Each new case further illuminates a degraded culture in which girls -- little girls -- are used as pawns and scapegoats. With a heavy heart, here is yet another.
The woman in Pakistan -- remember the stoning last week? -- was named Amina. So is this one: Amina Al-Tuahif. She's from Yemen, though she has lived in a moral universe so far removed from ours she might as well be from another planet.
- In 1984, Amina al-Tuahif was born.
- In 1995 she was married off. Age eleven.
- In 1996, when she reached her menarche, she was impregnated. Age 12.
- In 1998, (January), her husband was killed. She was pregnant with her second child. Age 14.
- In 1999, following a confession arrived at under torture, she was found guilty of the murder of her husband. She was sentenced to death. Age 16.
- In the next few years, she went through a series of appeals but at each juncture the sentence was upheld. While girls her age in America were trying to decide which prom dress to wear, she was contemplating her death.
- In 2002, she was raped by a prison guard and impregnated. Her third pregnancy. Age eighteen.
- In May, 2003, her son was born. Shar’ia law, compassionate in every detail, commuted her sentence until he reached the age of two — old enough to be weaned.
You’d think they’d just take the baby and let someone else raise it, wouldn’t you? But in Yemen (and the rest of the Muslim world) no one wants the offspring of a condemned woman and a rapist…not even her family. So Amina got to keep her son with her. Consider this: what is it like to have a baby in prison? What do you do for diapers? Do you get enough food for a nursing mother? You think? In Yemen?
Meanwhile, what about her other children? She’s not allowed to see them. Anyway, the younger daughter died in a car crash last year.
It is now May, 2005. Time to die. Tomorrow, her lawyer will arrive at the jail to take Amina’s son away. No one wants him. Amina must travel alone with her guards back to the village where they will kill her. Her parents are not permitted to see her. Age? Twenty-one.
So we have her story now. All the usual compassionate agencies and governments are making the usual attempts at intervention on her behalf. Perhaps they will succeed. Perhaps not.
Such a short, sad life.
Do you think it might be possible to save these little girls? If they’re going to be sold off anyway, why can’t we buy them? So many people want children. All these big, empty houses over here. All those sad little girls in the desert.
There is something very wrong with this picture.
--------------------------------
Sources for this post:
Times Online
xmau.com
Yemen Observer
(hat tip: Little Green Footballs)
9 comments:
Oh my! I never knew. My heart is sadden for her and her children-all of them.
Yes. Sick, degraded and evil. However, money does talk. Look at the compensation money Mukhtar Bibi got and how much power it gave her...they may kill her eventually but meanwhile she is living proof that what doesn't kill me makes me stronger.
I agree with you re Shar'ia law vis-a-vis adoption; that was clear after the earthquake in Iran left so many orphans. But damn it, there must be a creative way around so much death and so much projection into women. The Evil Ones, who keep men from paradise.
I don't mean the trivial Western feminism approach, either. Those mandarins in their ghettoes are worse than useless. There must be something...
As I said, they may as well be from another planet.
Consider that for time immemorial invading armies killed the men and enslaved the women and children. For this reason, in Judaism, the matriarch is the bearer of the faith for the family. Men are ostensibly disposable. Fact is, we are all sons and daughters of rape victims.
Those mandarins will side with the Islamic misogynists (redundant?) because, at worst, they hate all men, at best, they will have a new master against whom to practice their hatred.
Rational:
“I also wonder why we would choose to reward the genes of the rapist (likely producing another such rapist in 16 years or so) by letting the child of the rape grow up in our countries. It's cruel, but I would rather see him put to death than have him grow up around to potentially rape a daughter or sister of mine.”
It’s a women’s right to choose but a man’s right to find the ones that got away. I prefer this to “putting to death” the offspring of criminals before a fair probation period. Disgusting. Besides, I like Australians.
Brian--
I agree -- it is the tribal aspect of it which renders it so deadly. They are struggling with that in Iraq, especially in building a police force.
Islamophobe-- a lot of feminists have turned a blind eye because they're stuck with the multi-culti pc paradigm that trumps everything, including the truth. And in this case, the truth is that Muslim women are scapegoats. Just like they didn't come to the defense of the various women Bill Clinton groped. Reminds me of the old dogmatic Communists who were blind to the truth because it didn't fit their utopian view.
As for Amina's son...there is not a gene for rape. He is an innocent little boy. Amina's son no more deserves to die for his father's crimes than Amina deserves her execution for being there -- i.e., being someone handy to pin the blame on.
There is not a gene for compassion either. It isn't too late to learn...
Rational-
What do you mean by "ones that got away"?
A little dry humor if you believe in the right to choose.
As far as a vasectomy is concerned, perhaps I would side on removal of the sack and all of its’ contents before the removal of the progeny (to where?).
Eugenics is a proven method to husband a better race of super children, but for myself, I wouldn’t have the cold calculated will to take up where the Nazi’s left off.
So we have:
Be tough on criminals.
Respect life.
I don’t see the dichotomy.
Phobe--
You've made so many global assertions it's hard to know where to start. Let's see, how about communism: it was part of a larger historical movement toward socialism, which itself was a reaction to the excesses of the Industrial Revolution. Socialism in one form or another was the zeitgeist of the time. We had FDR.
The remarks about the Jews seem egregious at best.
Asians in this country may have a lower crime rate, but that has much to do with the people who self-select to come here. Back home, the crime rate is no lower than anywhere else. BTW, the Asian gangs on the West Coast are as vicious as any you could find in the world. They are every bit as lethal and ugly as the jihadists except they don't add religion or media to the mix.
As for blacks having a higher crime/rape/murder rate...that's hardly a combination of testosterone and low IQ. It's a phenomenon of the underclass, black or white. One of the unintended consequences of socialism in this country was to fund illegitimate babies and single-parent (mom) families. Boys raised by women are not well-socialized...cut the illegitimacy rate and you cut the crime rate. Which is starting to happen here. Britain, otoh, is still clinging to its welfare system and the underclass is burgeoning.
As for rape, FBI statistics don't prove genetics -- these are different classes of information. Show me the genetic marker for rape. Obviously if there is one, it's on the Y chromosome. But where? This sounds like the old eugenics stuff from the '30's and '40's...
As for vasectomies for violent criminals...are you serious? Be careful of the law of unintended consequences when you try to 'fix' everything with quick solutions. That's how we got no-fault divorce, welfare for needy families, and the whole mess that led us to the behavioral sink of which you complain.
There is also the tiny little inconvenience of the rule of law as practiced in Western culture. What you're suggesting was tried by Hitler...in fact the whole train of thought is pretty fascist...
And killing a child because he *might* grow up to have criminal tendencies? Good heavens, I'm glad you're not in charge of the kindergartens.
I have never met a woman who was indifferent to the idea of carrying to term the offspring of a rape. I have, in my work, met a few that ended up doing that because they couldn't do otherwise, but it was never less than tragic.
As for men not raping because they are put in a position of trust, that only goes about half-way to building a character with integrity. The other part has to do with how repugnant a real man would find such behavior.
Finally, exactly where are we going to export our criminals? Which country is going to take them? This sounds like the English solution with Australia...
You may have been born in the wrong century.
Battered women return to their husbands/boyfriends for a number of reasons. Sometimes 'love' is the least of it.
As a point of fact, the most dangerous time for a woman is when she leaves her batterer. The safest is when she returns.
Having been in an abusive relationship for 16 years without being able to find a safe way out -(nor could the authorities figure a safe way out) I find your summary dismissal unhelpful.
Having worked with at least three thousand battered women, I can tell you they would find your summary laughable. Some got out, some figured out how to make the relationship calm, some died, and some killed their batterer.
If you like, you may have the last word. I am done with this conversation. Time to move on.
Rational, concerning race & behavior --
The behaviors cited are too complex for simple genetic markers; probably hundreds or thousands of genes would be involved.
In addition, correlation does not prove causation. Crime statistics wrt race do not prove that blacks are genetically predisposed to criminal behavior. Ditto for Asians and nuclear physics.
Otherwise, why would the behavior of Jamaicans and that of "native" American blacks be so different? They are not racially distinct.
In order to prove causation, a large enough statistical sample of a given race would have to be taken from parents at birth and raised entirely by a different group. Plus -- you would have to somehow ensure that the adults treated their little cuckoos exactly as they would treat adoptees of their own race.
These conditions are not achievable in our world: the latter condition will have to wait until race no longer matters, when people no longer pay attention to it. By which time the whole question will be moot anyway.
No, the connection of race to any complex cultural behavior is not demonstrable. Any assertion otherwise has no scientific backing.
Myself, I prefer cultural theories. There are destructive -- sometimes almost suicidal -- cultural forms, which are gradually eliminated by Darwinian processes.
Both Islam and the ghetto subculture are fecund, and that gives them an advantage in sheer numbers of offspring. But it does not guarantee the success of their cultures in competition with others; people do gradually adopt other cultures if they are attractive to them.
The underclass culture is artificially advantaged by the welfare state and the tolerance (even encouragement) demanded by media-driven PC. Remove those two props, and it would quickly collapse.
Islam, however, is another matter entirely. The jury is still out on how strong its cultural paradigm is. As Jinnderella says, it is an ESS -- an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy.
JJ -- Yes, I've seen studies like that, too. The second point of my argument -- "you would have to somehow ensure that the adults treated their little cuckoos exactly as they would treat adoptees of their own race" -- cannot be met in our culture at this time. All of us are hyper-aware of race and its significance, at all times. Even the most sophisticated and careful parents would be likely unconsciously to treat children of a different race differently.
In addition, the children would have to have some interactions with the rest of the world, which would also be aware of their race.
We just can't devise a control group in which race is not a factor in how children are taught. By the time we reach the stage where we can do such a thing, the problem we would be researching will probably no longer exist.
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