Debunking Myths

See Giving Proper Credit at Social Sense. Mustang, the webmaster there, debunks some often-touted Arab/Islamic contributions to modern civilization. Excerpt:

...Common beliefs about Arabic contributions are a Moslem invention, not based in fact, and perpetuated by uninformed people. Rather than propagating distortions, let’s give credit to whom it is due...

Read it all HERE.

Yemeni Child Bride Age 12 Dies in Labor

From CNN:

Yemeni girl, 12, dies in painful childbirth

By Mohammed JamjoomCNN

AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- A 12-year-old Yemeni girl, who was forced into marriage, died during a painful childbirth that also killed her baby, a children's rights group said Monday.

Fawziya Ammodi struggled for three days in labor, before dying of severe bleeding at a hospital on Friday, said the Seyaj Organization for the Protection of Children.

"Although the cause of her death was lack of medical care, the real case was the lack of education in Yemen and the fact that child marriages keep happening," said Seyaj President Ahmed al-Qureshi.

Born into an impoverished family in Hodeidah, Fawziya was forced to drop out of school and married off to a 24-year-old man last year, al-Qureshi said.

Child brides are commonplace in Yemen, especially in the Red Sea Coast where tribal customs hold sway. Hodeidah is the fourth largest city in Yemen and an important port.

More than half of all young Yemeni girls are married off before the age of 18 -- many times to older men, some with more than one wife, a study by Sanaa University found.

While it was not immediately known why Fawziya's parents married her off, the reasons vary. Sometimes, financially-strapped parents offer up their daughters for hefty dowries.

Marriage means the girls are no longer a financial or moral burden to their parents. And often, parents will extract a promise from the husband to wait until the girl is older to consummate the marriage.

The issue of Yemeni child brides came to the forefront in 2008 with 10-year-old Nujood Ali.

She was pulled out of school and married to a man who beat and raped her within weeks of the ceremony.

To escape, Nujood hailed a taxi -- the first time in her life -- to get across town to the central courthouse where she sat on a bench and demanded to see a judge.

After a well-publicized trial, she was granted a divorce.

The Yemeni parliament tried in February to pass a law, setting the minimum marriage age at 17. But the measure has not reached the president because many parliamentarians argued it violates sharia, or Islamic law, which does not stipulate a minimum age.

Dancing to the Muslims' tune

We all have to dance around Muslim festivals now, it seems. In Bosnia, these bleating religion-soaked idiots are knocking the gay community for having the audacity to hold an LGB event during Ramadan, which has just begun.

Quite apart from the sheer impudence of these people in expecting another group even to consider moving its event at all, they conveniently forget that bloody Ramadan is a movable feast. These prats expect everyone else to arrange their events so as not to coincide with it if Muslims choose to be offended by whatever it is. Which could mean that several different organisations per year could find themselves rearranging their calendars if their activities don't fit in with moaning Muslims' ideas of what is right and proper, whether Ramadan falls in September, December or whenever.

"Queer Sarajevo Festival is to take place in from September 24th to 27th," Pink News tells us. "The Dutch, Canadian and Swiss embassies are among those supporting the event."

The online UK gay news source goes on to quote Amir Zukic of the Muslim Party of Democratic Action as having told a newspaper, "We respect freedom and tolerance, but the festival is a kind of provocation since it is taking place during Ramadan."

So how is it any more of a provocation for coinciding with one of your cultural events, then, Mr Zukic? If you don't like the coincidence of these events, move your damned festival to somewhere else in the calendar. You're the ones who have chosen to be offended. Who the hell do you think you are?

"We've been preparing the project for the past year and I would not spend my time only to provoke someone," Svetlana Djurkovic, head of the gay and lesbian rights group Association Q, is quoted as saying. "It is a festival of culture and art."

Yeah, and these bozos just expect you to move it or cancel it because they're observing their mumbo-jumbo. Tell them where to stick their Ramadan, Svetlana!

I've posted this much and more for those who are interested, on my regular blog at Pink Triangle.

On the Run from Islamic "Family Honor"

This story is excerpted from an article titled "Running Scared" in the March 2008 British edition of Cosmopolitan.

As 'Zena' walks home from the shop where she works, she takes in the
scene around her. It's an ordinary day, but... she clocks everything about her
surroundings -- number plates on passing cars, a man at the bus stop, two women
chatting... in the pub window. She's walking briskly, too; if she's even a few
minutes late home, her husband Jack will start to worry.

Zena, 37, a British Muslim, is one of the many women in the UK who has
taken the extreme measure of changing her identity. She and Jack... have lived
as runaways since Zena refused to be forced into an arranged marriage when she
was 21.

By her own account, Zena grew up in a home filled not with fear and abuse, but with laughter and affection. "My family meant everything to me... My sisters and I were real daddy's girls. We always felt he would protect us... " While adhering to Muslim "cultural" strictures against pubs and nightclubs, the large family of siblings invited friends over for pizza and dancing to Michael Jackson and Madonna. "The house was always noisy and full of laughter."

But in the back of her mind, Zena knew she was expected to submit to a marriage arranged by her parents.

In 1992 Zena met 'Jack', who is English and non-Muslim, and the two fell in love. They started meeting in secret. But Zena's parents had already chosen her future husband. So one morning before dawn Zena sneaked out of the house and eloped with Jack. Several days later Zena called her "loving family", hoping to persuade them to accept her marriage to Jack.

My brother answered and said I had brought shame on the family, that we were
both walking corpses and our bodies would end up in several bin liners. He said
they'd send a bounty hunter to track us down.

Zena and Jack were granted 'nationally sensitive' status by the police, in which their birth names and all traces of their past were wiped off government records. They have changed their identities twice more and moved more than 30 times. Even Jack has been forced to limit his contact with his own family. She and Jack live the lives of fugitives.

I have six different routes to get home from work so there's less chance of me
being followed. We know it takes seven seconds for someone to get from the front
door to our bedroom, so I've got enough time to get out of the window.

Zena mourns the loss of her large family. "Knowing that they want me killed is devastating," she says. She has not spoken with any family member in the 15 years of her marriage, and does not even know if her parents are still alive. And she will never have a family of her own, since it would be dangerous and unfair to bring a child into their fugitive lives. But she has no other regrets. "There are days when it's tough, but it's all been worth it. Despite our troubles, we rarely argue -- we know we're stronger if we face them together. I never tire of having only Jack in my life... I love him and know I've done the right thing. I would do it again tomorrow in a heartbeat."

The website JoinHunt4Yasser, devoted to the capture of Yasser Said, who murdered his daughters Amina and Sarah in Texas in December 2007, posts this January, 2003, quote from "Al Skudsi bin Hookah, roving reporter and foreign correspondent for The Gaza Gajeera."

Our way of life is under attack. And we are not fighting back. Deep
down, we know that when a woman has disgraced her family, nothing will restore
honor except by killing her. This is understood in Jordan, Syria, Yemen,
Lebanon, Egypt, the Gaza strip and the West Bank. So why are we Arabs telling
the Western press that honor killing is cultural, that it is not really part of
Islam? Our way of life is based on maintaining our honor. And make no mistake
about it: a woman does tarnish her family's honor by engaging in pre-marital
sex, or by getting herself raped, when she seeks divorce and when she marries
against her family's wishes.

There are millions of men like bin Hookah who believe women are their property, that they hold the power of life and death over them and have the final say in how they will conduct their lives. Fortunately, in Western culture such men are a small minority. But if bin Hookah is right, they are the majority in Islamic culture. And their "way of life" creeps nearer with every concession to Muslim "cultural sensitivity".