WOMEN.....WHERE IS YOUR OUTRAGE?
The truth about Islam pt. 1
Rarely do I let things affect me this much. Ok, that is probably a lie, I do it all the time, but it does take a lot to motivate me to take the time to research one of these and write it. That all happened very fast for this one, causing me to move some others aside, because I wanted to get this one out. I believe this is important.
This was sparked by seeing an interview with a woman named Ghazal Omid, the author of a book called "Living In Hell." The interview, and her book, is about the treatment of women living in Iran. She went on to tell about some recent protests in Iran, not the government sponsored (ie. planned and paid for) protests chanting "death to America and President Bush" that the media love to show, but instead an apparently un-newsworthy protest against their own government. This was a gathering in support of teachers who had not been paid. As should be expected, some of these women were arrested, which led to still more protests. These were not small protests either. Apparently 8000 women took to the streets to protest the arrests of these women. I know what you are thinking, it sounds hopeful doesn't it? Protests in Iran against their government. Well it gets ugly from here.
Asu Zaladida was one of these protesters. This 22 year old woman was subsequently arrested and taken to jail where, in keeping with a time honored Iranian tradition, she was brutally raped. Multiple times. Lets speak a little more plainly here....She was repeatedly anally raped with a baseball bat. After her family found, and then parted with enough money to convince the authorities to release her, she was then taken to the hospital. Her injuries got the best of her and she died. Taking treachery to the next level, the government would not allow the family to have her body for burial. Her family was warned not to speak against the government or they too would be arrested. Considering the arrest of Miss Zaladida led to her death, it would not be unreasonable to call this a death threat for the entire family.
As Ghazal Omid told this story, it was the next words she said that actually meant the most to me; "This is how women in Iran stand up to their abusers, and you guys don't hear about them because apparently they're not important." Is this true? Are these women just not important? She continued: "We need five minutes of your time per day to show you whats going on inside Iran." Apparently we can't spare that much time in America for these truly courageius women. After all we have Anna Nicole Smith, Sanjaya Malakar, Don Imus and his ghetto basketball commentary and Rosie O'Donnell to consider. Where can we find the time?
What happened to Asu Zaladida is NOT an isolated incident. You want another example? Take the case of Roya Tolouee, a 40 year old woman beaten and raped when she refused to sign "confessions." They finally coerced her by threatening to burn her two children to death right in front of her. Strange how she believed they would actually do it. Let her tell her story:
"Four armed men and three armed women barged into my house at night and took me away," she said. "My kids were terrified and crying. I was questioned all night by different interrogators and then thrown alone into a cell. When I wouldn't do what they wanted, they slapped me. But after the sixth night, the routine changed. I was left alone in a small dark room with two men. One was the assistant prosecutor and called himself Amiri. The other had a filthy mouth and said terrible things. They started slapping me again. For the rest of the night they did to me what no woman should ever experience. Amiri said, 'I'm going to hang you, but before I hang you, I will make an example of you so that no woman will dare to open her mouth here again'." He then sexually assaulted her. When she asked Amiri how he could act like that, he told her that only Islam and clerical rule were important to him. The attack left her badly bruised and bleeding internally, but she still refused to sign the papers they put before her. To further anger her attackers, she demanded to see a lawyer and cited international treaties on human rights. The following night they did not sexually assault her because she was still bleeding from the first assault. According to Islamic law, this rendered her "unclean" and therefore unfit to rape. So they told her they would kill her children by setting them on fire before her eyes.
Mainstream Islam takes a dim view of women's rights. When Islam reaches a level of authority that enables it to control and subjugate a population under Islamic law, oppression of women becomes the norm and these atrocities are NOT the exceptions. They even use their own belief system to enhance the enthusiasm for those who perpetrate these atrocities. Many years ago I remember reading a biography of the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez (yes, I really do read those kind of books all the time), and I was interested to learn that the Spaniards under his command would often "baptize" the native women before they took them sexually. This was all part of being a "good" catholic, since having sex with a "heathen" female, consent notwithstanding, would go against the acceptable church policies of the time. It appears our Islamic friends take that a step further. Sexual abuse as an interrogation technique is common. Young women are often raped BEFORE execution so they cannot reach heaven as virgins!!! This, as you can imagine, provides a considerable incentive to obey the Islamic state. This is the truth about Islam.
Meanwhile here in America, we are blessed with the ever illuminating political wisdom of Rosie O'Donnell who has recently taken to accusing the Bush administration of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. She also believes that the kidnapping of the British Sailors and Marines by Iran was a conspiracy, and a plot to start a war with Iran by Britain and the United States. She has made herself one of the biggest detriments to womens rights in the Islamic world by making such a spectacle of herself. The jhihadist puritans of Islam can point to this loudmouthed lesbian woman speaking against her own country in a time of war and say "this is what we are fighting against." You would think she would want to speak up for these women, but her own anti-christian and anti-American crusade is more important to her than the plight of women seeking not just freedom, but the simple dignity of being treated better than a dog. To Ms. Odonnell the question has been answered. These women are NOT important.
The New York Times, in an article published on May 28, 2006, accused Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being "a proponent of women's rights." The ever liberal newspaper is interested in portraying him as a reformer, and Iran as a negotiating partner that we can trust. Speaking of a "negotiating partner," we also have senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, who on a recent lovefest appearance on David Letterman's program, insisted that the United States should seek what he called "aggressive negotiations" with the Islamic regimes in Iran and Syria. Just exactly how do you aggressively negotiate? The President has chosen a policy of isolating these governments because decades of negotiations have failed. If these Islamic fundamentalist regimes will treat their own women as less than dogs, just what kind of negotiating partners can they be? Appeasement is in the air, but when has it ever worked? In the 1930's "aggressive negotiations" were attempted with Nazi Germany even as the world was well aware of the atrocities already being committed against their Jewish citizens. Did these aggressive negotiations prevent a war? Did they improve the conditions of the Jewish people in Germany? No! It bought the Nazi regime more time, making both the war, and the ultimate treatment of the Jews, worse by far. In fact, negotiations have never prevented a war. They only delay the inevitable, to the advantage of the aggressors. This has the effect of making the wars that follow worse. Remember that when we get into a shooting war with Iran....and we will. By negotiating with Iran, or likewise with its sister regime in Syria, we would be not only displaying weakness in their eyes, but also tolerating these atrocities committed against women. But I forget, liberals do preach tolerance don't they? So long as it suits their short term political needs.
Nancy Pelosi may be the worst of all. She takes it upon herself to show support for the plight of women in Islamic countries by going to Syria and offering, essentially, an alternate foreign policy. One that validates and endorses this treatment of women. Yes it does validate and endorse it because nowhere has she called for any human rights reform. You can add to that her "leadership" in attempting to get the United States to militarily withdraw from Iraq. Just what do you think will happen to the rights and wellbeing of the women there if we leave? Do you think women will be able to retain what rights they have gained after a longstanding 5 year history of them? There was a story on Nightline the other night where the president of Afghanistan pointed out that, legally, women do have rights, but that in reality, they may not be allowed to exercise them. It takes a culture awhile to adjust to change. The American civil rights movement should have taught us that. How much harder must it be in countries without a traditional belief in individual liberty and with violent militias working against them. When the American military leaves Iraq, so will any and all gains for women. Like it or not, President Bush has done more for women's rights in the Islamic world than any president in recent history. You won't find a statement like that in the media!
Ghazal Omid had this to say: "We need five minutes of your time per day to show you what's going on inside Iran, because we don't have podiums. If we don't, this government will not go anywhere. If you really want to get rid of this Iranian regime, help us to help you." The trouble is that Miss Omid does not understand how America works. The media is the podium, and the people who control it will do anything to oppose this administration and its policies. The media likes to portray America as unpopular in the Islamic world. Women represent over half the population in those countries. They don't have freedon to speak out without fear of reprisals. We are their only hope. Don't kid yourselves, we are wanted there, and when women are no longer afraid to speak out, they will tell us just that. If we just have the resolve to stay.
It amazes me to no end that the feminists in America refuse to speak out about the mistreatment of women in Muslim countries. Where is the outrage? Is the alliance with feminism to the liberal democratic party so important that they would remain silent just to help them win some more seats in goverment? Are muslim women being sacrificed on the altar of American liberalism? I would say these women, who would dare to resist their own government in the face of certain humiliation and death, represent the best of everything we claim to stand for. In this instance, the president has been taking exactly the right approach in not negotiating with these governments. Women's groups, however, not only won't stand with him, they joyously celebrate their opposition to his administration's policies with their continued adherence to an outdated alliance with the liberal democratic party! Their silence on these Islamic atrocities is deafening. In a word: outrageous!
There is a massive movement by the American media to be tolerant of Islam. Just be sure what it is you are tolerating. Islam is not and has never been a religion of peace or freedom. This is doubly true if you are a woman. There are those who would have you believe that it is extremist radical Islam and not mainstream Islam that is the problem. If that is so, where are the voices of the so called moderates speaking out against this behavior? Either they are silent on this subject or the media is keeping them silent by not reporting them. Meanwhile Islamic women, many of them brave enough to stand against their own government, continue to be tortured and abused as apart of Islam's continuing policy of subjugating them and rendering them docile and obedient. This is the truth about Islam.
