Talk Straight

In Saudi Arabia, an Islamic cleric who admits to raping, torturing and killing his daughter received a fine but no jail time for his heinous crime. Saudi media reports that the father paid 200,000 riyals ($50,000 US) in “blood money” for his crime, but will not be required to serve any time in prison.

In response to the heinous crime, and lack of justice for five-year old victim Lama al-Ghamdi, the women’s rights activist Manal al-Sharif and others issued a press release on Feb 2, and launched a Twitter campaign using the hashtags “#AnaLama” (Arabic for “I am Lama”) and #IamLama, demanding legislation criminalizing violence against women and children.

Fayhan al-Ghamdi, the victims father and a popular Islamic preacher who has made numerous television appearances promoting Islam, confessed to the heinous crime. Ghamdi told Saudi officials he used cables and a cane on his five-year-old daughter, leaving her with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns. In addition, one of Lama’s fingernails had been torn off. Hospital staff reports the child’s rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed.

Reports indicate the father had doubted his five-year old daughter’s virginity

Sick bastards.

Saudi Arabia has decided to bar gays and tom boys from its government schools and universities within a crackdown against the spread of this phenomenon in the conservative Moslem Gulf Kingdom, a newspaper said on Monday.

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most feared law enforcement authority in the oil-rich country, has been asked to enforce the new orders, Sharq Arabic language daily said.

“Instructions have been issued to all public schools and universities to ban the entry of gays and tom boys and to intensify their efforts to fight this phenomenon, which has been promoted by some websites,” it said.

The paper did not make clear who issued those instructions but said gay and tom boy students can go back to schools and universities if they prove they have been corrected and have stopped such practices.

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Any outrage from the Gay Left?  Hello? Anyone? Hellooooo? Nothing?

Yeah, figured as much.

According to several Arabic news sources, last Monday, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.”

The Grand Mufti made his assertion in response to a question posed by a delegation from Kuwait, regarding the position of a Kuwaiti parliament member who recently called for the”removal” of churches (he later “clarified” by saying he merely meant that no churches should be built in Kuwait). The Kuwaiti delegation wanted to confirm Sharia’s position on churches.

Accordingly, the Grand Mufti “stressed that Kuwait was a part of the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore it is necessary to destroy all churches in it.”

As with many grand muftis before him, the Sheikh based his proclamation on the famous tradition, or hadith, wherein the prophet of Islam declared on his deathbed that “There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula,” which has always been interpreted to mean that only Islam can be practiced in the region.

A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for breaking the country’s ban on female drivers.

The woman, identified only as Shema, was found guilty of driving in Jeddah in July.

Women2drive, which campaigns for women to be allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, says she has already lodged an appeal.

In recent months, scores of women have driven vehicles in Saudi cities in an effort to put pressure on the monarchy to change the law.

The sentence comes two days after the Saudi leader King Abdullah announced women would be allowed to vote for the first time in 2015.

Two other women are due to appear in court later this year on similar charges, correspondents say.

This past week, The Pakistan Christian Post reported on yet another case of young girls being kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. The father of the girls, Rehmat Masih, was told by a rich, local businessman that he intended to marry both daughters and had threatened to kidnap them if this wasn’t approved of. A complaint to the local Police Station proved pointless as the Police refused to take action.

A few days later, the girls were kidnapped by the man while on the way home from a market. Rehmat rushed back to the Police Station to complain. After an investigation, Rehmat was accused of making false accusations against the Muslim business man. It was further stated that Rehmat was a drunk and that he often beat his daughters and they had likely ran away from home to escape this treatment.

Forced conversion isn’t unique to Pakistan and in fact regularly occurs in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt and even England. It begs the question, what could possibly embolden the adherents of Islam to engage in such a heinous act? The answer is simple, the teachings of Mohammed.

Islam was spread by the sword after a slight initial, peaceful hiccup. The warlord and slave –trader Mohammed’s war conquests are very concisely documented. Sûrah al-Baqarah 256: Allah says, “Let there be no compulsion in religion. Truth has been made clear from error. Whoever rejects false worship and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that never breaks. And Allah hears and knows all things”.

Sadly, this verse and other verses of peace were replaced by more violent ones, like Sura 8:12, 9:5, 47:4 and many others.

Prior to emigrating from Mecca to Medina (the Hijra) in 622 CE, Mohammed preached sermons of peace and tolerance, taking and perverting verses from the Bible, the Torah and sacred Greek texts. This had proven to be an abject failure to Mohammed, as barely 100 to 150 people had converted to Islam in its first 13 years. Most of these converts were either close or long-time friends or members of his family.

From 624 CE, raids on defenseless communities reaped great rewards for the early Muslims in slaves, wealth and converts to Islam. A large portion of these people converted for self-preservation as the warring Muslims murdered, tortured, enslaved and raped their way across Arabia. This had proven a more lucrative tact to the one of peace and tolerance.

This is accentuated in Ibn Ishaq 814: “Submit and testify that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad is the apostle of Allah before you lose your head”. As well as Sahih Muslim 31:5917: “Fight with them until they bear testimony to the fact that there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger.”

The people of Mecca who refused to convert to Islam were forcibly removed following Mohammed’s last sermon in 632 CE. The same offer was made to the Christians and Jews in Arabia, though their choice was extended to either accept Islam as their faith, leave their land or be killed.

From Mohammed last sermon, Koran 9:5, “Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.”

Sahih Muslim 19, 4366, Narrated Umar b. al-Khattib: “I have heard the Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him) say:’ I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim’.”

In June 2008, Saba and Anila Younas, both Christian girls from Pakistan, were abducted by a group of Muslims, and forced to marry and convert to Islam. When the matter came before the court, Naeem Sardar, the District and Sessions Judge, ordered that the girls were not to be remanded to their Christian parents because the girls are Muslim now.

In June 2009, a Hindu woman Koli Goswami, 21, from Bangladesh was asleep in her bed when five Muslim men broke into the family home. They vandalized her home and attacked other family members that attempted to intervene before they abducted her. After some investigation by authorities, Kolis mother was told that she had converted to Islam after a ‘long, mutual love affair’ with one of the abductors. Her parents eventually gave up pressuring authorities for answers, Kolis mother stated, “we are afraid we may further be attacked and our other daughters might be abducted.”

In January 2010, Joselyn Cabrera, a Filipino Catholic nurse working at Riyadh Hospital in Saudi Arabia said, “After some months, employers give you an ultimatum, telling you to become Muslim to keep your job. For us, it is hard to make such a choice, but if we don’t, we become the victims of abuse.”

In her 10 years in The Kingdom, she said she saw at least 50 forced conversions at work. She tells of another woman that refused to convert that was raped, became pregnant and jailed under Saudi Law. She then later miscarried because of harsh conditions in the prison.

More at the link