may be hard for the mother to prove paternity.

And hapless wives will be sitting ducks for any venereal diseases their husbands pick up.

Roya Kashefi of the Association of Iranian Researchers works closely with women’s rights activists in Iran.

“In Islam, family is the most important element within society,” she says.

“It’s a sacred entity and there are many articles in the Iranian Constitution that point to the importance of marriage. So it’s very contradictory to have laws that actually endanger the very foundation of that marriage with polygamy.”

Under common sense, it is contradictory. Under Sharia, it is not, because the Qur'an has made polygamy lawful. Indeed, Muhammad was a prolific polygamist himself, and he is also the exemplar of good Islamic conduct according to Qur'an 33:21. To prohibit polygamy is to risk implying that Muhammad made a mistake, or that his example in that regard is not relevant to all times and places. That, clearly, will be an obstacle to reform.

Roya Kashefi has helped to organize a Europe-wide tour publicizing a banner inscribed with the tragic stories of 40 Iranian women who are second wives, temporary wives or the children of such marriages. The tour, named “Chehel Tikeh” (“Forty pieces”) is aimed at raising international awareness about the discriminatory bill.

The banner was taken to Iran’s parliament, the Majles, a year ago, although MPs refused to accept it.

Fifteen thousand women signed a petition calling for a ban on polygamy, submitted at the same time.

Women’s rights activists are urging the Iranian authorities to outlaw polygamy, grant equal divorce and custody rights and create laws tackling domestic violence.

At the moment married women in Iran can be prevented from working, leaving the country or pursuing further education by their husbands. It is difficult for a woman to divorce her husband without his consent - even if he has been violent towards her. If she remarries after divorce, she loses custody of any children.

Activists say provisions in the new bill will make it even more difficult for women to obtain a divorce, leaving thousands at risk of continued domestic violence, which is not currently criminalized under Iranian law.

Qur'an 4:34 allows a man to hit (yes, hit) women in his household from whom he fears disobedience. Muhammad struck Aisha for disobeying, hard enough to cause pain (Sahih Muslim 2127). There again is the same obstacle to reform.

Four years after its inception, the bill has still not been passed, largely because of widespread opposition from a broad coalition of women’s groups....

Laura Wilson was used, abused, and thrown away -- in keeping with the Islamic relegation of women to the status of commodities. And clearly Asghar's calling her a "kaffir bitch" reveals that they thought of her primarily as an unbeliever -- someone who had no rights and was at their disposal, until she proved inconvenient to have around. "Groomed for sex at 12, stabbed to death at 17: Shocking life of white teenage mother murdered after Asian lover rejected her child," by Rob Cooper for the Daily Mail, December 2 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

A teenage student stabbed to death and dumped in a canal was groomed for sexual exploitation by adults from the age of 12, it has been revealed.

Laura Wilson, 17, had been tracked by social services since 2005 after she was identified as being 'at risk' of sexual exploitation by British Pakistani men.

But their work focused on other girls who were more closely associated with abusers in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

The white teenager was the victim of a cycle of sexual abuse and little was done to help her, Laura's family have claimed.

Rather than removing her from the situation, social services only carried out 'preventative' work to stop her falling into the clutches of abusers.

The student was murdered in October last year after bringing 'shame' on two Asian families.

She had a brief fling with married Ishaq Hussain, now 22, and became pregnant with his child while she was in a sexual relationship with Ashitaq Asghar.

A few days before she was murdered and dumped in the canal she had revealed to the two families that she had had affairs with both men.

After being informed of the relationship, Asghar's mother apparently hit Laura with a shoe. she said her son would never have a baby with a white girl and called Laura a 'dirty white b****', and she should 'keep her legs closed'.

The teenager had become pregnant just a month after she turned 16 and gave birth to Hussain's child in June last year.

Asghar pleaded guilty to murder in May, while yesterday a Sheffield Crown Court jury cleared 22-year-old Mr Hussain of Laura's murder after deliberating for nearly 11 hours.

Prosecutor Nicholas Campbell QC told the trial that Mr Hussain and Asghar mounted a 'mission to kill' Laura.

They adopted the language of the cult British film 'Four Lions', a dark comedy about Islamic terrorists plotting an attack which was filmed in Sheffield and which they had both seen.

Asghar sent a series of texts to Mr Hussain using language from the film.

Asghar talked about buying a 'shooter' for £400 and he boasted about bringing his 'hit list' out. In fact, said Mr Campbell, the murder weapon of choice turned out to be a knife.

In one message, Asghar said to Hussain the day before she died which read: 'I'm gonna send that kaffir (non-Muslim) b**** straight to hell'.

Mr Campbell QC described Laura as 'embracing life with gusto and she was an attractive and popular girl'....