More fun from the "religion of peace"

From the UK Telegraph




Hanged for being a Christian in Iran
Eighteen years ago, Rashin Soodmand's father was hanged in Iran for converting to Christianity. Now her brother is in a Mashad jail, and expects to be executed under new religious laws brought in this summer. Alasdair Palmer reports.

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled "Islamic Penal Code", which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against.

Imposing the death penalty for changing religion blatantly violates one of the most fundamental of all human rights. The right to freedom of religion is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in the European Convention of Human Rights. It is even enshrined as Article 23 of Iran's own constitution, which states that no one may be molested simply for his beliefs.

And yet few politicians or clerics in Iran see any contradiction between a law mandating the death penalty for changing religion and Iran's constitution. There has been no public protest in Iran against it.

David Miliband, Britain's Foreign Secretary, stands out as one of the few politicians from any Western country who has put on record his opposition to making apostasy a crime punishable by death. The protest from the EU has been distinctly muted; meanwhile, Germany, Iran's largest foreign trading partner, has just increased its business deals with Iran by more than half. Characteristically, the United Nations has said nothing.

It is a sign of how little interest there is in Iran's intention to launch a campaign of religious persecution that its parliamentary vote has still not been reported in the mainstream media.

For one woman living in London, however, the Iranian parliamentary vote cannot be brushed aside. Rashin Soodmand is a 29-year-old Iranian Christian. Her father, Hossein Soodmand, was the last man to be executed in Iran for apostasy, the "crime" of abandoning one's religion. He had converted from Islam to Christianity in 1960, when he was 13 years old. Thirty years later, he was hanged by the Iranian authorities for that decision.

Today, Rashin's brother, Ramtin, is also held in a prison cell in Mashad, Iran's holiest city. He was arrested on August 21. He has not been charged but he is a Christian. And Rashin fears that, just as her father was the last man to be executed for apostasy in Iran, her brother may become one of the first to be killed under Iran's new law.

Not surprisingly, Rashin is desperately worried. "I am terribly anxious about him," she explains. "Even though my brother is not an apostate, because he has never been a Muslim – my father raised us all as Christians – I don't think he is safe. They assume that if you are Iranian, you must be Muslim."

Her brother's situation has ominous echoes of her father's fate. Rashin was 14 when her father was arrested. "He was held in prison for one month," she remembers. "Then the religious police released him without explanation and without apology. We were overjoyed. We thought his ordeal was over."

But six months later, the police came back and took her father away again. This time, they offered him a choice: he could denounce his Christian faith, and the church in which he was a pastor – or he would be killed. "Of course, my father refused to give up his faith," Rashid recalls proudly. "He could not renounce his God. His belief in Christ was his life – it was his deepest conviction." So two weeks later, Hossein Soodmand was taken by guards to the prison gallows and hanged.

Life for Rashin, her siblings and her mother became extremely difficult. Some Muslims are extremely hostile to people of any other religion, never mind to those who they consider apostates: Ayatollah Khomeini declared that "non-Muslims are impure", insisting that for Muslims to wash the clothes of non-Muslims, or to eat food with non-Muslims, or even to use utensils touched by non-Muslims, would spoil their purity.

The family was supported with financial and other help from a Christian church based in Iran. That support became even more critical as Rashin's mother began to lose her sight. Rashin herself was eventually able to leave Iran. She now lives in London, married to a fellow Christian from Iran who successfully applied for asylum in Germany.

It took years for Rashin to understand how her father could have been legally executed simply for becoming a Christian. In 1990, there was no parliamentary law mandating the death for apostates. What, then, was the legal basis for Hossein Soodmand's execution?

"After the revolution of 1979, Iran's rulers wanted to turn Iran into an Islamic state, and to abolish the secular laws of the Shah," explains Alexa Papadouris of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organisation that specialises in freedom of religion. "So the clerics instituted a mandate for judges presiding over criminal cases: if the existing penal code did not include legislation on whether a certain kind of behaviour is an offence, then the judges should refer to traditional Islamic jurisprudence." In other words: sharia law.

"That automatically created problems" says Mr Papadouris, "because Islamic jurisprudence is not codified law: it is a series of formulations developed across generations by scholars and clerics. Depending on the Islamic school or historical era, these formulations can differ and even contradict each other."

On one subject, however, sharia law is unequivocal: men who change their religion from Islam must be punished with death. So when the judge heard the case of Rashid's father, he could refer to sharia and reach a straightforward decision: the death penalty. There was no procedure for appeal.

Nevertheless, in the 18 years since Hossein Soodmand's execution, there have been no judicially sanctioned killings of apostates in Iran, although there have been many reports of disappearances and even murders. "As the number of converts from Islam grows," notes Ms Papadouris, "apostasy has again become a serious concern for the Iranian government." In addition to 10,000 Christian converts living in Iran, there are several hundred thousand Baha'is who are deemed apostates.

There is another factor: President Ahmadinejad. "The President didn't initiate the law mandating the death penalty for apostates," says Papadouris, "but he has been lobbying for it. It is an effective form of playing populist politics. The Iranian economy is doing very badly, and the country is in a mess: Ahmadinejad may be calculating that he can gain support, and deflect attention from Iran's problems, by persecuting apostates."

The new law is not yet in force in Iran: it requires another vote in parliament, and then the signature of the Ayatollah. But that could happen within a matter of weeks. "Or," says Papadouris, "it could conceivably be allowed to drop, were there a powerful enough international outcry".

Time may be running out for Rashin's brother. She believes that the new law will be applied in an arbitrary fashion, with individuals selected for death being chosen to frighten others into submission. That is why she fears for her brother. "We just don't know what will happen to him. We only know that if they want to kill him, they will."

_________________

Remember folks, these are the people that liberals remain silent about. These are the people that socialists DEFEND

Where is the Outcry from the Useless Nations (UN)?

Anyone?

Buehler?

Buehler?

Thank you Jimmy Carter

More tolerance from the "religion of peace"

From The Associated Press VIA AZSTARNET.NET

World
Abuses of children horrifying in Senegal's Quranic schools
The Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.17.2008

KAOLACK, Senegal — It hurts too much to lie on his back, so the 7-year-old has spent the past month stretched out on his stomach. His two grandmothers sit on the hospital bed beside him, fanning the pink flesh left exposed by his teacher's whip.

It's progress that Momodou Biteye is in the hospital at all. It's also encouraging that the Quranic teacher who did this to him is behind bars.

But what is most significant is that the boy's father — a poor farmer who sold part of his harvest to pay for the bus fare to the hospital — filed the charges against the teacher himself. In doing so, this man with cracked lips and bloodshot eyes braved the wrath of his entire village, including his own father, who considers all teachers in Senegal's Islamic schools to be holy.

In hundreds of these schools in the mostly Muslim West African country, children are made to beg in the streets and are beaten if they don't bring back enough money. One 10-year-old was beaten to death with his hands tied behind his back and his mouth stuffed with rocks. Despite laws passed to protect children, the courts have convicted only a handful of Quranic teachers and quickly cave in the face of powerful clerics.

The biggest obstacle to justice is the families themselves; they are unwilling to speak out against the teachers. Government officials say they cannot think of another case where a family has brought charges.

"Some people may say bad things about me. Even my own village is against me," says 40-year-old Moussa Biteye, the father of the thin boy. "But I think I am within my rights."

The respect for Islamic schools comes from a centuries-old tradition of families sending their sons to study the Quran and till fields in exchange for food. In the 1970s, as drought devastated West Africa, schools moved to the cities and Islamic teachers sent children out to beg in the streets. These days, boys as young as 3 are beaten not for failing to master the Quran, but for failing to bring back enough money — a change that families often are unaware of.

Biteye's village is a 30-mile drive from here on a potholed road, past herds of skinny cattle. Almost all the men in the village can recite verses from the Quran, especially the boy's grandfather, Baba Biteye, a wrinkled man who taught the holy book for 40 years before going blind.

The old man becomes agitated when asked about his grandson. He is angry not because of the severe beating, but because the boy's father — his son — dared press charges against the Quranic teacher, or marabout.

"It was an accident and my son had no right to humiliate the marabout by doing what he did," he says. "The day they took the marabout to prison, it hurt me so much it was as if they had come to jail me."

No one in this poor village is surprised that the boy was beaten. A child needs to suffer, the grandfather says, to master the difficult text. It's a sentiment that is echoed in the village chief's hut, under the grass roofs of neighbors' homes and on the lips of other families whose own sons are still in the jailed teacher's boarding school.

Hitting and education are so intertwined in Senegal that the word for "to educate" — "yaar" is the same as the word for the stick to discipline students.

"See this?" says Omar Drame, a middle-aged villager, as he bends his head forward and points to an indentation on the top of his skull. "It's my marabout that did this to me. It forged me. It allowed me to learn that I can overcome difficulty."

At first, even the father thought his son was lying about why he was beaten. The marabout told investigators that he hit the boy for mispronouncing a verse from the Quran.

But when the father saw his son, he wept. "I knew that he would be hit — but I didn't think he would be hit up to this point," says Biteye.

The boy says that when he arrived at the school in June, his marabout handed him an empty tin can and told him not to come back before filling it with 200 francs (about 50 cents).

The boy also had to beg for food. Some days all he got was a discarded fish head, or a spoonful of rice.

By the second week, he was hungry all the time. On July 2, he begged until dark and got the 50 cents, but spent part of it on biscuits. When the marabout found out, the boy says, he got whipped until the skin on his back fell off. Hospital officials believe the whip was laced with metal.

With around 30 children in his care, the marabout was netting $430 a month, three times the salary of an average citizen and as much as a government official.

"Ask yourself, what is this money used for? The kids are not fed, so it's not for food. They wear rags, so it's not for clothes. They don't have mattresses, so it's not for their beds," says Paul Ndiaye, of the Swiss aid group Sentinelles, who has spent the last 10 years trying to get courts to take action against abusive marabouts. "This is a sham on a grand scale under the cover of religion."

The reaction from the boy's village doesn't surprise Aissatou Mbodj, Senegal's former minister of the family and now vice president of the country's parliament. Three years ago, a 3-year-old boy turned up at a government shelter, his back sliced open by his teacher's whip.

The boy's father refused to file charges. Mbodj was so angry that she paid a lawyer to file them herself. Soon after, she began receiving death threats.

"The parents of these children believe in these men so completely that when they hand over their sons, they relinquish all control," says Mbodj, who is married to a prominent cleric. "They swear allegiance to the marabout and say that whatever happens to their son is for the child's good."

The marabout against whom she pressed charges was sentenced to five years in prison, in one of the only cases of firm reprimand by a Senegalese court. Far more cases end in a suspended sentence.

_________________________________________

Ok, so this begs the obvious first question, "Why don't we hear about Christian schools that have the same problems with beatings?"

Anyone?

AH forget it, I will answer it myself, because Christians BELIEVE in peace and do not just put it out there as a front, whereas ISLAM does.

This is a different country, and a different culture with different beliefs and traditions, but correct me if I am wrong here, aren't children supposed to be protected and loved WORLDWIDE?

Using them as whipping boys and sources of income is outrageous and EXPLOITIVE.

Lets face it ... ISLAM IS A FARCE

There is NOTHING peaceful about their holy book. NOTHING.

Bush Derangement Syndrome worms its way into Bhutto assasination

What the feck?

Someone had to find a way to blame Bush, didnt take them long did it?

From Yahoo News:

Where Bhutto's Death Leaves the U.S.



By MARK THOMPSON AND BRIAN BENNETT/WASHINGTON 1 hour, 35 minutes ago

The weeks to come will determine just how severe a blow Benazir Bhutto's death is to Pakistan, but debate over Washington's role in the run up to this tragic day will continue well beyond that. Even as the smoke still lingered in Rawalpindi, President Bush demanded that those responsible for Bhutto's death be caught and punished. "The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy," Bush told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where he had arrived Wednesday to begin a long New Year's holiday. "Those who committed this crime must be brought to justice."

But there are some who think the Bush Administration is not without blame. Hussain Haqqani, a former top aide to Bhutto and now a professor at Boston University, thinks the U.S., which has counted Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a key ally against terrorism since 9/11, bears some of the responsibility. "Washington will have to answer a lot of questions, especially the Administration," he says. "People like me have been making specific requests to American officials to intervene and ask for particular security arrangements be made for her, and they have been constantly just trusting the Musharraf Administration." U.S. officials said they were leery of intervening in another nation's internal affairs, and didn't want to give Bhutto Washington's imprimatur.

Haqqani is not shy about pointing fingers. He blames Musharraf himself, above all, for Bhutto's death. "It's quite clear that Musharraf does not want an election - you can quote me - he is the one who has constantly wanted anybody who can threaten him or his power, out." Haqqani told Congress in October that U.S. aid for Pakistan has for too long been tilted toward the Pakistani military. "Since 1954 almost $21 billion had been given to Pakistan in aid," he told the House Armed Services Committee. "Of this, $17.7 billion were given under military rule, and only $3.4 billion was given to Pakistan and the civilian government."

It is Musharraf's iron grip on power that has made Washington's own policy toward Pakistan such a target of criticism. While Washington has publicly extolled the virtues of democracy and hoped that Bhutto's return to Pakistan in October would usher in a power-sharing deal with Musharraf, it was also clearly nervous about the instability if the country's strong man were to lose power entirely. Pakistan - the world's second-most-populous Muslim nation, with elements of al-Qaeda and the Taliban controlling lawless mountainous pockets in the northwest - is also the only Islamic state with a nuclear arsenal. And though Washington publicly says Pakistan's nuclear weapons are safe, there are always private concerns about their security, concerns that will only heighten in the wake of Bhutto's assassination.

The U.S. has few options in Pakistan. One thing is clear, says Peter Galbraith, senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation: It is "not a good idea to have 70 nuclear weapons in the hands of a country that is falling apart." Some observers believe that U.S. policy in Pakistan has favored personalities over principles. "We have a bad habit of always personalizing our foreign policy," says P.J. Crowley, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "We've done it with Musharraf, and we did it with respect to Bhutto. We are very good at providing technical support to the Pakistani army. We are not good at building indigenous or effective local political processes or strong institutions of government." Given the realities on the ground, the U.S. is likely to continue to throw its support behind Musharraf. "In terms of political leadership, Pakistan does not have a deep bench," says Crowley.

Some will say Bhutto had a death wish; one U.S. official even termed her presence at large-scale campaign rallies "foolhardy", given the Karachi suicide bombing that killed more than 140 people on October 18, the day she returned from exile. She returned to Pakistan and faced a range of powerful anti-democratic enemies, including both religious extremists like al-Qaeda and corrupt branches of the Pakistani military and intelligence services. "When you have the criminal and corrupt in the same camp it makes for dangerous bedfellows," says Arsalan Iftikhar, contributing editor to Islamica magazine. "In a sense Benazir knew she was on a martyrdom mission. She was willing to give up her life for democracy."

Senator Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democratic and presidential candidate, echoed Haqqani's view that Musharraf, at a minimum, didn't provide Bhutto with adequate security. In fact, he twice urged the Pakistani President to bolster Bhutto's protection. "The failure to protect Ms. Bhutto raises a lot of hard questions for the government and security services that must be answered," said Biden, who is also chairman of the foreign relations committee. "The U.S. should offer any assistance necessary, including investigative teams, to get to the bottom of this horror."

Still, the former top U.S. military commander in that part of the world said it's wrong to blame Musharraf, or the U.S. "I think it is al-Qaeda - they're the only ones who gain from this," says Anthony Zinni, a retired four-star Marine general who served as chief of the U.S. Central Command - responsible for Pakistan - from 1997 to 2000. Zinni rattled off reasons for al-Qaeda's wanting Bhutto dead, including her commitment to democracy, her secular views, the blowback it will create for Musharraf, and her gender. Beyond that, Zinni says al-Qaeda - making marginal progress in Afghanistan, backsliding in Iraq, and rebuffed in Somalia - is looking for a new battlefield. "I really think they're trying to ignite Pakistan into the kind of chaos they need to survive," Zinni says, "and create a fundamentalist, even radical, Islamic government." "This is one of the worst things that could happen to Musharraf," he continues. "In part, because he'll be accused of doing it."

Zinni also disputes the idea that Washington could have done anything to prevent the assassination. "You want Blackwater out there providing security for her?" he asked, referring to the controversial U.S. private-security firm implicated in the deaths of many Iraqi civilians. "The losing of Pakistan - to whatever degree we've lost it, and I wouldn't write it off yet - goes back to after the first Afghan war," Zinni says, when Washington neglected the Afghan-Pakistan border roiling with insurgents. "We put them in a bad situation that we helped create," Zinni says. "I'm no fan of this Administration, but you can't criticize this Administration for what they inherited."

___________________________

Ok, so since when is the safety and security of leaders of countries the responsibility of the United States and NOT the government of that country?

For years we have been hearing cries to stay out of middle east policy, now we hear that we need to intervene at such a micro level as to manage the security for leaders?


I wont even go into to who was President after the first Afghan war but suffice to say that we didnt invent this situation, it was created by another country altogether.

Bush derangement syndrome...seriously, it should be listed as a mental health issue

Ordinarily I wouldnt post something like this, but it is good. Watch the video

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE IN THIS VIDEO.



I am not a fan of rap, but this guy sums it up in music quite nicely about the "religion of peace" Every once in a while you run across something in the music industry that gives you renewed hope for our future.

Hat tip to StikNStein