Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Hansel and Gretel Meet Mohammed

Hansel and GretelBelow is a very peculiar news story from the news site for Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

I was struck when I first read this by its resemblance to the “Hansel and Gretel” fairy tale: a woman with ulterior motives uses sweets to lure a boy and a girl into her home. In this case, however, it’s not an oven that awaits them, but… recitations from the Koran!

Many thanks to our Bulgarian correspondent RR for the translation:

A 36-year old lady named Nejla was arrested for the illegal detention of a child in her home in Plovdiv [Bulgaria’s second biggest city]. According to sources familiar with the case, she is a radical Islamist.

For quite some time Nejla used to lure a 13-year old girl and her 10-year old brother, promising them sweets and some reading of tales from “interesting books”. This Saturday afternoon the children visited Nejla’s flat, where she began to read to them the Quran. The religious recitations were boring to the children so they wanted to go home, but Nejla threatened them that Allah would punish them, and that “infidels’ hands and feet should be chopped off” [a true Quranic verse — RR]. The children were upset and terrified, and the boy managed to escape from the flat, all in tears. Meanwhile Nejla locked up the girl in her flat. After the boy raised the alarm with some neighbours, police intervened.

Nejla is a Bulgarian who adopted Islam fifteen years ago. She is a fervent Muslim and wears a black burka leaving only her eyes visible. Most of her neighbours consider her “not dangerous”, and some believed she needs psychiatric treatment. “She’s only able to frighten small children,” said an elderly lady neighbour. After the present incident, however, they seem to have changed their minds…

On searching her home, the police discovered religious literature from Saudi Arabia propagating radical Islam… The woman, who turned out to have a criminal past, was detained for 24 hours.

RR adds this commentary:

A common Islamist story. Bulgarian reactions still seem adequate, in any case. I’m afraid that in countries with more advanced democracy, the police would instead arrest the children and their parents for “hate crimes” against Nejla in their expression of dislike for the Quran and running away from her recitations.

6 comments:

Ex-Dissident said...

Maybe those stories about witches from the Islamic world are not so far-fetched.

SNAKE HUNTERS said...

The "chopping off of hands and feet" referred to in this post is directly from the Qur'an:

"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and his messenger (Muhammad) and strive for mischief in the land is: execution or cruxifixtion, or cutting off hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land; that is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the Hereafter." Quran 5:33

reb - www.lazyonebenn.blogspot.com

Takuan Seiyo said...

It cannot go unmentioned that Plovdiv was the site of two anti-jihad battles: one on June 30, 1208and another one on January 17, 1878. There is no place on the map of all but the north of Europe where one can go without being surrounded by jihad-related ghosts. This has sometimes surprising secondary effects. For instance, a book has recently been published by the Portuguese historian Manuel Rosa alleging that Christopher Columbus was the son of the Polish King Vladislav III, who lived in exile on the Island of Madeira. And why would a Polish king have to live on the Island of Madeira? Vladislav III, who commanded a Christian coalition in the Battle of Varna against the Turks (1444, Bulgaria) is believed to have been slain there. Not so, asserts Rosa, he survived and escaped to live in exile on the Portuguese island.

Hesperado said...

Speaking of amputation, there's this lesser-known Brothers Grimm fairy tale,

The Girl Without Hands

_______________________________

The Hesperado

joe six-pack said...

"she needs psychiatric treatment."

I will have to agree. Just to be certain that no stone is unturned, all of Islam should be examined psychologically.

Hesperado said...

"all of Islam should be examined psychologically."

A couple of years ago, I wrote an imaginative essay about a comforting future when the West will no longer be plagued by Islam, and when it will have the time, and intelligence, to study Islam as one historical psychological disorder among many:

Islam as a psychological disorder—in the year 2158