Islamic Women Today

88 Comments

• Chand Osmani

  November 24, 2014 7:48 am

  Reply

  All teachings recorded in the Koran and all other Islamic texts, revelations, writings, sayings, fatwa’s – of war, murder, killing, death and destruction, violence, terror, rape, hate, violent jihad, terrorism, torture, brutality, savagery, maiming, wife beating, inferiority of woman, women as instruments of sexual pleasure in paradise, honor killings, stoning, cutting off limbs, child sex, sharia law, bigotry, intolerance, extortion, slavery, mutilations, looting, pillaging, sexual depravity, child molestation, oppression and subordination of women, inferiority of woman, wife beating, honor killings, inequality of infidels, inequality of any human being, that infidels can be murdered and their property stolen as a holy duty, that Muslims who renounce Islam can be killed, that Muslims (or anyone) who challenge the teachings of Islam can be murdered, that believers who slay and are slain in the service of God will ascend to a sexual Paradise of lustrous eyed, full breasted virgins who they can sexually molest for all eternity etc are IMMORAL, EVIL AND IRRATIONAL AND NOT THE PERFECT TEACHINGS OF GOD – A PERFECT GOD – A GOD OF MORAL PERFECTION – A GOD OF ALL PURE LOVE AND PEACE – BUT THE TEACHINGS OF ALLAH (THE ANTI GOD) THE TEACHINGS OF MUHAMMAD

  To record in a so called Holy Book – the Koran – teachings of extermination, war, rape, slavery, looting, pillaging, hate, terror, etc is a very great evil. Just declaring that such immoral, evil teachings in the Koran are the ETERNAL divine word of God is evil incarnate and an obscenity against everything God stands for – a blasphemy and a crime against God himself. Islam is a total and complete rejection of God, a very great sin and crime against God.

  KILLING, MURDER, SLAUGHTER, RAPE, LOOTING ARE ALL CRIMES TO ALL NORMAL RATIONAL HUMAN BEINGS. MURDER IS NOT A MULTI CULTURAL DIFFERENCE. RELIGION IS SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE BEST OF MANKIND NOT THE WORST

  SINCE EVERY WORD/TEACHING MUST BE ABSOLUTE MORAL PERFECTION FOR THE KORAN TO BE FROM GOD THEREFORE AS WILL BE SHOWN FURTHER IN THIS ARTICLE NOT ONE WORD/TEACHING OF THE KORAN IS THE WORD/TEACHING OF GOD.

• mac

  September 2, 2014 2:54 am

  Reply

  Status of women .

  1. Women are precious Gift from ALLAH.

  2. A pregnant women who prays 2 Rakah of Salah , it is greater than blessings of 70 Rakah of salah.

  3. when a Husband reaches home in a state of Distress and stressed , her wife HEAL him with beautiful words then she gets the sawab of JIHAD (” to fight for the sake of ALLAH ).

  4. A women who didn’t slept just because of her child crying , she gets the sawab of freeing 70 slaves .

  5. when a husband and wife look each other in love then , ALLAH ( subhana ta Ala) look them with LOVE.

  6.. A wife who send her husband in the way of ALLAH, just for the sake of Allah , then she will enter into jannah before 500 years than her husband.

  7. when a women says Bismillah during mixing of flour , then she gets the blessings in her food.

  8. A women who look stranger men wantedly , ALLAH sends cursing upon her.

  9. when a wife pressing her husband feet , with our asking him then she gets the sawab of giving 70 kilograms of gold .

  10. when a pious wife , pure and clean , who prays salat regularly and do fasting and helps her husband then 8 doors of AL jannah is opened for her.

  11. A wife who disrespect her husband , her prayers and fastings will wont cross heavens.

  12. Every night is worshiping night and everyday is fasting day for a pregnant women . its means a pregnant women gets the sawab of fasting everyday and worshiping every night during her pregnancy.

  13. A women who gives birth to one child , then she gets the sawab of 75 years of praying and hajj sawab.

• name

  April 13, 2013 11:30 am

  Reply

  Good Article

• Mahtab Ali, B. Tech, Bangalore

  March 26, 2013 5:24 am

  Reply

  Islam never support terror. Those who are supporting terrer in the name of Islam are biggest enemy of Islam and Allah. They are not muslim but better sey Kafirs. Allah tels to love every man on the earth whether they are follower of Islam or not. We muslim should detect those Islamic terrorists and bycott them from our society to make image of Islam clean in the world. we Indian muslim should lead to protect our Islam from own shaitans who are destroying the desire of Masha Allah.

  • mac

    June 20, 2014 9:56 pm

    Reply

    Brotther Mahtab Ali, We muslims don`t SUPPORT terrorits activities, you and ilnow this, billions of muslims knows it, it is non-muslims who spread lies against islam, brother tell me onething, out of five pillar of islam, is there any pillar which says to kill others,all religious books have hatred verse towards others. When millions of muslims give ZAKAT(helping poor) in the name of religion(zakat is the most important pillar of islam, one who denies zakat ,he/she then will be denying allah), prohpet of entire man kind said “The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said:
    “(God) will (question a person) on the Day of Resurrection (saying)): ‘O son of Adam, I was sick but you did not visit Me.’ The person will say: ‘O my Lord, how could I visit Thee when Thou art the Lord of the worlds?’ Thereupon (God) will say: ‘Didn’t you know that a servant of Mine was sick but you did not visit him, and were you not aware that if you had visited him, you would have found Me by him?’(God will then say) ‘O son of Adam, I asked you for food but you did not feed Me.’ The person will say: ‘My Lord, how could I feed Thee when Thou art the Lord of the worlds?’ (God) will say: ‘Didn’t you know that a servant of Mine asked you for food but you did not feed him, and were you not aware that if you had fed him you would have found him by My side?’ Muslim:1172″”

    millions of muslims help poor people in the name of religion islam and allah but no body say “see, muslims help poor,it is part of their religion” but only a tiny thousands(yes tiny,coz out of 1.5 billions only few thousands are doing terrorism in the name of religion and that too are political,they are using it for their political purpose, otherwise why they have to fight with islammic pakistani,iraqi,afgani govt ha) are doing bad things in the name of religion and media and non-muslims only potrays them and level it to entire(1.5 billion) muslims worldwide, both muslim terrorists and non-muslims are responsible for hatred against islam, but we know what our religion is, and we will follow it in our own way , let the world say what ever they like to say.

    Allah bless you all.!!!!!!!!!!!!

• Sakira

  March 3, 2013 7:16 am

  Reply

  Mut’a (Temporary Marriage) – Allowed or Prohibited in Islam?

  Q. WHAT IS MEANT BY “MUT`AH NIKAH”? WHAT IS IT’S HISTORY AND PLACE IN MODERN ISLAM?

  A: “Mut’ah” refers to temporary marriage.

  There is evidence in the books of the history and the cultural traditions of the Arabs that in certain situations, a temporary marital relationship between a man and a woman was considered to be acceptable among pre-Islamic Arabs. There are certain narratives (hadith) that imply that for sometime, even the Prophet (pbuh) did not prohibit such a relationship. On the other hand, certain other narratives are held as evidence to the fact that the Prophet (pbuh) did not prohibit such a relationship at all, it was prohibited, later on – after the death of the Prophet – by the second caliph, `Umar ibn al-Khattab (ra).

  The Qur’an does not support this view. According to the very initial Surahs (chapters) of the Qur’an, like Surah Al-Mominun and Surah Al-Ma`arij the Qur’an specifically disallows all sexual relationships, besides that which are based on Nikah or that which were between a master and his slave girl. The Qur’an says:

  And those who guard their chastity, except with their wives and their slave girls – for they are not to be blamed. But those who trespass beyond this are the ones who are transgressors. (70: 29 – 31)

  It must be remembered here that a Mut’ah relationship makes a woman neither a wife nor a slave girl of a person, whereas the Qur’an specifically restricts sexual relationships of a person with these two. It should be noticed that the particular word used by the Qur’an in the referred verse translated as “wives” is “azwaj” plural of “zaujah”. In the classical Arabic language, a woman with whom a person had entered into a contract of Mut`ah was called the “Mamtu’ah” of the person, she was not referred to as the “zaujah” (wife) of the person. The verse, therefore is a clear evidence to the fact that no other relationship besides the one based on Nikah was allowed by Islam.

  Reader’s Response: You specified an aya as a proof that “the Quran does not support this view”, however, you did not mention the Quranic aya which was the basis of permitting the Temporary Marriage or Mut’a Marriage (aya 24 in Surat al Nisaa.) The said aya talks about marriage and the ayas before it and after it are talking about marriage as well (e.g. who can not be married, ..etc.). I refer you to any popular Arabic multi volume tafseer book, which will tell you that this aya is the basis for Mutaa marriage.

  Please also note that Surat al-Nisaa is Madaniyya and both suras which you sited (Surah Al-Mominun and Surah Al-Ma`arij) are both Makkiyya. Earlier aya can not abrogate/invalidate a later aya or instruction! You can read detailed analysis about Temporary Marriage (Chapter 6) at: http://al-islam.org/encyclopedia/

  Member of Ahlul Bayte DILP (Digital Islamic Library Project)

  Answer: In response to the previous article, the reader has also given an argument from the Qur’an. In the following paragraphs, I will try to briefly give my point of view on the objections raised by my respected brother.

  As far as whether or not Mut’ah was prevalent in the pre-Islamic Arabs is concerned, it does not have much significance in my view. The basic point that I have tried to make is that it was never a part of the social setup accepted, introduced or promoted by Islam.

  Before going into details with my reply to these responses, I would like to clarify here that any historical tradition, narrative ascribed to or pertaining to the life of the Prophet (Hadith) or the companions of the Prophet (A’tha’r) that, in any way, imply that Mut’ah was considered to be a legitimate relationship between a man and a woman cannot be accepted as truly depicting the facts, if the Qur’an disallows such a relationship. The fact that such historical traditions, hadith or a’tha’r are referred to in Sunni books has absolutely no bearing on my point of view. If such traditions, hadith and a’tha’r are in contradiction with the Qur’an, as I hold and have tried to explain in my original reply, they are then just not acceptable to me, and I am sure, neither would they be acceptable to any other Muslim.

  I therefore suggest that we should restrict our discussion, at least to begin with, to the understanding of the Qur’an. If the Qur’an is ultimately found to support my point of view, we should then have absolutely no reservations in out rightly rejecting the contradicting historical traditions, hadith and a’tha’r. While, if the Qur’an itself is found to support the point of view given by the reader’s response, we should then consider these traditions, hadith and a’tha’r more positively.

  In the light of the above explanation, I would like to thoroughly consider here the primary argument, which is based on the Qur’an, given by the referred article.

  The author of the article has based his argument on the 24th verse of Surah Al-Nisa’. The verse reads as follows:

  The translation of the verse, according to the author is as under:

  … the rest are lawful unto you to seek them with gifts from your property (i.e., dowry), provided that you desire protection (from sin), not fornication. So for whatever you have had of pleasure (Istamta’tum) with them by the contract, give unto them their appointed wages as a duty. And there is no sin for you in what you both agree (in extending the contract) after fulfilling the (first) duty.

  The author has then explained his point of view regarding this verse in the following words:

  In the above verse, the Arabic equivalent of the word “marriage” or any of its derivatives has NOT been used. Rather the derivative of word “Mut’a” (pleasure/temporary marriage) has been used, i.e., “Istamta’tum”. The word Istamta’a is the tenth verbal form of the root m-t-a. As we will show shortly, the word Istamta’a has also been widely used in the authentic Sunni collections for Temporary Marriage. Of course, Mut’a is one type of marriage, but some of it’s regulations are different than the permanent marriage, including the fact that the couple can extend this contract by mutual agreement as the end of verse specifies.

  It is quite clear from the above argument that the author has based his point of view on the word “istamta`tum”. According to the author, because this word is derived from the root m-t-`a, which is also the root for “Mut`ah” it therefore implies that the Qur’an is talking about “Mut’ah” here.

  Before I give my comments on the above argument, I would like to clarify to my readers that the italicized parts of the translation do not exist in the Arabic text of the Qur’an. There are no words in the Arabic text which can be translated as “by the contract”. Neither do I see any reason to make the parenthetical addition “in extending the contract”.

  Now, let us see what exactly the word “istamta’a” means. According to Aqrab al-Mawarid, “istamta`a be kaza” has the same meanings as “Tamatta`a be kaza” and “Imtata`a be kaza” which has been described as: “To take advantage/pleasure from something for a long time”. According to the Arabic-English dictionary, “Al-Mawrid”, “Istamta`a be” means: “to enjoy; to savor; relish; get pleasure from; to take pleasure or satisfaction or delight in; to have for one’s use or benefit; have the use or benefit of”.

  It should be quite clear from the above that the word “istamta’a” is not used in the Arabic language in the sense that has been implied by the author of the referred article.

  The referred part of the verse should thus be translated as:

  … other women are lawful for you, provided you seek them with your wealth (i.e., dowry), …. So for the enjoyment/pleasure you have already had from them give them their dowry, as a duty. And there is no sin for you in what you mutually agree upon (regarding the dowry) after fulfilling the duty.

  The verse, as should be clear from the above translation has nothing to do with “Mut’ah”. The underlined part (which includes the word “istamta’tum”) is only to stress that even though you have had the conjugal pleasures from your marriage and even though you have consummated your marriage, you must fix and pay them their dowries, considering it a duty upon yourself. Thus, this part of the verse is to correct the attitudes of the Arabs towards dowry, who used to take it very lightly and would not give it much importance.

  The remaining part of the verse, i.e. “And there is no sin for you in what you mutually agree upon after fulfilling the duty” is again with reference to the dowry, (as should be clear from the parenthetical addition). It says that it is the duty of the man to give the dowry to the woman but if they both mutually agree upon to waive any part of the dowry, there shall be no blame on either of them. This, in a way is the same directive as has been given in Al-Nisa’ 4: 4. The Qur’an says:

  Give the women their dowry as a gift; but if they choose to make over to you a part of it, you may regard it as lawfully yours. (4:04)

  I am sure that from the above explanation, my respected brothers will be able to see very clearly that in my opinion their interpretation of the referred verse is in no way correct or acceptable. The verse is quite clear in its meaning and should be interpreted in the light of the normal usage of its words in the Arabic language.

  In case my respected friends would like to carry on this discussion and would like to convince me of their point of view, I would like to suggest that to make our discussion meaningful and precise, they should concentrate on providing linguistic evidences (that is evidence from Arabic literature) to prove the following points:

  The word “zauj” (singular of “azwaj”) is used for women with whom a person has a contract of “Mut’ah”, or that a woman with whom a person has a contract of “Mut’ah” was termed a slave girl. Providing this evidence is necessary because according to the Qur’an sexual relationship, for a man, is only allowed with “azwaj” or with slave girls.
  The word “Istamta`a be” is used for “Mut’ah”.
  If “Mut’ah” is to be accepted as a part of the social setup of Islam, then evidences to substantiate the above two points must be provided. Once these evidences have been provided, we shall then look for the detailed guidance given in the Shari’ah (Qur’an and Sunnah) in this respect. This again would be necessary. For if “Mut’ah” was a part of the pre-Islamic Arab culture there must be a noun in the classical Arabic literature to denote it (which I have failed to find yet), just like the noun “Nikah”. The very existence of this noun is evidence of the fact that the Arab culture consisted of and recognized something called “Nikah”.

  On the other hand, if “Mut’ah” was introduced and promoted by Islam (as reader’s response holds), then:

  The Qur’an should not have used a verb of common usage (istamta`a), especially when it stood for some other meaning, to teach people about something which was being introduced for the first time;
  The Qur’an or the sunnah should then have given the detailed law regarding this newly introduced concept of relationship between a man and a woman.
  Without getting the above evidences, a Muslim who desires to live his life according to the clear teachings of his Lord, the Qur’an and the sunnah of His Prophet, cannot accept that the concept of “Mut’ah” has been promoted by the Qur’an, especially when there is clear evidence that the whole concept of “Mut’ah” is in contradiction to the Qur’an.

• Sabra

  March 3, 2013 7:10 am

  Reply

  Sexual feelings are strong forces within human beings which are created by God, and like any other force or instinct, should be directed and supervised. Marriage is God’s legislation to direct this very strong force which might otherwise destroy the human being’s prosperity and salvation. Permanent marriage is the most recommended form of marriage, however, there are situations in which for different reasons permanent marriage, where the intention is to construct a family, is NOT possible. Then what should be done in these cases? Can we accept that God has left us on our own in this important issue, or should we expect some legislation in this case as well? If we do not accept temporary marriage, there are two options left:

  1)
  Sexual promiscuity and licentiousness, with all it’s results. This is what happens (and is promoted by media, Hollywood, etc.) openly in the West, and not very openly in other cultures.
  2)
  Suppressing all sexual feelings and instincts until a permanent marriage is possible. There are, however, a few problems with this choice:
  A)
  It is not possible to enforce it in any large scale form, as a general rule for society.
  B)
  Even if we assume that it can be enforced, it may cause psychological disorders, and many other complexities. Suppressing natural needs and instincts (sexual or otherwise) is not a healthy practice and Islam does not approve of it either.
  It is evident that permitting temporary marriage (until a permanent marriage becomes possible) is the best solution. Mut’a is just a sanctification of the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship. Two people may also live together all their lives without marrying. But a marriage ceremony sanctifies the relationship. The couple acknowledge their actions as fulfillment of God’s will and not merely their personal desires. They are under an obligation to God to fulfill their commitment. In a similar way, Mut’a sanctifies what would otherwise be just a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

  One person mentioned that the Imam Ali’s (AS) narration: “If it were not for Umar’s prohibition of temporary marriage no one would commit adultery except a wretched” is not acceptable because it draws a distorted picture of men’s sexuality! Well, I must say that it is not just men who commit adultery, and Imam Ali (AS) is referring to both men and women. Temporary marriage, as well as permanent marriage, has two sides, and BOTH sides are supposed to benefit from it. Consequently, depriving them for these benefits may cause both men and women to go wrong.

  It seems that some people have no problem with what is promoted in the West, with a culture of nudity and nakedness, with using women as adverting objects, with reducing the sexual values and ethics to the garbage and obscenity we see everyday on TV, media, etc. There is nothing humiliating and unethical about using a young, pretty, half-naked girl (the ideal woman!) as a sex object to sell bear. A woman selling her beauty to a magazine or show is considered to have a “respectable” career and is called a “model”! What a meaningful terminology! On the contrary, playing the role of a “mother” in a family is considered to be unimportant, if not humiliating. Being boyfriend-girlfriends is accepted as a sign of freedom, culture, and growth. However, if we talk about temporary marriage suddenly these people start to cry!

  Some also believe that the spread of pre-marital relationships in the West is not completely a result of moral breakdown, rather it is also due to changed socio-economic conditions. In older times, marriage was simpler and the average age of marriage was much lower. In today’s complex society, it is no longer possible to be economically self-sufficient enough to get married until one is nearly thirty years old. This means that the only option to avoid pre-marital relationships is to extend the period of pre-marital celibacy to as much as 15 years. Education is another obvious example. The man and woman usually can not find a job if they are unskilled or uneducated, and therefore financial independence is not feasible in the early stages of their life. Such prolonged celibacy is unnatural and cannot be sustained in any society for long. This is one reason why the traditional marriage customs broke down in the west during the last 30 years.

  Today, most Muslim countries are also rapidly modernizing. It is inevitable that they will also face many of the pressures that most Western countries are facing. They have a choice to make. They can either try to mount a futile struggle against inevitable change and face a chaotic breakdown of their traditional customs. Or they can courageously take the initiative and revive the Islamic values such as Mut’a to respond to changing needs of the society in the true spirit of Islam. Choosing the second option will be a satisfying answer to the problem of prolonged pre-marital celibacy. Allowing an open and honest relationship committed to in the name of God with best of intentions, will discourage secret or promiscuous sexual behavior which is much more harmful to the moral fabric of a society.

  Below I have summarized few reasons, out of many, for the necessity of Temporary Marriage, and the advantages associated with it:

  1)
  As I mentioned, temporary marriage is not necessarily a sexual relation, and it could be for many other reasons. One purpose could be: getting to know each other closely. In the Shia communities it is even widely applied for a virgin girl to enter into such temporary marriage WITH the condition that the marriage is NOT to be consummated. This is actually for done a boy and girl want to permanently marry, but they don’t know much about each other, and to familiarize themselves to each other, they will enter to such contract few months before the official permanent marriage. This period is what is known as “engagement”. The engagement for the Shia Muslims means that they have contracted Mut’a marriage. (There is no other way for engagement in Islam!) In this period the boy regularly visits the girl in the house of the girl’s parents and he is considered as a part of their family. They are “Mahram” to each other (i.e., boy can see the girl and her mother without head-cover, as a result of temporary marriage contract). They talk, study, have fun, go to picnic along with their parents, and so on. The boy and girl are husband and wife, but the only thing that they can’t do, is to sleep together.
  This gives an opportunity to the boy and the girl in order to know each other more closely and to see if they can live together for the rest of their life and if their personal feelings are sort of compatible. Usually if something is found to be wrong, they will break up before the time when they want to permanently marry. This helps to decrease the rate of divorce in permanent marriage (when the permanent marriage may have been consummated and they may even have children) which is the worst thing in the family life.

  2)
  Another justification about temporary marriage is that, in Islam, the right of divorce has been given to the husband and not the wife. Also according to the Islamic teaching, a girl and a boy can not be with each other before marriage. So if the only way in Islam was to permanently marry, then this would be unjust towards a woman who does not know his husband before marriage. What if the woman later finds out that she does not have a very happy life with her husband because they are not morally compatible? Is she is bound to live with the husband that she didn’t know and she does not like him to the extent that she desires? The answer for permanent marriage is Yes. She can not get divorced unless her husband wants to divorce her. (Under some circumstances, a Muslim scholar/Judge can divorce her if she can prove that she is being harassed and is deprived of her rights or her man is sexually impotent, etc. But this is not likely to happen if she just does not like her husband too much or if she finds that she does not have too much compatibility and interest with her husband. Moreover, such procedure is risky, since the verdict of judge may be different than the wish of woman).
  The option of temporary marriage removes this unjust look of authority. In Temporary marriage a girl and a boy have opportunity to live together for sometime to find if they will see a good future for their permanent marriage. As I said, the couple entered in temporary marriage contract may put the condition at the time of contract that the marriage is not to be sexually consummated. The guardian of the girl can also enforce such condition and the couple can just visit each other during the day to talk, study, and take part in any other non-sexual activities.

  3)
  Temporary marriage is a conditional marriage. The purpose of such contract can be even only for talking to each other. Although necessary talks between two sexes in order to get along with daily life, without evil intention and without possible evil consequences, is not forbidden in Islam, but a man and woman who are presently unmarried and who are in close contact with each other due to the job, study or whatever, are encouraged to enter to such contract. This removes any possibility of sin.
  4)
  In another case, a boy and a girl may NOT have reached to a point to manage a family life with all financial and legal responsibilities. Or they might be able to manage it financially but they are in a temporary situation where they can’t plan for permanent marriage, like bachelor students who come to other countries to study where they may not be able to find a good match for the permanent life in the foreign country as a result of cultural differences. If they feel they can’t stand emotionally, they may enter to such contract for the few years that they are away from home.
  In any situation, if one can not control himself/herself, it is necessary to either temporarily or permanently marry. Obviously, temporary marriage is more practical in such situations.

  5)
  In each community, there are some women who have lost their husbands either by death or divorce, and no body had offered them a permanent marriage proposal after their first husband. She will have to do one of the three things:
  First to imprison the calls of nature in her body and bury her feelings, and then become like a nun. Sometimes this happens when the society tries to keep her as a prisoner of injustice, cultural traditions, and priesthood which Islam has made illegal.

  Second, she also could fight back and run towards indecency and immorality which is what happened in the western societies. Third, she could also become poor, weak, and homeless if she could not find a job to support herself.

  Islam should have a solution for such problems and emotional needs, and that is temporary marriage which she could benefit to the time she finds a qualified permanent husband. Of course, she can refuse to marry either way, and agree to a life of piety and loneliness away from any marriage, then that’s no problem! The problem occurs when the matter becomes one of the two: whether she would fall into indecency as what happened in the western societies, or whether she would preserve her chastity from sin through temporary marriage, based on the rule of Almighty God and His Messenger (PBUH&HF).

  6)
  According to the Islamic teaching, although the permanent marriage of a Muslim man with a woman from the People of the Book is not forbidden, but it is discouraged (Makrooh). Because permanent marriage is a plan for the whole lifetime while there is no guarantee that such woman will change her belief in future. Islam is not a custom but is a complete way of life. Such marriage could not be a successful marriage if the opposition in beliefs and practices wants to continue for the whole lifetime.
  In contrary, temporary marriage is a plan which expires after its period, and by that time, it would be apparent if the non-Muslim woman is really interested in the teaching of Islam, and whether she is a suitable match for the whole lifetime.

  7)
  A nice aspect of temporary marriage is that the couple can extend the period of their contract or even can convert the temporary marriage into a permanent marriage if they find that they both wish to live with each other permanently. They can do this only after the expiration of the first contract, or else the man can wave the rest of time period to his wife, so as to finish the temporary marriage earlier, and he should give her the dower (if it has not been paid yet), and then start a new contract with her with another specified period with a new dower. When the woman remarries the same man, she has no waiting period.

  This latter method of renewing the contract is established by a tradition related from Imam Ja’far al-Sadiq (AS). He was asked about a man who married a woman for a period of one month, but then found that a love for her was developing in his heart. Before the period expires, could he renew the contract and increase the time period and dowry? The Imam answered that such a course of action was not permissible so long as the first contract remained in effect. Therefore: “He must return to her the remainder of the days [of the contract] and then set up a new contract.” (Wasa’il al-Shia, v14, p478). This way guarantees that woman has free choice without any pressure or temptation to decide if she would like to renew the marriage after she has fully received the dower of the previous marriage contract and after the previous marriage has ended.
  In any way, it is necessary that the contract be repeated all over again, with specifying dowry (Mahr; Sidaq), new permission of the father of virgin girl (if the case), and also the marriage sentences (‘Aqd) need to be spoken literally again. The acceptance in heart is not enough, and some specific words should be uttered. One of the requirements of any kind of marriage is verbal offer and equal acceptance by the other party or their authorized representatives.

  8)
  Temporary marriage is not like polygamy which should be rare. It can be widely applied in an ideal Islamic society. Temporary marriage will result in less divorce rate, less rate of the youth committing unlawful sex, less eye-contact sins and so on.
  There are many more advantages for this Sunnah of the Prophet (PBUH&HF), but here we are limited by space. Tawfiq al-Fukaiki in his book “The Mut’a and its effect/benefit on society”, in Arabic, discusses some of the would-be benefits.

  However, we emphasize that the allowance of temporary marriage should not cause the importance of the institution of permanent marriage and family to be overlooked. All efforts should be made to promote permanent marriage, to eliminate the barriers and problems in its way. Therefore, temporary marriage, in general, should be looked upon as a secondary measure to protect both society and the individuals from the effects which otherwise would rise. It is not very difficult to see these problems both in the West and in the “Islami

• Alia

  February 24, 2013 9:13 am

  Reply

  Hi

  Here is a case of child marriage with an old man.

  The 15-year-old Saudi girl has reportedly been divorced from the 70-year-old man. She reportedly locked herself in a bedroom on their wedding night before fleeing

  A 70-year-old Saudi Arabian man has been divorced from his teenage bride – thought to be only 15.

  The terrified youngster locked herself in a bedroom on their wedding night and two days later she fled back to her parents’ home.

  But the elderly man caused outrage when he claimed that the youngster’s family had tricked him into paying a $20,000 (£12,479) dowry.

  According to local reports, the man said: ‘I feel that there is a conspiracy by her mother against me.’

  He claimed he would go to court to retrieve the dowry from the young girl’s Saudi mother and Yemeni father and said the payment made the marriage ‘legal and correct’.

  Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Commission however said a meeting had taken place between the man, the girl and her parents and that the dispute had been ‘resolved amicably’.

  The commission said the couple had been divorced.

  The marriage came to light when the man complained to local officials that he had been ripped off.

  After learning of the marriage the Human Rights Commission sent an investigator to the girl’s home in the village of Al-Hurath in Jizan province.

  There is no law outlining a minimum age for marriage in Saudi Arabia, with human rights campaigners claiming that child marriage is a problem in the Muslim country.

  The man has since disputed reports that the girl is a teenager.

  In an interview with CNN he said: ‘She is not 15 as everybody claims. She’s 25 years old and she’s mature enough to make her own decisions… I was fooled by the girl’s family.’

  Escape: The girl, who is thought to be 15, fled to her home in the village of Al-Hurath in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan province following the marriage

  Despite claiming to be 70, members of the commission said they believe he is 86.

  News of the marriage has caused an outcry on in the internet, with campaigners describing the incident as child prostitution and trafficking.

  Dr. Suhaila Zein al-Abedin, of government-backed group the Saudi National Association for Human Rights, said he was concerned about the marriage’s circumstances, as well as the age difference.

  Finally the Human Rights Commissionb found that the man was 85 years old and the girl only 15 years and he managed to marry the teenage just for sexual pleasure with tricks played with her parents by disguising his actual age.

• Firdaus

  February 4, 2013 7:49 am

  Reply

  Hi readers,

  One of the beliefs that emerges from the Koran is the concept of virgins. These virgins reside at the gates of heaven. The Koran further says that these virgins who are referred as houris or hurs will be the reward to the faithful who have spent a lifetime in service of Allah. Chapters 52 to 56 of the Koran mention about these virgins. The Koran only mentions about these virgins,but does not specify any number.

  This lacuna is filled by the Hadiths, which specify that the reward for a true follower of Islam will be rewarded with 72 virgins as wived. The Hadiths are the recorded words of Muhammad and also have great religious significance. The Hadiths which are six in number were compiled about 200 years after the death of the Prophet. Thus the importance of the Hadiths cannot be underrated. The Hadiths are supposed to be the exact quotations of the prophet.

  The Koran describes the houris. They are very beautiful and fair. They are perpetual virgins and have the god given quality of regenerating their hymens after intercourse. The houris are also buxom and breasts that do not sag. They are hairless except for eyebrows and head. They are reward for the faithful, who have either been martyred or spent a life time obeying the injunctions of Allah. Houris await the faithful at the gates of Paradise. The Hadiths mention that the sweat of these virgins has the smell of musk and they will give eternal love and satisfaction. They will be in addition to the wives on this earth. The Koran also mentions that an unspecified number of boys will also be rewarded to the true believers.

  This belief in the Houris and the boys as sacred and cannot be questioned. This concept of the houris is a tremendous motivating influence in Islam.

• Gazala

  February 4, 2013 7:38 am

  Reply

  Princess Sultana is said to be a real Saudi princess from one of the highest royal families in Saudi Arabia. This Arabian princess kept diaries detailing the gut-wrenching treatment of Saudi women and passed her story on to an author named Jean P. Sasson. Sasson then wrote a book from the provided diaries, allowing the world to get a glimpse of the oppressed and often horrific lives of Saudi Arabian women.

  Princess Sultana’s story is not for the faint of heart, as it includes tales of the torment, rape, and murder of Saudi Arabian women. While her story has not been proven 100-percent factual, many assert that there is enough evidence to suggest that Saudi women do lack even the most basic of human rights and are treated, in some circles, as less than animals.

  Princess Sultana is not the princess’ real name; Sasson changed her name in Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia to protect her from the harm that would likely befall her if her identity was revealed. Public acknowledgment might also lead to the harm of Sultana’s children. From her veil of secrecy, Sultana reveals a place in which males take up certain and unrelenting dominance over their female counterparts. She does not stop with merely showing how male dominates female in adult relationships. She also shows how the oppression begins with children, offering details of a time when she was severely punished as a child for eating an apple that was hers, but was desired by her brother.

  Princess Sultana describes ways in which Muslim women are denied human rights. For example, she discusses how they are often undereducated or refused education altogether. She tells tales of women who are starved or locked in rooms for what most would consider minor infractions. She details how they are tormented and, in some cases, stoned to death, all within the confines of the laws of the land. She even gives accounts of women being raped, and then executed as punishment for their supposed seduction of their rapists.

  For many, the horror of Princess Sultana’s story stems from the accounts she gives of the lives of other women. However, many find the personal history of her childhood, marriage, and motherhood equally, if not more, alarming. The tales of her brother’s life serve as a vivid reminder of the differences between men and women in some Islamic countries. It is important to note that some people believe the stories of Princess Sultana to be fully contrived or merely based on extreme and rare situations. Others, however, believe her stories to be true.

• Sadia

  February 1, 2013 7:06 am

  Reply

  Hymen reconstruction, a surgery that repairs a hymen that is no longer intact, is controversial but that doesn’t stop more and more women from having it done.

  The hymen is a tissue in vagina that tears and bleeds when one has sex for the first time. The hymen can also be “broken” by strenuous exercise, the use of tampons and other activity can cause the membrane to tear.

  So what does it matter? Who cares if the hymen is intact or not? Well, in some cultures, men do. In cultures where virginity is highly prized, it matters a great deal if the hymen is intact and if there is bleeding on the wedding night. It may be an old fashioned way of thinking, but some men expect their bride to be a virgin and there can be extreme consequences in some countries.

  Rather than stay a virgin, women are opting to experience sex before marriage, then have the hymen reconstructed. The surgery isn’t terribly expensive, around $800 in China, where it is becoming more common. Muslim countries also have a large number of women seeking the procedure.

  More about hymen reconstruction surgery, and one man’s explaination of why women are “like cell phones” and why his future wife should be a virgin.

• Yasmeen

  January 30, 2013 8:49 am

  Reply

  ISLAM IS A TWISTED PERVERTED IDEOLOGY

  TEACHING CHILDREN ISLAM IS CHILD ABUSE

  Islam is a deeply twisted perverted ideology. Any parent who teaches Islam to their children should be charged with child abuse.

  To indoctrinate children to hate infidels and turn then into good little jihadists who will slay and be slain in the cause of Allah to enter the Paradise of big breasted, lustrous eyed virgins is evil.

  Here are some quotes from deranged Palestine parents:

  “I’m prepared to sacrifice my six children,” said Mahmoud Sumara’s mother, Halima. “I’m serious. I don’t mind if I lose them if that brings back al-Aqsa…” (NBC News)

  ▪ “I pray that G-d will choose them (to be martyrs),” says the father of a 13-year-old. (New York Times)

  ▪ “I am happy that he [my 13-year-old son] has been martyred. I will sacrifice all my sons and daughters (12 in all) to Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem.” (London Times)

  ▪ “If I had 20 children I would send them all down (to fight), I wouldn’t spare any of them. We’re not scared of death.” (Associated Press)

  ▪ Mother on PA TV, January 2003: “He would always dream of Shahada [martyrdom]. It was his first and last goal in life. I told him: ‘Dear, we all want to be Shahids.’ He said: ‘In this entire world, I can’t think of anyone to marry. I don’t think of any girls of this world to marry. I want to marry the Dark Eyed (Virgins of Paradise).’ I said: ‘If these are his thoughts, I wish him Shahada.’

  Ah yes, a mother’s love. Obviously, not all mother’s wish Shahada (martyrdom) for their children, but a Palestinian Psychologist, DR, Shafiq Massalha claims that “more than half of Palestinian children aged 6 to 11 dream of becoming suicide bombers.”

  And quotes from children:

  ▪ “When I wander into Jerusalem I will become a suicide bomber.” proclaims a young Palestinian, age 9. (Palestinian TV children’s show, “The Children’s Club”)

  ▪ “I come here to say that we will throw them to the quiet sea. Occupiers, your day is near, then we will settle our account. We will settle our claims with stones and bullets,” an 8-year-old boy announces. (Palestinian TV children’s show, “The Children’s Club”)

  ▪ “My heartfelt conviction is to launch a Jihad war,” says a 4-year-old. (Palestinian TV children’s show, “The Children’s Club”)

  ▪ “I want to die as a martyr. I will go straight to paradise if I do that,” said a 12-year-old Palestinian boy. (Times of London)

  Dr. Massalha conducted a study that has led him to believe that within 10 years or so, with the continued indoctrination of Palestinian children with hatred and the love of Shahada, they will be unleashing upon the west a virulent army of Jihadists.

  Mahatma Ghandi said that “To reach real peace in this world…. we shall have to begin with children”. It’s obviously not going to happen with the children of Palestine.

  What is most heartbreaking and disturbing is what young children suffer through as Muslims and non-Muslims living in Muslim majority countries. Like women, children are considered chattel, with not much more importance placed on their lives as a cow or a goat. They are offered up, at times, as human sacrifices for their parents’ perverse ideological and religious beliefs. Mothers in Palestine (and elsewhere) encourage their children to aspire to Jihad rather than a University education. Like British Islamic religious leader Yassin Nassari’s wife, Dutch national Bouchra El Hor , who actively encouraged her husband to embrace radicalism and offered herself and their 5-month old son for martyrdom!

  They were caught with missile blueprints and instructions on how to make a bomb (to be used against the West) on their way back into the UK from Amsterdam. The sad truth is that not all terrorist wannabees are uneducated, disenfranchised youth. This man was born in London and University educated, although he failed to obtain his degree because his interests turned to Islamic fanaticism instead.

  Disabled children are considered even more of a disposable commodity. Insurgents, In Iraq, packed a Down Syndrome child full of explosives and sent him off, as a suicide bomber, to blow up a polling place during the elections of 2005. He succeeded. And not long ago, U.S. soldiers discovered a group of naked, malnourished special-needs orphans in an Iraqi Orphanage tied, like animals, to their small cots. The soldiers initially thought they were dead. Surprisingly, there were cupboards full of food and new clothing that had obviously not been utilized for these young boys. 24 in total. They speculate that those items were probably being sold on the black market. The only heart warming aspect of the video is at the end where the soldiers are seen handing out stuffed toys, and stroking and touching the children’s hands. Something you won’t see much of in the msm. The boys were obviously starved for human affection

  Not only Muslim children suffer at the hands of Islam, innocent children of other faiths are often brutally murdered for being infidels. Remember the Indonesian girls who were ambushed on their way to their private Christian school? 3 of them were beheaded their heads found a few miles from where their bodies were found.

  And the children of Beslan? 1,200 people were taken hostage at a school in Beslan by Chechen Muslim rebels. 376 people were killed, 186 of those were children.

  Children are murdered in the name of Islam daily: collateral damage in suicide bombings, used as human shields in acts of cowardice, pawns in a deadly game of “Mohammed Says: kill the Infidels.” Mothers callously bid farewell to their suicide bomber kids as if they were simply sending them off to summer camp, as opposed to their death; proud that their little Ahmed will take his own life and the lives of the many innocents they might happen to cross paths with at the time. Children want to please their parents, and those parents who instill in their child’s mind that there is pride and glory in Jihad are as guilty of murder as their offspring who might end up splattered all over some street in Haifa.

• Sabra

  January 29, 2013 10:59 am

  Reply

  Hi sisters,

  In Islamic Egypt brides use hymen kits to “prove” virginity

  The hymen is a vaginal membrane which normally ruptures and bleeds at
  the first intercourse. For Egyptian Muslims and in other Islamic
  countries it is assurance that the bride was truly a virgin. It is
  customary
  for a new groom to soak a handkerchief in the blood, step out of the
  honeymoon chamber, and proudly wave it to a crowd of friend eagerly
  awaiting the verdict. If this does not happen, the bride may be
  abandoned.
  That could be the case if a menstruation has already removed the
  hymen,
  yet a virgin girl may face rejection because she did not bleed.
  God! What will make these animals at least part-way human? And when?

  “Conservatives condemn the Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit as
  technology that will promote promiscuity. Others say the furor over
  the device raises disturbing questions about double standards.”

  By Jeffrey Fleishman and Amro Hassan
  October 7, 2009

  Reporting from Cairo – Whether it’s seen as a clever little gadget to
  help a woman keep a secret or a devilish deception that threatens
  Islam, the Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is not welcome in Egypt.

  The kit allows a bride who is not a virgin to pretend that she is. A
  pouch inserted into the vagina on her wedding night ruptures and leaks
  a blood-like liquid designed to trick a new husband into believing
  that his wife is chaste. It’s a wink of ingenuity to soothe a man’s
  ego and keep the dowry intact.

  Egyptian conservatives condemn the device as technology that will
  promote promiscuity in a culture that forbids premarital sex. Their
  protests are arising in a nation that over the last 40 years has gone
  from miniskirts and secularism to hijabs and religious devotion. But
  seldom have conservatives faced such brazen advertising.

  “No more worry about losing your virginity. With this product, you can
  have your first night back any time,” states the website of Gigimo, a
  Chinese mail-order company that sells the kit and other sexual
  products, including sex dolls and bondage toys, worldwide. “Add in a
  few moans and groans, you will pass through undetectable.”

  Members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which controls 20% of the seats in
  Egypt’s parliament, have called for banning the kit and arresting
  anyone selling it on the black market. Cleric Abdul Moeti Bayoumi has
  issued a fatwa urging that peddlers of the $29.90 device be charged
  with banditry and punished for spreading immorality and sin.

  “Egyptian girls are normally afraid to lose their virginity before
  marriage,” Sayed Askar, a lawmaker and member of the Muslim
  Brotherhood, recently told parliament. “A product like that can make
  it easier and tempting for girls who don’t have strong wills to commit
  such a sin. It will be a crying shame and a blot on the government if
  they allow the selling of this product in our markets.”

  Lina Samaan, an accountant, said the furor raises disturbing questions
  about her country and the double standards that often apply to women:

  “I think it’s a shame that we are discussing a product like this. If
  most girls don’t have sex prior to marriage only because they want to
  keep virginity, then there is something wrong with the way we think,”
  she said. “Sex is a right for every woman but unfortunately we started
  turning to products like these because men — even non-religious ones
  who have sex before marriage — wouldn’t marry a girl if she’s not
  virgin.”

  The emotion over the kit speaks to a traditional society that is
  increasingly pious, whether it’s rich professionals seeking moderate
  Islam on websites of progressive imams or poor and middle-class
  families adopting strict religion as a buttress to the influence of
  Western media and a loss of confidence in a state that has failed to
  provide prosperity.

  The government of President Hosni Mubarak is troubled by
  ultraconservative Islam imported from Saudi Arabia and the Persian
  Gulf. Egypt’s leading Muslim cleric, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, is
  considering forbidding the niqab, or face veil, at the university and
  schools run by Al Azhar, Sunni Islam’s top educational institution. A
  similar edict barring nurses from wearing niqabs has been loosely
  enforced.

  The Egyptian media quoted Tantawi telling a student that the “niqab
  has nothing to do with Islam. . . . I know about religion better than
  you and your parents.”

  Many parents, however, did not grow up with the economic and social
  problems that their children face. Single women have traditionally
  lived with their families until they found a husband. But today’s
  inflation, joblessness and poverty are forcing many couples to delay
  marriage until money is saved and dowries are accumulated. With men
  and women single longer, dating, breakups and natural impulses
  challenge religion and tradition.

  “Having something like the virginity kit can cause complete mayhem
  within the Egyptian social life,” said Farid Ismael, a member of
  parliament’s health committee. “It can lead to the spreading of vice
  and the loss of all the good morals and values we had and that totally
  contradicts with our Islamic beliefs.”

  The kit — like surgical repairs to the hymen that Middle Eastern
  women have relied upon for years — is marketed to offer a sleight of
  hand. Such secrets keep prospective brides in the graces of their
  families and avoid what in rare cases are honor killings of women
  accused of promiscuity.

  Choosing to have “sex or not is something every girl and woman should
  decide regardless of the society’s perspective toward her,” said
  Samaan, the accountant. “Even if she is religious then she shouldn’t
  do it because of her religious belief and not in fear of other people
  or fear that she will not get married if she’s not a virgin.”

  “If a girl decided to have sex before marriage,” she added, “then God
  already knows it and she shouldn’t hide it from anyone else.”

• Sulatna

  January 29, 2013 10:12 am

  Reply

  Hello readers,another evil of islamic relgion against women?

  VEILED CRIMES Some victims have been subjected to Halala an excruciating two to eight times. Sometimes a close friend of the husband or even the brother obliges.

  Holding a placard that says ‘Halala is nothing but the vilest of rapes’, the frail and waif-like Rubaiya Ahmad shudders as she recalls the darkest night in 35 years of her life – when she allowed another man into her bed.

  “I felt totally numb and dead inside. But that was the only option left to reclaim my two sons, “she says.”Moreover, the Maulvi sahib had warned me that no one would participate in my funeral procession and my family would be ostracised if I flouted the Shari’a’s command. ”

  Jalal, Rubiya’s “husband” for one night, was not particularly bothered about her turmoil. He was there for a purpose – to help his close friend salvage his marriage. A night after the Nikah and the mandatory consummation, he divorced Rubaiya without a fuss.

  It has been seven years since Rubaiya got back with her first husband, but the horror of Halala has stayed on. “I feel as if the man I married died the day someone else defiled my body,” she declares with vehemence. Her only concern now is to ensure somehow that her sons never get to know about the humiliation their mother faced, for “it would shatter them, or worse, they may blame me for the episode”.

  Last week’s meeting held by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) proved to be a catharsis of sorts for two dozen-odd victims of mental violence – namely Halala and triple Talaq. “Many who went through this could not gather enough courage to come out and face the world,” says BMMA president Naish Hasan.

  Last week, Naish created ripples in conservative Lucknow by dashing off a letter to the octogenarian president of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board. Pressing for inclusion of women’s issues on the agenda in its next executive meeting, it pointedly demanded a ban on Halala and triple Talaq, apart from recommending a codification of the Sharia to escape misinterpretation. “The response from AIMPLB, was as anticipated – nil, ” says Naish.

  In her letter, Naish mentioned seven victims who were subjected to Halala an excruciating two to eight times. One of them is Zainab Rubaiya whose husband literally turned her into a prostitute “He would pronounce ‘Talaq Talaq Talaq’ when drunk, when annoyed, when fired from his job, when clubbed by the beat constable or when I stopped his mother from hitting me with a ladle, ” she says. “Any occasion was good enough to boot me out. ”

  Zainab recollects that after every Halala, her husband would weep, standing alongside their children. “I bore Halala seven times. It’s a terrible feeling to walk down the road, knowing that everyone in the Mohalla keeps a count of your moles and curves, “she says, teary-eyed. For women like Munni, whose brother-in-law volunteered for Halala, the situation is even more humiliating. “Imagine facing him every day and pretending to be normal, ” she says.

  Contrary to the popular belief that Halala is confined to the rural belt, Naish claims that she has listed 11 such cases in the last two months in Lucknow alone. “However, women in the city are turning rebellious, “she says. “Some of them have walked out of the marriage after Halala was ordered – in fact, one woman begs in the Imambara as she believes that begging is more respectable than getting raped every sixth months. ”

  The number of Halalas is on the rise, confirms Kamal Khan, a Lucknow-based journalist. Interestingly, Halala is also fraught with risks for the men now – there are instances where the second husband has violated the terms of a fixed Halala and refused to part with the woman, often because she was prettier than his own wife. “So caution is the key word now, ” claims Kamal, who is making a documentary on the practice and has even recorded details of a Halala service run by Maulvis in Ghazipur and Faizabad. “The cleric in Akbarpur has inherited a lucrative business from his father. He conducts the marriage and divorce ceremonies. The business is growing, “he says.

  According to Khan, Halala-fixing is nowhere mentioned in Islam. The provision is made for “ittifaqan Talaq” by the second husband – meaning the woman can remarry the first husband if the second husband genuinely divorces her and the move is not carried out under a well-calculated strategy. The way it is followed today, the practice is totally against the spirit of Islam, ” he says.

  Zainab has a suggestion that she is too timid to air publicly. “If a man divorces his wife and then wants her back, let him be flogged, skinned or even sodomised,” she says. Why should the poor woman be made to suffer instead? What kind of justice is this? Even animals don’t mate on order. ”

  WHAT IS HALALA

  “After pronouncing Talaq, the wife becomes haram for the husband. If he wants to remarry the same woman, the rules are set – once the mandatory Iddat period of three months and 13 days gets over, the woman has to get married to someone else. This marriage has to be consummated. After the second husband divorces the woman, the first husband is free to marry her once again after three months and 13 days. However, Halala-fixing is strictly prohibited in Islam. “Maulana Khalid Rashid Firangimahali

• Atiqa

  January 28, 2013 9:49 am

  Reply

  Muslims would have us believe that Islam was spread peacefully by Muslims traveling from country to country, city to city, door to door preaching the teachings of Peace and Love and Goodness from Allah and His Messenger.

  This is not what happened.

  Obeying the teachings of Islam – Muslims fell upon the infidel civilizations and peoples with unimaginable savagery and rivers of blood flowed across the pages of human history.

  Islam is coated in blood of the innocents. In the past 1400 years, Islam has murdered 270,000,000 nonbelievers.

  80 million Hindus killed.

  60 million Christians were slaughtered

  10 million Buddhists died.

  120 million Africans butchered

  As stated countless times already – ALL Muslims MUST believe the Koran is the divine word of God – the Laws of God. All Muslims MUST believe that God authored the Koran and a copy of the Koran is in heaven. The Koran remains for all Muslims, not just “fundamentalists,” the uncreated word of God Himself. It is valid for all times and places forever; its ideas are absolutely true and beyond all criticism. To question it is to question the very word of God, and hence blasphemous. A Muslim’s duty is to believe it and obey its divine commands without question.

  Muslim can be murdered (beheaded) for doing any of the following:

  Reviling Allah or his Messenger; (2) being sarcastic about ‘Allah’s name, His command, His interdiction, His promise, or His threat’; (3) denying any verse of the Quran or ‘anything which by scholarly consensus belongs to it, or to add a verse that does not belong to it’; (4) holding that ‘any of Allah’s messengers or prophets are liars, or to deny their being sent’; (5) reviling the religion of Islam; (6) being sarcastic about any ruling of the Sacred Law; (7) denying that Allah intended ‘the Prophet’s message . . . to be the religion followed by the entire world.’

  To any rational, normal person reading the teachings of the Koran (and these are just a small sample of the 1000’s and 1000’s of the teachings of hate, terror, cruelty, depravity etc that is Islam) the claim by Muslims that they are reading the words, teachings, laws of God – that the Koran is authored by God and a copy of the Koran rests in Heaven is insanity.

  There is no Islamic fundamentalism, Islamo – fascism, political Islam, Islamic terrorists, Islamic militants, jihadists, Wahhabism, radical Islam etc who have hijacked the religion. There has been no hijacking. These demented souls are following EXACTLY the teachings of the Koran – they are following in the footsteps of their founder – the man of evil – Muhammad. In the end – IT’S ALL ABOUT ISLAM STUPID INFIDEL.

  ISLAM IS AN EVIL TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGY NOT A RELIGION

  Islam is a declaration of war against infidels. Islam is an ideology of WAR. The Koran is a BOOK OF WAR. Allah is a GOD OF WAR. This war is permanent until all the infidels have converted, or paid a submission tax or have been murdered. These are the ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH AS SET DOWN IN THE KORAN

  Infidels can be murdered by Muslims as an ETERNAL LAW OF ALLAH. Not only can they all be murdered but the wives and daughters of the murdered infidels can be taken as booty, raped, and then sold as slaves. Their sons can be sold into slavery. If there is any doubt as to the boy’s age of puberty – Muslims can pull down their pants and inspect their genital area for hairs. Even the slightest sign of hair growth means that these young men can be taken and beheaded. As an ETERNAL LAW OF ALLAH, Muslims can then loot and pillage the property of the murdered infidels, and must share the booty obtained from the sale of boys and women and the proceeds of looting with ALLAH. Muslims can own slaves as an ETERNAL LAW OF ALLAH. Slavery has been a central part of Islam since it’s creation by Muhammad. ALL THIS EVIL ARE THE ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH AS SET DOWN IN THE KORAN. THESE LAWS OF ALLAH ARE FOREVER. Not only that but righteous Muslims who slay and are slain murdering infidels can ascend as martyrs to the evil, sexually degenerate, depraved Islamic Paradise of eternal erections and virgins who re – generate as virgins after each sex act. THIS IS THEIR ETERNAL REWARD FOR OBEYING THESE EVIL LAWS OF ALLAH.

  Again, the above ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH allow murder, slavery, looting and pillaging and if you are killed in the process of obeying these Laws then you can ascend to a paradise of full breasted, lustrous eyed virgins to sexually molest for all eternity. ALLAH permits the raping of female slaves. As already shown in Islam – rape is not just a sexual weapon – it is a weapon of war. Having murdered the woman’s man, Muslims can now – sanctioned by ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH complete their final humiliation and domination of her body.

  Unlimited sex and money were powerful motivations for Muslims to grab their swords, climb on their horses and ride off into the sunset to bring war, death and destruction to the infidels.

  India paid an horrific price. The world famous historian, Will Durant has written in his Story of Civilization that “the Mohammedan conquest of India was probably the bloodiest story in history”.

  Buddhism was devastated.

  Persia’s civilization disappeared from history.

  The holocaust of slavery was imposed on large parts of black Africa. Slavery has been an integral part of Islam since its creation by Muhammad. Islam institutionalized slavery and made its existence legal and an ETERNAL LAW of ALLAH (read articles relating to slavery further in this Website). Islam was a major player in the black African slave trade – an historical fact not well known today. Also not taught is the fact that 1.5 million Europeans were taken as slaves by Muslims.

  The fact that throughout Islam’s history, this slaughter of the innocents in the worst ways imaginable, murdered in the name of and to the greater glory of God is an obscenity. The so called men of ALLAH responsible for this carnage who have – through the millenniums – for Power, Domination, and Control of society unleashed this evil deserve to be in Hell.

  To take man’s natural Concept of God, a conception of Peace and Love and Goodness – an all Wise, all merciful, all Loving God for all mankind, and turn God – by bastardizing his teachings into a murderous ALLAH (the ANTI GOD) of hate, terror, intolerance, death and destruction is one of the greatest sins that can be committed against God. Islam will remain forever a black historical stain smearing all human history.

• Noor Jehan

  January 27, 2013 10:07 am

  Reply

  An Iranian woman wants to save her future husband from ‘Infamy’ and ‘disgraced woman.’ The Muslims of Kurdish persuasion present their bloody sheet to the parents after the wedding night.

  “Many of the Muslim woman have had sexual intercourse several times, then comes the wedding and the reality catches up with them.”

  It has happened that a Muslim girl has been raped by her family and then forced to prove her virginity.

  There are cases when the restoration of the Muslim hymen is the only option due to the health concerns of the Muslim woman. The human rights organization, Terre des Femmes, disagrees on the hymenorrhaphie issue.

  “The social significance of virginity is often utilized to deny women their sexual freedom and to restrict their lifestyles.”

  Dr. Teenhardt has long worked with Muslim women seeking hymen restoration. It usually turns out that the Muslim women know very little about their own bodies and sexuality. “If I tell them that hymen does not necessary guarantee bleeding, or that some Muslim girls are born without a hymen, they’re very surprised.”

  The gynecologist teaches the Muslim women how virginity can be faked.

  In cases where the Muslim woman is in great distress and afraid of deadly honor violence, the doctor is prepared to perform the outpatient surgery. “We want to prevent mental and physical suffering.” The cost is about 200 euros.

  How many thousands of hymen restoration operations are done in Europe is unknown. The demand is huge, shows the offers by plastic surgeons, some charging up to 2100 euros for the procedure.

  One advert promises: For only 24.95 Euros (including shipping) you can save your honor.

  The tips and addresses are also provided by Internet forums. “My gynecologist operates in outpatient basis and it will cost only 100 euros,” writes a Muslim woman.

  Dr, Tennhardt emphasizes that much more important than tip for doctors and cost is to tackle the issue of Muslim woman through societal shift of thinking. The young Muslim women should be encouraged to demand their right to fuck anyone, anytime, anywhere.

  Life Saving Surgery
  Restoring virgiinty @ £2,000 pounds

  My virginity was restored in a delicate operation just last week, and I honestly view it as life-saving surgery,” says Aisha.

  “If my husband cannot prove to his family that I am a virgin, I would be hounded, ostracised and sent home in disgrace. My father, who is a devout Muslim, would regard it as the ultimate shame.

  “The entire family could be cast out from the friends and society they hold dear, and I honestly believe that one of my fanatically religious cousins or uncles might kill me in revenge, to purge them of my sins. Incredible as it may seem, honour killings are still accepted within our religion.

  “Ever since my family arranged this marriage for me, I’ve been terrified that, on my wedding night, my secret would come out. It has only been since my surgery last week that I’ve actually been able to sleep properly. Now, I can look forward to my marriage.” says Iranian girl so confidently, not worried at all

• Veena Malik

  January 22, 2013 10:20 am

  Reply

  Who would have thought a wee little packet of fake blood could threaten to unravel an entire culture. But so great is the threat of the “Artificial Virginity Hymen” — a kit that helps women fake their virginity — that prominent Egyptian conservatives are calling for an all-out ban. Not only that, they are also demanding the exile of anyone who traffics it.

  Longtime Broadsheet readers will no doubt remember the item at issue, which is made in China and sold by an online sex shop. Once inserted into the vagina, the gizmo leaks fake blood. The product hasn’t changed since I puzzled over it last year, but the price sure has: It’s selling for a pricey $30, instead of $14.90. It seems the creators have realized that, while similar technology sells for just a couple bucks at a Halloween superstore, they have hit a marketing gold mine. They’ve also hit a cultural nerve.

  The kit “encourages illicit sexual relations,” declared Abdel Moati Bayoumi, a respected Egyptian religious scholar, according to the Associated Press. He added: “I think this should absolutely not be allowed to be exported because it brings more harm than benefits. Whoever does it should be punished.” On a similar note, Sheik Sayed Askar said, as the AP paraphrased it, that “the kit will make it easier for Egyptian women to give in to temptation.” On the Muslim Brotherhood Web site, he wrote: “It will be a mark of shame on the ruling party if it allowed this product to enter the market.”

  If a woman in the Middle East fails to bleed on her wedding night, she can face shame, abuse and even death. Sure, many women don’t bleed when they lose their virginity. Yes, hymens are often torn through non-sexual activities. True, there exists no way to prove a woman’s virginity. But, la-la-la, they aren’t listening to any of that medically accurate naysaying! Bloody the sheet or else.

  The truth is Muslim women are already artificially making that happen, regardless of whether they’re virgins (see above: Virgins don’t always bleed). Outlawing the “Artificial Virginity Hymen” won’t change that. Egyptian women will still have hymenoplasties, which are outlawed in the country but take place nonetheless, get doctors’ certification of chastity — which can be forged or real, at least to the extent that such a thing can be legitimate — or come up with a creative home remedy. Given the high stakes, this will always be the case. To think otherwise is willful denial or utter foolishness, or both.

• Afreen

  January 19, 2013 9:29 am

  Reply

  Proving one more time that when it comes to Muslim women, it’s about headscarves and hymens — in other words, what’s on our heads and what’s between our legs — Egypt is hot and bothered over a Chinese device that fakes female virginity.

  It’s reportedly available in Syria for $15 but nobody knows if the gizmo called Gigimo is on sale in Egypt yet. Just the mere thought of a device, which is said to release liquid imitating blood, allowing a woman to fake virginity on her wedding night, has driven some conservatives crazy.

  One Egyptian Muslim scholar even went so far as to say that people caught importing the virginity-faking device into the country should face the death penalty and the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition bloc in parliament, want the kit banned on grounds it will encourage promiscuity.

  The conservatives are not content that their ideology has put headscarves on the heads of 80 per cent of Egyptian women. Now it’s the horror of uncertainty about that “good girl” they marry.

  With all the troubles Egypt faces these days — spiralling cost of living, a president in power for 28 years whose son looks likely to succeed him, etc. — why all the fuss over hymens, real or fake?

  Welcome to the hypocrisy and denial that together drum at the heart of conservative religious views on women and chastity. And in the case of Egypt, that conservatism applies equally to Muslims and Christians.

  As a Muslim, I know the Qur’an preaches chastity for men and women, but the conservative obsession with women means only females are expected to abide by the prohibition on extramarital sex. This obsession with virginity is shallow at best and deadly at worst.

  And it’s built on a lie — people in Egypt are having sex outside of marriage, as they do everywhere. Hymen reconstruction surgery was an option for sexually active women who could afford it.

  In less affluent and more rural areas, women have used body parts of animals for blood on the sheets. Now the Gigimo provides a cheaper, cleaner and non-surgical prop to maintain the lie that many men still want to believe.

  Truth be told, it’s unlikely Egyptian women will flock to the Gigimo. But it’s been worth it just to watch male hysteria as the made-in-China hymens threatened to smash their virginity god

• paki_girl

  January 19, 2013 8:56 am

  Reply

  Cruelty in Hadith

  Book 38, Number 4359:

  Narrated Abdullah ibn Abbas:

  The verse “The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite side or exile from the land…most merciful” was revealed about polytheists. If any of them repents before they are arrested, it does not prevent from inflicting on him the prescribed punishment which he deserves.

  Now Muhammad orders an adulterer to be stoned to death (there are many Hadith on stoning to death).

  Book 38, Number 4364:

  Narrated Nu’aym:

  Ma’iz came to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and admitted (having committed adultery) four times in his presence so he ordered him to be stoned to death, but said to Huzzal: If you had covered him with your garment, it would have been better for you.

  This time, Muhammad orders the hand of a petty thief chopped off.

  Book 38, Number 4367:

  Narrated AbuUmayyah al-Makhzumi:

  A thief who had accepted (having committed theft) was brought to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him), but no good were found with him. The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him), said to him: I do not think you have stolen. He said: Yes, I have. He repeated it twice or thrice. So he gave orders. His hand was cut off and he was then brought to him. He said: Ask Allah’s pardon and turn to Him in repentance. He said: I ask Allah’s pardon and turn to Him in repentance. He (the Prophet) then said: O Allah, accept his repentance.

  Once again, a man who stole a shield worth just three dirhams has his hands cut off on Muhammad’s orders.

  Book 38, Number 4373:

  Narrated Abdullah ibn Umar:

  The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) had a man’s hand cut off who had stolen from the place reserved for women a shield whose price was three dirhams.

  A woman has her hand chopped off for selling jewellery that she had borrowed.

  Book 38, Number 4382:

  Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu’minin:

  A woman borrowed jewellery through some known persons and she herself was unknown. She then sold them. She was seized and brought to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him). He gave orders that her hand should be cut off. It is this woman about whom Usamah interceded and of her the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) said whatever he said.

  In this Hadith, Muhammad seems very eager to kill a thief, but when the people remind him that he is only a thief, Muhammad “relents” and orders his hand chopped off. The next time, he has his foot chopped off. This saga continues, with his other hand and foot being chopped off, before he is finally stoned to death.

  Book 38, Number 4396:

  Narrated Jabir ibn Abdullah:

  A thief was brought to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him). He said: Kill him. The people said: He has committed theft, Apostle of Allah! Then he said: Cut off his hand. So his (right) hand was cut off. He was brought a second time and he said: Kill him. The people said: He has committed theft, Apostle of Allah! Then he said: Cut off his foot.

  So his (left) foot was cut off.

  He was brought a third time and he said: Kill him.

  The people said: He has committed theft, Apostle of Allah!

  So he said: Cut off his hand. (So his (left) hand was cut off.)

  He was brought a fourth time and he said: Kill him.

  The people said: He has committed theft, Apostle of Allah!

  So he said: Cut off his foot. So his (right) foot was cut off.

  He was brought a fifth time and he said: Kill him.

  So we took him away and killed him. We then dragged him and cast him into a well and threw stones over him.

  In this Hadith, Muhammad orders a man’s hand to be chopped off and hung around his neck.

  Book 38, Number 4397:

  Narrated Fadalah ibn Ubayd:

  A thief was brought to the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) and his hand was cut off. Thereafter he commanded for it, and it was hung on his neck.

  I ask my readers to bear in mind that Islam IS the example of Muhammad. The above instances are not mere history, but the normative code of conduct for Muslim societies for all time to come. Islam is unique in that it makes one man’s conduct the basis for its law (Shari’a). All of the above examples are now cast in stone, and form the basis for Shari’a law for all time.

  I have a few questions to ask of my readers after they have read the Hadith above:

  1. Was Muhammad a kind and compassionate man, as claimed by Islamic apologists?

  2. Could a man who displayed the kind of cruelty described in the Hadith above be called a Saint, let alone “the last Prophet of God”?

  3. When one sees the kind of cruelty that routinely comes out of Islamic societies, is it against Islam, or directly in accordance with it?

  4. Is anything the Taliban do against Islam? Indeed, Muhammad’s punishments seem far more brutal than what the Taliban dish out.

  5. Is there ANY place for such a barbaric cult in civilized society?

  Notice that in none of the Hadith does Muhammad show an iota of compassion to those whose hands and feet he orders chopped off. Not once does he even ask “Did you fall on bad times? Why did you do what you did?” In Muhammad’s time, if a man stole a loaf of bread to feed his hungry family, guess what? Too bad, his hands would be chopped off. There was no compassion in this man. When 1.2 billion people think this is the behaviour of the “perfect man”, that is when we see all the barbarity that Islam displays daily. Beheadings, stoning, brutal intolerance and so on. It all comes from one man and his religion.

• Gulnar

  January 19, 2013 1:14 am

  Reply

  The decision of a French court in Lille to annul a Muslim marriage because the wife was not a virgin has sparked anger in France. It has ignited a reaction from secularists who view the ruling as a threat to “French values”. French Urban Affairs Minister, Fadela Amara, went so far as to say that the the ruling constitutes “a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women.”

  The ruling also highlights the challenges faced by many Muslim women in France who have become sexually emancipated while still retaining close connections with the traditional Islamic values upheld by their families. The tension arising from this, is never so intense than when it comes to matters of family honor, particularly as it relates to the importance of a daughter’s virginity when entering into matrimony.

  It isn’t unusual for prospective brides to be required to provide evidence of virginity. In some cases women have been required to go for gynecological exams in order to determine virginity status.

  Some women are so concerned about the prospect of bringing dishonor to the family and becoming objects of scorn, that they undergo an operation called a “hymenoplasty.” This is a procedure that reconstructs the hymen, the thin membrane usually broken during intercourse. The cost of becoming a faux virgin varies, but in a private clinic in Paris it can cost around $3,000. It should be pointed out that the procedure in France is still relatively rare, as compared to the Middle East and Latin America for example.

  Jacques Lansac of the French College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians opposes hymen reconstruction surgery: “Attaching so much importance to the hymen is regression, submission to the intolerance of the past.”

  The surgery may create the illusion of virginity, but the marriage will still be based upon willful deception from day one. How does living-a-lie uphold family honor? And if family honor needs to be safeguarded by deception, what value does it have over and above the importance of saving face?

  While some Muslim women feel sufficiently pressured that they are willing to make a pretense of being virgins, husbands-to-be are not required to answer for their sexual history. It is a viewpoint that is sexist and out-of-touch with modern realities.

  Any mainstream religion, not only Islam, faces the challenge of striking a balance between the social mores of the society in which it operates and traditional religious values. There needs to be a measure of understanding and tolerance, of give and take, otherwise children of future generations are going to remain in a position of conflict – torn between traditional values and a contemporary lifestyle that is more about rights than religious obligations.

  The Lille annulment created an uproar because critics view it as a threat to the rights of women. They see it as equating marriage with a commercial transaction that makes the woman appear more like goods that come with a contract, rather than a human being with dignity and value that goes beyond the mere fact of her virgin status.

  Justice Minister, Racheda Dati, has announced that the government will be appealing the ruling.

  Some of the reaction to the Lille decision has been over-the-top. Some of it has also been fomented by those who seek any excuse to cast Islam in a negative light. To call it a move toward sharia law as some have done, is ridiculous. In fact seen from the woman’s perspective the court did her a favor by annulling her marriage to a much older man who lacked the class to keep matters of the marriage bed private.

  Article 180 of the French Civil Code allows for such annulments to take place if a partner fails to fulfill an “essential” part of the pre-marriage arrangement. In the Lille case it was the honesty of the bride that was in question. The ruling wasn’t addressing virginity as an “essential quality” of marriage. Couples of other religions have used Article 180 to obtain annulments in the past.

  A number of French Muslims have expressed sympathy for the woman in this case. Abdelkibir Errami, vice president of the Islamic Center of Roubaix, close to Lille where the marriage took place, had this to say:

  The man is the biggest of all the donkeys. Even if the woman was no longer a virgin, he had no right to expose her honor. This is not what Islam teaches. It teaches forgiveness.

• Husna

  January 17, 2013 9:18 am

  Reply

  Hi every body

  Muslim countries in the Middle East and north-central Africa lead the world in human trafficking, according to a new U.S. State Department report. Of the 17 countries that were given the “Tier 3″ listing reserved for the worst offenders, nine were Muslim countries or countries with a large Muslim population from these two regions. Tier 3 countries are defined as those “whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards” of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 and “are not making significant efforts to do so.”

  The Middle Eastern countries with Tier 3 status are Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The north-central African countries are Mauritania, Chad, Sudan, Niger and Eritrea, all of which have very large Muslim populations.

  Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Lebanon are on the Tier 2 Watchlist – one step above Tier 3.

  Shyima Hall, 19, was photographed for the State Department report in the windowless garage where she was kept for two years. Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their home in California. She used to wake before dawn and often worked past midnight ironing clothes, mopping the marble floors and dusting the family’s crystal. She sometimes worked up to 20 hours a day and earned $45 a month. (Photo: Traffic in Persons Report 2009).

  The data in the report indicates that Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa are continuing their centuries-old practice of human trafficking. Historians estimate that between 9 and 14 million black Africans were brought to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade and between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert between the Muslim conquests in the 7th century and 1900.

  Iran: The report says that “Iran is a source, transit, and destination for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and involuntary servitude. Iranian women are trafficked internally for the purpose of forced prostitution and forced marriage. Iranian and Afghan children living in Iran are trafficked internally for the purpose of forced marriage, commercial sexual exploitation, and involuntary servitude as beggars or laborers to pay debts, provide income, or support drug addiction of their families. Iranian women and girls are also trafficked to Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom for commercial sexual exploitation.”

  The State Department report noted that “the Government of Iran does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, and is not making significant efforts to do so. Lack of access to Iran by U.S. Government officials impedes the collection of information on the country’s human trafficking problem and the government’s efforts to curb it.”

  North Africa and Middle East: Tier 3 countries are shaded maroon. (Traffic in Persons Report 2009).

  Saudi Arabia, the report says, “is a destination country for men and women trafficked for the purposes of involuntary servitude and, to a lesser extent, commercial sexual exploitation. Men and women from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Sudan, Ethiopia, and many other countries voluntarily travel to Saudi Arabia as domestic servants or other low-skilled laborers, but some subsequently face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude, including restrictions on movement, withholding of passports, threats, physical or sexual abuse, and non-payment of wages.

  “Some Saudi men have also used legally contracted ‘temporary marriages’ in countries such as Mauritania, Yemen, and Indonesia as a means by which to sexually exploit migrant workers. Females as young as seven years old are led to believe they are being wed in earnest, but upon arrival in Saudi Arabia subsequently become their husbands’ sexual slaves, are forced into domestic labor and, in some cases, prostitution. The Government of Saudi Arabia does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making discernible efforts to do so.”

  Syria is “principally a destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of domestic servitude and commercial sexual exploitation. Women from Iraq, Eastern Europe, former Soviet states, Somalia, and Morocco are recruited as cabaret dancers and subsequently forced into prostitution after their employers confiscate their passports and confine them to their work premises. A significant number of women and children in the large Iraqi refugee community in Syria are forced into sexual exploitation by criminal gangs or, in some cases, their families. Some desperate Iraqi families reportedly abandon their girls at the border with the expectation that traffickers on the Syrian side would arrange forged documents for the children and ‘work’ in a nightclub or brothel. Iraqi families arrange for young girls to work in clubs and to be “married,” often multiple times, to men for the sole purpose of prostitution.”

  In Kuwait, the majority of trafficking victims are from among the over 500,000 foreign women recruited for domestic service work. “Men and women migrate from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in search of work in the domestic and sanitation industries. Although they migrate willingly to Kuwait, upon arrival some are subjected to conditions of forced labor from their ‘sponsors’ and labor agents, such as withholding of passports, confinement, physical sexual abuse and threats of such abuse or other serious harm, and non-payment of wages with the intent of compelling their continued service.”

  “Adult female migrant workers are particularly vulnerable, and consequently are often victims of sexual exploitation and forced prostitution. There have been instances of domestic workers who have fled from their employers, lured by the promise of well-paying service industry jobs, and being coerced into prostitution. In other cases, the terms of employment in Kuwait are wholly different from those agreed to in their home countries. The Government of Kuwait does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making sufficient efforts to do so

  • Zionist exposed

    January 21, 2013 9:57 am

    Reply

    Israel is the highest country in prostitution , I wonder why you didn’t mentioned that ( Zionist troll paid agent lol)
    The only country that still occupy another nation land , the only country that commit assassination in high rank , the only country that oppress another nation , jail minors for years with no charge ,

    The only country will pay for Zionist agents to spread lies and enmity against Arab and Muslims on YouTube and the Internet , google Israel hiring paid agents to comment on YouTube , and you are one of them Zionist troll wahhhhh , akakakaka , looool

• Fatima Gul

  January 17, 2013 7:47 am

  Reply

  Crimes Against Women and Children in the Name of Islam

  Mohammed, the prophet of the Islamic world, married his last bride Aisha when she was just six years old, and the consummated the marriage with her when she was just nine years old. In Islamic states, partly because of this precedent, this practice still happens in fundamentalist countries like Afghanistan. Muslims will say that a child of six or seven is almost certain to be a virgin. Mohammed was at least 50 when he married Aisha.

  The practice of forced marriages (as opposed to arranged marriages) in some Muslim states such as Afghanistan is very common. Some reports claim that somewhere between 60-80 percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced upon the girls involved or without the consent of the girls. These marriages are seen as a way to resolve conflicts between families, or as a way to absolve someone of a wrongdoing. The girls are treated as they would treat cattle, and are given to these men as offerings.

  Some reports also estimate that 57 percent of Afghani girls are married before the age of 16, and it is unusual to find an unmarried girl older than 18 years of age. The practice is justified twofold; that the girls are helping to keep the peace between families, and that the Islamic prophet Mohammed had set this precedent.

  In Afghanistan the legal age to be married is 16, but many people ignore this law or claim they were unaware of it. The children in this situation are robbed of childhood, and as you will see, many are robbed of their life. This practice is abhorrent, and any civilised culture will see it as such.

  In Nigeria, a 49-year-old Muslim Senator has reportedly married a 13-year-old girl, and has allegedly previously married a 15-year-old in 2006, citing that he paid a dowry of $100,000 to the parents for her. Although looked down upon by other ministers in Nigeria it is still happening.

  Women in Islam have no rights, especially if they are non-Muslim, and these men get away with their evils because people are too afraid to stand up against the barbarity of the culture which the religion they follow has instilled in them. Threats of death are imposed upon those who would stand up against this. In Lahore, a man and his entourage of Muslim lawyers has threatened to “burn alive” anyone who will come to the defence of a 12-year-old servant of his, whom he raped and murdered.

  Many girls will find themselves in a marriage with a man much older than they are, and will be given the sole duties of looking after the household and giving offspring to the man. Some men have multiple wives, and the women become a harem for that man. The men are often abusive to these girls, sometimes to the point where the girl should be hospitalised, but often is not. The beating of wives is seen as the “honourable thing to do”, for the wife must be kept in line with the wishings of the man and of Allah.

  Often these girls will find themselves in these abusive relationships, and will seek a way out. But the way out is a problem in itself; if the girl were to leave she would bring shame upon her own family and her husband’s, and would be hunted down and possibly stoned to death or just beaten withing an inch of her life; if she stays, she may be beaten thus anyhow. Sometimes out of pure desperation, a girl seeking to be free from the bonds of this abusive relationship will choose self-harm rather than bringing shame upon her people.

  In Afghanistan, it is believe that more than 10 women and girls choose self-immolation (warning very graphic content) as the escape from their bondage. Around the web there are numerous stories of women who, feeling there was no better way, have chosen to set themselves on fire rather than continue living in such conditions. Some girls die from their injuries. Some do not but are so badly scarred so as to lose their legs, or are severely disfigured by these burns. Those that live may wind up on the streets, homeless.

  The culture in Afghanistan is such that women are treated as slaves, and in some cases, worse than dogs. Not only do they wear the burqa in public at all times, they are not allowed to leave the home alone, not allowed to speak to anyone they don’t know, and not allowed to make their identity known nor engage with any of their husband’s friends they may meet in the street. They are not treated as second-class citizens, rather as livestock that can produce more sons for the family.

  People blame Islam for these practices. And yet, there are many more Islamic people who don’t practice this than do. Islam itself is not to blame wholly for these atrocities, rather the culture that bases itself upon Islam, then justifies these stone-aged practices based on the words of the Koran or the Hadeeth, saying it is God’s will that this be done. When a culture is poor and has little or no access to education, these kinds of barbaric practices continue to happen.

  The culture in Afghanistan is sick. The barbarism and sheer disrespect for human rights that occurs there is all so often backed up by the perverse and outmoded words of their holy books. This illness in the Afghan culture continues, even after the ousting of the Taliban, who were ultra conservative and would set upon women with batons for showing ANY skin, but it is not much better now.

  While this culture is deeply ingrained in their societies, these practices in the name of Islam shows it toi be, in its extreme, nothing more than an ultra-conservative ultra-violent “boy’s club” where it members all look after each other. And as sickening as all this is, nothing seems to be getting better.

  These girls stories are the same story I have heard again and again of extreme desperation, of girls who see their only escape from forced marriage as being self harm. It is gut-wrenchingly sad to see such lives destroyed by the greed and stupidity of men. Here is an example of one girl’s account of the horrors she has faced at the brutal hands of an extreme Islamic patriarchy

• Golbahar

  January 14, 2013 6:39 am

  Reply

  my best friend is from morocco, she had sex when we were both in college with a guy . she got engaged last week to a guy her family found her and she asked me how to fake her virginity . i told her she wouldn’t need to because exercise stretching tampons all can break her hymen and she wont necessarily bleed first time but she insisted she had to use blood or something because her fiancee inst very educated on the subject and wouldn’t be amused with any other result then a broken hymen iam really worried for malika and iam willing to send her a fake hymen kit . if i find one that is .. i want to know if they are realistic and if they will cause her any infection or something ?

• Salma Agha

  January 14, 2013 6:34 am

  Reply

  RIYADH: Khaled never thought a form of temporary marriage would open the door to his happily-ever-after. The 25-year-old Saudi security guard opted to marry Zeinab, also a Saudi, through a Misyar contract ? a kind of marriage under which couples often live separately but get together regularly.

  Khaled and Zeinab are among thousands of people who choose Misyar in this ultraconservative kingdom where contact between unrelated men and women is forbidden and extramarital affair regarded as a grave sin.

  Misyar is allowed in Sunni Islam and it is legal in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and other Middle East countries. But it is traditionally frowned upon and the fact that it leaves the wife financially vulnerable has angered many women?s activists and intellectuals.

  After years of study, the influential Makkah-based Islamic Jurisprudence Assembly in April this year declared that Misyar marriage was legal, angering many women?s rights? activists in the Gulf.

  Influential Muslim cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi has given his blessing to Misyar, but said there should be at least some form of dowry to provide a guarantee for the wife.

  ?No doubt it is somehow socially unacceptable, but there is a big difference between what is Islamically valid and what is socially acceptable,? he recently told Al Jazeera television.

  Misyar offers an alternative to cash-strapped men who want to avoid lavish weddings but would like a relationship, without incurring the wrath of the morality police.

  Under Misyar, the husband is not financially responsible for his wife.

  Khaled, who declined to give his full name, admitted he wasn?t serious about commitment when he decided on Misyar.

  But now, he and Zeinab are expecting a baby together.

  ?I thought let?s give it a try … and now I feel like a hero in a romantic film,? he said.

  ?Misyar reduces marriage to sexual intercourse,? said Hatoun al-Fassi, a female Saudi historian. ?For clerics to allow it is shameful for our religion.?

  In regular marriages in Saudi Arabia, men must pay for expensive ceremonies, huge dowries and a home. If the couple divorce, he must pay alimony and child support.

  So Misyar appeals to men of reduced means, as well as men looking for a flexible arrangement ? the husband can walk away from a Misyar and can marry other women without informing his first wife.

  Wealthy Muslims sometimes contract Misyar when on holiday to allow them to have company of a woman without breaching the tenets of their faith.

  This vulnerability has sometimes encouraged abuses: women sometimes act as matchmakers for less than scrupulous men on the prowl for lonely and wealthy spinsters.

  Saudi television presenter Rima al-Shamikh said Misyar is the result of frustration among Saudi Arabia?s largely youthful population, bound by a strict religious code but exposed to western lifestyles through the media and Internet.

  ?Our young people watch the satellite television channels. There is dissatisfaction,? she explained.

  ?Misyar is a way of getting around the obstacles of marriage in Gulf societies.?

  Some scholars say Misyar was practised in the Arabian peninsula during the early days of Islam, when men were often away for months during battles or for trading.

  The practice reappeared in the early 19th century in Egypt, where it is known as Urfi marriage and is now very common.

  Saudi clerics say Misyar is authorised as long as it meets the basic requirements of sharia, ? consent of both parties, the blessing of the woman?s guardian, the presence of witnesses and a state marriage official.

  Advertisements for Saudi men and women seeking Misyar marriage abound on the Internet, recalling the ?lonely hearts? columns popular in Western newspapers.

  ?I am a 33-year-old Saudi man with acceptable looks seeking to marry a Saudi virgin or a divorcee,? read one posting on a special Misyar website. ?Saudi man seeking divorcee living in Jeddah, no objection to children,? read another.

  But not all Misyar couples are in it for the short-term. A few, like Khaled and Zeinab, find Misyar can be a first step to something more durable.

  ?We got used to each other very quickly,? said Khaled, who has been married for 18 months. ?Then she got pregnant. We couldn?t bear our situation, so we decided to live together for real, not just with Misyar.

• Mubina

  January 14, 2013 6:29 am

  Reply

  Mutah exposed, Iran opens brothels, Shia are allowed to do mutah with sunni girls without their permission?

  The Iranian government recently passed legislation which created legal whore-houses, brothels which would be officially liscensed under law as “Chastity Houses.” Such a name is of course the epitome of Orwellian terminology, and the irony of the name should not be lost to anyone.

  The Iranian clerics argued that the only way to solve the problem of prostitution is to bring it under state control. In recent weeks, several prominent conservative clerics have proposed that prostitutes be placed in government-run shelters for destitute women to be called “Chastity Houses,” where male customers could briefly “marry” them under the Shia belief of Mutah. These brothels would then be run by the Iranian religious clerics, who would ensure that the couples use contraceptives and protective measures. Proponents of the idea argue that it would “eradicate social corruption” by legitimizing sexual relations between the men and women. Under the plan, the couples would register for a temporary marriage under Iran’s Shia law.

  One cleric backing the plan, Ayatollah Mohammed Mousavi Bojnurdi, recently told a newspaper: “We face a real challenge with all these women on the street. Our society is in an emergency situation, so the formation of the Chastity Houses can be an immediate solution to the problem.” He added that the plan “is both realistic and conforms to Sharia [Islamic] law.”

  The Cultural Council for Women, a women’s rights group, argue back that such houses would be a “deceitful and thinly disguised” form of prostitution. Reuters recently quoted Shahrbanou Amani, a female parliamentarian, as calling the Chastity Houses “an insult and disrespectful to women.” Particularly discomforting is that there are hundreds of thousands of prostitutes in Tehran alone, and many of them are girls who are poverty-striken and forced into the now legalized prostitution that is so rampant in Iran.

• Muslimah

  January 12, 2013 7:36 am

  Reply

  Concept of Muta marriage, another way of prostitution.

  Muta Marriage” is a short term contractual relationship, lasting hours or a few days, where the man gives something of value to a woman and they “marry” and engage in sex for an agreed length of time. Once the contractual time expires the marriage is over and they go their own ways. This is legalized Islamic prostitution. Men get satisfaction and women get something of value, be it money, or clothing, or even a Quranic recital.

  Narrated Abdullah: We used to participate in the holy wars carried on by the Prophet and we had no women (wives) with us. So we said (to the Prophet ). “Shall we castrate ourselves?” But the Prophet forbade us to do that and thenceforth he allowed us to marry a woman (temporarily) by giving her even a garment, and then he recited: “O you who believe! Do not make unlawful the good things which Allah has made lawful for you.” Bukhari: Volume 6, Book 60, Number 139.

  Temporary “Muta” marriage is practiced today and often arranged by Imams and other Islamic leaders in Europe (the city centre’s where Shia Muslims cluster), America (Shia parts of Dearborn, Michigan), and of course in the Mideast. The most common victims of Muta marriage are destitute widows and orphaned girls who are sold to old men. These females are driven to extreme means to pay rent and feed themselves and their children. These females are abused by both the men who purchase them and the Islamic leaders. Muhammad’s system allows them to be abandoned and then exploited rather than responding with charity and compassion.

  Sunni Muslims do not normally practice Muta marriage. But many Sunni Muslims today are ashamed of what Muhammad did because they know that Muhammad allowed prostitution to satisfy his men’s wants. And that’s the same story with Muhammad again and again. Like Felix and his bag of tricks, Muhammad always managed to pull a “revelation” out of thin air and change the rules of the game. If one reads the “Sirat Rasulallah”, (“The Life of Muhammad”, by A. Guillaume), one will find that Muhammad allowed, then disallowed, then allowed, then disallowed Muta marriage, etc. several times. Muhammad’s rules and religion depended on circumstances, not on God’s will.

• Zahida

  January 11, 2013 9:08 am

  Reply

  Hello Zahid,

  What you are talking, it is all non sense. Female are not treated equally in Koran itself, they are just fields to be ploughed like any thing, they are beaten, they have to prove virginity,male does not need to be virgin. Male is allowed to k eep 4 wives, even for jihadies, 72 virgins are available,(nonsense things to make terrorists),women if raped, need atleast 2 witness to seek justice, domestic violence, talak any moment, torturne, rape blood shed, are all cruelties of Islam.

  Islam is meant only for terrorists, sexy and horny persons. Prohpet was the great rapist,who did not spare 9 year old girl(just like his grand daughter)?

• Zahid

  January 10, 2013 8:21 pm

  Reply

  If islam oppresses woman why people in west accept islam as islam is fastest growing religion in world. if there are four converts 3 are women to islam. just search fastest growing religion in world or go wikipedia and search women in islam and find rights of women in islam, islam is a religion who gave rights to women. You can go to http://www.usislam.org or http://www.muslimconverts.com and find the rights of women.
  Islam is a scientific religion.
  islam gives right to have own property which she may or may not share with their husband.
  Islam gives rights to educate women.
  Islam gives right to choose muslim husband.
  Islam gives right to run their bussiness.
  islam prevents women from barbaric acts.
  Islam gives women right to vote.
  islam gives women to have share of property from their parents and much more. go to above websites and find truth.

• Veena Malik

  January 10, 2013 8:38 am

  Reply

  Dear Admn. Thanks for making an exclusive blog for educating our muslim girls and save their married life.

  It is really a great service done by you through this blog. Some interesting and useful information and guidance has been given by our intellectual sisters. They are not in good number, but atleast some of them have given their views so frankly and intelligently, which I myself had never anticipated. The use of artificial hymen kit is a great blessings in the modern age particularly for muslim girls,who had subject to torture, rape, murder, domestic violence, cruelty, discrimination, kidnapping, torture and so on…..

  My sincere thanks once again. VM

  • admin

    January 10, 2013 8:09 pm

    Reply

    It is our pleasure and honor that all these intellectuals are talking about religion-related issues.

    Is that the God who provided certain guidance in “the book” and we are suppose to literally follow it, or that God wants us to do good karma based on our moral and self conscience? If God wanted us to strictly follow certain commandments literally and without interpreting it in today’s context, why HE made some of us critical thinkers to question the book? What ever God did, there is no reason to buy into someone’s claim that women are less intelligent than men.
    
    On your point, “(we are) not in good number”, actually there are lots more readers come to this site (current rate of 6 million hits/year) for guidance, but they do not write. Thus what ever you are writing here has already made some impact. Invite your other friends to this site. Keep up the good work!

• Shazia

  January 9, 2013 8:04 am

  Reply

  Hi,

  Gone are the days when women went through anxious days and spent sleepless nights over the loss of their virginity. After nose jobs, breast implants, liposuction and botox, the latest trend is hymenoplasty or hymenorrhaphy. Restoring virginity is fast becoming popular amongst women who desire to be virgins again for a variety of reasons. Over centuries virginity has been given social, religious and moral importance. Today, regaining lost virginity by repairing the hymen with a surgical procedure is fast and easy.

  What is virginity?

  Virginity is a term that refers to something being pure, untouched and unexposed. In context of olive oil, the first pressed olives with a low acidity of about .08% are termed as extra virgin olive oil. There are drinks without any alcohol mixture is termed as virgin. A female or male who has never indulged in sexual activity or had a sexual intercourse are called as virgins. Virginity in the human context is a concept that differentiates between people who have been sexually active and those who have not.

  Losing virginity

  If the hymen inside a woman’s vagina tears due to a sexual intercourse, the woman is supposed to lose her virginity. According to societal norms, the tearing of the hymen during intercourse acts as an indicator that the woman had never indulged in sexual activity. The hymen can even tear while doing a heavy workout, strenuous activities like horse riding and even while wearing a tampon.

  What is the hymen?

  The hymen is named after the Greek goddess Hymenaeus – the God of marriage and weddings. Hymen is a tissue that covers the external vaginal opening. It may or may not be perforated. It partially conceals the vaginal orifice. Biologically, the hymen is not an indicator of a woman’s virginity because a hymen may tear during a physically strenuous exercise, masturbation or may not be there at all. In some cases, the hymen can be so elastic that it does not tear at all during penetrative sex. Remnants of hymen can be present even after a woman gives vaginal birth. A woman or man loses virginity only after they have had a sexual intercourse, irrespective of whether there was a hymen tear or not.

  Restoring virginity

  Times have changed and the world has evolved. A woman has the power today to regain her virginity with simple plastic surgery procedures. Hymenoplasty or revirgination is a procedure that can reattach the hymen and bring back lost virginity. It is a plastic surgery process that repairs the hymen of a woman. It restores lost virginity in females.

  Different ways of performing a hymenoplasty

  If you plan to opt for the surgical procedure, ensure that you find the right cosmetologist or doctor. Find an expert and experienced surgeon for the surgery. Check and compare costs. Discuss the procedure that your doctor will follow. Do not forget to get complete information about post surgery care. Read and find information online. Here’s some basic know how on ways of how a hymenoplasty is performed.

  Performing an immediate suturing after a tear has taken place

  Create a membrane without blood supply. It is a cosmetic procedure that uses an artificial blood like gelatin substance. It can be performed a few days before someone intends to get married.

  Creating a new hymen with the remains of the torn hymen
  The doctor may advise abstaining from a sexual intercourse for a few days and prescribe medication to avoid vaginal infections. Follow instructions religiously.

  Hymenoplasty is a controversial issue in many countries around the world. Different women have different reasons to restore their virginity and therefore vaginal repair and reconstruction is becoming a popular trend. It can save women of social embarrassments and grant them a chance to enjoy the conformation of being a virgin all over again.

• Nadia

  January 9, 2013 7:51 am

  Reply

  The virginity industry

  Young Arab women wait in an upmarket medical clinic for an operation that will not only change their lives, but quite possibly save it. Yet the operation is a matter of choice and not necessity. It costs about 2,000 euros (£1,700) and carries very little risk.

  The clinic is not in Dubai or Cairo, but in Paris. And the surgery they are waiting for is to restore their virginity.

  Whether in Asia or the Arab world, an unknown number of women face an agonising problem having broken a deep taboo. They’ve had sex outside marriage and if found out, risk being ostracised by their communities, or even murdered.

  Sonia says she considered suicide after her first sexual relationship

  Now more and more of them are undergoing surgery to re-connect their hymens and hide any sign of past sexual activity. They want to ensure that blood is spilled on their wedding night sheets.
  The social pressure is so great that some women have even taken their own lives.

  Sonia wants to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. She is a slender young brunette studying at art college in Paris.

  Although born in France, Arab culture and traditions are central to Sonia’s life. Life was strict growing up under the watchful eyes of a large traditional Arab family.

  Virginity certificates

  “I thought of suicide after my first sexual relationship,” she says, “because I couldn’t see any other solution.” But Sonia did find a solution.

  She eventually went to the Paris clinic of Dr Marc Abecassis to have surgery to restore her hymen. She says she will never reveal her secret to anyone, especially her husband to be.
  I believe we as doctors have no right to decide for her or judge her

  Dr Abecassis

  “I consider this is my sex life and I don’t have to tell anyone about it,” she says. It’s men that are obliging her to lie about it, she says.

  Dr Abecassis performs a “hymenoplasty” as it’s called, at least two to three times a week. Re-connecting the tissue of the hymen takes about 30 minutes under local anaesthetic.

  He says the average age of the patient is about 25, and they come from all social backgrounds. Although the surgery is performed in clinics around the world, Dr Abecassis is one of the few Arab surgeons who talks openly about it. Some of the women come to him because they need virginity certificates in order to marry.

  “She can be in danger because sometimes it’s a matter of traditions and family,” says Dr Abecassis. “I believe we as doctors have no right to decide for her or judge her.”

  With Chinese manufacturers leading the way, there are now non-surgical options on the market as well. One website sells artificial hymens for just £20 (23 euros). The Chinese hymen is made of elastic and filled with fake blood. Once inserted in the vagina, the woman can simulate virginity, the company claims.

  ‘Caught out’

  But this was not an option for Nada. As a young girl growing up in the Lebanese countryside she fell in love and lost her virginity. “I was scared my family would find out especially since they didn’t approve of my relationship,” she says. “I was terrified they might kill me.”

  After seven years in the relationship, her lover’s family wanted him to marry someone else. Nada attempted suicide. “I got a bottle of Panadol and a bottle of household chemicals,” she says. “I drank them and said, ‘That’s it’.”

  Even if society accepts such a thing, I would still refuse to marry her

  Noor

  Nada is now 40, and found out about surgical hymen restoration just six years ago. She married and had two children. Her wedding night was a stressful ordeal. “I didn’t sleep that night. I was crying,” she says. “I was very scared but he didn’t suspect anything.”

  It’s a secret that Nada – which is not her real name – will carry to her grave. “I am ready to hide it until death,” she says. “Only God will know about it.”

  But it’s not only the older generation that subscribes to traditional views about sex before marriage, when it comes to choosing a wife.

  Noor is a trendy professional who works in Damascus. He’s fairly representative of young Syrian men in a secular society. But although Noor says he believes in equality for women, underneath the liberal facade lies a deep-rooted conservatism.

  “I know girls who went through this restoration and they were caught out on their wedding night by their husbands,” he says. “They realised they weren’t virgins. Even if society accepts such a thing, I would still refuse to marry her.”

  Muslim clerics are quick to point out that the virginity issue is not about religion. “We should remember that when people wait for the virgin’s blood to be spilled on the sheet, these are all cultural traditions,” says Syrian cleric, Sheikh Mohamad Habash. “This is not related to Shariah law.”

  Christian communities in the Middle East are often just as firm in their belief that women should be virgins when they marry.

  Arab writer and social commentator, Sana Al Khayat believes the whole issue has much to with the notion of “control”.

  “If she’s a virgin, she doesn’t have any way of comparing [her husband to other men]. If she’s been with other men, then she has experience. Having experience makes women stronger.”

  It may be the 21st Century but the issue of virginity in Arab culture can still be a matter of life and death, especially for women like Sonia and Nada.

  And while hymen repair may be a quick fix, it can’t reconcile centuries of ingrained tradition with the attitudes of modern society

• Chand Osmani

  January 8, 2013 7:27 am

  Reply

  Hello Admn.

  We have not seen your comments on this blog. We feel missing your feed back. Even Satyen is keeping silent on this blog.

  Ask him to give feed back.

  Thanks and regards.

  • admin

    January 8, 2013 10:27 pm

    Reply

    Chand,
    Yes, we miss Satyen too.

    Recently we gave the “tips of the iceberg” message at https://www.interfaithshaadi.org/?p=3929#comment-37317 . Bottomline message there is.. if any women (irrespective of religion) wishes to have respect and dignity in THIS life, she should get top notch education or somehow be financially independent.

    Please keep up your good work.

• Yasmeen

  January 7, 2013 10:48 am

  Reply

  Hello sisters,

  Dont worry about high cost of hymen repair surgery.

  THE CHINESE people enjoy a good reputation as inventors of the newest creations. The invention of gun powder and the paper, among other things, goes to their credit. The famous Chinese silk adorned the body and the bedroom of the high and the mighty like Julius Caesar and his successors in Rome and pretty women like Cleopatra in Egypt who travelled to Rome to display her best and win hearts of Romans.

  Now in the 21st century, the Chinese have come out with a new fangled device dear to hearts of girls who enjoy pre-marital sex and yet gladden their husbands on nuptial night with an intact hymen. The Chinese invented device costs just US $ 30. It is indeed worth buying.

  The artificial virginity kit is marketed by Gigimo, a Chinese company. When inserted, it emits a blood like fluid that the husbands believe to be the proof of virginity before copulating with the bride. In a conservative society like the ones in the Orient and the Middle East, the artificial virginity kit is likely to be sold like hot cakes among the fair sex who now feel sexually liberated.

  Nowadays, many women like to experiment in bed with a boy friend or, in some cases in a one night stand. Their virginity, however, is lost and the broken hymen bears testimony to it. The conservative males are not yet prepared to accept a bride on a nuptial night who had had pre-marital sex. The new kit is an answer to this vexing question.

  The male-dominated society in the Middle-east has, however, raised a hue and cry against the Chinese invented kit. The opinions expressed by them and carried by the Arabic press pointedly say that the new device will increase promiscuity in the conservative society. Thus the traditional values will go down the drain.

  They claim that wives who get used to playing deception on husbands may enlarge the area of cheating on their husbands. Where will the moral values go? The female lobby has not yet openly favoured the freedom to buy or not to buy the aforesaid kit. Should they do so, they are likely to be pointed as women of loose morals. Generally speaking, the male lobby is vociferous and the female defence is too feeble to withstand this male onslaught.

  Is the male who becomes the bridegroom as pure as fresh snow? You never can tell. In this respect, our Maker did not put a physical device to test the virginity of a man. Thus the male, after committing a thousand sins goes scot free. No stigma is attached to him and no proof lingers on to bother him except his own conscience, if he has one.

  The male society may be educated on the subject so that they practise perfect equality between men and women in matters of pre-marital sex. It will be dream come true. The Chinese inventors will, however, lament the thought of equality of this kind permeating the fabric of a conservative society. Then their business of such kits will bomb and the conservative world will laugh at them.

• Chand Osmani

  January 7, 2013 2:57 am

  Reply

  Hello

  Hymen repair and a prettier vagina:
  These are changing times, right! The emancipation of women has made them strong, fearless, and courageous. We forge forward to go where no woman has gone before and we play on the same grounds that were once the exclusive preserve of men. We are strong, beautiful and confident and we believe that sexual attraction should be followed through. Sex before marriage is perfectly fine and woe to any man or women or even society pundits who dare to tell us otherwise. We are in a modern world where women are in everyway equal to men.

  Wrong! These may be modern times but we still have an ancient mindset. Women might have forged forward but the men are still languishing behind. Women may be sexually emancipated but ancient beliefs of virginity are still around and hold strong. Men from any generation are still the same and will remain the same. The very idea of having a virgin blushing bride that comes untouched to the marital bed can still be a huge turn on for any man, whether he is sexually experienced or not. This disproportion in the male: female perception of sex before marriage is now causing a huge uproar in the media. And the main outrage is whether women should conceal the fact that they have had sex before marriage, and then get their hymen repaired to “fool” men into thinking they have virgin brides!

  What is the hymen? What does it do?

  It’s a fact that the female reproductive system is located very near to the outside of the body. The vagina is a self cleansing organ but it leads to an internal tube called the vaginal canal that ends in the uterus. The vaginal canal can be about five to six inches long and there are very good chances that an errant bacteria sitting on toilet bowls or contaminated tampons will swim upwards causing infections of the uterus. For women getting frequent infections of the urinary tract and the neck of the cervix can be really painful and uncomfortable. Frequent vaginal discharge, aches and pains, fevers and even spotty blood in the vagina is a common sign of a uterine infection. As a result, to protect the female reproductive system, nature naturally provided the vaginal canal with a so called gate called the hymen. This was a small strip or veil of tissue that covered the opening of the vaginal canal. But every woman is unique. Just as you would find women with blond hair and brunette hair, there are very good chances that female children will be born without a hymen or half a hymen. Similarly women who have active physical lives like horse riding, bicycling, and who use tampons can have their hymens prematurely ruptured due to the vigorous activity. The appearance of the hymen is also very different as you look at the following picture

  Medically speaking

  There is no reason to assume that an intact hymen indicates a virgin. Hymens can vary in size, shape and thickness and a few female children are born without any hymen at all. Each different appearance is given a particular like an annular hymen, a septate hymen, ring hymen etc. It’s not possible for a hymen to completely cover the vaginal canal as menstrual fluid has to leak out through the same opening. There are rare cases where a completely covered vaginal opening due to a thick and complete hymen can block the vaginal canal. The woman will find it difficult to pass urine, evacuate menstrual fluids, wear a tampon and even have penetrative sex. It might be necessary to have a physician to manually cut the hymen open but this is rare.

  Cultural significance of an intact hymen

  Since ancient times, the presence of the hymen was essential to prove the virginity of the bride before marriage. An intact hymen was checked for by a neutral party before marriage to ensure that the bride was not a pig in a poke! And the process is still done by a few cultures till date. Mother of the bride and the mother-in-law get together to confirm that the groom is getting prime untouched marital beef! And god forbid, if the hymen appears to be broken. Honor killings both on the bride’s side and by the groom’s side are still very common in countries like India and Pakistan. Other cultures that have a strong insistence of the presence of an intact hymen are Muslims from Indonesia, Arabia, and Malaysia.

  The focus has always been on marrying a woman who is sexually pure for her husband. And this fact was reinforced by a French court in the northern city of Lille. The court had to annul a 2006 marriage between two French Muslims when the groom discovered on his nuptial night that the bride was not a virgin. He climbed off the nuptial bed and went out to the still partying wedding guests to announce the fact and the bride was delivered right then and there back to her parents doorstep! And the horror of the fact was that the man was a French national, with an engineer’s degree aged about 30 with considerable sexual experience of his own as the tabloids later discovered! According to sociologists, countries that focus on virginity usually are underdeveloped and have limited resources, the people are poor and clan systems are very strong. To assure the family that any progeny is purely from the same clan, marrying a virgin is purely crucial. After all, they cannot afford or access DNA testing and they will not be fooled into to supporting another mans child!

  Why so much uproar about such an itty-bitty tissue?

  The French courts ruling surprised the entire country at the time. When it can be possible for the court to rule that the loss of the hymen was a breach of contract as the groom had agreed to the marriage because he was told that the woman was single and chaste! The ruling aptly demonstrated the current zeitgeist of the times: the paramount importance of religion into daily life, the insistence of certain cultures for virgin brides for marriage and the inequality of the sexes as related to premarital sex!

  Says Zubeidaa Halleem,“I have been studying in the US for the last ten years and the culture here is very different! I fell in love with this fellow student and we followed up our relationship with a sexual relationship too. At the time, even though my family was very orthodox and they did not know about him, I had decided that this man would be my life partner so it did not really matter. But eventually, we broke up. My family has fixed my marriage with a man back in Morocco and I will have to do something. If it means surgery then so be it! Earlier it was possible to fool a man by dropping a few drops of blood on the wedding sheets and tying up pubic hair into knots to simulate a difficult penetration…but it’s not that easy now.” And her practical attitude just demonstrates is the current attitude towards women who do have sex before marriage. Arab women or Muslim women (not the only minority who opts for the surgery) often travel long distances and give fake names and addresses to carry out the 20 minute surgery that can cost anywhere from $400- $1000. And the sad fact is that they think is an entirely justifiable expense.

  What does the surgery of hymen repair entail?

  A hymen repair surgery is just one method of making a fake hymen at the opening of the vaginal canal. The entire process takes about ten minutes and the cost of the procedure can vary according to what else you want to include in the surgery. A few women ask only for a hymenorraphy where the hymen is recreated by stitching the remnants together. Surgeons also offer an option of inserting a gelatin filled delicate capsule that is filled with blood like material that will be released on penetration. A new hymen can also be built by the doctor by taking tissues from the vaginal wall. But the only drawback with the process is that most doctors agree that hymenorraphy is not taught in medical colleges and it can be a risky procedure if not done properly. The process was first tried by am American doctor called Dr David Matlock who then trained a handful of others in the same process. Most patients are also advised no sex and no physical exercise for six to ten weeks after the procedure till healing is complete. Of course the price of the surgery will also vary with costs ranging from $1000-$2000 in the US and ranging to as low as $700 in countries that encourage medical tourism. Countries like China and Korea encourage hymen reconstruction and offer as much as a 50% discount for students and women who want to look their best.

  Bottom line is…..

  It’s sad but it’s a fact. When you have everything to lose in the form of loving family, a potentially wealthy husband who will care and love you and a happily married life; a single hymen seems to weight very less against it! If you can afford it and if it reassures your potential partner then no one has the right to tell you what to do. No one needs to know and you don’t need to tell your husband about it. You can even ask your doctor to expunge the surgery from medical records. All you have to do is make sure no one finds out about it.

  Is it just women who want to fool potential husbands who are doing the surgery?

  No its not! Surprisingly there is another category of woman who voluntarily does the procedure without any fear of reprisals! If there are thousands of modem Muslim women students getting the hymen repair done to assure their husbands of their purity; then there are an equally large number of women doing the surgery as a gift to their husbands and partners after several years of marriage! That’s right! Prettification or beautification of the vagina, repair of the hymen and tightening of the vaginal canal are just a few of the procedures that are being opted for by women in their late 30s as anniversary or second honeymoon gifts for their husband.

  What does prettification of the vagina mean!!!

  Just what it says! Doctors and surgeons can pull, tweak, bleach and clean up your privates to make them look as pretty as possible just like a little hair peach. A few doctors have stated that reducing the size of the labia, polishing up the internals and building up a hymen are just a few of the procures that wealthy married women are going in for to make their men happy. Women are willing to be revirginsed ten years into their marriage just to keep the sparkle alive with second honeymoons. Hymenoplastys, hymenorraphy, vaginal rejuvenation, labioplasty were a few of the techniques that have been opted for and they seem to have increased in popularity over the last few years. Recreational hymenorraphy is now a trend with the regular advertising appearing at the back of women’s magazines and costs dropping to about $1,000. Medical tourism has also got into the act with countries like China, Hong Kong and Thailand offering a tour and a package deal where they offer surgery, plus travel and a second honeymoon.

  Is it a fad?

  Prettification can work but it just seems to be another shallow depth that society women are drooping to. For women who have had multiple pregnancies and now experience problems like loose vaginal canals, urinary incontinence and other problems; tightening up the vaginal canal is an essential operation that is very necessary for pelvic health. Just carrying out the surgery to zing up marriage is really nonsense! But hey, its your money and your life.

• Chand Osmani

  January 7, 2013 2:56 am

  Reply

  ymen repair and a prettier vagina: the current zeitgeist?
  by Baba
  These are changing times, right! The emancipation of women has made them strong, fearless, and courageous. We forge forward to go where no woman has gone before and we play on the same grounds that were once the exclusive preserve of men. We are strong, beautiful and confident and we believe that sexual attraction should be followed through. Sex before marriage is perfectly fine and woe to any man or women or even society pundits who dare to tell us otherwise. We are in a modern world where women are in everyway equal to men.

  Wrong! These may be modern times but we still have an ancient mindset. Women might have forged forward but the men are still languishing behind. Women may be sexually emancipated but ancient beliefs of virginity are still around and hold strong. Men from any generation are still the same and will remain the same. The very idea of having a virgin blushing bride that comes untouched to the marital bed can still be a huge turn on for any man, whether he is sexually experienced or not. This disproportion in the male: female perception of sex before marriage is now causing a huge uproar in the media. And the main outrage is whether women should conceal the fact that they have had sex before marriage, and then get their hymen repaired to “fool” men into thinking they have virgin brides!

  What is the hymen? What does it do?

  It’s a fact that the female reproductive system is located very near to the outside of the body. The vagina is a self cleansing organ but it leads to an internal tube called the vaginal canal that ends in the uterus. The vaginal canal can be about five to six inches long and there are very good chances that an errant bacteria sitting on toilet bowls or contaminated tampons will swim upwards causing infections of the uterus. For women getting frequent infections of the urinary tract and the neck of the cervix can be really painful and uncomfortable. Frequent vaginal discharge, aches and pains, fevers and even spotty blood in the vagina is a common sign of a uterine infection. As a result, to protect the female reproductive system, nature naturally provided the vaginal canal with a so called gate called the hymen. This was a small strip or veil of tissue that covered the opening of the vaginal canal. But every woman is unique. Just as you would find women with blond hair and brunette hair, there are very good chances that female children will be born without a hymen or half a hymen. Similarly women who have active physical lives like horse riding, bicycling, and who use tampons can have their hymens prematurely ruptured due to the vigorous activity. The appearance of the hymen is also very different as you look at the following picture

  Medically speaking

  There is no reason to assume that an intact hymen indicates a virgin. Hymens can vary in size, shape and thickness and a few female children are born without any hymen at all. Each different appearance is given a particular like an annular hymen, a septate hymen, ring hymen etc. It’s not possible for a hymen to completely cover the vaginal canal as menstrual fluid has to leak out through the same opening. There are rare cases where a completely covered vaginal opening due to a thick and complete hymen can block the vaginal canal. The woman will find it difficult to pass urine, evacuate menstrual fluids, wear a tampon and even have penetrative sex. It might be necessary to have a physician to manually cut the hymen open but this is rare.

  Cultural significance of an intact hymen

  Since ancient times, the presence of the hymen was essential to prove the virginity of the bride before marriage. An intact hymen was checked for by a neutral party before marriage to ensure that the bride was not a pig in a poke! And the process is still done by a few cultures till date. Mother of the bride and the mother-in-law get together to confirm that the groom is getting prime untouched marital beef! And god forbid, if the hymen appears to be broken. Honor killings both on the bride’s side and by the groom’s side are still very common in countries like India and Pakistan. Other cultures that have a strong insistence of the presence of an intact hymen are Muslims from Indonesia, Arabia, and Malaysia.

  The focus has always been on marrying a woman who is sexually pure for her husband. And this fact was reinforced by a French court in the northern city of Lille. The court had to annul a 2006 marriage between two French Muslims when the groom discovered on his nuptial night that the bride was not a virgin. He climbed off the nuptial bed and went out to the still partying wedding guests to announce the fact and the bride was delivered right then and there back to her parents doorstep! And the horror of the fact was that the man was a French national, with an engineer’s degree aged about 30 with considerable sexual experience of his own as the tabloids later discovered! According to sociologists, countries that focus on virginity usually are underdeveloped and have limited resources, the people are poor and clan systems are very strong. To assure the family that any progeny is purely from the same clan, marrying a virgin is purely crucial. After all, they cannot afford or access DNA testing and they will not be fooled into to supporting another mans child!

  Why so much uproar about such an itty-bitty tissue?

  The French courts ruling surprised the entire country at the time. When it can be possible for the court to rule that the loss of the hymen was a breach of contract as the groom had agreed to the marriage because he was told that the woman was single and chaste! The ruling aptly demonstrated the current zeitgeist of the times: the paramount importance of religion into daily life, the insistence of certain cultures for virgin brides for marriage and the inequality of the sexes as related to premarital sex!

  Says Zubeidaa Halleem,“I have been studying in the US for the last ten years and the culture here is very different! I fell in love with this fellow student and we followed up our relationship with a sexual relationship too. At the time, even though my family was very orthodox and they did not know about him, I had decided that this man would be my life partner so it did not really matter. But eventually, we broke up. My family has fixed my marriage with a man back in Morocco and I will have to do something. If it means surgery then so be it! Earlier it was possible to fool a man by dropping a few drops of blood on the wedding sheets and tying up pubic hair into knots to simulate a difficult penetration…but it’s not that easy now.” And her practical attitude just demonstrates is the current attitude towards women who do have sex before marriage. Arab women or Muslim women (not the only minority who opts for the surgery) often travel long distances and give fake names and addresses to carry out the 20 minute surgery that can cost anywhere from $400- $1000. And the sad fact is that they think is an entirely justifiable expense.

  What does the surgery of hymen repair entail?

  A hymen repair surgery is just one method of making a fake hymen at the opening of the vaginal canal. The entire process takes about ten minutes and the cost of the procedure can vary according to what else you want to include in the surgery. A few women ask only for a hymenorraphy where the hymen is recreated by stitching the remnants together. Surgeons also offer an option of inserting a gelatin filled delicate capsule that is filled with blood like material that will be released on penetration. A new hymen can also be built by the doctor by taking tissues from the vaginal wall. But the only drawback with the process is that most doctors agree that hymenorraphy is not taught in medical colleges and it can be a risky procedure if not done properly. The process was first tried by am American doctor called Dr David Matlock who then trained a handful of others in the same process. Most patients are also advised no sex and no physical exercise for six to ten weeks after the procedure till healing is complete. Of course the price of the surgery will also vary with costs ranging from $1000-$2000 in the US and ranging to as low as $700 in countries that encourage medical tourism. Countries like China and Korea encourage hymen reconstruction and offer as much as a 50% discount for students and women who want to look their best.

  Bottom line is…..

  It’s sad but it’s a fact. When you have everything to lose in the form of loving family, a potentially wealthy husband who will care and love you and a happily married life; a single hymen seems to weight very less against it! If you can afford it and if it reassures your potential partner then no one has the right to tell you what to do. No one needs to know and you don’t need to tell your husband about it. You can even ask your doctor to expunge the surgery from medical records. All you have to do is make sure no one finds out about it.

  Is it just women who want to fool potential husbands who are doing the surgery?

  No its not! Surprisingly there is another category of woman who voluntarily does the procedure without any fear of reprisals! If there are thousands of modem Muslim women students getting the hymen repair done to assure their husbands of their purity; then there are an equally large number of women doing the surgery as a gift to their husbands and partners after several years of marriage! That’s right! Prettification or beautification of the vagina, repair of the hymen and tightening of the vaginal canal are just a few of the procedures that are being opted for by women in their late 30s as anniversary or second honeymoon gifts for their husband.

  What does prettification of the vagina mean!!!

  Just what it says! Doctors and surgeons can pull, tweak, bleach and clean up your privates to make them look as pretty as possible just like a little hair peach. A few doctors have stated that reducing the size of the labia, polishing up the internals and building up a hymen are just a few of the procures that wealthy married women are going in for to make their men happy. Women are willing to be revirginsed ten years into their marriage just to keep the sparkle alive with second honeymoons. Hymenoplastys, hymenorraphy, vaginal rejuvenation, labioplasty were a few of the techniques that have been opted for and they seem to have increased in popularity over the last few years. Recreational hymenorraphy is now a trend with the regular advertising appearing at the back of women’s magazines and costs dropping to about $1,000. Medical tourism has also got into the act with countries like China, Hong Kong and Thailand offering a tour and a package deal where they offer surgery, plus travel and a second honeymoon.

  Is it a fad?

  Prettification can work but it just seems to be another shallow depth that society women are drooping to. For women who have had multiple pregnancies and now experience problems like loose vaginal canals, urinary incontinence and other problems; tightening up the vaginal canal is an essential operation that is very necessary for pelvic health. Just carrying out the surgery to zing up marriage is really nonsense! But hey, its your money and your life.

• Sahila

  January 7, 2013 2:37 am

  Reply

  Hello Admn./Satyen,

  I dont see your valuable comments on this blog here, why?
  Seeking only views of muslim sisters only, without your observations and suggestions?

  In all most all blogs you both have been contributing a lot.

  Similarly no comments from both of you, on the Islamic Women today, blog?
  Why, are you afraid of Balshphemy case from fundamentalists?

  Please respond.

• Sahila

  January 5, 2013 2:26 am

  Reply

  Hello every body,

  Previsouly from Iran but presently born and brought up in Canada and also studied in coeducation pattern here. I am 27 years old and working girl in Toronto. During my study , I got in touch with several boy friends and enjoyed premarital sex frequently, loosing my virginity at 18years old, since I was greatly impressed by canadian life style and deadly against muslim restrictions on females, as I obvserved in case of my mother since childhood. My parents wanted me to marry my own cousin haling from Iran also but settled here.

  I happened to talk to him on various issues and came to know that he wanted a virgin wife, whereas he was married earlier and divorced his wife. I told him frankly when you are not virgin, how can think of a virgin wife? His mother came to know about this argument and one day came to me and asked me whether I was virgin or not? I told her that I shall marry only a virgin husband not your son. Ultimately relationship for future broke. Now I am marrying a Hindu boy, who knows every thing about me and working my company also.

  My purpose to write all these things is just to make aware our sisters not to marry such muslim guys who are not virgin themselves but need a virgin wife. We should oppose such discriminatory mind set of islamic religion.

  IN MY VIEW HYMEN REPAIR SURGERY IS A BOON FOR MUSLIM GIRLS OTHERWISE THEIR EXISTENCE SHALL COME TO AN END. IF MALES CAN CHEAT, FEMALE MUST CHEAT. TIT FOR TAT.

  Respond to Sahila at https://www.interfaithshaadi.org/?p=4012

• Nazneen

  January 3, 2013 5:16 am

  Reply

  zneen says: January 3, 2013 at 5:13 am
  Hello Admn.

  I am attempting to reply your points raised for discussion in the beginning?

  1. Premarital sex is a crime or not, it all depends on the situation. If an innocent girl is raped or forced to sexual favour due to her some miserable situation, how it could be a crime. In the muslim community raping a slave girl or non muslim is not a crime. In todays free environment hardly 2% girls will not be virgin before wedding night atleast in western countries or talibani dominated areas, where rape is a matter of routine events.

  2.Mailes are not required to prove their virginity because of male dominated society almost every where, and the sexual organ having different shapes and sizes. In muslim community atleast male does not need to prove it because of privileges given in Koran, to marry 4 wives or give them talak, if not satisfied. Males have complete freedom in islam treating them just like a sex dolls.

  But such discrimination cannot be permitted in the eyes of Lord, who have created both male and female. Inspite of so much cruelty, discrimination, violence sexual assault no body dares to speak against Islam.

  3. Hymen bleeding is not a 100% proof of virginity now a days due to option of hymen repair surgery available in all countries. Even if bleeding occurs, even then wives are given divorce in search of another women for sex. In muslim community restrictions are so much, that sense of insecurity among wives are prevailing. Regarding sports to the girls, it cannot be stopped. Girls are recruited in army and police too, doing drill and physical exercises even in muslim countries, leading to breaking of hymen at times. Girls are participating in international tournaments of all types, so principle of equality does not permit to deny their rightful privileges.

  4.The blood stains are considered to be proof of virginity in a girl, who has not indulged in a sex prior to marriage and she is pure.
  Only due to this factor, the girls who can afford to go for surgery, they choose to do so and please their husband about her purity. But the poor girls who cannot afford it, they adopt other methods, like secretly sprinkling red ink or other red liquid on the bed sheet on the wedding night, as one of our sisters had pointed putting animal blood stains on the bed sheet. In muslim countries the business of hymen repair surgery is flourishing manifold, as the girls are not able to be keep their hymen intact prior to marriage due to one or other reasons.

  5. This practice is more prevalent in muslim community being the mind set of males and Koran. Even Jihadies are offered to get 72 virgins in the heaven. Muslim males want their wives to be virgin and self indulging sexual games with hundreds of other women. It is all evils of islamic religion, where women have no say, they are just fields, to be ploughed like any thing. Mullas and Maulvies/Imams are the most curel and corrupt elements of the muslim society preaching male domination and indulging sexual favours with any female, whom they like.

  6.For all evils in Islam, Koran, Prophet Mohammad and Sharia laws are responsible, who proclaim the orders of Allah? Can a God be so cruel against females? Imam/Mullas/Maulvies always interpret laws which suits to the males. Females in the islamic community has to lead a very miserable life under restrictions, torture, domestic violence and separation at any time. Islam is a relgion of blood shed, violence, murder, rape, looting, killing, kidnapping in the name of religion for thousand of years. Now Talibani, Al Quaida and other terrorists factions insisting for islamic rules in the world, so that they can enjoy sexual pleasure freely and commit attrocities on the females.
  EVEN IN SOME COUNTRIES SEX WITH DEAD WIFE IS PERMISSIBLE, WHAT A INHUMAN ACT?

  7. Solution for these evils lies on the muslim women by:-

  (i) raising their voice against cruelties,
  (ii) take support from non muslim women,
  (iii) mass education programme for muslim girls,
  (iv) openly resist implementation of inhuman practices like circumcision among females, talak procedue to be made more rational and not at the will of the male.
  (v) Hymen repair surgery equally good for women, if the males can cheat the females, why not females to react in the same pattern?
  (vi) representation of women in all forums to voice their concern?

  May kindly give your views also.

  Also ask Aamir and other like minded persons, who are keeping silent for some time, to give their comments on this issue.

  Thanks.

• Jafreen

  January 2, 2013 7:43 am

  Reply

  ore About:surgery for womenhuman interest
  Hymen reconstruction, a surgery that repairs a hymen that is no longer intact, is controversial but that doesn’t stop more and more women from having it done.

  The hymen is a tissue in vagina that tears and bleeds when one has sex for the first time. The hymen can also be “broken” by strenuous exercise, the use of tampons and other activity can cause the membrane to tear.

  So what does it matter? Who cares if the hymen is intact or not? Well, in some cultures, men do. In cultures where virginity is highly prized, it matters a great deal if the hymen is intact and if there is bleeding on the wedding night. It may be an old fashioned way of thinking, but some men expect their bride to be a virgin and there can be extreme consequences in some countries.

  Rather than stay a virgin, women are opting to experience sex before marriage, then have the hymen reconstructed. The surgery isn’t terribly expensive, around $800 in China, where it is becoming more common. Muslim countries also have a large number of women seeking the procedure.

  More about hymen reconstruction surgery, and one man’s explaination of why women are “like cell phones” and why his future wife should be a virgin?

  Respond
  Zeenat says: January 2, 2013 at 7:22 am
  Hello Muslim sisters,

  Dont worry about loss of virginity before wedding night.

  Hymenoplasty in Thailand is a viable option for women who wish to appear chaste before marriage or want to recapture the first intercourse experience. Those who want to save considerably and remain discreet about their hymen repair should consider virginity surgery in Thailand.

  Hymen repair surgery in Thailand is available at a lower price than in First World countries, such as the US, the UK, and Australia, because of the lower cost of living. However, the affordable prices of cosmetic surgeries such as sex change and laser vaginal rejuvenation in Thailand does in no way imply compromising the quality of the surgery you will be receiving—the reputable Bangkok plastic surgeons have undergone rigorous medical training and are compassionate to the needs of medical tourists.

  Besides the low prices and quality surgery, the popularity of Thailand’s tourist activities also attracts numerous foreign patients from all over the world. According to the article “The effects of medical tourism: Thailand’s experience,” by Anchana NaRanong and Viroj NaRanong published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization on September 22nd, 2009, Thailand provided medical services to as many as 1.4 million foreign patients in 2007.

  Hymen Repair – How It’s Done?

  During the procedure, your surgeon will numb the area with a local anesthetic. The edges of the previously torn hymen will be brought together to re-form the small ring as it was originally.
  The surgery is not recommended for women who have had vaginal deliveries or who have been pregnant.
  After the surgery, the “revirginized” hymen will bleed and tear during sexual intercourse as it would prior to any sexual relations.
  Hymenoplasty takes about one hour to perform.
  The recovery period typically takes about two months. Patients should not exercise or do any strenuous activities (including sexual intercourse) for the first couple of weeks after the surgery. Patients can usually go back to work after one week.

  Advantages of Hymenoplasty in Thailand

  One does not have to worry about going over his/her budget, as the hymen repair cost in Thailand is much lower than in the United States, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and other European countries and Australia.
  With medical tourism in Thailand on the rise, the country’s doctors and hospital staff know how to make foreign patients feel welcome. The leading plastic surgery hospitals in Bangkok are replete with all the modern facilities and equipment. Additionally, English-speaking hospital staff and multilingual translators make communication between the patient and the doctor a breeze.
  Getting hymen reconstruction surgery in Thailand allows you to be discreet about your hymen repair. You can simply tell friends and family members that you are flying out for a vacation so they will not know you will be undergoing hymen repair in Thailand.
  You will be in good hands during your virginity restoration surgery in Thailand, as there are numerous JCI-accredited hospitals in the Southeast Asian country.
  If you have been considering other aesthetic procedures besides hymen repair surgery in Bangkok, now is the time to do it. Obtaining procedures such as a nose job or fat transfer in Thailand along with your hymenoplasty will help you save considerably.

  Things to Consider Before Undergoing Revirgination in Thailand

  While an affordable hymenoplasty cost in Thailand is important, patients should take care not to let price be the only factor in their decision. Making sure that the hospital is reputable and the surgeon is board-certified is crucial to getting the desired results.
  When considering hymenorrhaphy in Thailand, it is important to plan out your mode of transportation.
  Whether obtaining hymenoplasty or buttock implants in Thailand, it is important that you research your doctor and hospital of choice thoroughly before traveling to Thailand. You may want to look at before and after pictures, patient feedback, and online forums.
  The best time to visit Thailand is November through February.

  Undergoing a hymenoplasty in Thailand is a great way to save on costs while obtaining high quality surgery. And during your stay to avail hymenoplasty in Bangkok, you would love being able to indulge in the city’s various sightseeing activities as you recover.

  Respond
  Golbahar says: January 2, 2013 at 6:07 am
  Hello readers,

  In my opinion, when both male and female are creation of almighty, if the male can enjoy premarital sex with out proving their virginity for marriage, if the females enjoy premarital sex and get their hymen repaired for wedding night, what is the harm? Females have right to equally satisfy their physical requirement at a time, when they need from the male whom they prefer.

  It is really a boon for females to get their hymen repaired for marriage to teach lessons to the males. Due to present libral environment and socail net working sites including sexual chattings, the courage for early sex has arisen among teenagers and they enjoy many times before being married. The cases of hymen repair surgeries through out the world particularly among muslim females have increased many times and such center and clinics are earning a lot.

  Respond
  Farzana says: January 2, 2013 at 5:48 am
  Hello Tiger,

  But in fact a jackal.

  Who is responsible for the present condition of females in Islam?

  According to Islamic culture Muslim girls must be virgin when they enter a marriage. For girls who had not succeeded in doing so, the wedding night hangs like the sword of Damocles above their head. A hymen repairs operation offers a way out. “I’ll do everything, if only I’ll bleed.”

  “I was greatly relieved when I was after it.” Yasmina (22) from Rotterdam sits on a bench in Zuiderpark. She wears jeans with a leather jacket and big silver earrings hang from her ears. After thinking and weighing it for a long time, Yamina had finally promised to talk about one of the great taboos in the Islamic community: the hymen repair operation.

  Yasmina: “I was 19 and head over heels in love with with a boy at school. He was also Muslim and when he heard from my girlfriends that I though he was nice, we started talking. My girlfriends warned me that I should still look out because he was known as a player, but I was too in love to listen. More than that he told me I was the one. Exactly three months after I went out with him it happened. He swore to stay by me, but when I called him up the following day he broke it off.”

  At that moment Yasmina realized that she would never be a virgin when she married. “I felt terrible. Not being a virgin before marriage is one of the greatest sins in Islam. My mother always told me in the past that girls who gave away their virginity will never marry. I really wanted to get married and out of fear kept silent.” Three years later, when Yasmina was ready to get married, the panic began anew. “My fiance made no secret of the fact that he thought it very important that I was still a virgin. I was then also terrified of what he would do if I didn’t bleed. Probably he would immediately separate from me. By chance I happened on the internet on a clinic that offered hymen repair operations. At that moment it seemed to me the perfect solution. A couple of days ago I had the operation and next week I’ll be married. I know that I can’t erase the past, but the hymen repair operation made me in any case a virgin again.”

  Yasmina is one of the hundreds of girls in the Netherlands who go through a hymen repair operation annually. The operation is especially popular by Muslim girls of Turkish, Moroccan and Hindu origins. In this group there’s often enormous obscurity about the hymen. The girls are raised with the idea that the hymen is a type of glass membrane that closes the vagina and which only lets the menstrual blood flow through. During the wedding night this membrane is perforated and the girl bleeds. In many North-African countries it is even usual on the following day to show the bloodied sheets to the family. When a girl is no longer a virgin, she is repudiated according to tradition. In the Netherlands, despite the present time, this tradition is persistently held on to. Girls who lose their virginity without marriage go into complete panic.

  Wies Obdeijn- Van Welij, doctor and sexologist, gets 50 girls a year who beg for a new hymen. “Most girls who come here still think that they must bleed when they lose their virginity.”

  “In the past maybe it was so that in the Islamic culture certainly 90% of the girls bled during the wedding night. But this happened mainly because they married very young and through marrying off still barely knew their partner. Because of the nerves there wasn’t a state of arousal and that resulted in bleeding. Today certainly 40% of the girls don’t bleed during the first time. Also the hymen is not a film that must be pierced but barely a bordering tissue.”

  However many girls decide to go through the repair operation. Obdeijn- Van Welij: “The idea of bleeding is often held so deeply that they barely believe anything else. They just want most of all to bleed during the wedding night. As the tradition prescribes. An operation can take care of that. During the operation we pull the edges of the hymen more tightly so that the girl almost certainly will bleed. When they’re done with it, they often go home happily. Virginity is strongly connected by these girls to the hymen.” If it’s intact, it means they’re virgins.

  Saida (25), from Amsterdam, had a hymen repair operation two years ago. She sits in a station restaurant in The Hague because she is afraid to be recognized in her own neighborhood. “Though every Muslim knows it happens, nobody talks about it,” she says. “This is the first time that I tell about it. When I was seventeen I lost my virginity. It was a boy from class with whom I had a courtship at that time. Naturally I felt very guilty afterwards, but my fear began just when I was about to be married. At any cost bleed during the wedding night. I didn’t want my husband to be disappointed and also though even as a virgin you don’t have to bleed, my husband would never understand that. Above all, I had no interest in difficult talks during my marriage. It had to be perfect. Therefore I had a hymen repair operation. The wedding night was perfect. I bled and my husband was completely happy.”

  However the operation is disputed. Many gynecologists refuse to perform the operation because it upholds the myth regarding the hymen. Ineke of Seumere is a gynecologist at the UMC in Utrecht and performs the operation only rarely and on exceptional indications. When we support the idea that a virgin must bleed during the wedding night nothing will ever change. Not only do we agree that a virgin must bleed, we also help to keep the tradition. A tradition that according to Seumeren is full of contradictions. Isn’t it strange that a man may have sexual intercourse before marriage but demand a virgin? Therefore I get girls repeatedly that have used anti-conceptions for years, and now they want a quick restoration before their marriage.

  Obdeijn-Van Welij agrees with the gynecologist’s story. “There are even girls who come to me that are yet plainly virgin and want to make sure that they bleed. But I think that it’s not up to use to change the tradition. You shouldn’t forget that these girls are a second generation of guest workers. They are girls that have enormous double feelings. On the one hand they grow up in the free Netherlands. On the other hand they don’t want to disappoint their parents. I think that the situation will change by itself. Till that time, I will attend girls as well as I can. That’s what I’m a doctor for.”

  Yasmina is not worrying anymore about her wedding night. “Through the operation my problem has been solved. My husband will tear my hymen, and I will bleed for him. May be feeling proud of him.

  Respond
  Tiger says: January 1, 2013 at 2:25 pm
  Ye Admin

  Bhain ka lauda, is ki Amma ku jab

  100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 kutte (Dogs) and

  100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Ghade (Donkeys)

  100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Suwar (Pigs)

  and every of this animals

  100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 times Fxxxed her Mother,

  jab jaaker ye Kutta, Ghadha, Suwar Paida hua hy,

  Isiliye aise website banaya hy.

  Jab jaaker

  Respond
  admin says: January 1, 2013 at 2:35 pm
  Tiger,

  Can you guide what Saina should do now? She is confused about Islam and need your guidance. Can you ask other Islamic experts to come and guide Saina?

  Why you are blaming this web site? If not this web site, Saina would have said this at other web site. Important point is to guide Saina to a right path and all are welcomed to share their own views.

  We recommended her to focus on good education now, is that a good advise? What would you say?

  Respond
  Shejadi says: January 1, 2013 at 4:52 am
  Nice advice given by Saimah.

  Saina you should act as per advice given by Saimah and need not to worry about Imam. Imam will never tell truth, as they are interested in enjoying their life with sex and cruelty on the females.

  Respond
  suma says: December 31, 2012 at 9:33 am
  There is no permanent hell or paradise in Hindu theology. One accrues karma out of one’s actions in a life time. After death one comes back in a different body and transmigrated atman (or soul) and then continues the journey with accrued karma. By the way this applies to ALL HUmans regardless of the faith one belongs to. Sadly muslims and Christians threaten the people with dire consequences like hell to those who are not christians or muslims.So you are better off believing in hindu doctrines and forget about the eternal hellfire. AS you said, all christians and muslims are abused psychologically with the hell inevitability to apostates and others. Live without fear and do only good things. So dharma-karma-moksha is the doctrinal sequential philosophy we believe in. God is not cruel to create hell for ANYBODY.Relax.

  Respond
  suma says: December 31, 2012 at 9:39 am
  learn about savage Islam by reading ‘faithfreedom.oreg’ run by Ali Sina, and further explore Nonie Darwish, Wafa sultan and Ayan Hirsi Ali. These are all educated muslims and tell you about the savage religion and savage prophet Mohammads. By the way they are all muslim men and women.Google those names.Learn the facts and take a decision.

  Respond
  Saimah says: December 31, 2012 at 2:23 am
  Hello Saina,

  You are educated and modern girl and so you need not to bother about the advice of Imam/maulvi who are most cruel and corrupt/criminal to discriminate and torture female community. They are the follower of so called Prophet, who did not spare his own grand daughter like 6 years old girl to rape at the age of 59. Be tactful, get age of maturity, look for a nice non-muslim guy, who is kind,intelligent, cooperative. Can you disclose your country right now? In Islam women are subject to so many innumerable cruelties, in security of women.

  Respond
  admin says: December 30, 2012 at 11:54 pm
  Saina,

  You are only 15 years and fully dependent on your parents now. For your personal safety, please do not talk against Islam to your boy friend (even you may think he is trust worthy), parents or to your imam. Punishment to renounce Islam is stoned to death, no kidding, they mean it.

  Further, do not mention to ANYONE about this post. Do not brag to anyone in your school. If your community finds out your opinion and views expressed on this site, you could get into deep deep trouble. This is not the right time to go public with your real identity.

  Ignore Islamic issues now, it is not a right time for you, instead fully focus your mind and time on your education.

  When ever you are frustrated, just come here and express your feeling to the world. No one will find out who you are and thus there is no harm to you. Act smart. Be carefu

• Rasheeda

  December 30, 2012 10:30 am

  Reply

  HiSisters, due to islamic traditions,the restoration of Muslim women virginity is in demand in Germany. The Muslim women in need of new, unused hymen, are mostly older, 20 to 25-years-old Muslimahs. They come from Turkey, Balkans, Iran and the Arab countries.

  The Muslim women call themselves Zeda, Aysegul, Cancun and Samar. They met anonymously on the Internet and discuss the vital issue for them: “I urgently need information on where a Muslim woman can get her hymen sewn restoration; what would it cost – please help me,” writes of them in the lifestyle and health forum. She received many responses within minutes.

  On the WWW the Muslim women can share their fears and discuss Muslim issues undisturbed. Only a few could talk about this taboo topic within the family. The loss of virginity in Muslim world is as much disgrace as unwanted pregnancy. The Muslim family honor is equated with the purity of their daughters.

  The Berlin’s family planning center receives numerous request for information on Muslim hymen restoration every week. “The demand has increased dramatically,” says Dr. Christiane Tennhardt. The woman are mostly between 20 to 25-years old and came from Turkey, Balkans, Iran and other Arab countries. “Most are not veiled and speak perfect German.”

  The parents must be presented with the bloody sheet

  Th story is the same: An Iranian woman wants to save her future husband from ‘Infamy’ and ‘disgraced woman.’ The Muslims of Kurdish persuasion present their bloody sheet to the parents after the wedding night.

  “Many of the Muslim woman have had sexual intercourse several times, then comes the wedding and the reality catches up with them.”

  It has happened that a Muslim girl has been raped by her family and then forced to prove her virginity.

  There are cases when the restoration of the Muslim hymen is the only option due to the health concerns of the Muslim woman. The human rights organization, Terre des Femmes, disagrees on the hymenorrhaphie issue.

  “The social significance of virginity is often utilized to deny women their sexual freedom and to restrict their lifestyles.”

  Dr. Teenhardt has long worked with Muslim women seeking hymen restoration. It usually turns out that the Muslim women know very little about their own bodies and sexuality. “If I tell them that hymen does not necessary guarantee bleeding, or that some Muslim girls are born without a hymen, they’re very surprised.”

  The gynecologist teaches the Muslim women how virginity can be faked.

  In cases where the Muslim woman is in great distress and afraid of deadly honor violence, the doctor is prepared to perform the outpatient surgery. “We want to prevent mental and physical suffering.” The cost is about 200 euros.

  How many thousands of hymen restoration operations are done in Europe is unknown. The demand is huge, shows the offers by plastic surgeons, some charging up to 2100 euros for the procedure.

  One advert promises: For only 24.95 Euros (including shipping) you can save your honor.

  The tips and addresses are also provided by Internet forums. “My gynecologist operates in outpatient basis and it will cost only 100 euros,” writes a Muslim woman.

  Dr, Tennhardt emphasizes that much more important than tip for doctors and cost is to tackle the issue of Muslim woman through societal shift of thinking. The young Muslim women should be encouraged to demand their right to fuck anyone, anytime, as per their choice and physical requirement generated by almighty.

• Mumtaz

  December 29, 2012 10:12 am

  Reply

  Forced marriages in Muslims

  Police in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia have intervened to prevent the forced marriage of a 13-year-old girl belonging to a Muslim immigrant family from Morocco.

  The girl was one of nine reported victims of forced marriage in Catalonia during the first six months of 2012. Seven of the reported cases involved minors, but in several instances when police were alerted, they were unable to intervene in time to prevent the marriages from taking place.

  Catalan police, known locally as Mossos d’Esquadra, have reported a cumulative total of more than 50 forced marriages involving minors since the regional government began compiling official data in 2009. Police, however, say this figure represents only “the tip of the iceberg”; many victims are unaware of their rights and most of the cases go unreported.

  The issue of forced marriage is especially acute in Catalonia, where the Muslim population has skyrocketed in recent years. Catalonia, a region with 7.5 million inhabitants, is now home to an estimated 400,000 Muslims, up from 30,000 in the 1980s.

  The Muslim population in many Catalan towns and cities now exceeds 20%; and the town of Salt, near Barcelona, where Muslim immigrants now make up 40% of the population, has been dubbed the “new Mecca of the most radical Islamism” because of efforts by Muslims to enforce Islamic Sharia law there.

  According to Catalan officials, the majority of forced marriages in Catalonia involve Muslim girls from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. The majority of the cases involve immigrants from Morocco, followed by Pakistan, Gambia, Guinea and Senegal. Marriages are often arranged with a cousin or another family member to continue the tradition, to prevent the Europeanization of the girls, or to pay outstanding debts.

  According to Catalan police, four of the cases of forced marriages during the first six months of 2012 occurred in the Catalan province of Gerona, one of the most heavily Islamized regions of Spain. Police say they were able to prevent only two of the four weddings. Three of the others occurred in the city of Barcelona, and two were within the province of Barcelona. All nine involved Muslim immigrants.

  Children, on their own initiative, have even approached the police for help. The situation involving the 13-year-old girl, for example, began in January 2012, when the girl’s mother, with whom the child had been living in Gerona, died, and the father, who was residing in neighboring France, took the girl to live with him in Toulouse.

  Once in France, the girl discovered that her father was planning to marry her off to a man in Morocco in early July. The girl alerted police in Toulouse, who transmitted the information to the Spanish consulate in the city. Spanish authorities then devised a scheme in which the girl persuaded her father to take her to Gerona on the pretext of completing some official paperwork. Once across the border in Spain, police arrested the father, and the girl was transferred to a foster home in Gerona.

  As forced marriage is not an offense under the Spanish Criminal Code, police have been trying to use other legal avenues such as pursuing crimes involving sexual assault, unlawful detention, gender violence and kidnapping. In the instance of the 13-year-old, police determined that the girl was being subjected to physical violence, and arrested the father for child abuse. But as is often happens in Spain, the judge overseeing the case ordered the father to be released from jail.

  Many reports of forced marriages of children reach police through schools: victims often confide in a trusted teacher. In one such case in 2011, police in the Barcelona suburb of L’Hospitalet arrested a 27 year old Moroccan man for forcibly marrying a minor.

  The case came to public attention after a former teacher of the girl, who lives in the same apartment complex as she, alerted the police. A subsequent investigation found that the girl’s family had taken a trip to Morocco where the child was forced to marry against her will. Once back in Spain, the girl contacted the teacher, who then called the police.

  Investigators found that the girl was being detained in her new husband’s apartment against her will and that she was a victim of rape. Once again, the judge hearing the case ordered the husband released from jail.

  In another case, a young Pakistani girl subjected to forced marriage escaped from her husband and wandered alone on the streets of Barcelona for ten days until gathering the courage to report her situation to the police.

  In some cases, the trigger for forced marriage comes when young women from Muslim immigrant families find a boyfriend in Spain and angry parents intervene. A 17-year-old girl in Gerona, for instance, was coaxed by her family to travel to her native country for a family reunion. Once there, she was forced to marry her cousin. Although she resisted because she had a boyfriend in Gerona, she relented when her family threatened to prevent her from returning to Spain if she refused to sign the marriage certificate.

  Catalan police say they prevented 21 forced marriages in 2011, 13 of which involved minors; 15 forced marriages in 2010, and 13 in 2009. They also say that in 2011, they prevented the genital mutilation of 36 girls aged between two years to 12. Most of the cases (27) occurred in the province of Barcelona, eight in Gerona and one in Lérida. In 2010, Catalan police prevented the genital mutilation of 28 girls, and in 2009, 55 genital mutilations. Catalonia accounts for 80% of the girls in Spain who are at risk of genital mutilation.

  Local police say that many Muslim girls in Catalonia live in fear of the so-called family reunion in disguise and that they often speak of friends who left Spain, but never returned

• Lubna

  December 29, 2012 7:45 am

  Reply

  Islam is a declaration of war against infidels. Islam is an ideology of WAR. The Koran is a BOOK OF WAR. Allah is a GOD OF WAR. This war is permanent until all the infidels have converted, or paid a submission tax or have been murdered. These are the ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH AS SET DOWN IN THE KORAN

  Infidels can be murdered by Muslims as an ETERNAL LAW OF ALLAH. Not only can they all be murdered but the wives and daughters of the murdered infidels can be taken as booty, raped, and then sold as slaves. Their sons can be sold into slavery. If there is any doubt as to the boy’s age of puberty – Muslims can pull down their pants and inspect their genital area for hairs. Even the slightest sign of hair growth means that these young men can be taken and beheaded. As an ETERNAL LAW OF ALLAH, Muslims can then loot and pillage the property of the murdered infidels, and must share the booty obtained from the sale of boys and women and the proceeds of looting with ALLAH. Muslims can own slaves as an ETERNAL LAW OF ALLAH. Slavery has been a central part of Islam since it’s creation by Muhammad. ALL THIS EVIL ARE THE ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH AS SET DOWN IN THE KORAN. THESE LAWS OF ALLAH ARE FOREVER. Not only that but righteous Muslims who slay and are slain murdering infidels can ascend as martyrs to the evil, sexually degenerate, depraved Islamic Paradise of eternal erections and virgins who re – generate as virgins after each sex act. THIS IS THEIR ETERNAL REWARD FOR OBEYING THESE EVIL LAWS OF ALLAH.

  Again, the above ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH allow murder, slavery, looting and pillaging and if you are killed in the process of obeying these Laws then you can ascend to a paradise of full breasted, lustrous eyed virgins to sexually molest for all eternity. ALLAH permits the raping of female slaves. As already shown in Islam – rape is not just a sexual weapon – it is a weapon of war. Having murdered the woman’s man, Muslims can now – sanctioned by ETERNAL LAWS OF ALLAH complete their final humiliation and domination of her body.

  Unlimited sex and money were powerful motivations for Muslims to grab their swords, climb on their horses and ride off into the sunset to bring war, death and destruction to the infidels.

  India paid an horrific price. The world famous historian, Will Durant has written in his Story of Civilization that “the Mohammedan conquest of India was probably the bloodiest story in history”.

  Buddhism was devastated.

  Persia’s civilization disappeared from history.

  The holocaust of slavery was imposed on large parts of black Africa. Slavery has been an integral part of Islam since its creation by Muhammad. Islam institutionalized slavery and made its existence legal and an ETERNAL LAW of ALLAH (read articles relating to slavery further in this Website). Islam was a major player in the black African slave trade – an historical fact not well known today. Also not taught is the fact that 1.5 million Europeans were taken as slaves by Muslims.

  The fact that throughout Islam’s history, this slaughter of the innocents in the worst ways imaginable, murdered in the name of and to the greater glory of God is an obscenity. The so called men of ALLAH responsible for this carnage who have – through the millenniums – for Power, Domination, and Control of society unleashed this evil deserve to be in Hell.

  To take man’s natural Concept of God, a conception of Peace and Love and Goodness – an all Wise, all merciful, all Loving God for all mankind, and turn God – by bastardizing his teachings into a murderous ALLAH (the ANTI GOD) of hate, terror, intolerance, death and destruction is one of the greatest sins that can be committed against God. Islam will remain forever a black historical stain smearing all human history.

• Afreen

  December 27, 2012 10:24 am

  Reply

  In the past, if a woman wasn’t a virgin, she would surreptitiously pour animal blood on the bed after consummating her marriage. Today, this tradition has been replaced in Macedonia with a more sophisticated ruse – hymen repair surgery. This procedure is recognized medically as plastic surgery and is easily performed, taking only thirty minutes to one hour to repair a broken hymen.

  Thinner than skin, the hymen is a fibrous, elastic membrane covering the vagina – one so delicate that it can be ruptured from vigorous physical exercise or even a fall, as well as by sexual intercourse.

  “I’m at this clinic for the second time. I have to have hymen repair surgery because if I’m not a virgin I can’t be married again. I don’t feel any pain, it’s not difficult – it’s just expensive!” – says Esma, a 19 year-old Romani girl explaining that after two previous marriages, she now wants to marry again. But the family of her third husband doesn’t want a bride who is not a virgin. After the wedding, they will wait outside the bedroom all night and ask to see if there is blood on the bed sheet. If no blood is found, the husband’s family will return the disgraced bride to her family’s home. To avoid this grave situation, a virginity test is often conducted by a doctor on the engaged woman at the request of the fiancé’s family.

  Esma will pay 400 euros ($550 USD) to repair her hymen – the equivalent of two months salary for average Macedonians – even though this procedure is forbidden by law.

  Her 16 year-old cousin Lina, has five marriages behind her, having had hymen repair surgery twice. The first surgery was performed before her first marriage, the second was done for her current marriage.

  “When I went to the gynaecologist for the first time, I was only 13 years old. The mother of my husband was with me to ask the gynaecologist if I’m a virgin or not. Because I wasn’t, she paid for the surgery. I was afraid, but I didn’t feel anything,” explains Lina. She says that she decided to get the surgery again because her new husband promised to be a good lover if she is a virgin.

  • Young Romani woman and her child in Eastern Europe. Photograph by Amy Keus •
  Both Esma and Lina are Romani Muslims, and while the majority of women in Macedonia who pursue hymen repair surgery are Muslim, young women from both of the country’s main religions (Muslim and Macedonian Orthodox) decide to have the procedure done. Muslim women are particularly pressured to have the surgery because of their religious beliefs: a woman who is not a virgin, faces potential violence and can even be in danger of being killed by her male family members in an attempt to restore the family’s honor. While Islamic law requires chastity before marriage for both men and women, men are never required to “prove” their chastity. But the practice of honor killing is determined by culture, not by religion. Because hymen plastic surgery re-establishes the appearance of virginity, these young women can potentially avoid the threat of physical violence that might otherwise occur.
  Over the last five years, large numbers of young Orthodox women in Macedonia have also begun pursuing this surgery, but for a much different reason: their lovers think that sex is better with a virgin. And while Muslim women secretly opt for the surgery, Orthodox women do so usually after discussing it with their sexual partners. This trend began when private gynaecological clinics were established in Macedonia. Before that, neither Orthodox Macedonians nor Muslims could readily have the surgery as state medical clinics strictly forbade it.

  Gynaecologists and plastic surgeons worldwide report that an increasing number of women are seeking hymen repair plastic surgery. Other religious groups such as Orthodox Jews and fundamentalist Christians are fueling an increased demand for this procedure. In the US, there is a similar demand with some women simply doing it as a way to “restore” their sex lives.

  According to June Reinisch, former director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sexuality, Gender and Reproduction, there is a long history of hymen repair, including using a needle and thread and membrane material from goats. But there are also more modern methods, the simplest of which is done by stitching together the remnants of the ruptured hymen with sutures that dissolve, and inserting gelatin capsules with fake blood that rupture during intercourse.

  In Macedonia, doctors often perform the surgery at night and their patients typically give false names, arrive in disguise and pay in cash to ensure the necessary secrecy that will save some of these women’s lives. Some travel from as far as Turkey and Western Europe to have the procedure done.

  “[A] lot of women come from Kosovo and Albania to repair the hymen and their husband or their fiancé pay without to ask for the price. They pay in cash and in euros, but they ask us for discretion,” says one gynaecologist from Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, who insists on anonymity. He says that over the last three years the number of women seeking hymen repair has skyrocketed from 10 surgeries per year to approximately 15-17 per week.

  “After the war in Kosovo women and girls came [to] Skopje and asked for fast and quality surgery. They didn’t ask [about the price]. This is the reason why the price is going down. If in the past we ask[ed] 2000 marks, today the price is between 300-400 euros ($412-550 USD),” says one Albanian gynaecologist who confirms that all the women who come to his clinic are Muslim. He explains that the price depends on the damage done to the broken hymen. A woman seeking her first surgery pays the least, but the second or third time the price is more expensive because the hymen is more damaged. One gynaecologist from Bitola, a town in western Macedonia, has repaired one woman’s hymen one hundred times! Unlike most women who seek this surgery, the woman was a Romani prostitute who always wants to be “new” for her wealthy clients.

  But even the surgery doesn’t guarantee a woman’s safety. If her partner discovers that she’s had the procedure, her safety and possibly her life can be in jeopardy. Doctors who openly advertise the procedure are receiving death threats but they continue to offer the surgery to save the lives of these women. And yet despite the good intentions of some doctors, the fact that the surgery is illegal means that many girls are putting themselves at risk. Some of the cheaper clinics that offer the procedure are not up to medical standards and their doctors often use un-sterilized equipment that leads to infection. Last year, three Romani girls who could not afford to pay top dollar at a good clinic, died after surgery

• Zakaria

  December 26, 2012 10:00 am

  Reply

  While Chinese women work to produce anything that sells and raise their country to new heights as an emerging power, Muslim women remain embroiled still in proving that their worth is more than just their virginity

  Clerics in Egypt are in a quandary. A new device made by a Chinese company threatens to make every Egyptian woman who uses it, a virgin. The “Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit” distributed by Gigimo costs about USD30 and is intended to help newly married women fool their husbands into believing that they are virgins by producing a small amount of blood-like substance during intercourse.

  The controversy began when a reporter from a Dutch radio station broadcast an Arabic translation of the Chinese advertisement for the product. Conservative members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s Parliament have since asked for a ban on the device. Prominent Egyptian scholar Abdel Moati Bayoumi said anyone who imports the device should be punished, saying “This product encourages illicit sexual relations; Islamic culture forbids these relations except within the confines of marriage.”

  The controversy over virginity and the newly-provided ability to fake it, hits at the center of questions regarding the status of women in much of the Muslim world. Questions regarding female purity hold a crucial position in evaluating the worth of a woman and negotiating marriage contracts. In Egypt itself, thousands of women undergo hymen reconstruction surgery every year to fulfill preconditions of virginity for marriage and avoid bringing shame to families.

  The practice of hymen reconstruction surgery has migrated with Arab populations to European countries like France where young Muslim women may undergo the half-hour surgery for a cost of about 2000 Euros. Others choose to go back to countries like Tunisia where they can get the surgery at lower cost. The surgery is legal in the European Union as well as in the United States where it falls in the category of elective surgery.

  While surgery itself is less common in Pakistan, women are routinely abused, tortured and even killed if they are found to be non-virgins upon being wed. In several cases, young brides have been known to commit suicide rather than risk bringing shame to their families.

  The issue of whether virginity constitutes the total worth of a woman upon marriage (rendering her otherwise unmarriageable) was dealt with recently in a courtroom in the French city of Lille where the judge initially ruled that a marriage between a Muslim man and a woman could be annulled because the bride had lied about her virginity.

  A French appeals court then took up the issue of whether virginity was “an essential quality of a woman” and ended up reversing the previous decision that had decreed lying about virginity to be grounds for fraud that would justify annulment. Of course, the outcome of the case would have been markedly different under Islamic law where deception regarding the virginity of the bride would result both in an annulment of the marriage and a repudiation of the dower.

  Expectedly, as the news clips from Egypt amply illustrate, much of the clerical debate over the device has focused on the fact that it allows women to fake and flout the theological precept prescribing a prohibition on pre-marital sexual relations. No argument is provided for the fact that the male involved may also have come to the marriage without proof of virginity, which is equally theologically culpable but less easily verified. The assumption is that women’s virginity must necessarily be verifiable hence necessitating the ban on the Chinese virginity gadget while male virginity can conveniently be glossed over.

  Equally sexist are attempts to justify the concern over women’s virginity as motivated by ensuring the sexual purity of society in general since it ignores the reality that every pre- or extra-marital heterosexual act by definition involves two parties, one male and one female, which are both equally responsible for their actions.

  The fact is, in Egypt, as in a majority of Muslim countries, the onus of protecting a society’s delusions of purity and piety are placed solely and singularly on the shoulders of women. In ensuring that virgins are venerated and non-virgins vilified, social constructions of good and bad women are enforced in a society where the value of a woman is little else than her ability to breed sons, please her husband and be a good housekeeper. The myth that is continually forwarded is that all those women who are not virgins are somehow dirty, impure and unworthy of marriage. No consideration is given to the fact that the majority of these women may be widows, divorcees or victims of sexual assault. In other words, male complicity in reducing women to a non-virgin status is completely ignored in the whole discussion.

  Because of this, thousands of widows, divorcees and rape victims in countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are forced to live lives at the very margins of social acceptability. Not only can they not expect to be married again, they are further dealt the burden of being somehow morally compromised simply because they are no longer the pure virgins venerated as brides. Examples from Islamic history that suggest otherwise, for instance, the notable fact that the first marriage of the Prophet (pbuh) was to a widow are given short shrift and virtually ignored.

  It is interesting indeed, that the device in question that provides Muslim women with some semblance of empowerment against the strictures of proving their purity has been made in China. Indeed, it brings to focus the vast disparity between nations like China, who have put their women to work and hence harnessed 51% of an unused labor force to become a manufacturing super power and countries like Pakistan and Egypt who are still squabbling over inanities that necessitate a device like the Artificial Hymen Kit.

  While Chinese women work to produce anything that sells and raise their country to new heights as an emerging power, Muslim women remain embroiled still in proving that their worth is more than just their virginity

• Razia Baig

  December 26, 2012 8:23 am

  Reply

  Hello every one,

  Female circumcision, otherwise referred to as female genital mutilation by critics, involves surgery on a young woman’s clitoris, major and minor labia, and is considered a culturally significant practice in many African countries. The practice has a longstanding history, and is said to be one of the most significant rites of passage young women undergo. This, however, does not protect it from being considered by most of the world, myself included, as a brutal, inhumane act that destroys an important aspect of female sexuality.
  Unlike male circumcision, women who undergo this procedure experience compromises in their physical and sexual health. In the most extreme form of female circumcision, referred to as infibulation, the entire clitoris and most of the major and minor labia are completely removed, often with unsterilized scissors, razor blades, and other non-surgical cutting tools. Opponents of banning this practice state that it has important religious, marital, and health benefits. These claims, however, have largely been debunked through basic sociological, anthropological, and medical knowledge.

  The first claim of this practice is that it fulfills an important religious requirement. Most of the people practicing this ritual are Muslim, however the Koran makes no mention of removing components of female genitalia. The Koran says, “Reduce, but do not destroy,” but destruction is exactly what is happening to the genitals of young women in these countries. No commands were ever made by the Prophet that women need to be circumcised. I find this ironic-religion is referenced as the number one reason, yet the religion makes no mention of female circumcision to the extent that it is being carried out. This misinterpretation has resulted in crude mutilation with minimal religious relevance.

  The second claim is that it preserves group identity. This may be true, but that is only because it is considered a cultural norm. In these patriarchal societies, women are considered inferior by many of the men if they are not circumcised. Naturally, most women have come to see this as a requirement should they ever want to wed, thus perpetuating the perceived need to undergo the procedure. I see this as an example of how male domination, and the resulting female submission, has normalized a disabling, oppressive, medically unsafe act under the guise of a rite of passage.

  The third major claim is that the procedure helps to maintain cleanliness and health. This is simply not true. Due to a lack of health education in these countries, the cause-and-effect connection is not drawn in that surgically removing components of female genitalia actually compromises health: it leads to constant infection, reproductive complications, and, in many cases, death of the woman. I understand that our health education is more comprehensive and scientifically based in the Western world than in the African countries and cultures that practice female circumcision, but when there is resistance in the presence of such facts, which have been made available to these cultures, I see it as denial and reluctance to change based on preserving tradition.

  People who practice female circumcision fail to realize that removal of one’s genitals does not eliminate sexual desire or further marriage goals through its promise of chastity-it only eliminates the ability to have an orgasm. Desire to achieve sexual satisfaction does not diminish for the woman. In fact, many women end up having multiple partners due to the inability to achieve sexual gratification. In essence, female circumcision’s Western equivalent is Abstinence-Only Education, which is largely considered a failure. Additionally, preserving family honor is not a strong enough reason to protect this act from being banned. Many cultures used to perform mercy killings of their daughters under the excuse of restoring family honor, especially in the case of infidelity or other perceived atrocities, yet this is now banned as murder is illegal worldwide. Why can’t local governments advocate for the welfare of their women and ban this act as well?

  Opponents of banning female circumcision, such as those made by P. Masila Mutisya as featured in Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Human Sexuality, argue that prohibiting this rite of passage is an example of Western cultural imperialism. I wholeheartedly disagree-protecting the welfare of humans from dangerous, disabling surgical procedures is a humanitarian responsibility. The practitioners and countries who hold this ritual as culturally significant are misinformed about what it does to the female body, as most of their claims have been debunked by science and sexual knowledge-they are not criminals; they are simply operating from a medically naive standpoint.

  Mutisya also argues that Western culture is practically devoid of all rites of passage, with the exception of marriage and death rituals. This ethnocentric response undermines the Western culture and discredits humane rites of passage. It also fails to recognize many other healthy, humane rights of passage such as first haircuts, high school and college graduation, and Coming of Age ceremonies (Unitarian Universalism). Mutisya is attempting to argue that Western people cannot relate to the importance of these African rites of passage, yet he fails to realize that almost every culture has them in some form or another.

  While I do acknowledge the important passage female circumcision represents-the transition from a girl to a woman-I believe the practice does not take into account the welfare of the women. As the author in favor of prohibition says, “We all share common goals like the desirability of promoting people’s health, happiness, opportunities, and cooperation, and the wisdom of stopping…torture and exploitation. These common goals make up a world community (Kopelman, 1994).” What she means by this is that we need to assess and address the harm this procedure is causing to young women, put culture aside, and intervene. A ban on such practices will not have the effects that Mutisya says it will-it will not break a culture apart; it will allow compensatory rituals to be decided and instated by the practicing cultures that are more humane.

  Legally and ethically, I do believe female genital mutilation should be banned, but I am aware of the cultural need to recognize a female’s coming-of-age. Though I disagree with the practice, I am not strongly opposed to the pricking of the clitoris or labia as a means of recognizing a transition from adolescence to adulthood, so long as there are not any long-term effects, and that it is performed in a sanitary manner. The complete removal of the clitoris as in type 2 and 3 circumcision, however, is abusive, unnecessary, and needs to change. I am grateful for the efforts of human rights campaigns, but I strongly believe any change short of a ban needs to come from a prominent voice within the culture as outside influences have failed thus far.

  The legacy of female circumcision is not to be revered-it is to be challenged against modern ethical principles, changing worldviews, and humanitarian movements. Even the most conservative world religions have adapted to societal changes, so there is no reason practicing cultures should continue to perform these detrimental acts in the face of well-substantiated opposition. If practitioners of infibulation knew the facts and accepted the science, they would realize that it is not only failing to accomplish the goals it was originally intended to, it is compromising the health of a very important half of their population. I believe even the most patriarchal societies care about protecting the life of their women; the argument simply needs to be repackaged in a culturally sensitive way, and come from within, so that these humanitarian efforts can prevail

• Salma Agha

  December 26, 2012 7:48 am

  Reply

  Hello sisters,

  The following is the pathetic story of a Afgan girl tortured by fundamentalists for sexual abuse and when she refused to prostitute herself or have sex with the man she was forced to marry when she was about 13, officials said, Sahar Gul’s in-laws tortured her and threw her into a dirty, windowless cellar for months until the police discovered her lying in hay and animal dung.

  In July, an appeals court upheld prison sentences of 10 years each for three of her in-laws, a decision heralded as a legal triumph underscoring the advances for women’s rights in the past decade. She is recovering from her wounds, physical and emotional, in a women’s shelter in Kabul.

  But to many rights advocates, Sahar Gul’s case, which drew attention from President Hamid Karzai and the international news media, is the exception that proves the rule: a small victory that masks a still-depressing picture of widespread instances of abuse of women that never come to light.

  Further, advocacy groups fear that even the tentative progress that has been achieved in protecting some women could be undone if the West’s focus on Afghanistan now begins to shift away as NATO troops withdraw and the international money pumped into the economy diminishes.

  “If you take away that funding and pressure, it is not sustainable,” said Heather Barr, Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch.

  As more details of Sahar Gul’s case have come to light — including the fact that the abuse continued even as, time and again, neighbors, police officers and her family members voiced suspicions that something was wrong — it has only reinforced how vulnerable women and girls still are in Afghanistan, particularly in rural areas where under-age marriages are common and forced ones are typical.

  Sahar Gul, who is now about 14, grew up in Badakhshan, a poor, mountainous province in the north. As a young child she was shuffled around after her father died, ending up with her stepbrother, Mohammad, when she was about 9. She helped with the hard work — tending cows, sheep and an orchard of walnut and apricot trees, and making dung bricks for the fire — but her stepbrother’s wife resented her presence. The woman pressured Mohammad to give Sahar Gul up for marriage after he was contacted by a man, about 30, named Ghulam Sakhi — even though she had not yet reached the legal marriage age of 16, or 15 with a father’s consent.

  In effect, Ghulam Sakhi bought her: he paid at least $5,000, according to government officials and prosecutors, an illegal exchange. He drove off with Sahar Gul to his parents’ home in Baghlan, another northern province hundreds of miles away.

  Ghulam Sakhi’s first wife had fled after he and his mother beat her for not bearing children, according to Rahima Zarifi, the chairwoman of Baghlan’s women’s affairs department, and the mullah in the mosque in the town in Baghlan. In his search for a new wife, there may have been a reason Ghulam Sakhi’s family looked so far afield: they intended to force her into prostitution, according to Ms. Zarifi, who followed the case closely, and officials at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul.

  In Baghlan, the girl was immediately put to work cooking and cleaning, but she was able to resist consummating the marriage for weeks.

  She ran away to the house of a neighbor, who alerted both the police and her husband’s family. Ghulam Sakhi’s neighbors and the police forced him to sign a letter promising not to mistreat Sahar Gul, though they let him take her back.

  The warning had little effect. One day, when she complained of a headache, her mother-in-law, Siyamoi, tricked her into taking a sedative that she thought was medicine, said Mushtari Daqiq, a lawyer for the aid group Women for Afghan Women and also Sahar Gul’s lawyer.

  “When she woke up in the morning, she realized she had been used by her husband,” Ms. Daqiq said.

  A neighbor named Ehsanullah said that one evening last summer, as his family ate dinner, they heard screaming coming from the house. The following morning his mother called at the house. He recounted what she saw: “Sahar Gul had lost a lot of weight, her hands were covered with bruises and wounds, one of her hands was broken, but her mother-in-law was forcing her to do the laundry.” He added, “She kept her head down the whole time my mother was there.”

  After a group of elders confronted Ghulam Sakhi, the screaming stopped.

  Frustrated that the girl could not perform the housework they expected, the family put her in the cellar, where she slept on the floor without a mattress, her hands and feet tied with rope. She was given only bread and water to eat. She was also beaten regularly. According to Sahar Gul and Ms. Daqiq, most of the beatings were at the hand of Amanullah, Ghulam Sakhi’s elderly father.

  They described grotesque crimes, accusing Amanullah of hitting Sahar Gul with sticks, biting her chest, inserting hot irons in her ears and vagina, and pulling out two fingernails.

  “She was helpless,” Ms. Daqiq said. “She had no hope for her life.”

  Sahar Gul’s uncle Khwaja, who lived nearby in the same province, and her stepbrother, Mohammad, tried to visit her a few times, but the family told them the girl was not home. The family then threatened Mohammad, warning that he had illegally given his sister to be married. “He had to accept and run back to Badakhshan without meeting his sister,” Khwaja said.

  Then, last December, about six months after the marriage, they finally got to see her when they called at the house with two police officers and heard a voice coming from the cellar.

  “In the light of our flashlight, we found Sahar Gul lying on a pile of hay,” said Shirullah, one of the police officers.

  Her dress was in rags, she was barely conscious and she could not stand after weeks in the dark.

  “She was constantly moaning,” Shirullah said. “She was in a horrible situation. She couldn’t move her body parts, and we carried her to the hospital in our arms.”

  Ms. Zarifi and three nurses washed her and gave her soup and dates. “When she saw the food, she became very excited,” Ms. Zarifi said.

  The police arrested the mother-in-law, Siyamoi, her daughter Mahkhurd and finally Amanullah, the father-in-law — who was discovered hiding in a burqa and a blanket.

  The family told the police that Ghulam Sakhi was in the Afghan Army in Helmand. That was later found to be untrue, according to local residents and Afghan officials, but the claim bought enough time for him to slip away from the authorities along with his brother, Darmak. They remain at large.

  With her mistreatment a big story in the Afghan news media, Mr. Karzai called for swift justice. In a district court in Kabul on May 1, the judge, speaking in front of a bank of microphones on national television, declared Sahar Gul’s three in-laws guilty.

  According to neighbors and to officials who heard the in-laws’ arguments in court, they acted the way they did mostly because they felt they had paid good money for a girl who they said was not pretty, who misbehaved and who would neither work as they demanded nor bear them children.

  Lawyers for the family members say that they deny beating or drugging Sahar Gul, and that her wounds were self-inflicted. They deny confining her in the cellar, and say they had no plans to send her into prostitution. The prostitution accusation was not addressed in court.

  The lawyers, who were provided by the legal group Da Qanoon Ghushtonky, or Demanders of Law, which is financed by international aid, argue that the political outcry caused the trial to be rushed through without due process.

  Rather than showing the lack of legal protections for women, they argued, Sahar Gul’s case underscores the weakness of Afghanistan’s still-developing legal system, one that can easily be swayed by politicians like Mr. Karzai.

  Siyamoi and Mahkhurd are now 2 of 171 prisoners in a women’s prison in Kabul. On a recent morning there, the two women insisted they were innocent and railed ferociously at their accusers.

  “We are being cheated by the court,” Siyamoi said. “If you think I am a criminal, why don’t you pull out my fingernails?”

  A few miles away across Kabul, Sahar Gul lives in a shelter provided by Women for Afghan Women, one of seven shelters the organization has established nationally for abuse victims.

  Sahar Gul played in the sun in the garden in a golden dress and purple shawl and pink bracelets, a round-cheeked, gangly girl. She had made a new friend at the shelter, a 14-year-old girl whose face was scarred by acid by a sister’s thwarted suitor.

  Sahar Gul still bears the scars and bruises of her ordeal, but her caregivers said she was recovering and becoming gradually more independent. She said she had ambitions.

  “I want to become a politician and stop other women suffering the same,” she said.

  Now, however, rights groups fear that schools and clinics for girls may close as international money dries up and the political climate in Afghanistan becomes more religiously conservative, undermining the fragile lattice of pro-women support groups, government ministries and nongovernmental organizations as well as laws specifically created in the past few years to protect women.

  A new 2009 law to eliminate violence against women was cited in the sentencing of Sahar Gul’s abusers, but the law is still barely applied, according to a United Nations report published in November, and it has not been formally adopted.

  Women’s shelters are under threat, with a conservative justice minister describing them as “brothels,” while a new family law that could make it easier for abused women to divorce is being held up.

  In such a climate, the fear is that Sahar Gul’s successful rescue may turn out to be an aberration rather than a new norm, and that it will not help those women whose suffering is not discovered.

  “We have many cases perhaps graver than this where women are murdered,” Ms. Zarifi said. “No one hears anything about them.”

• Jehanara

  December 23, 2012 9:18 am

  Reply

  In many Muslim countries, rape is common but the idea that there should be four witnesses to prove the rape can be hard to produce as rape can take place when the aggressor and the victim are totally alone.
  Some women prefer not to report the rapist for fear of scandal as sex outside marriage or rape is seen as dishonouring their family.

  The Islamic law or sharia condemning the aggressor to lashes or death is practised in very few countries like Saudi Arabia. In other Muslim countries like Morocco the penalty is imprisonment and a fine or the aggressor with the consent of the victim in case of deflowering her should marry her.

  Another point is that in many Islamic countries rape within marriage isn’t recognised as the woman should be at the beck and call of her husband even in sexual matters. But in countries like Morocco, there are associations formed to help women in difficulties with their husbands, including the sexual abuse they can be exposed to.

  In view of the traditional restrictions on sexual freedom in Muslim countries and the desire for a romantic relation, many women fall victims to rape resulting in deflowering which is considered as a loss of dignity for the woman and a dishonour to her family.

  To deal with the problem of rapes and to have real statistics about it in the Muslim world, taboos on this should be lifted and open debates should be organised to sensitise women about the legal procedures they should follow as well as sensitizing societies and families to provide the victim with support instead of looking down on her as a shame to her surrounding

• Zeenat

  December 22, 2012 9:40 am

  Reply

  Islamic ideology supporting domestic violence against women

  The Quran and Sharia Law provide the “boundaries” for marital sex and violence:
  “Women are your fields; go, then, into your fields whence you please.” (Surah 2:223)
  It is obligatory for a woman to let her husband have sex with her immediately when a) he asks her, b) at home, c) she can physically endure it, and d) the husband has paid the marriage price. (Reliance of the Traveler, para. m5.1)
  A husband possesses full right to enjoy his wife’s person in what does not physically harm her. (R of T, para. m5.4)
  The husband is entitled to insist that his wife undertake both the measures necessary for having sex (like bathing) and those necessary to the full enjoyment of her (like shaving her private parts). (R of T, para. m5.6)
  Apart from providing her husband full lawful sexual enjoyment, if the wife cooks food or washes clothes for him, that is merely considered a “voluntary charity.” (R of T, para. m10.12(3))

  A wife is in rebellion if she fails any of these obligations, and the sanction is first a warning, then banishment from the marital bed, and finally beating. This applies to daughters, as well. The Quran and Sharia Law are quite specific:
  “As for those [women] from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.” (Surah 4:35)
  “If she commits rebelliousness, he . . . may hit her, but not in a way that injures her, meaning he may not break bones, wound her, or cause blood to flow.” (R of T, para. m10.12)
  “Umar reported the Prophet as saying: ‘A man will not be asked as to why he beat his wife.’” (Hadith of the Sunan of Abu Dawud, Chapter 709 – On Beating Women, #2142)
  There is no retaliation for a father or mother for killing their offspring or their offspring’s offspring. (R of T, para. o1.2(4))
  There is no indemnity for killing someone who has left Islam. (R of T, para. o4.17)

  Violence against Women is a Crime

  In most Western countries, wife-beating and sexual battery are against the law. Usually, the legal provisions are very specific and quite comprehensive. The California Civil Code, Section 1708, states:

  Every person is bound, without contract, to abstain from injuring the person or property of another, or infringing upon any of his or her rights. A person commits a sexual battery who does any of the following: Acts with the intent to cause a harmful or offensive contact with an intimate part of another, and a sexually offensive contact with that person directly or indirectly results. For the purposes of this section “intimate part” means the sexual organ, anus, groin, or buttocks of any person, or the breast of a female. A person who commits a sexual battery upon another is liable to that person for criminal penalties as well as financial damages, including, but not limited to, general damages, special damages, and punitive damages.

  Domestic violence includes injury, abuse, and offensive conduct and any credible threat to commit such acts. Injury or abuse includes a pattern of conduct by the abuser whereby the plaintiff reasonably feared for his or her safety, or the safety of an immediate family member. An immediate family means a spouse, parent, child, any person related by consanguinity or affinity within the second degree, or any person who regularly resides, or, within the six months preceding any portion of the pattern of conduct, regularly resided, in the plaintiff’s household. Offensive contact means contact that offends a reasonable sense of personal dignity. A credible threat means a verbal or written threat, including that communicated by means of an electronic communication device, or a threat implied by a pattern of conduct or a combination of verbal, written, or electronically communicated statements and conduct, made with the intent and apparent ability to carry out the threat so as to cause the person who is the target of the threat to reasonably fear for his or her safety or the safety of his or her immediate family.

• Zeenat

  December 22, 2012 9:23 am

  Reply

  The Veil and Violence against Women in Islamist Societies
  

  Submitted by admin on 7 August, 2007 – 10:17
  Iran
  Islamic states
  IHN 2007.2 August
  International Humanist News
  Women

  Recent reports on the Islamic regime of Iran’s crackdown on women who are ‘badly’ veiled (bad-hejab) and their resistance to the regime’s campaign of arrest and harassment has been reported quite extensively in comparison to other similar events over the years. This is partly due to amateur video footage taken via mobile phones by passers-by uploaded on YouTube for the world to see.

  There are two pieces of footage that everyone should take a look at. One is of an unveiled woman shouting ‘we don’t want the veil; we want freedom’. The other is of a young girl who is being questioned by security agents for being ‘badly veiled’; she pulls off her veil in front of them and is kicked into a waiting car to be driven away.

  Given that veiling is compulsory in Iran, these acts of defiance are all the more heroic.

  This ongoing battle between the Islamic authorities and women over the veil clearly reveals why it has become a symbol like no other of the violence women face under Islam and why ‘improper’ or ‘bad’ veiling and unveiling have become a symbol of resistance to Islam in power and its violence against women. It is for this very reason that the slogan ‘neither veil nor submission’ has become a rallying cry ever since the regime imposed compulsory veiling on women after expropriating and crushing the revolution to consolidate its rule.

  With the myriad examples of violence against women in Islamist societies – from stoning to legally sanctioned domestic violence – the ‘fuss over veiling’ may seem overboard for those who have heard about the ‘right to veil’ and ‘freedom of clothing’ from Islamists who deceptively use rights language in an effort to make the veil palatable to a western audience.

  But the veil is anything but a piece of cloth or clothing. Just as the straight-jacket or body bag are anything but pieces of clothing. Just as the chastity belt was not a piece of clothing. Just as the Star of David pinned on Jews during the holocaust was not just a bit of cloth.

  The veil is a tool for the suppression and oppression of women. It is meant to segregate. It is representative of how women are viewed in Islam: sub-human, ‘deficient’, ‘inferior’, without rights, and despised. Trapped in a mobile prison not to be heard from or seen.

  The veiled woman is veiled to prevent her from being seen or touched by anyone other than those who have some form of ownership over her – her father, husband or brother.

  In many instances it is a matter of life and death. In Iran just recently paramedics were denied access to two sisters who needed emergency assistance because their brother deemed it sinful for the paramedics to touch them. They died as a result. And we have all heard of the example of Saudi Arabia where girls’ schools are locked as usual practice to ensure the segregation of the sexes. In 2002 when a fire broke out at a school in Mecca, the guards would not unlock the gates and religious police prevented girls from escaping – to the point of even beating them back into the school – because they were not properly veiled; moreover they stopped men who tried to help, warning the men that it was sinful to touch the girls. Fifteen girls died as a result and more than fifty were wounded.

  As I said – a matter of life and death.

  Moreover, the veil imposes sexual apartheid and the segregation of the sexes very much like racial apartheid in the former South Africa. But in this instance, in addition to the segregation that is carried out in society, such as separate entrances for women in certain government offices, separate areas for women’s seating on buses, the banning of women from certain public arenas like sport stadiums, a curtain dividing the Caspian sea for segregated swimming and so on, woman are forced to carry the divide on their very own backs.

  And don’t forget the more subtle aspects to it, though just as detrimental, like the sun never touching a woman’s hair or body and the adverse health effects of that. And how depressing it must be to be deemed so vile and dangerous as to need constant cover…

  And imagine the effects of the veil on girl children. Sexualized from age nine, kept segregated from boys, taught that they are different and unequal, restricted from playing, swimming and in general doing things children must do – nothing short of child abuse.

  And this is not only the situation for women and girls in countries where Islam rules. At least in places like Iran, there is mass resistance in the form of a social protest movement. The veil is also imposed on many women in Europe via threats and intimidation. But because of the respect the veil and religion are granted due to racist cultural relativism, women and girls are often left to the mercy of regressive Islamic organisations and parasitical imams.

  A mullah in Green Lane mosque in Birmingham has said, for example: ‘Allah has created the woman deficient’ and a satellite broadcast from the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, beamed into the mosque suggested that children should be hit if they don’t pray and don’t wear the hijab. Then there is Australia’s senior Islamic cleric, Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, who has compared unveiled women to ‘uncovered meat’ implying that they invite rape and sexual assault. ‘If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside … without cover, and the cats come to eat it … whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.’

  That women transgress the veil daily is a testimony to their humanity and not the laws, states or groups that impose it by force or intimidation.

  No apology, justification, appeasement or cultural relativism can deny the indignity and violence that the veil is and represents.

  The veil is an offence to 21st-century humanity. It has to be opposed unequivocally.

• Sabia

  December 22, 2012 9:06 am

  Reply

  I am a Muslim woman and, like my late mother, free, independent, sensuous, educated, liberal, contrary and confrontational when provoked, both feminine and feminist. I style and colour my hair, wear lovely things and perfumes, appear on public platforms with men who are not related to me, shake their hands, embrace some I know well, take care of my family.

  I defend Muslims persecuted by their enemies and their own kith and kin. I pray, fast, give to charity and try to be a decent human being. I also drink wine and do not lie about that, unlike so many other “good” Muslims. I am the kind of Muslim woman who maddens reactionary Muslim men and their asinine female followers. What a badge of honour.

  Female oppression in Islamic countries is manifestly getting worse. Islam, as practiced by millions today, has lost its compassion and integrity and is entering one of the darkest of dark ages. Here is this month’s short list of unbearable stories (imagine how many more there are which will never be known):

  Iranian painter Delara Darabi, only 22 and in prison since she was 17, accused of murdering an elderly relative, was hanged last week even though she had been given a temporary stay of execution by the chief justice of the country. She phoned her mother on the day of her hanging to beg for help and the phone was snatched by a prison official who told them: “We will easily execute your daughter and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Her paintings reveal the cruelty to which she was subjected.

  Meanwhile Roxana Saberi, a 32- year-old broadcast journalist whose father is Iranian, is incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin prison, accused of spying for the US. She denies this and says she has been framed because she was seen buying a bottle of wine. This intelligent, beautiful and defiant woman is on hunger strike. Over in Saudi Arabia, an eight-year-old child has just divorced a 50-year-old man. Her father, no doubt a very devout man, sold his daughter for about £9,000.

  I have been reading Disfigured, the story of Rania Al-Baz, a Saudi TV anchor, the first woman to have such a job, who was so badly beaten up by her abusive husband that she had to have 13 operations to re-make her once gorgeous face. Domestic violence destroys females in all countries, but in Muslim states, it is validated by laws and values. As Al-Baz writes, “It is appalling to realise that a woman cannot walk down the street without men staring at her openly. For them she is nothing but a body without a mind, something that moves and does not think. Women are banned from studying law, from civil engineering and from the sacrosanct area of oil.”

  Small optimistic signs do periodically appear in this harsh desert, says Quanta A Ahmed, a doctor who worked in Saudi Arabia and then wrote her account, In the Land of Invisible Women. She describes the love she finds between some husbands and wives, idealists who think better rights will come one day.

  That faith in the future is echoed by Norah al-Faiz, the Deputy Minister for Women’s Education, chosen in this week’s Time magazine list of the world’s most influential people. They hope because they must, I guess, even though they can see the brute forces lining up on the horizon ready to crush them by any means necessary. This country has spread its anti-female Wahabi Islam across the globe, its second most important export after oil.

  In Afghanistan Ayman Udas was a singer and songwriter who wore lipstick and appeared on TV, defying her family. She was a divorced mother of two who had remarried. Ten days after this she was shot dead, allegedly by her brothers, who must think they are upright moral upholders with places reserved in paradise. In March President Karzai gave monstrous tribal leaders what they demanded, absolute control over wives by husbands and the right to rape them on the marital bed. Protests by brave women in that country and international outrage has forced him to step back from this commitment but there is concern that he is too weak to hold out, and once again women will become the personal and political playthings of men.

  Let’s to Pakistan then shall we, the country that once elected a woman head of state. The divinely beautiful Swat Valley has, for reasons of political expediency, been handed over to the Taliban, and there they have blown up over a hundred schools for girls and regularly flog young females on the streets. The girls are shrouded and forbidden to scream because the female voice has the potential to arouse desire. Or pity perhaps.

  I am aware that my words will help confirm the pernicious prejudices that fester in the minds of those who despise Islam. Yet to conceal or excuse the violations would be to condone and encourage them. There have been enlightened times when some Muslim civilisations honoured and cherished females. This is not one of them. Across the West – for a host of reasons – millions of Muslims are embracing backward practices. In the UK young girls – some so young that they are still in push chairs – are covered up in hijabs. Disgracefully, there are always vocal Muslim women who seek to justify honour killings, forced marriages, inequality, polygamy and childhood betrothals. Why are large numbers of Muslim men so terrorised by the female body and spirit? Why do Muslim women encourage this savage paranoia?

  I look out of my study at the common and see a wife fully burkaed on a sunny day. She sits still. Her children and husband run around, laughing, playing cricket. She sits still, dead, buried, a ghost. She is complicit in her own degradation, as are countless others. Their acquiescence in a free democracy is a crime against their sisters who have no such choices in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

  Al-Baz says: “I am a disruptive presence because I give women ideas.” Me too. To transgress against diehard obscurantists and their unholy rules is an inescapable sacred duty. Yet how pathetic that sounds. Progressive believers tilt at windmills driven by ferocious winds of self-righteousness. Our arms and legs weaken and we are brought to our knees. I fear there is only worse to come.

• Saina

  December 22, 2012 6:28 am

  Reply

  Hi Admn.

  I am a young Muslim bride I was was treated like a slave after arriving in Pakistan following an arranged marriage.

  .

  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1046541/Facing-jail-Violent-husband-beat-Muslim-slave-bride-day-arranged-marriage.html

  My self British Sania Bibi, 20, I was forced to work 17-hour days cooking, cleaning and washing clothes for her husband’s family.

  I was constantly beaten by her husband, who announced within days of her arrival that he planned to remarry and would make her look after his new bride’s children.

  Giving evidence from behind a screen and with the aid of an interpreter, described in the court gruelling days lasted from 6am to 11pm.

  ‘I was told I had been brought here as a servant and I was told I had to do all the work,’ she said.

  St Albans Crown Court heard Mrs Bibi had never seen her husband, Haroon Aktar, 28, before their wedding in northern Punjab on April 1, 2006.

  It is alleged Aktar returned to the UK two weeks later without having consummated the marriage and his parents Zafia Bibi, 49, and Ali Aktar, 55, followed, taking jewellery their daughter-in-law had been given at the wedding.

  Mrs Bibi travelled to Britain on September 7, 2006, and went to live with them in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.

  But she said on her arrival she discovered her husband’s two brothers, older sister and her three young children were also living in the house.

  Her clothes and shoes were confiscated and she was given pyjamas as work clothes. She was only allowed to change into normal clothes when guests came.

  She claimed she was never allowed to have any money and was banned from answering the door or using the phone.

  The court heard Mrs Bibi and her husband had sex for the first three days following her arrival. But this suddenly stopped and she was moved into a box room where she slept on a sofa.

  Within days, she alleges, she had been put to work for the entire family and the beatings began.

  ‘[My husband] said he had brought me here as a servant to work,’ she said.

  ‘He said “You are not good enough for me” and he would get married a second time and he would have children through his second marriage and I would have to take care of these children.’

  The court heard the first beating happened as she was folding clothes a week after her arrival.

  Haroon Aktar allegedly grabbed her by the hair and pushed her against a window before becoming abusive about her family and calling her brothers ‘bastards and dogs’.

  The jury was told the beatings happened every day, usually before her husband went to work and on his return.

  On one occasion Zafia Bibi allegedly became angry that the housework had not been done properly and called her son, who attacked his wife in the bathroom before throwing her down the stairs.

  Mrs Bibi said she confided in relatives during a visit to Blackburn but they told her: ‘Now that you are married you have to stay there and it is family honour.

  ‘You belong to that family. You no longer belong to us.’

  One her return, the court heard, one of her brother-in-laws threatened to send her back to Pakistan and her sister-in-law said she was going to be sent to a mental asylum where she would be given electric shocks.

  She was finally expelled from the house early in 2007 when she was collected by a taxi and driven to her relatives’ home.

  Proscutor George Heimler told the jury: ‘It was clear when she arrived in the UK she would work for her husband’s family.

  ‘She was given work to do. It was an austere and oppressive regime which involved many long hours.

  ‘She was regularly admonished for poor performance. Haroon told her he wanted to marry someone else. He punched her and slapped her and she lived in a climate of isolation and despondency.’

  Haroon Aktar denies five charges of causing actual bodily harm. He and his mother deny putting a person in fear of violence between September 1, 2006, and January 9, 2007.

  Mrs Bibi snr and Ali Aktar deny theft of Sania Bibi’s jewellery.

  The case continues.

• Razia Baig

  December 19, 2012 11:34 am

  Reply

  Dear Readers.

  A successful businesswoman has told of her agony after being forced into an abusive marriage at the age of five – despite living in Britain.

  Samina Shah, who is now in her 40s and too frightened to reveal her real name, spoke out after revelations that Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit had handled the case of another five-year-old girl last year.

  Mrs Shah said she believed she was being dressed for her fifth birthday party on the day of the Islamic ceremony which effectively ended her childhood.

  She told The Sun: ‘There was a lot of activity – a lot of relatives in the house. I was dressed up in an outfit which my mother-in-law had bought for me.

  ‘My sister told me later that my mother-in-law had said, “At last, the beautiful girl belongs to me!”‘

  Pondering why a tiny girl from a large northern town would be forced to undergo such an ordeal, she said she thought it was to do with maintaining tradition – and control.

  Mrs Shah was born into a close-knit Asian community, and while her family lived in Britain they remained true to the conventions of remote Pakistani villages.

  Aged just 13, she was removed from school without explanation. Instead of an education, she was taught that a woman’s place was in the home – and reminded that the greater her sufferings on earth, the more lavish her reward would be in Paradise.

  Samina was still a frightened girl of 14 when she went through the formal wedding ceremony which marked her transition from her parents’ house to that of her husband. At 6am the day after, she was forced onto a plane to Pakistan, told only that she would return to Britain with her husband when she reached 16.

  Long before that time, the teenager endured the forced consummation of her marriage after suffering an appalling beating.

  She was Locked up by her husband, child bride Mrs Shah used to watch other children playing outside and sigh with envy

  Mrs Shah returned to the UK three months later, after her Guardians decided she should be kept there under lock and key.

  She said the feeling of sunlight on her face was one of the things she missed most during her captivity, adding, ‘I used to look out at kids playing and feel an overwhelming sense of envy.

  ‘When you are married at the age of five you no longer live like a normal child. I was deprived of my basic human rights.’

  ‘She should be playing with dolls, it’s shocking’: Colombian girl, 10, gives birth to healthy baby daughter.

  After giving birth to a daughter at the age of 20, Mrs Shah said she became determined her child would never endure the horrors she herself had lived through.

  Ultimately, her daughter was to be her salvation. Though the years of abuse she had suffered took a toll on Mrs Shah, manifesting as crippling obsessive compulsive disorder, she became interested in studying after watching her daughter’s progress through school.

  To her husband’s displeasure, she enrolled in college and took GCSEs.

  Finally, at the age of 37, she found the strength to leave the man who had made her life a misery, even banning her from smiling because he considered it ‘the sign of a loose woman’.

  In strict Muslim communities divorce remains strictly taboo, and those who do separate from their partners risk being ostracised by their friends and families.

  While Mrs Shah returned to her parents after dissolving her marriage, the arrangement was not a success and she found herself entirely alone in the world.

  At her lowest ebb, contemplating suicide, she began composing a goodbye text to her beloved daughter – but couldn’t bring herself to abandon the best thing in her life, a child who so obviously needed her.

  Finding herself outside a church, and ready to turn her back on a religion which had brought her nothing but pain and subjugation, Mrs Shah threw herself on the mercy of a priest.

  Though she said she was keen to become a Christian, the priest said it was misuse of islam for criminal and curelty against women in muslim countries

  After ending her own forced marriage, Mrs Shah hopes to help girls understand that Islam does not permit the barbaric practice – and that they too can escape it.

  Having reinvented herself as a successful entrepreneur, she now gives talks to women’s groups and mentors youngsters in her local area.

  Above all, she wants to emphasise that forced marriage is completely contrary to both the teachings of Islam and the dignity of human beings.

  My point is here that girls should keep their eyes open in the matter of marriage and do not soccuumb to pressures.

• Razia Baig

  December 17, 2012 10:10 am

  Reply

  MUSLIM MEN ARE WOMANIZERS

  I am Razia Baig from Spain, originally from Sindh Pakistan, about 28 years back. Against my wishes, I was married to a Sindhi Pakistani, on so much promises of blissful and graceful life for me after marriage. I was very happy the day I married my muslim husband. He was the first muslim man I knew from Asia and I wanted to be a good muslimah wife and grow closer to Allah and Islam in the marriage. Alhamdullilah I have been able to feel closer to God and discover more about the religion.

  But after 6 years of marriage, my husband just turned to me one day and said he wanted to leave me and get a divorce. I was thoroughly shocked and didn’t expect this at all. My husband said he wanted to find happiness in his life which he couldn’t feel in the marriage. I have tried talking to him and telling him that we have everything we ever wanted in our marriage and he should not fall to his “nafs” chasing for more worldly happiness. But he wouldn’t listen and he left, and suddenly I am all alone to fend for myself.

  I feel lost and vulnerable. I was the type of wife who has been so faithful, I would never leave the house without my husband, I stayed home to cook, clean, wash for him despite being very educated in western universities and brought up in western culture. I thought that I was fulfilling my responsibility as a a muslim wife to a husband I adored and respected. And he just dumped me high and dry to search for his own “happiness”. I learned recently he is out chasing young arab girls to marry again (my husband is almost 40 ). My caucasian friends are all telling I-told-you-so-arab/muslim-men-are-womanisers and that they go chasing after girls half their age. It feels awful when your own husband helps to justify the Westerner’s biased perception of Islam.

  I feel scared and empty in my life right now. My husband told me what he did is not something wrong and even Islam would approve. He even said that without divorce papers, he could get married quickly in a mosque because he is a man. And women like me get the bad end of the deal in Islamic marriages.

  I really wanted to have my husband back. I didn’t know what to do anymore. I begged and cried and humiliated myself. Its not easy out where I lived to find other muslim men, and I don’t know if I could go back to seeing caucasian non-muslim men.

  Ultimately one day I had to come to Madrid and started to settle down my life again. Came in contact with a Nepali Hindu guy working in the same company. He promises to keep me happy, if I married him.

  I have read so many stories of muslim girls tortured and humiliated and one day they marred to non muslim husbands and living a happy life.

  I have no problem to adjust with Nepali Hindu, but still I feel it necessary to seek some guidance. My parents are competely demoralized and left at my discretion to marry any one, as their attempt failed bitterly to marry me in muslim community.

  Please advise. -Razia Baig.

  Reply to Razia at https://www.interfaithshaadi.org/?p=3773

• Najneen

  December 11, 2012 9:33 am

  Reply

  Hi Every body,

  Due to religious pressures and cultural dimensions in Islam,increasing numbers of women are having taxpayer-funded ‘virginity repair’ operations before marriage.

  There were 11600 hymen replacement operations carried out on the NHS between 2005 and 2009. The total for 2009 was 300, up 25 per cent from 240 in 2005.

  The health service figures, which do not include data on the religion or marital status of the individuals, seem to echo a trend reported by private clinics, which are seeing a huge surge in demand for the procedure from Muslim women paying up to £4,000.

  One Harley Street clinic said that demand for its half-hour procedure had tripled in recent months.

  Doctors say patients are under pressure from future muslim husbands or relatives who insist that they should be virgins on their wedding night.

  Critics, including moderate Muslim groups, have condemned the trend as a sign of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the West.

  During the hymenoplasty procedure – viewed by some as invasive and degrading – the hymen is stitched or reconstructed so that it will tear again and bleed on the woman’s wedding night.

  In some cases, the vaginal lining can be used to create a false hymen. A blood capsule can then be inserted into the lining to ensure realistic blood flow when the membrane is broken.

  Consultant gynaecologist Dr Magdy Hend performs hymenoplasty under local anaesthetic at his Regency Clinic on Harley Street. He charges £1,850 for the half-hour procedure and says that most of his clients are Muslim women.

  He said: ‘In the past, we would do one or two hymen reconstruction operations a week. Sometimes now, we get two or three women a day. Demand has tripled.

  ‘Our Muslim clients worry about having had sex, and their fiance and family knowing that they have been touched before.

  ‘It is more cultural rather than religious. If the bride is not a virgin and does not bleed on the wedding night, it is a big shame on the family. There have been honour killings in extreme cases.

  ‘It is simple surgery that takes only half an hour. They can have it done at lunchtime and do not have to give their real names and addresses.’

  Imam Dr Taj Hargey, chairman of the Muslim Educational Centre in Oxford, called on the Muslim community to try to reverse the trend.

  He said: ‘The situation is very common in the Middle East where there is a huge scandal that can lead to divorce or even honour killings if there are not bloodstained bed sheets after the wedding night.

  ‘It is very disappointing that Muslim women in this country feel they need to lead a double life, resorting to subterfuge surgery.

  ‘That is not conducive to either their psychological or spiritual health and it is hypocrisy and double standards because Muslim men are doing as they please with women.’

  There have been calls for a ban on NHS surgeons carrying out the operations for women wanting to marry as virgins.

  But a Department of Health spokesman insisted that hymen repair operations take place on the NHS only to ensure a patient’s physical or psychological health.

  She said: ‘The NHS does not fund hymen repair operations for cultural reasons. All operations on the NHS are on the basis of clinical need.

  ‘Operations to repair the hymen are only carried out exceptionally to secure physical or psychological health.

  There is no binding for males to be virgin. They have complete freedom to have sex even before marriage.

  What a discriminatory religion to crush women’s feelings and sentiments?

• Paki_girl

  December 4, 2012 9:43 am

  Reply

  Hi Muslim girls,

  Following are the remarks of President Musharraf during his rule.

  Outrage at Musharraf rape remarks
  
  The Karachi protest attracted 19 activist and women’s groups

  Pakistani activists have reacted with outrage to recent comments on rape victims by President Pervez Musharraf.
  He said that rape was a “money-making concern” and many argued it was a way to get money and a visa to emigrate.

  Pakistan’s most-high profile rape victim, Mukhtar Mai, told the BBC no woman could subject herself to “such a horrendous experience” to make money.

  Women’s groups and activists protested in Karachi on Friday, shouting: “Down with chauvinism”.

  ‘Money for justice’

  The president made his comments in an interview with the Washington Post on 13 September, incensing campaigners and others at home.

  “You must understand the environment in Pakistan. This has become a money-making concern,” he said.

  “A lot of people say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped
  A lot people say if you want to go abroad… get yourself raped

  In Karachi on Friday, 19 rights and advocacy groups vented their anger at the remarks, holding banners such as: “Who wants to be a millionaire – just get raped!”

  Sumar Mallah, a fisherman whose five-year-old daughter was raped and killed on 5 September, was at the rally.

  Mr Mallah said: “The police and the rapists have been insisting that I accept money and forget about my daughter. I will never settle for money. I want justice.”

  Activist Fauzia Burney said: “General Musharraf’s remarks are so shocking because they are so removed from reality.”

  Mukhtar Mai, who shot to world attention after being gang raped in 2002, allegedly on the orders of a village council or panchayat, earlier told the BBC: “I offer all the riches I’ve made out of the panchayat-enforced gang-rape to the president in return for justice.”

  The Women’s Action Forum described the president’s comments as “outrageous”.

  Last week President Musharraf told a conference on violence against women in Islamabad that Pakistan should not be singled out for its treatment of women.

  He also lashed out at rights groups for their role in highlighting cases such as Ms Mai’s outside the country. Leading rights groups called the conference a “farce”.

  The president’s critics say he pays only lip service to cracking down on the abuse of women, hundreds of whom are raped and murdered every year in so-called honour cases in Pakistan.

  Despite government protestations that it is doing much to help women, many of those who try to register cases of rape and violence find it as hard as ever to do so, campaigners say.

• Zakiah

  December 3, 2012 10:06 am

  Reply

  Hi muslim ladies,

  The quran so called gift of the almighty full of war, sex and attrocities on women, can it be true, can the God be so cruel?

  Horror Stories of Women Who Fled From Abusive Muslim Husbands
  
  The practices of degradation, exploitation, humiliation, subjugation, and physical abuse of women by Muslim men have been, and still are, time-honored traditions since the 7th century.

  Muslims’ abominable treatment of the fairer sex was established by Muhammad and copied by his Bedouin Arab followers. They swept across Arabia and into neighboring countries, butchering the male inhabitants, looting and stealing their belongings, and taking their women and children captive to be raped, sodomized, forced into slavery, and shipped off on in droves to the harems and households of the wealthy men of the day.

  Muhammad based his “right” to the above behavior on conveniently timed justifications which he passed off as “revelations” on the subject. Because he was ruthless in eliminating anyone who disagreed with him, his followers let him get away with this practice.

  After Muhammad died, the bits of bone and leaf and other materials upon which Othman wrote his utterances were organized by him into what are today called the suras of the Qur’an. They were arranged by length, the longest being first, rather than by chronology.

  It is the suras concerning women in this collection of statements, and in the thousands of comments and analyses called the Hadith by Muslim jurists and philosophers based on the words of Muhammad, which began the institutionalization of relegating women to the status of non-persons to be used and exploited in any way Muslim males chose. Those jurists and philosophers who hated women took every opportunity to craft ever more limitations on how women were to be thought of, how they were to be treated, and what they were and were not allowed to do.

  The following are “authorities” of that express the prevailing opinion of Muslim males from Muhammad’s time until today. Because it is forbidden to question or analyze the Qur’an and the Hadith, these statements, set forth 14 centuries ago, remain unchanged and written in stone to this day.

  Sura al-Baqarah 2:23: Your women are a tilth to you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will, and send good deeds before you for your souls, and fear Allah, and know that ye will one day meet Him.

  Sura an-Nisa 4:34: As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them, refuse to share their beds, and beat them.

  Sura an-Nisa 4:24: And all married women are forbidden to you save those whom your right hand possesses (captives).

  Sura al-Baqarah 2:222: They question thee concerning menstruation. Say it is an illness, so let women alone at such times and go not unto them till they are cleansed.

  These are called in Islam the “golden rights and provisions for all Muslim women:”

  The right to be treated as diseased and as sex toys
  The Qur’an – 2:222; Sahahi Bukhari -3.31.172

  The right to be used as a sowing field
  The Qur’an – 2:223

  The right to enjoy another husband after the third divorce from the previous husband (hilla marriage)
  The Qur’an – 2:230; Sahih Bukhari – 8.73.107; Sahih Bukhari – 7.63.187

  The right to engage in Islamic prostitution through Mut’a marriage
  The Qur’an – 4:24;Sahih Bukhari – 8.3246, 3247, 3248;
  Sahih Muslim – 8:3252, 8:3253, 8:3258

  The right to be treated as impure or as a drunkard
  The Qur’an – 4:32; The Qur’an – 16:92

  To uphold the inalienable superiority of men over women and the right to be beaten by husbands—no questions asked
  The Qur’an – 16:92; Sunaan Abu Dawad – 11.2142; Abdur Rahman – 1 DOI, the recognized authority on Sharia in his book, Women in Society”

  To uphold the right of the husband to have four wives at any time and any number sex-slaves for all times; in case of objection by any wife, the husband can beat her

  The Qur’an – 4:3; Sunan Abu Dawad – 30.2.13; The Qur’an – 23:5-6, 70:29-30

  The right to be treated as a dog, a pig, a monkey, or an ass
  Sahih Bukhari – 1.9.490, 493, 498 Sahih Muslim – 4.1039;
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 11.2155; Mishkat ul-Masabih – vol 2, p.114, Hadis no. 789

  The right of ordinary women to be treated as crows
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  The right of a Muslimah to be stupid and to become a servant
  Sahih Bukhari – 1.6.301; Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  Muslim women forfeit their right to travel alone
  Sahih Bukhari – 2.20.192, 193; Sahih Bukhari – 3.29.85, 4.52.250
  Abdur Rahman 1 Doi, the recognized authority on Sharia in his book, “Women in Society

  Women must keep their sexual organs ready at all times for the husband to enjoy them unhindered at any time—night or day
  Sahih Bukhari – 4.54.460, 7.62.81; Sahih Muslim – 8.3367, 3368;
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 43

  Women have the right to breast-feed an unrelated bearded man to make him haram (forbidden to her in marriage)
  Sahih Muslim – 8.3424, 3425, 3426, 3427, 3428

  Women are slaves (prisoners) and men are their masters (owners)
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 33; Hedaya – p. 47

  Islamic marriage is about sex for money (prostitution)
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 11.2105, 2.11,2106; Milik’s Muwatta – 28.4.12;
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 11.2126; Hedaya – p. 44

  If a woman wishes to get rid of her tyrannical husband she must refund the ‘sex money’ (Mahr) she received from him during marriage
  Sahih Muslim – 7.63.197, 198, 199; Sunaan Abu Dawud – 12,2220;
  Malik’s Muwatta – 29.10.32

  Women have the right to undergo female circumcision (FGM)
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 41.5251

  Women are slaves and infidels—they are not fit to join the moral police force
  Ghazali – vol 2, p.186

  A husband has the right to have sex with his wife by force (the right to rape)
  Hedaya – p. 141

  Women are cheap—you can have sex with a woman by simply teaching her how to recite a few verses from the Qur’an
  Sahih Buhkari – 6.61.547, 548; Ghazali – vol 2, 31

  Barren women should be confined at home—they are fit only to be in the house-prison
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 24; Sunaan Abu Dawud – 3.29.3911

  A woman has no say when her husband decides to add more wives in his harem; she can’t even ask her husband to divorce her
  Sahih Bukhari – p. 141

  A wife has the right to decorate her husband when he goes out to have sex with his other wives
  Sahih Bukhari – 1.5.270

  A woman should never be selected or elected as a ruler
  Sahih Bukhari – 5.59.709; Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  Muslim women uphold the right of Islamic Jihadists to rape captive women right in front of their vanquished husbands
  The Qur’an – 4:24; Sahih Muslim – 8.3371, 3373, 3374, 3377;
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 2.11.2150, 8.77.598

  Women are devils; they are as dirty and filthy as private parts are
  Sahih Muslim – 8.3240, 3242; Ghazali – vol 2, p. 26, vol 2, p. 43

  Fear the company of women—they bring bad luck
  Sahih Bukhari – 7.62.30, 31; Bukhari – 4.52.110, 111;
  Malik’s Muwatta – 54.821, 22; Sahih Muslim – 36.6603. 6604;
  Ghazali – vol 3, p. 86, 87

  Women have very little intelligence—their own testimony is inadmissible in rape cases; in other matters their testimony is half to that of a man

  The Qur’an – 4:14, 2:282; Sunaan Abu Dawud – 3.40.4662

  Women are less human—they get one-third of blood money, no booty (for Jihad) for them
  Malik’s Muwatta – 43.64b; Sahih Muslim – 19.4458

  Women are worse than dead persons—they cannot follow a bier
  Sahih Muslim – 4.2039

  Men should always oppose women
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  Women are easily expendable—a divorced woman gets no maintenance or alimony from her ex-husband
  Sahih Muslim – 9.3519, 3522

  A woman has the right to stay at home solely to provide sex to her husband
  Hedaya – p. 54

  A woman becomes a harlot when she wears perfume
  Mishkat al-Masabih – vol 2, p. 255

• Zakiah

  December 3, 2012 10:04 am

  Reply

  Hi Muslim ladies,

  It is my proud privilige to educate our female community about the eils of islam propagated by a rapist and murders, claiming messenger of God. Can it be true?
  
  Horror Stories of Women Who Fled From Abusive Muslim Husbands

  The practices of degradation, exploitation, humiliation, subjugation, and physical abuse of women by Muslim men have been, and still are, time-honored traditions since the 7th century.

  Muslims’ abominable treatment of the fairer sex was established by Muhammad and copied by his Bedouin Arab followers. They swept across Arabia and into neighboring countries, butchering the male inhabitants, looting and stealing their belongings, and taking their women and children captive to be raped, sodomized, forced into slavery, and shipped off on in droves to the harems and households of the wealthy men of the day.

  Muhammad based his “right” to the above behavior on conveniently timed justifications which he passed off as “revelations” on the subject. Because he was ruthless in eliminating anyone who disagreed with him, his followers let him get away with this practice.

  After Muhammad died, the bits of bone and leaf and other materials upon which Othman wrote his utterances were organized by him into what are today called the suras of the Qur’an. They were arranged by length, the longest being first, rather than by chronology.

  It is the suras concerning women in this collection of statements, and in the thousands of comments and analyses called the Hadith by Muslim jurists and philosophers based on the words of Muhammad, which began the institutionalization of relegating women to the status of non-persons to be used and exploited in any way Muslim males chose. Those jurists and philosophers who hated women took every opportunity to craft ever more limitations on how women were to be thought of, how they were to be treated, and what they were and were not allowed to do.

  The following are “authorities” of that express the prevailing opinion of Muslim males from Muhammad’s time until today. Because it is forbidden to question or analyze the Qur’an and the Hadith, these statements, set forth 14 centuries ago, remain unchanged and written in stone to this day.

  Sura al-Baqarah 2:23: Your women are a tilth to you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will, and send good deeds before you for your souls, and fear Allah, and know that ye will one day meet Him.

  Sura an-Nisa 4:34: As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them, refuse to share their beds, and beat them.

  Sura an-Nisa 4:24: And all married women are forbidden to you save those whom your right hand possesses (captives).

  Sura al-Baqarah 2:222: They question thee concerning menstruation. Say it is an illness, so let women alone at such times and go not unto them till they are cleansed.

  These are called in Islam the “golden rights and provisions for all Muslim women:”

  The right to be treated as diseased and as sex toys
  The Qur’an – 2:222; Sahahi Bukhari -3.31.172

  The right to be used as a sowing field
  The Qur’an – 2:223

  The right to enjoy another husband after the third divorce from the previous husband (hilla marriage)
  The Qur’an – 2:230; Sahih Bukhari – 8.73.107; Sahih Bukhari – 7.63.187

  The right to engage in Islamic prostitution through Mut’a marriage
  The Qur’an – 4:24;Sahih Bukhari – 8.3246, 3247, 3248;
  Sahih Muslim – 8:3252, 8:3253, 8:3258

  The right to be treated as impure or as a drunkard
  The Qur’an – 4:32; The Qur’an – 16:92

  To uphold the inalienable superiority of men over women and the right to be beaten by husbands—no questions asked
  The Qur’an – 16:92; Sunaan Abu Dawad – 11.2142; Abdur Rahman – 1 DOI, the recognized authority on Sharia in his book, Women in Society”

  To uphold the right of the husband to have four wives at any time and any number sex-slaves for all times; in case of objection by any wife, the husband can beat her

  The Qur’an – 4:3; Sunan Abu Dawad – 30.2.13; The Qur’an – 23:5-6, 70:29-30

  The right to be treated as a dog, a pig, a monkey, or an ass
  Sahih Bukhari – 1.9.490, 493, 498 Sahih Muslim – 4.1039;
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 11.2155; Mishkat ul-Masabih – vol 2, p.114, Hadis no. 789

  The right of ordinary women to be treated as crows
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  The right of a Muslimah to be stupid and to become a servant
  Sahih Bukhari – 1.6.301; Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  Muslim women forfeit their right to travel alone
  Sahih Bukhari – 2.20.192, 193; Sahih Bukhari – 3.29.85, 4.52.250
  Abdur Rahman 1 Doi, the recognized authority on Sharia in his book, “Women in Society

  Women must keep their sexual organs ready at all times for the husband to enjoy them unhindered at any time—night or day
  Sahih Bukhari – 4.54.460, 7.62.81; Sahih Muslim – 8.3367, 3368;
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 43

  Women have the right to breast-feed an unrelated bearded man to make him haram (forbidden to her in marriage)
  Sahih Muslim – 8.3424, 3425, 3426, 3427, 3428

  Women are slaves (prisoners) and men are their masters (owners)
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 33; Hedaya – p. 47

  Islamic marriage is about sex for money (prostitution)
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 11.2105, 2.11,2106; Milik’s Muwatta – 28.4.12;
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 11.2126; Hedaya – p. 44

  If a woman wishes to get rid of her tyrannical husband she must refund the ‘sex money’ (Mahr) she received from him during marriage
  Sahih Muslim – 7.63.197, 198, 199; Sunaan Abu Dawud – 12,2220;
  Malik’s Muwatta – 29.10.32

  Women have the right to undergo female circumcision (FGM)
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 41.5251

  Women are slaves and infidels—they are not fit to join the moral police force
  Ghazali – vol 2, p.186

  A husband has the right to have sex with his wife by force (the right to rape)
  Hedaya – p. 141

  Women are cheap—you can have sex with a woman by simply teaching her how to recite a few verses from the Qur’an
  Sahih Buhkari – 6.61.547, 548; Ghazali – vol 2, 31

  Barren women should be confined at home—they are fit only to be in the house-prison
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 24; Sunaan Abu Dawud – 3.29.3911

  A woman has no say when her husband decides to add more wives in his harem; she can’t even ask her husband to divorce her
  Sahih Bukhari – p. 141

  A wife has the right to decorate her husband when he goes out to have sex with his other wives
  Sahih Bukhari – 1.5.270

  A woman should never be selected or elected as a ruler
  Sahih Bukhari – 5.59.709; Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  Muslim women uphold the right of Islamic Jihadists to rape captive women right in front of their vanquished husbands
  The Qur’an – 4:24; Sahih Muslim – 8.3371, 3373, 3374, 3377;
  Sunaan Abu Dawud – 2.11.2150, 8.77.598

  Women are devils; they are as dirty and filthy as private parts are
  Sahih Muslim – 8.3240, 3242; Ghazali – vol 2, p. 26, vol 2, p. 43

  Fear the company of women—they bring bad luck
  Sahih Bukhari – 7.62.30, 31; Bukhari – 4.52.110, 111;
  Malik’s Muwatta – 54.821, 22; Sahih Muslim – 36.6603. 6604;
  Ghazali – vol 3, p. 86, 87

  Women have very little intelligence—their own testimony is inadmissible in rape cases; in other matters their testimony is half to that of a man

  The Qur’an – 4:14, 2:282; Sunaan Abu Dawud – 3.40.4662

  Women are less human—they get one-third of blood money, no booty (for Jihad) for them
  Malik’s Muwatta – 43.64b; Sahih Muslim – 19.4458

  Women are worse than dead persons—they cannot follow a bier
  Sahih Muslim – 4.2039

  Men should always oppose women
  Ghazali – vol 2, p. 34

  Women are easily expendable—a divorced woman gets no maintenance or alimony from her ex-husband
  Sahih Muslim – 9.3519, 3522

  A woman has the right to stay at home solely to provide sex to her husband
  Hedaya – p. 54

  A woman becomes a harlot when she wears perfume
  Mishkat al-Masabih – vol 2, p. 255

• Waheeda

  December 3, 2012 9:24 am

  Reply

  RAPING SEX SLAVES: THE EVIL LAWS OF ALLAH (the ANTI GOD)

  All Muslims believe the Koran is the divine word of God – the laws of God – authored by God Himself. The Koran remains for all Muslims, not just “fundamentalists,” the uncreated word of God Himself. It is valid for all times and places forever; its ideas are absolutely true and beyond all criticism. To question it is to question the very word of God, and hence blasphemous. A Muslim’s duty is to believe it and obey its divine commands without question.

  Following are some of the IMMORAL EVIL LAWS NOT OF GOD BUT OF ALLAH (the ANTI GOD) OF RAPING SEX SLAVES. These laws are ETERNAL AND FOR ALL TIME.

  As we have already seen – in Islam – rape is not only a sexual weapon – it is a weapon of war. Having murdered the woman’s man, Muslims can now – sanctioned by the law of Allah (the ANTI GOD) complete their final humiliation and domination of her body.

  Sura 23 (The Believers), Verses 1-6

  23.1-6: Successful indeed are the believers, Who are humble in their prayers, And who keep aloof from what is vain, And who are givers of poor-rate, And who guard their private parts, Except before their mates or those whom their right hands possess, for they surely are not blameable.

  This is the Sura which gives the slave owner the right of sexual access to his female slaves. The term “guarding the private parts” is a synonym for sexual intercourse, and it is said that this is not blameable if indulges with wives and slaves.

  Sura 70 (The Ways of Ascent) verses 29-35

  70: 29-35 And those who guard their private parts, Except in the case of their wives or those whom their right hands possess — for these surely are not to be blamed, But he who seeks to go beyond this, these it is that go beyond the limits — And those who are faithful to their trusts and their covenant And those who are upright in their testimonies, And those who keep a guard on their prayer, Those shall be in gardens, honored.

  These verses gives the right to slave owners to have sexual relation with female slaves.

  QURAN – 70:22-30: “Not so the worshippers, who are steadfast in prayer, who set aside a due portion of their wealth for the beggar and for the deprived, who truly believe in the Day of Reckoning and dread the punishment of their Lord (for none is secure from the punishment of their Lord); who restrain their carnal desire (save with their wives and their slave girls, for these are lawful to them: he that lusts after other than these is a transgressor…” This verse shows that Muslim men were allowed to have sex with their wives (of course) and their slave girls.

  Men can marry up to four women if they treat them equally; unlimited forcible concubines permitted

  In Islam, not only are men allowed to practice polygamy, but they may also capture women in war and use them as sex slaves. This is considered morally legitimate according to the Quran. In other words, non-Muslim women have no right to be free from the horror of slavery and serial rape by Muslim military men. Note The term “ whom your right hand possess” means slaves.

  4:3 Marry women of your choice, Two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice.
  4:24 Also (prohibited are) women already married, except those whom your right hands possess
  4:24 And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess. It is a decree of Allah for you. Lawful unto you are all beyond those mentioned, so that ye seek them with your wealth in honest wedlock, not debauchery. And those of whom ye seek content (by marrying them), give unto them their portions as a duty. And there is no sin for you in what ye do by mutual agreement after the duty (hath been done). Lo! Allah is ever Knower, Wise.

  All married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.”
  You can’t have sex with married women, unless they are slaves obtained in war (with whom you may rape or do whatever you like).

  4:25 If any of you have not the means wherewith to wed free believing women, they may wed believing girls from among those whom your right hands possess
  23:1,5-6 The believers …. abstain from sex, Except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess,- for (in their case) they are free from blame,
  70:29-30,35 And those who guard their chastity, Except with their wives and the (captives) whom their right hands possess,- for (then) they are not to be blamed, … Such will be the honoured ones in the Gardens (of Bliss).
  Muhammad can go beyond the four-wife restriction, can treat his own wives and sex slaves unequally

  33:50-52 O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom God has assigned to thee; and daughters of thy paternal uncles and aunts, and daughters of thy maternal uncles and aunts, who migrated (from Makka) with thee; and any believing woman who dedicates her soul to the Prophet if the Prophet wishes to wed her;- this only for thee, and not for the Believers (at large); We know what We have appointed for them as to their wives and the captives whom their right hands possess;- in order that there should be no difficulty for thee. And God is Oft- Forgiving, Most Merciful. Thou mayest defer (the turn of) any of them that thou pleasest, and thou mayest receive any thou pleasest: and there is no blame on thee if thou invite one whose (turn) thou hadst set aside. This were nigher to the cooling of their eyes, the prevention of their grief, and their satisfaction – that of all of them – with that which thou hast to give them: and God knows (all) that is in your hearts: and God is All-Knowing, Most Forbearing. It is not lawful for thee (to marry more) women after this, nor to change them for (other) wives, even though their beauty attract thee, except any thy right hand should possess (as handmaidens): and God doth watch over all things.
  This verse is for Muhammad. ALLAH (the ANTI GOD) allows Muhammad to own and rape his slave girls.

  The above verses are only a few out of numerous such verses scattered throughout the Quran. What could be more unethical than owning slaves and raping slave girls? ALLAH (the ANTI GOD) graciously allowed Muslims to own and rape slave girls. Prophet Muhammad himself and his disciples routinely raped their slave girls. Muslims were permitted unlimited raping of their slaves and even gang rape. Sex slaves were one of the main factors in the spread of Islam. This is the evil that is Islam.

  FROM THE HADITHS

  Bukhari (62:137)- An account of women taken as slaves in battle by Muhammad’s men after their husbands and fathers were killed. The woman were raped with Muhammad’s approval.

  Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri:

  We got female captives in the war booty and we used to do coitus interruptus with them. So we asked Allah’s Apostle about it and he said, “Do you really do that?” repeating the question thrice, “There is no soul that is destined to exist but will come into existence, till the Day of Resurrection.”

  Bukhari (34:432)- Another account of females taken captive and raped with Muhammad’s approval. In this case it is evident that the Muslims intend on selling the women after raping them because they are concerned about devaluing their price by impregnating them. Muhammad is asked about coitus interruptus.

  Bukhari (59:637)- “The Prophet sent Ali to Khalid to bring the Khumus (of the booty) and I hated Ali, and Ali had taken a bath (after a sexual act with a slave-girl from the Khumus). I said to Khalid,’Don’t you see this (i.e. Ali)?’ When we reached the Prophet I mentioned that to him. He said,’O Buraida! Do you hate Ali?’ I said,’Yes.’ He said,’Do you hate him, for he deserves more than that from the Khumlus.'”

  Muhammad approved of his men having sex with slaves, as this episode involving his son-in-law, Ali, clearly proves. This hadith refutes the modern apologists who pretend that slaves were really “wives,” since Muhammad had forbidden Ali from marrying another woman as long as Fatima (his favorite daughter) was living,

  Abu Dawud (2150)- “The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) sent a military expedition to Awtas on the occasion of the battle of Hunain. They met their enemy and fought with them. They defeated them and took them captives. Some of the Companions of the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) were reluctant to have intercourse with the female captives in the presence of their husbands who were unbelievers. So Allah, the Exalted, sent down the Qur’anic verse:(Sura 4:24)’And all married women (are forbidden) unto you save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.'” This is the background for verse 4:24 of the Qur’an. Not only does Allah (the ANTI GOD) grant permission for women to be captured and raped, but allows it to even be done in front of their husbands.

• Firdaus

  December 1, 2012 9:53 am

  Reply

  Hi sisters,

  Allaah has prepared for His believing slaves in Paradise that which no eye has seen, no ear has heard and has never even crossed the minds of men, such that even the person who has the least blessings in Paradise will think that he is the most blessed among them. Abu Sa’eed al-Khudri (may Allaah be pleased with him) said that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “The lowest of people in status in Paradise will be a man whose face Allaah turns away from the Fire towards Paradise, and shows him a tree giving shade. He will say, ‘O Lord, bring me closer to that tree so that I may be in its shade… Then he will enter his house [in Paradise] and his two wives from among al-hoor al-‘iyn will come in and will say to him, ‘Praise be to Allaah who brought you to life for us and brought us to life for you.’ Then he will say, ‘No one has been given what I have been given.’” (Narrated by Muslim, no. 275)

  Among the blessings that Allaah has prepared for His slaves are al-hoor al-‘iyn. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

  “So (it will be). And We shall marry them to Hoor (fair females) with wide lovely eyes”

  [al-Dhukhaan 44:54]

  “They will recline (with ease) on thrones arranged in ranks. And We shall marry them to Hoor (fair females) with wide lovely eyes

  [al-Toor 52:20]

  Al-hoor al-‘iyn are extremely beautiful, such that the marrow of their shins will be visible from beneath their garments. Every man who enters Paradise will have two wives from among al-hoor al-‘iyn. Allaah says, describing them (interpretation of the meaning):

  “Therein (Gardens) will be Khayraatun‑Hisaan [fair (wives) good and beautiful];

  Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both (jinn and men) deny?

  Hoor (beautiful, fair females) guarded in pavilions;

  Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both (jinn and men) deny?

  With whom no man or jinni has had Tamth [opening their hymens with sexual intercourse] before them.

  Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both (jinn and men) deny?

  Reclining on green cushions and rich beautiful mattresses.”

  [al-Rahmaan 55:70-76]

  “And (there will be) Hoor (fair females) with wide lovely eyes (as wives for Al-Muttaqoon – the pious).

  Like unto preserved pearls”

  [al-Waaqi’ah 56:22-23]

  It was narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “The first group will enter Paradise looking like the moon on the night when it is full, and those who follow them will be like the brightest shining star in the sky. Their hearts will be as one, and there will be no hatred or jealousy among them. Each man will have two wives from among al-hoor al-‘iyn, the marrow of whose calves can be seen from beneath the bone and flesh.” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, no. 3014)

  It was narrated that Anas ibn Maalik (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: “I heard the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) say: ‘Going out and coming back for the sake of Allaah is better than this world and all that is in it. And a spot the size of the bow of one of you in Paradise – or a spot the size of his whip – is better than this world and all that is in it. If a woman from among the people of Paradise were to look at the people of this earth, she would light up all that is in between them and fill it with fragrance. The veil on her head is better than this world and all that is in it.’” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, no. 2587)

  A man will have intercourse in Paradise with his wives from among al-hoor al-‘iyn and his wives from among the people of this world, if they enter Paradise with him. A man will be given the strength of a hundred men to eat, drink, feel desire and have sexual intercourse. It was narrated from Anas (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “The believer in Paradise will be given such and such strength for sexual intercourse.” He was asked, “O Messenger of Allaah, will he really be able to do that?” He said, “He will be given the strength of one hundred (men).” (Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, no. 2459. He said, (it is) saheeh ghareeb).

  It was narrated from Zayd ibn Arqam that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “A man among the people of Paradise will be given the strength of a hundred men for eating, drinking, desire and sexual intercourse. A man among the Jews said, ‘The one who eats or drinks needs to excrete!’ The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said to him: ‘The excretion of any one of them will be in the form of sweat which comes out through his skin, then his stomach will reduce in size again.’” (Narrated by Ahmad, no. 18509; al-Daarimi, no. 2704)

  The mufassireen said concerning the phrase “busy in joyful things” (Yaa-Seen 36:55 – interpretation of the meaning):

  ‘Abd-Allaah ibn Mas’ood and Ibn ‘Abbaas (mayAllaah be pleased with them both), and Sa’eed ibn al-Musayyib, ‘Ikrimah, al-Hasan, Qutaadah, al-A’mash, Sulaymaan al-Taymi and al-Oozaa’i said concerning the aayaah (interpretation of the meaning),

  “Verily, the dwellers of Paradise, that Day, will be busy in joyful things” [Yaa-Seen 36:55]

  they said, (it means) they will be busy deflowering virgins. Ibn ‘Abbaas (may Allaah be pleased with him) said, according to a report narrated from him, that “busy in joyful things” means listening to stringed instruments. Abu Haatim said: he misheard the phrase iftidaad al-abkaar (deflowering virgins) and thought it was samaa’ al-awtaar (listening to stringed instruments). In fact the correct phrase is iftidaad al-abkaar (deflowering virgins). (Ibn Katheer, 3/564)

  With regard to children, the scholars differed as to whether children would be born as a result of this intercourse or not. Some said that there would be children if the man wants them, but the pregnancy and birth would take just one hour. Abu Sa’eed al-Khudri (may Allaah be pleased with him) narrated that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “If the believer wants a child in Paradise, the pregnancy and delivery will take only an hour, then the child will be the age that the man wants.” (Narrated by al-Tirmidhi, no. 2487; al-Daarimi, no. 2712; Ahmad, no. 11339; Ibn Maajah, no. 4329). And Allaah knows best.

  Dear sisters, can a God be so partial?

• Zainab

  December 1, 2012 9:40 am

  Reply

  Taslima Nasreen who has been living in exile because of her anti-Islam statements is again in the thick of a controversy because of her vulgar remarks made recently. She has not studied Islam, the Quran and the Islamic history seriously and so most of her knowledge about Islam is based on the Western and Zionist propaganda. Her vulgar and immoral advice she has given to Muslim women is also based on her ignorance. She has advised Muslim women to establish sexual relationship with 72 men because they would not meet them in heaven. Her advice hints at the Hadiths that say that in heaven, Muslim men will get 72 houris. Taslima has accused Islam and the Quran of being partial against women earlier as well.

  There are some Hadiths that speak of 72 houris for martyrs of Islam in the heaven. Similarly there are other Hadiths that speak of two houris for pious men. But the Hadiths that speak of 72 houris are used by the detractors of Islam to vilify it. They try to create the impression that Muslims do good deeds in the world only to get 72 houris in the heaven and so are ever ready to die or take the life of others for houris. It is said that while giving mental and physical training to the would be terrorists and suicide bombers, the Pakistan based terrorist organisations convince them into believing that they are not terrorists but the holy warriors ready to sacrifice their lives to protect Islam for which they would be rewarded with 72 houris in the heaven. Therefore, these gullible youth throw themselves into the fire of hell in the hope of meeting 72 houris. This myth has been so widely circulated in anti-Islam circles that it has become a means of vilifying Islam. The truth is that Muslims faced all the opposition and sufferings for establishing the system based on truth, demolishing idolatry, shirk and all the social, economic and ethical vices in the world. In return, God promised unlimited bounties for them in the heaven.

  The Quran nowhere mentions a specific number of houris for a Muslim man. The Quran assures pious and righteous men and women of heaven and simultaneously warns sinner men and women of the fire of hell and in doing so it does not specify gender. Every man or woman who leads his life on the path assigned by God and his prophet will go to heaven where they will be blessed with unlimited bounties and luxuries while the men and women who indulge in idol worship or shirk and sins will be doomed to go to hell where they will live forever. The Quran narrates the story of the son of Prophet Noah who was washed away along with his nation by the floods as he was among the non-believers who earned the wrath of God. God did not even heed the prayer of Noah in favour of his son. Similarly, the Prophet Louth’s wife who was among the sinners of his nation was destroyed along with them. Similarly, Abu Lahab and his wife Umme Jamil who tortured the holy Prophet (PBUH) and his followers are doomed to go to hell. On the contrary, Hadhrat Fatima (R.A.) and Hadhrat Ali (R.A.) will be the heads of the women and men in the heaven respectively. Therefore, the Quran and Hadith testify to the fact that heaven will be populated by both righteous men and women while the hell will be fed with evil men and women.

  Indeed God has promised fair complexioned doe-eyed houris for the righteous men but this will not be the only bounty for them in the heaven but one of the countless bounties and gifts that God will bestow on them as a reward for their good deed on earth since men and women are incomplete without each other. A man cannot be complete without a woman despite all the measure of physical bounties and luxuries. In the same way a woman cannot be complete without a woman despite all the bounties in her possession. And in the heaven, all the bounties will be at their disposal endlessly as the life in the heaven will be infinite. To God the place of martyrs of Islam is the highest among the believers and the hadiths that speak of 72 houris for martyrs are for a glorified group of the dearest slaves of God whereas the Quran speaks of bounties for general Muslims. That’s why it does not mention a number of houris for men. Men and women have different status in relation to their degree of piety, sacrifices and virtues and they will get their place in the heaven according to their devotion.

  “Men have different places before God” (Al-e-Imran: 163)

  Now, let’s come to the second point. Taslima and other detractors of Islam spread the propaganda that the Quran mentions houris for men but do not mention virgin men for women. It is wrong. As the Quran mentions houris, that is, extremely beautiful virgin women for men, it also mentions handsome virgin boys for the blessed women in heaven. Following is the verse about the houris:

  “And fair complexioned women with wide eyes like hidden pearls, reward for the deeds they did.” (Al Waqiah: 22-24)

  Another verse discusses the bounties of heaven in the following words:

  “Those who fear are in the gardens and amidst bounties, enjoying fruits that have been given to them by God and saved them from hell, eat and drink to the heart’s content, reward for your deeds, sitting in a row on thrones with pillows, married to wide-eyed houris “ (Al Toor: 17-20)

  In other words, as there would be all the means of comfort and luxury and fruits and the best quality of drinks for men in the heaven, there would also be doe-eyed women like hidden pearls.

  Similarly, there will be young boys in the heaven spread everywhere. They will also look like pearls in their shells.

  “And immortal young boys move around them, when you look at them it seems as if they are pearls scattered all over “ ( Al Dahr: 19)

  Another verse of the same meaning is as follows:

  “And there will go round boy-servants (Ghilman) of theirs, to serve them as if they were preserved pearls. “ (Al Toor: 24)

  In the verse quoted above, ‘boy-servants (Ghilman) of theirs’ means boys meant for them. Another important point to be noted is that that the Quran uses two different words for the young boys in the heaven. In the Surah Waqiah (17-18) and Surah Al Dahr (19) they are referred to as Wildan while in Surah Al Toor (24) they have been called Ghilman. Does it mean that the young men in the heaven will be under two catergories? About Ghilman, the Quran says that they will be like pearls covered and protected in their shells in the same way as the houris are described as hidden pearls. The exegetes are of the opinion that by saying that houris will be like hidden pearls the Quran means that they will be virgins not consummated by men before. On the same lines, we can infer that Ghilman who also have been described as pearls in their shells will be virgins not consummated by women before. ‘Boys of theirs” also hints at that. In other words, Ghilman means the young men who will be specifically meant for women and Wildan will be the boys who will serve as attendants to men and women, serving them the holy drink called Sharab-e-Tahoora:

  “They will be served by immortal boys,(Wildan) With cups, and jugs, and a glass from the flowing wine,”.” (Al Waqiah: 17-18)

  Therefore it is clear from the verses in the Quran that Ghilman are the boys who are meant for the pious women in the heaven while Wildan are the boys who will serve as their attendants, serving them holy wine in cups and jugs.

  So, if the explanations and arguments presented in the preceding lines demolish her misconception, Taslima Nasrin can repent and come back to the fold of Islam. If she leads the life of a good Muslim, she can rest assured that she will get more than 72 young men (all virgins) in the heaven who will be always at her ‘service’ with the finest quality of wine to serve her before the actual ‘party’. She can live with them happily ever after.

• Yasmeen

  November 29, 2012 5:38 am

  Reply

  Hi every body,

  There are many things that go on in Islam regarding women that are barbaric. Untold suffering has been heaped upon women due to these practices. There seems to be no one in the world of Islam that is willing to speak out and bring an end to these practices. Imams are silent, the women’s movements of the world are silent, particularly women’s studies in the universities, and reform seems impossible given the secondary position of women in the Qur’an and the hadiths.

  There are many practices that demean women and subject them to barbaric and evil conditions.

  1. Female Genital Mutilations
  
  Consider the following news story:

  TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq – Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor’s house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

  There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. “I do this in the name of Allah!” she intoned.

  As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan’s genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan’s mother smiled with pride.

  “This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”

  More than 60 percent of women in Kurdish areas of northern Iraq have been circumcised, according to a study conducted this year. In at least one Kurdish territory, 95 percent of women have undergone the practice, which human rights groups call female genital mutilation.

  “In Somalia, like many countries across Africa and the Middle East, little girls are made “pure” by having their genitals cut out. There is no other way to describe this procedure, which typically occurs around the age of five. After the child’s clitoris and labia are carved out, scraped off, or, in more compassionate areas, merely cut or pricked, the whole area is often sewn up, so that a thick band of tissue forms a chastity belt made of the girl’s own scarred flesh. A small hole is carefully situated to permit a thin flow of pee. Only great force can tear the scar tissue wider, for sex.

  “Female genital mutilation predates Islam. Not all Muslims do this, and a few of the peoples who do are not Islamic. But in Somalia, where virtually every girl is excised, the practice is always justified in the name of Islam. Uncircumcised girls may be possessed by devils, fall into vice and perdition, and becomes whores. Imams never discourage the practice: it keeps girls pure.

  “Many girls die during or after their excision, from infections, Other complications cause enormous, more or less lifelong pain.”

  There are testimonies of Muslim girls who are frightened to death of their wedding night when they are forced to have sex under these conditions. Not only is sex a problem, but delivering a child through these conditions is abnormal. One would think that Muslim men would rise up and condemn the practice for there are men who married women and could not enter the woman on their wedding night. This reflects poorly on a man’s image of himself.

  I consulted a friend who is an ob-gyn doctor and asked his views on the implication of this mutilation. He wrote:

  “I looked up Frank Netter’s drawings of the procedure (Netter is a well honored MD/medical artist who is famous for his drawings of anatomical and surgical subjects). Netter shows various degrees of mutilation involved with female “circumcision”. It may involve “only” a partial removal of the anterior labia minora and clitoral hood, to the total removal of the labia minora, partial removal of the labia majora and extirpation of the total clitoris. This is the same as we do for cancer of the vulva (called a simple vulvectomy). In both cases with “circumcision”, the labia are the sutured TOGETHER! (with vulvectomy we attempt to resuture residual anatomy to appropriate residual anatomy). The net results leaves a nearly impenetrable vulva…or what I would think an actually impenetrable vulva. The following are some possible/probable side effects:

  1) Physical obstruction of the introitus may lead to a condition of hematocolpos and hematometria…the accumulation of menstrual blood in the vagina and endometrial cavity of the uterus which would cause(likely) sterility as well as endometriosis (a condition of small implants of endometrium in the lower abdominal cavity that causes pockets of blood in the abdomen and severe pain in the abdomen…and even potential death should the enlarging blood cysts rupture)

  2) A misdirection of the urinary stream–the labia minora fundamentally direct or point the flow of urine. This side effect is worse than it sounds…it may cause the smell of urine on the person so effected.

  3) Severe scarring of the vulva which would lead to a predisposition to severe tearing during childbirth. This (tearing) could lead to severe hemorrhage and the formation of huge hematomas of the vulva…I’ve seen them the size of a football and require several units of blood transfusion. As a corollary of this, scarring could cause dystocia (an increased disability, or even inability, to deliver.)

  4) Infection at the time of the procedure or shortly thereafter…infection with attempted intercourse or any trauma that might lacerate the scar tissue.

  5) Massive dyspareunia (pain with intercourse) due to the scar tissue. This would probably be a lifetime problem unless obviated by surgery. Normal sexual function would likely be impossible.

  6) The psychological effects would be massive. It seems to certainly have the grotesque psychological side effects as childhood rape has, which often leads to a number of problems, such as drug and alcohol addiction (high correlation), antisocial behavioral disorders (moderate correlation) and remarkably promiscuous behavior, including prostitution (high correlation)

  7) It has been my observation that many women who are self-described lesbians have had traumatic incidents analogous to this that are associated, in the victim’s opinion, with men.”

  One has to ask about this practice in the minds of people. Did the Creator make a mistake in making females the way they are? Do Muslims feel the need to improve on what He did? Is this not an insult to the Creator? What does this do for the female in terms of sexual pleasure? It is not commanded in the Qur’an, so why not reject the practice? Why do imams not condemn the practice?

  The story of Genesis 1-2 is that God created man and woman. No improvements were necessary. No barbaric operations were ordered. In fact the Hebrews were forbidden to cut the body. “You are the sons of the LORD your God. You shall not cut yourselves or make any baldness on your foreheads for the dead. (Dt. 14:1) In the New Testament we read: “And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. “ (I Thess. 5:23 ASV) The body, both male and female, is to be kept in its created state.

  The lone exception is male circumcision which was the sign of Yahweh’s Covenant with Abraham. As such the foreskin was cut, but the organ was not mutilated. Nor does it impose a hardship on the man. This was commanded for the Jewish people only. The Qur’an does not command female cutting. If one attempted to justify the practice from the hadiths it must be remembered they are not “revelation.” Moreover, there are so many fraudulent hadiths that one cannot be sure about using them to justify an evil practice on women.

  It is a horrible sin to mutilate little girls in the name of custom, Allah, religion, or tradition.

  2. Wearing the burqa.

  This is the most extreme form of covering for females. One of the most barbaric examples of this was in March 2002 in Mecca when fifteen girls were killed in a fire at their school. The Saudi Religious police would not allow the girls out of the building without the proper dress. They battled the police and the firemen who were trying to open the schools’s doors. Is this not an evil practice that required the girls to die rather than being seen without the burqa? What kind of value system is this?

  Can you imagine as a man wearing a tent to cover your whole body and not exposing any part of your body to be viewed by others? Not only is it demeaning to women, it is also unhealthy.

  “Muslim women who wear the burqa in Ireland are at increased risk of pelvic fractures during childbirth because of vitamin D deficiency due to a lack of sunlight, a consultant warns.

  Babies born to women with vitamin D deficiency are also more prone to seizures in their first week of life, according to Dr Miriam Casey, of the Osteoporosis Unit in St James’s hospital in Dublin.

  Casey said she was aware of cases involving pelvic fractures, and warned that these could become more frequent as Ireland’s Muslim population increased. “Ireland’s temperate climate doesn’t have the intense sunlight that keeps burqa-clad women from becoming vitamin D-deficient in their own countries,” she said.

  Vitamin D helps the body to absorb calcium and is crucial for making bones strong. The greatest source is sunlight.

  Casey said the fractures occur at sites of particular weakness which develop in under-mineralised pelvic bones. In these women’s babies, low calcium can cause “serious complications such as seizures, growth retardation, muscle weakness and fractures”.

  “As a toddler, carrying the weight of the torso can force the development of a bow-legged appearance and a waddling gait,” she said. “Later, there can be rickets, which is caused by vitamin D deficiency, with swollen wrists and bones that fail to fuse in adolescence.”

  Darker skins can produce as little as 1% of the vitamin D that fair skins produce. Moreover, studies have found that the rate of many diseases rises the further north one moves, leading researchers to suspect that vitamin D may play a greater role in health than previously thought. (“Ireland too grey for the burqa,” by Colin Gleeson for the Times Online, December 28, 2008)

  It seems that the Creator made us to be exposed to the sun for our health’s sake, but many Muslim cultures require a female to be covered and that is more important to Islam than health. It is irrational to think that only men will be excited by viewing women. Why do not the men cover themselves as required of the women? Women are not without passion. How would a man feel wearing a black tent that covers his entire body and his face covered so no one would recognize him? For more on this, go here and here.

  3. Honor killings

  No one knows the number of “honor killings” that occur each year. The estimates run into the thousands. Frequently the police do not investigate and bring charges against the murderer in Muslim cultures. Honor killings are primarily related to the females who may be suspected of having sex before marriage, flirting with someone, talking to a stranger, failing to serve a meal on time, rape by a relative, cousin, uncle, or brother. There is no limit to the reasons given for honor killings. One of the more notorious honor killings occurred in the Dallas, Texas area where two sisters were killed by their father because they were being too influenced by western culture and music. In many places records are not kept on these murders and that is one of the reasons statistics are not well documented. (*)

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali pressed for an experiment in Holland where figures were not kept. In a time period between Oct. 2004 and May 2005 eleven Muslim girls were killed by their families in just two regions of the country. There are 25 such regions in Holland.

  Shawbo Ali Rauf was a 19 year old Iraqi girl who was murdered by her own in-laws. Her crime was to have an unknown number on her mobile phone. Her “honour killing” is just one in a grotesque series emerging from Iraq, where activists speak of a “genocide” against women in the name of religion. (*)

  In the latest such case, it was reported yesterday that a 17-year-old girl, Rand Abdel-Qader, was stabbed to death last month by her father for becoming infatuated with a British soldier serving in southern Iraq. In Basra alone, police acknowledge that 15 women a month are murdered for breaching Islamic dress codes. Campaigners insist it is a conservative figure. Violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of the militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicides through self-immolation, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse masquerading as marriage of girls as young as nine are all on the increase. (*)

  A sixteen-year-old Palestinian girl became pregnant after being raped by her younger brother. Once her condition became known, her family encouraged her older brother to kill her to remove the blemish from their honor. Her brothers, the rapist and the murderer, were exonerated. The girl was blamed. “She made a mistake,” said one of her male cousins. “She had to pay for it.

  Even more horrifically, a four-year-old Palestinian girl, raped by a man in his mid-twenties, was left by her family to bleed to death. They did this because they felt her misfortune would sully their honor.

  “European police report that Islamic honor killings are on the rise. In 2005, for instance, a review by British police of 22 domestic homicides led to 18 of the cases being reclassified as “murder in the name of so-called ‘honor.’” Polls routinely find that a disturbingly large percentage of Muslims – one in 10 according to a 2006 BBC poll – would condone the murder of someone seen to have disrespected their families honor.” (Frontpagemag, Jan.1, 2009)

  The claim is that the female has brought shame to the family. The greater shame is that they have no shame for what they do to the women.

  As long as the “shame culture” exists there will be lots of innocent victims put to death. Medical examinations have revealed that innocent girls accused of immorality were still virgins, and the real evil was in the minds of the fathers, or brothers, or relatives. The principle of “innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t seem to operate in the minds of these people.

  4. Wife beating

  The practice of beating a wife is not new in many societies. It may come about because of jealousy, laziness, indifference, or distrust. There are lots of irrational excuses for this in many cultures. Even among Christians there are those who beat their wives.

  There are no religious verses commanding a Christian to beat his wife. Most non-Muslims who beat their wives do not have any religious justification for it. There are Muslim men who do not beat their wives, however, the Muslim context is different. There is a religious directive for it. The Qur’an says, “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because God has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) absence what God would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (first), (Next), refuse to share their beds, (And last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means (of annoyance): For God is Most High, great (above you all).” (Surah 4:34 Yusuf Ali’s trans.)

  Pickthall uses the word “scourge them.” Six other translations of the Qur’an use the word “beat them.”

  Obviously this is a command that gets a lot of attention both in and out of Islam. Inside are the defenders saying that it is such a mild beating as with a “toothbrush.” Those outside of Islam have seen the results of the beating of neighbors who have been bruised, battered, thrown against the walls of their apartments. Often nothing happens when the police arrive because the wives will not file charges. So it goes on and on.

  Statistics are hard to come by for obvious reasons. “The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences has determined that over ninety percent of Pakistani wives have been struck, beaten, or abused sexually — for offenses on the order of cooking an unsatisfactory meal. Others were punished for failing to give birth to a male child. In Spring 2005, when the East African nation of Chad tried to institute a new family law that would outlaw wife beating, Muslim clerics led resistance to the measure as un-Islamic.”

  Muslim leaders do affirm the view of the Qur’an and teach the idea of beating a disobedient wife.

  On October 5, 2004, France expelled Algerian-born Imam Abdel Qader Bouziane for telling a French magazine that Muslim husbands may beat their wives. This follows the sentencing on January 14 of the Egyptian-born Sheik Muhammad Kamal Mustafa, the imam of the mosque of the Spanish city of Fuengirola, Costa del Sol, for publishing a book that explains that wife-beating is in accordance with Shariah law.

  Sheik Yousuf Qaradhawi, one of the most influential clerics in Sunni Islam and head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research and the International Council of Muslim Clerics, has also advocated wife-beating on multiple occasions in his 1984 book “The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam,” and on his weekly Al Jazeera program, which is popular among the surging number of European Muslims who increasingly look to religious leaders from the Middle East for religious guidance. This is particularly true with the growth of viewers watching Arab TV stations, available on satellite TV in Europe, which frequently airs shows dedicated to teaching a husband how to beat his wife. The following examples on this subject can be viewed at http://www.memritv.org (MEMRI | Friday, November 05, 2004)

  For an extensive treatment on the issue of wife beating go here.

  There are probably many explanations why men do beat their wives. One may be that many marriages are arranged and neither person knows the other. If the marriage has a large age gap as in a 10 year old girl and a 40 year old man the marriage is doomed to have lots of problems. A recent story from Saudi Arabic tells of a girl who was 5 who appeared to be tested for marriage. The doctor denied the test and she could not get married. What companionship is there between two such spans of ages? What is the basis of love in an arranged marriage?

  The lack of education for females is also a source of problems. The Taliban has been burning down schools, threatening people who send their girls to schools, and the end result is an enforced ignorance of the females. Can there be any preparation for marriage in ignorance?

  There will be no change in this situation since the word from Allah and Mohammed is to beat the disobedient wives.

  5. Rape

  In a number of western countries, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Australia, there have been a large increase in the rape of non-Muslim women some as young as a 13 year old Swedish girl gang raped by 5 Kurds. The victims in Australia were called “sluts” or “Aussie pigs.” A Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed blamed the women themselves for wearing skimpy clothing which invites men to rape them. In Copenhagen, Islamic mufti Shahid Mehdi declared that women who did not wear a head scarf were asking to be raped.

  What is the psychology behind all these rapes? (Someone has written that most of the men who rape had the name of Mohammed.) The answer lies in the example of Mohammed. Rape was permitted and encouraged by Mohammed. Rape is a part of jihad. It is a part of war. The women captured in battle were raped and the husbands humiliated.

  Mohammed participated in this horror. After the battle of Khaybar the spoils were given out. One warrior, Dihya bin Khalifa requested of Mohammed that he be given a slave girl from the captives. He chose a woman name Safiyya bint Huyayy. Her husband had been captured, tortured and killed by the Muslims. Later when Mohammed saw her he told Dihya to take another girl from the captives. Mohammed freed her and married her upon her agreement to convert to Islam. That night she was dressed in a wedding dress and Mohammed consummated the marriage. What was it like to see your husband tortured, killed, and then forced into a marriage on the same day?

  One of the problems discussing rape is that Muslims do not consider raping a non-Muslim as a sin or a problem. It is justified because Mohammed did it.

  Rape is not only bad in the western countries where there can be punishment for the offenders when caught and tried, but in Muslim countries there is a different problem. If a woman makes charges at the police station that she has been raped, she must produce 4 male witnesses to justify her accusations. If she cannot produce these four witnesses, she is often charged with adultery or fornication and may be imprisoned herself. In Pakistan 75 percent or more of the women in prison are victims of rape. To report a rape may mean nothing more than a confession of guilt. Little is done to investigate the charges. Can you imagine the chagrin of a women who reports a rape at a police station to seek justice and to her dismay finds that she is put in jail for committing fornication or adultery?

  For more information on the issue of rape in Islam, go here and here and here.

  These are a few problems for women in the Muslim culture. Unfortunately, there will be little change for improvement of the lives of half a billion women. Conditions vary from country to country, some worse than others, but none with real freedom and position.

  When women cannot be allowed a real education there will be problems borne of ignorance whether in growing up, marriage, raising a family, being a wife, being a real companion, or whatever. Ignorance is not bliss. Women can make a phenomenal contribution to the rising of culture if they are allowed this freedom. Only when one can escape the influence of a seventh century culture does this happen.

  I request all sisters to analyse above evils of islam and propose solutions of of evils in the larger interest of female community.

• Egyptian girl

  November 29, 2012 5:14 am

  Reply

  Hello sisters,

  Aside from provoking shock, disgust, and denial, last week’s news of Egyptian parliamentarians trying to pass a “farewell intercourse” law legalizing sex with one’s wife up to six hours after she dies has yet to be fully appreciated.

  An Egyptian cartoon pokes fun at the proposed “farewell intercourse” law. As the spirit of the deceased woman ascends, and as her husband sexually eyes her corpse, she remarks: “O please, man—where were you when I was alive!”

  To start, consider the ultimate source of this practice: it’s neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor the Salafis; rather, as with most of Islam’s perversities—from adult breastfeeding to pedophiliamarriage—Islamic necrophilia is traced to the fount of Islam, its prophet Muhammad, as found in a hadith (or tradition) that exists in no less than six of Islam’s classical reference texts (including Kanz al-’Umal by Mutaqi al-Hindi and Al-Hujja fi Biyan al-Mahujja, an authoritative text on Sunni Doctrine, by Abu Qassim al-Asbahani).

  According to this hadith, Muhammad took off his shirt and placed it on a dead woman and “lay with her” in her grave. The gravediggers proceeded to hurl dirt atop the corpse and the prophet, exclaiming, “O Prophet, we see you doing a thing you never did with anyone else,” to which Muhammad responded: “I have dressed her in my shirt so that she may be dressed in heavenly robes, and I have laid with her in her grave so that the pressures of the grave [also known as Islam’s “torments of the grave” may be alleviated from her.”

  What was Muhammad saying and doing? Perhaps his magical shirt would transport the dead woman to heaven, and his blessed body would protect her from the “pressures of the grave”? A more cynical—a more human—reading is that he stripped his shirt as a natural step before copulating; that he precisely, if not sardonically, meant the act of sex would “alleviate” the pressures of death from the corpse; and that the observers covered them with dirt for privacy and/or for shame.

  This interpretation is given much more weight when one considers that the secondary meaning for the word I translated above as “lay with” is “intercourse,” further demonstrating that the proposed Egyptian law is, in fact, based on this hadith: after all, the Arabic root-word used for “intercourse” in the phrase “farewell intercourse” is derived from the same root-word that Muhammad used to explain what he did with the dead woman . As if this was not enough, necrophilia finds more validation in Islam’s legal texts. For example, according to al-Sharwani’s Hawashi, “there is no punishment for having intercourse with a dead woman” and “it is not necessary to rewash the dead after penetration and discharging semen.”

  Incidentally, this issue of “death-sex” far precedes Egyptian parliamentarians. In fact, I first wrote about this macabre topic back in 2009, based on an episode of Father Zakaria Botros, where he explored the perverse sexual habits of Islam’s prophet Muhammad (see here). Interestingly, when that episode first aired, many Muslims were livid, denying the existence of the hadith, and renewing calls to assassinate the priest for trying to “defame” Islam: yet here it is, once again—only this time, the hadith is being passed into a “law,” further documenting the existence, if not legitimacy, of necrophilia in Islam.

  Which leads to another eye-opener: it is no longer this or that “radical” cleric, but parliament members who are, not merely acknowledging bizarre Islamic practices, but trying to implement them as “laws.” (Perhaps this should be unsurprising, considering weeks earlier in Egypt, suit-and-tie wearing Muslim court lawyers attacked.

  What else do such “parliamentarians” and “lawyers” have in store for Egypt and its neighbors? If this little known, ghoulish practice is being endorsed simply because of one arcane hadith, how much more support must Egypt’s Islamist-dominated parliament be giving to those other ironclad teachings of Islam—for instance, Muhammad’s unequivocal commands, recorded in hundreds of canonical hadiths, to fight, deceive, and subjugate all non-Muslim infidels?

• Zarina

  November 29, 2012 5:03 am

  Reply

  Hi sisters,

  An Imam in Morocco issued a fatwa stating that necrophilia is “Halal” or religiously acceptable practice in Islam. He said that a husband has the right to have sex with his dead wife.

  The Imam, whose name is Zamzami Abdelbari, said that marriage remains valid even after death, which does not cancel the marriage link. He took as evidence a Koranic verse which says that Muslims believers will go to Paradise with their wives…

  Sheikh Zamzami said that the husband has the right to have sex with his dead wife. He added that the husband may wash the body of his dead wife and have sex with her.

  He said that the woman also has the same right but failed to explain how a woman can manage to perform sex with the corps of her dead husband.

  However, cheikh Zamzami, tempered his most unusual fatwa by stating that necrophilia, though Halal is a disgusting act that would be best avoided.

  Based on this, Egyptian Govt. is also contemplating to legalize Necropholia, an another barbaric attempt to disrespect female community.

• Sultana

  November 29, 2012 3:59 am

  Reply

  Women face differing conditions in Muslim countries

  The situation of women in Muslim countries is quite complex. It varies from country to country in paradoxical ways and it is very hard to make any sense of the overall picture. The patriarchal legacy remains influential, particularly through religion yet in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia and Bangladesh women have either served as vice president or head of state perhaps a sign that the mindset of the people is starting to change.

  •61% of Saudis, 85% of Iranians and approximately 90% of Indonesians, Turks, Lebanese and Bangladeshi agree that men and women should share the same legal rights.
  •90% of people in Malaysia support a woman’s right to work outside her home in any job for which a woman qualifies as do majorities in Turkey (86%), Egypt (85%) and Saudi Arabia (69%).
  •Majorities are also in favor of a woman’s right to vote without any involvement from other family members: 80% in Indonesia, 89% in Iran, 67% in Pakistan, 90% in Bangladesh, 76% in Jordan, 93% in Turkey and 56% in Saudi Arabia.
  •The situations in these countries are much more complex than the numbers would suggest, often filled with important differences between the sovereign states and paradoxical facts.
  •In Egypt, women have access to top-notch education and work in positions with important responsibilities but, just a short time ago, had to get permission from a male family member to travel.
  •In the Islamic Republic that is Iran, women are required to cover their hair and wear long-sleeved, ankle-length garb.
  •At the same time, the country’s Vice President is a woman and women outnumber men in university classrooms.
  •In Saudi banks, 70% of the savings are owned by women who also possess 61% of the country’s private firms yet women are subject to gender based discrimination and are confined to “appropriate” professions and are not legally allowed to drive a car.
  •The countries’ populations appear ready for a change and evidence suggests that it is on its way but, as always, slowly.

  The main problem is the misinterpretation of islamic rules against women and giving too much freedom to the males at the cost of sufferings to the female community. The misinterpretation of such rules give rise to the anti social elements in the form of terrorists and criminals.

• Salma Agha

  November 28, 2012 6:19 am

  Reply

  The Diverse Roles and Aspirations of Middle Eastern and Muslim Women

  It is a common assumption in the U.S. that all Muslim women are oppressed, and that their religion forces them to cover their bodies and even their faces, denies them education and the right to work, and makes them subservient to men. While it is certainly true that most Muslim women, like women in other cultures, struggle against various forms of inequality and discrimination, it is important to distinguish carefully between constraints imposed by Islam as a religion on the one hand and local cultural and legal restrictions on women’s autonomy on the other. Women in different countries face enormously different circumstances, and we must examine the experiences of women in particular places and times in order to appreciate both the obstacles they face and their own agency in overcoming them.

  In the Middle East today, Muslim women must negotiate a complex system of restrictions and opportunities created by the intersection of (1) how Islam is practiced locally; (2) cultural practices, traditions and expectations related to gender; and (3) the legal and civil structures and intent of the state. The nation-state may reinforce what are seen to be traditional restrictions on women based in a conservative interpretation of religion, as in Saudi Arabia or Iran, or it may contradict traditional interpretations of Islam and forcefully encourage women to become what it considers to be more modern, as in Tunisia or Turkey.

  Early Muslim Societies

  These three elements—religion, culture and political structures—have been shaping the environment in which women live since before the advent of Islam. Islam itself arose in—and dramatically changed—a particular cultural environment. Pre-Islamic Arabia was a tribal society in which the virtues of warfare were paramount. Women were often seen as chattel to be seized in raids from other tribes. Sometimes girl babies were killed at birth by exposing them to the elements because they were considered a liability to the family’s economic survival and/or honor. At the same time, certain individual women of high status and ability had some autonomy. Khadija, the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, was a successful businesswoman who hired Muhammad to conduct business for her, and was impressed enough with him that she initiated a marriage proposal.

  The Quran made explicit and dramatic reforms to the position and treatment of women in the early Islamic community. It explicitly states that men and women are equal in the eyes of God, and addresses the revelation frequently to “you believing men and women.” Furthermore, the Quran absolutely forbids female infanticide, instructs Muslims to educate their daughters as well as sons, insists that women must agree to a prospective husband, gives women rights (including custody of young children) if they are divorced by their husband, gives women the right to divorce in certain cases, and gives women the right to own and inherit property, among other reforms. While these changes do not add up to our contemporary definition of gender equality, they mark an enormous legal change in the status of women that is arguably unequalled in the West until the nineteenth century.

  Legal inequalities remained, despite these Quranic reforms. In Sunni Islam, for example, female heirs get only half of what men inherit. Some scholars explained that this was because men are expected to care for their mothers, wives, children and any unmarried female relatives, and therefore need greater resources. Women also did not have the same legal authority as witnesses as did men. Polygamy (the marriage of one man to up to four wives) was accepted, but discouraged, and on the whole practiced less frequently than imagined by those in the West. Some scholars now argue that it was originally allowed only because so many Muslim men of the early community were killed, and their wives and daughters had no protectors or providers. Many contemporary Muslims cite the Quranic phrase “But treat them equally… and if you cannot, then one [wife] is better” and argue that monogamy is preferable, or even mandatory. The Quran also acknowledged the practice of slavery, as did Judaism and Christianity, but put restrictions on its practice.

  Some women in Muslim societies have been prominent social and political actors. Female relatives of the Prophet Muhammad were particularly important in the early Muslim community because they knew his practice and teachings so well. In addition to Khadija and Aisha, both wives of the Prophet, Fatima (the Prophet’s daughter) and Zaynab (the Prophet’s granddaughter) are also very important role models for many Muslim women. The tenets of Sufism were first articulated by a woman named Rabi’a, a freed slave who became a prominent scholar in the 8th-century city of Basra in Iraq. She refused to marry because she did not want any earthly distractions from her love of God. This tradition of women’s religious leadership continues today–one example is Zaynab al-Ghazali, who led the women’s wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

  While it seems clear that the Quranic revelations ushered in a number of legal innovations that benefited women, the scholarship and social mores of succeeding centuries pushed back against this early reformist intent. In many cases, the most restrictive interpretations of gender-related injunctions of the Quran and hadith (sayings about the practice of Muhammad) were adopted, and more liberal interpretations were rejected. As the Muslim state expanded into areas that had been controlled by the Byzantines and Sassanians, it also adopted some of the practices of these societies related to women. For example, the practice of veiling, which was common for upper-class women in both Sassanid Persia and Byzantium, was integrated into Muslim practice in the Middle East. The cultural practice of a large harem of concubines for the ruler and uppermost elite was also adopted. Even the Quranically-mandated rights for women were not always followed, depending on the strength of local patriarchal customs. Women in 19th-century Ottoman Egypt, for example, were often not given the full inheritance due to them by law. If they challenged the family members who withheld their money in an Islamic court, however, they could win.

  One other important concept for gender was elaborated in the early centuries of Islam as the Muslim state expanded. Relying on a prophetic hadith (an accepted action or saying of Muhammad) that said, “My community will never agree on an error,” the scholarly community or ulama gave a certain amount of latitude to local customs, so that those cultural practices that did not explicitly contradict Islam were deemed permissible. This legal doctrine, meant to reduce the possibility of intra-Muslim conflict, allowed for great cultural variation to exist between different Muslim societies as the religion expanded through both conquest and trade. Thus while some religious scholars in 9th- and 10th-century Iraq were prescribing more restrictive roles for women, elite women in Islamic Spain were sometimes able to bend these rules and mix quite freely with men.

  Gender fault lines also existed across socio-economic class. Wealthier women historically have had more economic and educational opportunities by virtue of their class. Many wealthy women were and continue to be highly educated, their money and intelligence giving them the power to ignore society’s traditional expectations of women and to participate fully in the economic, political, and cultural life of their community. Upper-class women, however, were often more restricted in their clothing and movement in public, since keeping them covered and out of public life was a way to demonstrate status. Poorer and rural women had relatively more freedom of movement but fewer educational opportunities. In addition, women in highly segregated Muslim societies sometimes created (and still do create) their own society set apart from the male world. In all cases, it is important to consider that whatever the cultural and economic background of a woman, her own abilities and personality determine to a great extent what she can achieve in her society.

  The Colonial Experience and Gender

  The position of women was frequently used by the colonial powers as a reason to interfere with the political and social institutions of colonized societies. While this was based to a certain extent on sincere do-goodery, it was also a political tool used to undermine the legitimacy of local traditions and replace them with colonial institutions. One can see an explicit example of this in the practice of the British governor general of Egypt, Lord Cromer. At home he was a member of the Anti-Suffrage League, but he decried the oppression of Egyptian women in order to denigrate Egyptian society and to legitimize British control, while restricting real educational reforms for Egyptian women.

  For many in the Middle East who remember the bitter colonial experience, the West’s interest in “reforming” the position of women is therefore suspect. When the push for advancing women’s liberation comes from outside, it may be seen as part of an assumption that Western ways are superior and perhaps as a strategy to delegitimize the leadership of the modern nation-states of the region. On the other hand, the position of women can also be used by those within Middle Eastern societies as a touchstone for their unease about the encroachment of the commercialized and sexualized culture of the West. These factors can make it very difficult for women in the region to advocate for legal changes or more social tolerance for an expansion of women’s roles, since reformers may be seen as tools or dupes of the West.

  Still, many regimes in the contemporary Middle East have sought to advance the status of women in law and in society as a marker of their own national progress and in order to take advantage of the full human capital of the society. In Turkey and Iran, Kemal Ataturk and the Shah, respectively, argued for adoption of secular Western ideas about the roles of women, in particular arguing (and even legislating) that women should remove their headscarves in order to participate fully in the modern world. The Arab nationalist and socialist regimes of Syria and Iraq brought in many reforms for women in the second half of the 20th century–while at the same time restricting the political freedoms of the society as a whole.

  Negotiating the Islamic Tradition
  
  Women in Middle Eastern societies who want to expand their rights and roles may, at one and the same time, have to defend themselves against the accusation of being too Western, fight against ultra-conservative interpretations of Islam and restrictive local cultural traditions, and disentangle themselves from being co-opted by an oppressive nation-state. One strategy being adopted by many women in the Middle East to advocate against the various restrictive social and legal practices of their own societies is to argue that their impulse to reform the role and status of women comes not from the West but from the Islamic tradition itself. They look to the early reformist spirit of the Quran and some hadith, rather than to the legal accretions of later centuries, to argue that Islam mandates that women have equal status in law and society, if in some areas different roles.

  Women in the Middle East today who are struggling to better their own positions thus have an arsenal of tools to wield in opposing the laws, states and traditions that confine them. These may be secular arguments about human rights, equality and democracy and/or religious arguments about what they see as the inherent gender justice of Islam. In opposition to the 2009 election results in Iran, mainly elite women in Tehran demonstrated in their thousands–often using loose green headscarves as a symbol of support for their favored candidate. In Turkey, secular feminists argue freely with women who resist the state’s restrictions on the practice of religion, including the ban on headscarves in public schools and in public office. Even in the conservative Gulf states, perceptions of gender and their legal reflections are changing. In Kuwait, four women were elected to Parliament in 2009; in Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, too, women have won the right to vote.

  In every state in the region, women are acting as social entrepreneurs, setting up organizations to combat domestic violence, oppose government malfeasance, increase educational opportunities for girls, insist on observance of human rights, and advocate for change across a wide variety of issues. Women are also using both established and new forms of artistic expression to throw light on the issues they consider most important, to critique their societies, and to point the way to their own visions of a more equitable life.

• Tabbusum

  November 28, 2012 5:45 am

  Reply

  HI every muslim girl,

  I am describing about stress that a modern Muslim women can struggle to balance conflicting cultures to ensure her married life has a smooth sailing.

  It is a drastic and costly measure but as she takes her husband’s hand in marriage, she knows it is one which may – quite literally – save her life.

  The horror and outrage that would ensue if it was discovered she had already slept with a man would be so damning that her own strictly religious relatives might kill her rather than face public shame.

  “My virginity was restored in a delicate operation just last week, and I honestly view it as life-saving surgery,”

  “If my husband cannot prove to his family that I am a virgin, I would be hounded, ostracised and sent home in disgrace. My father, who is a devout Muslim, would regard it as the ultimate shame.

  “The entire family could be cast out from the friends and society they hold dear, and I honestly believe that one of my fanatically religious cousins or uncles might kill me in revenge, to purge them of my sins. Incredible as it may seem, honour killings are still accepted within our religion.

  “Ever since my family arranged this marriage for me, I’ve been terrified that, on my wedding night, my secret would come out. It has only been since my surgery last week that I’ve actually been able to sleep properly. Now, I can look forward to my marriage.”

  Myself is far from alone in seeking such drastic – and almost barbaric – surgery.

  The rise in Islamic fundamentalism is being blamed for the growing trend for hymenoplasties, where the hymen is re-created from the already torn tissue, or a new membrane is inserted using a gelatine-like substance.
  

  In some cases, the vaginal lining can also be used to create a “false” hymen.

  A blood capsule can be inserted into the lining to ensure realistic blood flow when the false hymen is broken.

  Eight Hundred Twenty-four muslim women in the UK had the procedure on the NHS between 2010 and 2011, but it is thought that even thousands more – included – have plundered their savings to pay up to£4,000 to have private surgery.

  My story illustrates the intense pressures on young British muslim women caught between the strict moral code of their own community and the laxer, permissive attitudes of their white contemporaries.

  .

  I grew up against a stiflingly strict background as one of seven dutiful Muslim daughters in an affluent middle-class family who moved to England from Pakistan two generations ago.

  “I’ve always adored my parents. My father, now 62, is a retired accountant and my mother raised a family of seven sisters in a five-bedroom house in Birmingham.

  “I attended the local Catholic secondary school and although I wore a scarf on my head, I refused to wear a veil, telling my parents that it would make me stand out too much.

  “I was one of the girls, totally accepted by my white, English friends whose lives revolved around shopping and fancying boys.

  “But the moment I stepped over the doorstep, normal teenage life would cease and it was like entering an entirely different world. At home, we had to pray together five times a day.

  “We weren’t allowed to watch television. My parents were so worried that Western influences might take our minds off the most important things – education and religion – that we were never allowed to bring any schoolfriends home.

  “But it made all the things my friends did more attractive to me. I would sneak out on Saturday afternoons and join them in town, hanging around, shopping and chatting to boys.”

  Perhaps ironically, it was my academic success that was to prove my downfall, as I used to move away from home to study language and politics at university, and found myself plunged into a world of louche student living.

  I recall: “I was a totally naive 18-year-old, and found myself living away from my parents for the first time, and suddenly, everything that I had been bought up to believe was wrong, was being played out in front of me.

  “I decided that drinking, smoking and having boyfriends was just a part of normal, teenage growing up.

  “Like other young girls, I just wanted to be part of a crowd. I stopped wearing the veil and for the first time in my life I wore Western clothes – designs which revealed far more of my body than anything I had ever worn before.

  “I also started drinking. I started off on beer and then gradually things like vodka and cocktails, which naturally helped me lose my inhibitions.”

  I was in her second year of university when she found love and inevitably, lust.

  “He was another student in my tutorial class, and the more time we spent together, the more I found myself falling in love.

  “Philip was white, English, charming and kind. When we started dating, I told him I was a virgin and that I was expected to keep my virginity for marriage.

  “But he wore my inhibitions down, and I began to see that having a physical relationship with him would be pleasurable.

  “All my friends were sleeping with their boyfriends and it was entirely accepted. I was the odd one out, so after several months I took the plunge and went on the contraceptive pill as a precaution.

  “As the months went past, he became more and more desperate to make love.

  “I wrestled with my conscience night after night, but having taken away the fear of pregnancy by being on the pill, I saw that – as long as my parents never found out – there was no reason not to make love.

  “Marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. Anyway, at that time I assumed I would marry for love, not have an arranged marriage.”

  I tried to resist Philip but I discovered that I liked the physical contact. Then one fateful night, we went out and I had too much to drink. My head was spinning, we ended up in bed together and couldn’t resist any longer. It was really lovely, and I felt no shame.

  “It was only when I woke up the next morning, and saw Philip lying beside me, that I thought: ‘What have I done?’

  “But there was no turning back and it felt entirely natural. He reassured me it was OK and told me that he loved me.

  “Part of me was scared but I was also rather proud of what I’d just done. I wasn’t just a little Muslim girl, I was an independent young woman who could make up her own mind how she was going to live her life.

  Traditionally, Muslim brides are expected to be virgins when they marry

  “Four months later, Philip and I broke up but I suddenly felt sexually empowered.

  “When I started going out with another student, I knew from the word go that we would sleep together and we did, on the second night.

  “I also had another sexual fling at university with a friend.

  “Having lost my virginity, it didn’t seem to matter how many men I slept with, the damage was already done.

  “Besides, I was living away from my parents, and my old life of endless prayer and abiding by the customs of our religion seemed a long way away.”

  The full reality didn’t hit home until I returned home to Birmingham at 22, after finishing my degree.

  “It was horrible,” . “It felt like returning to a prison, and I could feel my father’s eyes burning into me, as if he knew. I tried to play the dutiful Muslim daughter, but I had changed.

  “I felt as if I was being smothered. My parents wanted me to live at home and work in Birmingham, but I got a job on a graduate sales training scheme in London. I convinced my parents it was a great honour.”

  With a new job and a new life, I fell in love with a colleague, Steve, and as a couple moved in together in an astonishing breach of her strict Muslim upbringing.

  “I still managed to keep it secret from my parents; my father was quite ill by now and they rarely travelled.

  “I would talk to them on my mobile phone, and we didn’t have a landline in the flat.

  “Steve and I lived together for two years, but then the relationship started to go wrong. He spent too much money, and he was very jealous and possessive of me.

  “When a job opportunity came up in the chain of stores I worked for in Birmingham, I seized it and moved back to get away from him. My parents were thrilled and they started talking seriously about an arranged marriage.

  “I realised I had two choices. I could either move back to London and live a Western life, bringing shame on my poor parents and estrange myself from the sisters, aunts and uncles I loved. Or I could go along with their dreams of an arranged marriage.

  “A Muslim husband would have the same values as me, and I would be firmly back within my family support system.

  “For a year I played the part of the dutiful daughter. I wore the hijab, even to work, and I helped my mother care for my father. His pleasure at my return was so touching.”

  Then last summer, my mother announced that she had found a prospective husband who came from an affluent Muslim family living in Pakistan.

  As tradition demanded, the families had shared two ceremonial meetings and the parents of both prospective bride and groom agreed to a match.

  In July, I flew to Pakistan to meet her “fiance” for the first time.

  “I was absolutely terrified. This was the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with.

  “I didn’t know if I would get on with him, or even if he would approve of me.

  “And at the back of my mind was this awful, sickening worry about my virginity.

  “But when I met him, I liked him immediately. He was 28, 6ft 3in tall with black hair and very handsome. He made me feel so welcome.

  “I spent a month at his parents’ house, and I grew to love my future husband. We didn’t kiss in all the time we were together, and I played the diligent Muslim girl who prayed five times a day, wore my hijab and kept my eyes downcast.

  “But as I said goodbye to my future husband and flew back to Birmingham, I really started to panic about my virginity.

  “Muslim tradition demands that on my wedding night, bridegroom will take the bloodied sheets to show his mother and aunts to prove that his bride is pure.

  “If I do not bleed, the wedding will be annulled, and I will be sent home in disgrace.

  “This was all I could think about. How could I fool my own husband and his family into believing that I was pure?”

  Through friends, I heard of a new operation to “restore” a torn hymen, and, in my desperation, I went onto the internet to find out more.

  “A few friends have already had this operation, though it has to be done with the utmost secrecy, as we would be disowned by our family if the news ever came out.

  “On the internet, I found the clinic of Dr Magdy Hend, at the Regency Clinic on Harley Street.

  “I went for an initial consultation, telling my family I was travelling to London on business, and was absolutely reassured.

  “The operation would cost £2,000 and would be done under local anaesthetic.

  “Dr Hend said it would take only about an hour and a half, and I would be able to go back to work the next morning, though I had to be careful not to do anything which would make the hymen break, such as strenuous exercise.

  “The operation would involve taking the ‘torn’ parts of my hymen and basically stitching them back together, adding further tissue from the side of my vagina.

  “If I wanted, just prior to my wedding he could place a capsule of blood into the hymen which would ensure a healthy amount of blood. It sounds barbaric, but what choice did I have?”

  Inevitably, there was controversy when it emerged that taxpayers had funded such operations on the NHS, with MPs suggesting it was a sign of “social regression”.

  But while I felt I had no choice, I preferred the discretion of a private clinic: “The operation went just as he predicted. It was painless, and I can feel no difference at all.

  “I think I will have the blood capsule put in place, just to make sure. I’ve had to save up for months to afford it, and I still have student debts, but it is such a weight off my mind. I had been crying myself to sleep, wondering how I was going to cope, and now I know that my secret is safe.

  “I feel very sad that women like me feel so torn between our two cultures. Our religion is so rigid – yet I was brought up among Western friends who thought nothing of sleeping with their boyfriends.

  “It makes life so confusing and I feel so deeply for all the many Muslim girls in Britain who are caught in the same dilemma.

  “I was lucky, I suppose, in that I could afford to repair my ‘mistake’ so no one would know.

  “But it scares me to think what will happen to Muslim girls who do not have this option and are seen to be ‘shaming’ their families. They are the ones whose lives will be at risk

  and finally after 4 months I got married in Pakistan and on the wedding night, as usual, my husband penetrated and broke the hymen and the blood capsule bleeded and several stains of blood appeared on the bed sheet which were examined by an elderly women in the monrning. Husband and his family was proud of me having a virgin woman.

  Time passed and one day, I came to know that my husband was already married and having kids. It came to me a big blow. I asked him why did he choose to marry me, he said as per religions, he can keep 4 wives.

  OMG, I informed my ailing father and mom, they were also shocked. Dom estic violence against me started and one day I was divorced. I contacted the prominent persons of my locality but of no use. Ultimately, I had to leave Pakistan and came back to UK with parents.
  Again started working in Birminghmam mall and this time met with a Punjabi Hindu boy. Having lost so much in the life, I got attracted towards him. His wife had died with out any kids.Our relations grew more and more and one day I told my parents to marry him. They asked him to meet them. He met and discussed and did not put any condition to covert to Hindu.Ultimately parents agreed.

  Now I am with him (Vivek), both respecting each other,s religion. I have a kid. My 2nd and 3rd sisters have married with British guys, as per their choice. Due to growing age of parents, they have lost to put any pressure.

  Reply to her at https://www.interfaithshaadi.org/?p=3510

• Rizwana

  November 27, 2012 6:52 am

  Reply

  Hello every one. I am from Spain and describing how muslim girls are forced to marriages against their wishes.

  Children, on their own initiative, have even approached the police for help. As forced marriage is not an offense under the Spanish Criminal Code, police have been trying to use other legal avenues such gender violence and kidnapping, but as often happens in Spain, the judge orders the man released from jail.

  Police in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia have intervened to prevent the forced marriage of a 13-year-old girl belonging to a Muslim immigrant family from Morocco.

  The girl was one of nine reported victims of forced marriage in Catalonia during the first six months of 2012. Seven of the reported cases involved minors, but in several instances when police were alerted, they were unable to intervene in time to prevent the marriages from taking place.

  Catalan police, known locally as Mossos d’Esquadra, have reported a cumulative total of more than 50 forced marriages involving minors since the regional government began compiling official data in 2009. Police, however, say this figure represents only “the tip of the iceberg”; many victims are unaware of their rights and most of the cases go unreported.

  The issue of forced marriage is especially acute in Catalonia, where the Muslim population has skyrocketed in recent years. Catalonia, a region with 7.5 million inhabitants, is now home to an estimated 400,000 Muslims, up from 30,000 in the 1980s.

  The Muslim population in many Catalan towns and cities now exceeds 20%; and the town of Salt, near Barcelona, where Muslim immigrants now make up 40% of the population, has been dubbed the “new Mecca of the most radical Islamism” because of efforts by Muslims to enforce Islamic Sharia law there.

  According to Catalan officials, the majority of forced marriages in Catalonia involve Muslim girls from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. The majority of the cases involve immigrants from Morocco, followed by Pakistan, Gambia, Guinea and Senegal. Marriages are often arranged with a cousin or another family member to continue the tradition, to prevent the Europeanization of the girls, or to pay outstanding debts.

  According to Catalan police, four of the cases of forced marriages during the first six months of 2012 occurred in the Catalan province of Gerona, one of the most heavily Islamized regions of Spain. Police say they were able to prevent only two of the four weddings. Three of the others occurred in the city of Barcelona, and two were within the province of Barcelona. All nine involved Muslim immigrants.

  Children, on their own initiative, have even approached the police for help. The situation involving the 13-year-old girl, for example, began in January 2012, when the girl’s mother, with whom the child had been living in Gerona, died, and the father, who was residing in neighboring France, took the girl to live with him in Toulouse.

  Once in France, the girl discovered that her father was planning to marry her off to a man in Morocco in early July. The girl alerted police in Toulouse, who transmitted the information to the Spanish consulate in the city. Spanish authorities then devised a scheme in which the girl persuaded her father to take her to Gerona on the pretext of completing some official paperwork. Once across the border in Spain, police arrested the father, and the girl was transferred to a foster home in Gerona.

  As forced marriage is not an offense under the Spanish Criminal Code, police have been trying to use other legal avenues such as pursuing crimes involving sexual assault, unlawful detention, gender violence and kidnapping. In the instance of the 13-year-old, police determined that the girl was being subjected to physical violence, and arrested the father for child abuse. But as is often happens in Spain, the judge overseeing the case ordered the father to be released from jail.

  Many reports of forced marriages of children reach police through schools: victims often confide in a trusted teacher. In one such case in 2011, police in the Barcelona suburb of L’Hospitalet arrested a 27 year old Moroccan man for forcibly marrying a minor.

  The case came to public attention after a former teacher of the girl, who lives in the same apartment complex as she, alerted the police. A subsequent investigation found that the girl’s family had taken a trip to Morocco where the child was forced to marry against her will. Once back in Spain, the girl contacted the teacher, who then called the police.

  Investigators found that the girl was being detained in her new husband’s apartment against her will and that she was a victim of rape. Once again, the judge hearing the case ordered the husband released from jail.

  In another case, a young Pakistani girl subjected to forced marriage escaped from her husband and wandered alone on the streets of Barcelona for ten days until gathering the courage to report her situation to the police.

  In some cases, the trigger for forced marriage comes when young women from Muslim immigrant families find a boyfriend in Spain and angry parents intervene. A 17-year-old girl in Gerona, for instance, was coaxed by her family to travel to her native country for a family reunion. Once there, she was forced to marry her cousin. Although she resisted because she had a boyfriend in Gerona, she relented when her family threatened to prevent her from returning to Spain if she refused to sign the marriage certificate.

  Catalan police say they prevented 21 forced marriages in 2011, 13 of which involved minors; 15 forced marriages in 2010, and 13 in 2009. They also say that in 2011, they prevented the genital mutilation of 36 girls aged between two years to 12. Most of the cases (27) occurred in the province of Barcelona, eight in Gerona and one in Lérida. In 2010, Catalan police prevented the genital mutilation of 28 girls, and in 2009, 55 genital mutilations. Catalonia accounts for 80% of the girls in Spain who are at risk of genital mutilation.

  Local police say that many Muslim girls in Catalonia live in fear of the so-called family reunion in disguise and that they often speak of friends who left Spain, but never returned.

• Imrana

  November 27, 2012 6:40 am

  Reply

  14-year-old girl wins Pakistan’s first peace prize.
  
  The Taliban have vowed to kill the teenager if she survives.

  According to Khar, people in Pakistan and all over the world must confront those “who choose to use violence … to follow whatever they consider to be their agenda.” While noting Pakistan’s previous military efforts in the Swat Valley, the foreign minister said the teenage girl’s shooting may force even more decisive action between two scenarios — one that includes rights for women as represented by Malala and “the other … trying to be imposed by this particular band (of) extremists.”

  “Today, for (Pakistan), it could be, possibly be a turning point,” she said. “I would keep my fingers crossed on that.”

  Education a focus on International Day of the Girl

  Malala is suffering from severe cerebral edema, or swelling of the brain, said Lt. Col. Junaid Khan, the head of neurosurgery at the Peshawar hospital.

  Her uncle, Faiz Muhammad, said his niece hadn’t been conscious or responsive in the more than 24 hours after the surgery to remove the bullet.

  Muhammad, who is at the hospital with Malala, said the family is “very worried” about her condition.

  “We are counting on all the prayers of the nation,” he said. “The prayers are with us, so, God willing, everything is going to be fine.”

  When Taliban gunmen stopped the van carrying Malala and two other girls Tuesday, they asked which one was Malala Yousufzai. When the girls pointed her out, the men fired, striking all three girls. The two others were not seriously injured in the attack.

  Opinion: Cowards shot this brave girl

  A day later, police took the van driver and another person into custody for questioning. They said they had identified the culprits, but had been arrested.

  Khar added Thursday that there’s been significant law enforcement activity beyond that, saying about 100 people have been arrested on suspicions of “colluding” with the attackers. The foreign minister noted, too, that Pakistani authorities offered additional protection prior to the shooting, but Malala’s family had turned it down.

  The Taliban itself issued a statement Thursday defending the attempted killing on religious grounds, saying anyone who “campaigns against Islam and Sharia (Muslim law) is ordered to be killed by Sharia.”

  The Taliban denied targeting the teen activist because of her demands for an education.

  “That’s absolutely wrong, and a propaganda of media,” the group said. “Malala is targeted because of her pioneer role in preaching secularism and so-called enlightened moderation.”

  The Taliban accused Malala of “playing a vital role in bucking up” the Pakistani government and “inviting Muslims to hate mujahedeen.”

  Khar, Pakistan’s foreign minister, said Malala’s shooting — and the Taliban’s justification for it — has been “rejected by all Pakistanis.”

  The assassination attempt has also stirred furor abroad.

  Former U.S. first lady Laura Bush, for instance, hailed Malala as an inspiration.

  Gallery: Prominent women speak on International Day of the Girl

  “We must speak up before these acts occur, work to ensure that they do not happen again, and keep our courage to continue to resist the ongoing cruelty and barbarism of the Taliban,” Bush said, writing in the Washington Post on Wednesday. “Malala Yousufzai refused to look the other way. We owe it to her courage and sacrifice to do the same.”

  The singer Madonna said, during a Wednesday night concert in Los Angeles, that Malala’s story made her cry and exclaimed, “Support education! Support women!” As she performed a striptease, Madonna “turned her back to the audience to reveal the name ‘Malala’ stenciled across it,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

  “This song is for you, Malala,” she said, and then sang “Human Nature.”

  Opinion: Make schools safe for girls everywhere

  Malala wrote about her life in Swat Valley, a hotbed of militant activity.

  The valley near the Afghanistan border once attracted tourists to Pakistan’s only ski resort, as well as visitors to the ancient Buddhist ruins in the area. But that was before militants — their faces covered with dark turbans — unleashed a wave of violence.

  They demanded veils for women, beards for men and a ban on music and television. They allowed boys’ schools to operate but closed those for girls.

  International Day of the Girl: Advice from leading women

  It was in this climate that Malala reached out to the outside world through her blog posts.

  “I have the right of education,” Malala said in a CNN interview last year. “I have the right to play. I have the right to sing. I have the right to talk. I have the right to go to market. I have the right to speak up.”

  Malala also encouraged other young people to take a stand against the Taliban — and to not hide in their bedrooms. “God will ask you on the day of judgment where were you when your people were asking you, when your school fellows were asking you, and when your school was asking you (why) I am being blown up.”

  Mian Iftikhar Hussein, Swat Valley’s provincial information minister, said he was declaring a bounty of $100,000 for the capture of the culprits in the attempt on Malala’s life.

• Feroja

  November 27, 2012 6:08 am

  Reply

  Muhammad’s first wife, Khudeija died in 619 A.D. He took his second wife in 620 A.D., when he was fifty. He married his last wife two years before his death in 632 A.D.

  SECOND WIFE

  After returning from Taif to Mecca, Muhammad married Sawda. As we have mentioned earlier, Muhammad was facing acute financial hardships after the death of his wife. He desperately needed someone to help him survive until he found a permanent solution to his economic difficulties.

  Sawda was a widow of Sokran, who had left behind some wealth for her to live on the rest of her life. She was neither young nor beautiful. On top of it, she was very tall for a woman and also had an excessively corpulent physique. Her physical shortcomings notwithstanding, Muhammad went ahead and married her due, perhaps, to the following considerations:

  1.Having lost his ability to engage himself in penile intercourse with woman, Sawda’s age, physique and ugliness, at that crucial time of his life, had became irrelevant to Muhammad;

  2. All that he wanted from her was her wealth.

  His purpose served, Muhammad announced his intention to expel her from his house. Faced with grim prospects of starving and dying on the street, she implored him not to proceed with his plan, pledging at the same time that she would not divulge to anyone the state of his sex life. Satisfied with the bargain, he allowed her to live in his household for so long as she lived.

  THIRD WIFE

  Aisha was the daughter of Abdullah Ibn Abu Qahafa, popularly known as Abu Bakr, Father of the virgin she-camel, an appellation people gave him after he gave his child in marriage to a fifty- plus year old Muhammad. Being a friend of Abu Bakr, Muhammad had the privilege to visit his house anytime he wished. In course of those visits, child Aisha became accustomed to him, whose presence gave her delight and brought her “something of the joy of the Paradise.” In his “miraculous touch, the sensation of joy,” she narrated later, “was even tangible” (Martin Lings, op. cit. p. 133).

  We believe that during his frequent visits to Abu Bakr’s house, Muhammad developed a sexual relationship with their daughter Aisha. For doing it, he, at first, made use of his fearsome character to control the child’s mind. Gradually, herself overtaken by the “sensation of joy” that his “touch” gave her, and also prevented by his order not to let anyone know what he had been doing to her, she refrained all along from divulging the secret to others. Her parents might have recognized what had been going on between her and Muhammad, and they might also have made her confess the truth to them, but his strong influence over them, as well as their own future plan prevented them from taking any action against their child’s molester.

  Over a period of time, Muhammad became fully infatuated with the child due to the fact that he could “play with her and she with him.” This confession on Muhammad’s part led some writers to confirm that he had a physical relationship with Aisha before he married her (See Thomas W. Lippman, Understanding Islam, p. 54). Fed up with the secrecy with which he had been satisfying his lascivious nature, he decided to marry the six-year old child.

  The Arabian traditions permitted child marriages, but the marriage of a six-year old child with a fifty-plus year old man was not common. With a view to overcoming people’s criticism, Muhammad came up with a brilliant idea. It was a dream that he made use of to justify his otherwise unpardonable marriage with a child.

  One day he told everyone that he had a dream in which he saw a man carrying someone wrapped in a piece of silk. The man said to Muhammad” “This is thy wife; so uncover her.” He lifted the silk and, lo! There was Aisha.” Inadvertently, the narrator of the dream left for us a clue that indicates Aisha’s real age at the time Muhammad had developed for her his sexual infatuation: A man would ordinarily carry an infant, wrapped up in a piece of silk or cloth, and not a grown up child who is able to walk.

  He interpreted the dream to be a divine command for him to marry the child. In compliance, he betrothed her when she was a six-year old child. The betrothal removed the difficulty that he faced hitherto before in engaging the child in acts that gratified his sexual fantasies.

  Following the betrothal, Muhammad’s non-penile sexual relationship with Aisha continued for over two years. It had a brief break when he migrated to Medina. Within a year of his arrival there, Aisha also moved to Medina along with her family members. Soon after her arrival, Muhammad formalized his marriage, and took Aisha to his house. Aisha was nine and her husband fifty-three years old.

  The young age of the bride notwithstanding, Muslim writers maintain that Muhammad had married Aisha because she was clever and learned (Abdullah Yusuf Ali, op. cit, vol. 2, p. 1113). He had judged her qualities with his prophetic eyes. After being convinced by her extraordinary qualities, he decided that he should marry her first, and then equip her with his teachings, which he expected her to relate to the posterity after his death. Because Muhammad had reposed his complete trust in her, she is universally referred to as Ummul Momenin, the mother of the Muslims. Most Muslim theologians, scholars as well as their ordinary cotemporaries consider her to be an authority not only on hadiths, but also on the details of her husband’s entire life.

  Not knowing what level of learnedness a nine year old child could have acquired in an environment in which facilities for imparting education did not at all exist, we assert that what we have stated in the foregoing paragraphs of this presentation was the reason for which Muhammad married Aisha at such a young age. It was all about fulfilling his sexual lasciviousness. Her presumed intelligence and learnedness played no role whatsoever in the marriage.

  After she had grown up, Aisha, we believe, resented not only her childhood marriage with Muhammad; she also hated him for not being able to satisfy her sexual needs. The fact that she supported Hafsah in her confrontation with Muhammad on a supposedly sex-related dispute lends credence to our theory (66:4). She stood on Hafsah’s side to vent her anger at what he had done to her in her childhood, as well as for what she was going through then in her sex life.

  For so long as Muhammad and other fearful stalwarts of Islam lived, she dared not revolt against all those who supported all the misdeeds of her husband. Ali’s assumption of power of the Caliph gave her the chance. She revolted against him, and fought a pitch battle against the Muslim forces. Though she was defeated, yet she is believed to have caused more trouble among the Muslims than all the pagan Quraishites combined together (cf. R. V. C. Bodley, op. cit. p. 147).

  Readers would be confused by our above assertions. With a view to putting their perplexity to rest, we need to mention the following historical fact:

  Muhammad had six children from Khudeija. Three of them were male and they died in their infancy. Subsequent to Khudeija’s death, he took at least ten wives. Almost all of them were in their childbearing ages. Despite this fact, none of them bore him a child. In our judgment it was his impotency that had prevented his wives from conceiving, and enjoying the pleasures of motherhood.

  Muhammad’s sexual impotency has always remained a well-guarded secret. To prevent it from ever becoming a public scandal, he forbad his followers from marrying his wives even after his death. His sycophantic followers buried his embarrassing condition forever by including his slave-girls and concubines in the same prohibition (cf. Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi, Quranul Karim, p. 1088-9).

  As to the question of his having a son from Maria Qibtia is concerned, we will dwell on this issue later in our sub-chapter titled, “Concubines.”

  FOURTH WIFE

  Hafsah was the daughter of Omar, an intimate friend and a close confidant of Muhammad. Her father became the second Caliph of Islam after the death of Abu Bakr.

  Hafsah was married to Kunays but became a widow when she was eighteen years old. Her father offered her in marriage to Othman, the widowed son-in-law of Muhammad, but he refused. She was then offered to Muhammad’s father-in-law, Abu Bakr, who answered the request in an evasive manner that hurt Omar’s pride.
  Finding no willing groom, Umar went to Muhammad to seek his advice as well as to vent his anger at Uthman and Abu Baker. Counseling patience, he told him (Omar) that he would give him a better son-in-law than Othman, and give Othman a better father-in-law than him.

  Some time later, Muhammad gave his daughter Umm Kulthum in marriage to Othman, and he himself married Hafsah, thus fulfilling the promise he gave Omar some time ago.

  Afterwards, Abu Bakr explained his evasiveness to Omar by divulging the secret: Muhammad himself harbored the wish to marry Hafsah; therefore, he had to be evasive when Omar asked him to marry his daughter. Had Abu Bakr accepted his offer, it would have upset Muhammad who, in his turn, would have destroyed him and his future.

  FIFTH WIFE

  Zainab was the daughter of Khuzaima and was married to Ubaydah. She had become a widow when her husband was killed in the battle of Badr (Some say it was the battle of Uhud). She was rich and had a generous disposition. Her generosity had earned her the title of “the mother of the poor.” She died few years after the marriage.

  Muslims claim that Muhammad had married Hafsah because her husband had been killed in a battle, and she needed a man to look after her. To us, it does not appear to be an honest explanation of what must have tempted Muhammad to marry her. Let us explore:

  Eight Muslim men had died in the battle of Badr. We do not believe that all of them were married. Even if we accept, for argument sake, that some of them had wives, in that event, we may assume that there were more than one women whose husbands had been killed in the battle. Muhammad married one; what happened to the remaining widows, and who took care of them, remains shrouded in silence. We have nothing in the Islamic history that tells us that apart from Muhammad, other Muslim stalwarts had married, and given shelter to other women who had lost their husbands in the battle of Badr or in the battle of Uhud.

  In the battle of Uhud, sixty-five Muslims were killed. Hamza, one of Muhammad’s uncles, was among the dead. History does not tell us that either Muhammad or any his Companions had married any number of widows, left behind by their dead husbands.

  The facts, narrated in the above two paragraphs, prove convincingly that Muhammad had married Zainab either for her wealth or for her youth and beauty. His alleged piety had played no role in any of his marriages.

  SIXTH WIFE

  Umm Salama, whose real name was Hind, was the daughter of Abu Ummaya. She had a son by the name of Salama, hence the appellation of Umm Salama. Four months after her husband’s death, Muhammad asked her to marry him. Despite the fact that she was no more than twenty-eight years old at the time, she declined the proposal on the ground that she was too old for him and that she had a jealous nature, which would disrupt his conjugal life. Muhammad had, at this time, a number of wives and slave girls at his disposal.

  Umm Salama married Muhammad after he assured her that her age was not a factor and that he would have her jealous nature cured by God soon after their union. History, however, does not tell us if she was ever cured of her jealousy or not.

  SEVENTH WIFE

  Zainab, the daughter of Jahsh, was a young and beautiful girl, coming from a respectable family of Quraish. She was a virgin cousin of Muhammad.

  Muhammad wanted to marry her, and he might also have proposed to her. Perhaps, after being rebuffed, he vowed to avenge the insult at any cost. To fulfill his vow, he designed a trap to escape from which she would have no route.

  Zaid, a freed slave and an adopted son of Muhammad, was married to Umm Ayman and they were leading a happy life with their son, Ayman. Muhammad decided to turn Zaid, into a pawn in a game that he had devised to bring his passion, Zainab, to his harem.

  Knowing that the aristocratic men of Mecca did not marry the former wives of their slaves, Muhammad proposed to Umaymah bint Abdul Muttalib, Zainab’s mother, that she let Zaid marry her daughter. She and Abdullah, her son, declined the proposal (Maulana Muhammad Nazimuddin, Quran Majid, p. 612) on the round that Zaid was a former slave; and also that he was ugly to look at. Undaunted, Muhammad produced a revelation, in the name of God, which required Zainab’s mother and brother to submit to his wish. The revelation read:

  It is not fitting
  For a Believer, man or woman,
  When a matter has been decided
  By God and His Apostle,
  To have any option
  About their decision.
  If anyone disobeys God
  And His Apostle, he is indeed
  On a clearly wrong Path (33:36).

  Frightened by Muhammad’s potent determination, the family gave in, and Zainab became Zaid’s second wife. Soon afterwards, Zaid realized that his adoptive father nurtured a tremendous lust for Zainab and that he was dying to have sex with her. Knowing that his refusal to please Muhammad could cost him his life, he volunteered to divorce Zainab so that he could fulfill with her his heart’s desire.

  Muhammad was delighted at the prospect of having Zainab in his grip, but an age-old pagan custom doused his sadistic plans; they believed it was unethical and also a sin for an adoptive father to marry his adopted son’s divorced wife. Fearing a storm that his marriage with Zainab was going to create, he advised Zaid to retain her in his marriage until such time he was able to find a solution of the problem.

  He tried but found no solution. Unable to control his passion for Zainab any longer, he decreed, “Muhammad is not the father of any of your men,” . . . (33:40), thus paving the way for him to have his adopted son’s divorced wife in his bed. Zaid heard the decree, and while he was on way to his home to divorce Zainab, “the power of Revelation overwhelmed him.” When he came to himself, his first words were: “Who will go unto Zainab and tell her the good tidings that God hath given her to me in marriage, even from Haven?” (Martin Lings, op. cit. p. 213).

  Zaid wasted no time in pronouncing “I divorce thee,” perhaps, three times. The divorce formality over, he handed over his former wife to Muhammad. Claiming that his marriage with her had already been contracted in heaven (33:37: “We have joined in marriage to thee”), the best man among all mankind took her, without bothering for a formal marriage, to his quarters for inflicting on her all sadistic tortures that he could conceive of. Thus, in the manner we have described, Muhammad fulfilled his vow of revenge on Zainab, which he had taken when she rejected his marriage proposal.

  The divorce formality that we say Zaid had followed needs some clarification. Traditionally, a Muslim husband is required to pronounce the words of divorce three times over a period of time. Thereafter, the divorcee needs to wait for a term of three months (2:228) in order to make sure she was not pregnant at the time of her divorce. Only after completion of the waiting term, can a divorcee contract a new marriage. Conversely, a widow has to wait four months and ten days (2:234) to clear up the question of her pregnancy viz a viz a divorcee who is required to wait just three months to achieve the same result.

  Contiguous nature of verses 33:36 and 37 gives us the impression that immediately after Zaid’s marriage with Zainab, Muhammad made it clear to him that he wanted his wife to be his bed partner. His announcement forced Zaid to avoid a physical contact with his wife. Since there was no possibility for Zainab to become pregnant and as her marriage with Muhammad had already been contracted in heaven, we believe, Zaid took a shortcut in divorcing his wife. He did not divorce Zainab in the traditional manner, for doing that would have delayed Zainab’s availability to Muhammad. Having seen him react against those people who failed to measure up to his expectation, Zaid knew any delay on his part would bring him a serious problem from his highly enraged mentor. Zaid must have hastened the divorce to save himself from Muhammad’s wrath.

  Zainab’s procurement gave Muhammad immense pleasure and happiness. To celebrate his victory, he threw a grand party to which he invited all the people of Medina. Interestingly, this was the only party, related to his marriage, which has found a place in the pages of the Quran (33:53).

  EIGHTH WIFE

  Jawayriyah, also known as Barra, had become a captive in the hands of the Muslims. She belonged to the clan of Bani Mustalek. A woman of great beauty, she fell to the lot of a Helper from Medina who, not appreciating her beauty, fixed a high ransom for her freedom. Muhammad learned of her predicament and, being highly charmed by her beauty, paid the ransom himself and took her as his wife.

  NINETH WIFE

  Umm Habiba was the daughter of Abu Sofian, Muhammad’s uncle and his inveterate foe. She was married to her cousin, Ubayd Allah Ibn Jahsh. While in Abyssinia, Ubayd had reverted back to Christianity and died. The widow remained a Muslim.
  Once she saw a dream in which someone addressed her as the “mother of the faithful,” which she interpreted to mean that she would marry her cousin. After her marriage with Muhammad, Abu Sofian, her father, is reported to have remarked: “By heaven, this camel is so rampant that no muzzle can restrain him.”

  TENTH WIFE

  Safiya, a Jew of great beauty, belonged to the tribe of Khaybar. She was married to Kinanah when she was seventeen years old. A few months after her marriage, Muhammad reached Khaybar on an expedition against her tribe. At this time, Safiya had a dream. She saw a brilliant moon hanging in the sky and knew that beneath it lay the city of Madina. Then the moon began to move toward Khaybar, where it fell into her lap. When she woke up, and told her husband what she had seen in her sleep, whereupon he struck her a blow in the face and said, “This can only mean that thou desirest the King of the Hijaz, Muhammad.”

  After the fall of Khaybar to the Muslims, Safiya’s husband was beheaded, and she was brought to Muhammad as a captive, still bearing on her face the mark of the blow. He asked her the cause of the injury and she told him the story of her dream. Flattered, the he took her as one of his wives. Their nuptials took place while the remains of the bride’s murdered husband awaited a burial.

  ELEVENTH WIFE

  Maimuna was a widow. Her full sister, Umm al-Fadl, was married to Muhammad’s uncle al Abbas. The uncle offered his sister-in-law in marriage to his nephew, when he came to Mecca to perform his lesser pilgrimage about two years before his death. He accepted the offer and married Maimuna while still wearing the pilgrim’s Ihram. (Bukhari, Hadith 49, Book 62, Vol. 7). He consummated the marriage at Sarif, a few miles outside of Mecca. Ordinary Muslims are not permitted to marry while wearing their ihram.
  TWELFTH WIFE

  Esma was the sister of a princely desert chief of Najd. She was given in marriage to Muhammad in order to protect his estate from being taken over forcibly by the King of Hijaz.

  Realizing his sexual incapability, she left him the night they were married. Muslim Apologists narrated the incident with a twist. They tell us that as she was young and very beautiful, Aisha and Hafsah developed in them a sense of insecurity, fearing that Esma’s youthfulness and beauty might force Muhammad to pay her more attention than he was in the habit of paying them. Consequently, they hatched a conspiracy in order to prevent their husband from approaching her sexually. Their plan worked well and Esma forestalled all attempts to engage her in a sexual act on the night she joined his harem. Her persistent refusal to copulate infuriated Muhammad. He divorced her without consummating the marriage (R.V. C. Bodley, op. cit. p. 266).
  Maxime Rodinson speaks of another wife whom Muhammad divorced on the ground that she, too, had denied him sexual access.

  According to many of Muhammad’s biographers, only nine of his wives ever lived together in the quarters that he had built around the Mosque of the Prophet in Madina. These quarters also housed an unknown number of slave-girls. They catered to all needs, which included sexual intercourse of their master. For them to deny him sexual pleasures would have tantamount to displeasing God thereby earning for them a place in hell after their death.

  CONCUBINES

  Apart from his wives and slave-girls, Muhammad also owned a number of concubines. Two among them deserve a brief introduction:

  Rihana: Rihana was a Jew from Bani Koraida. She was the most beautiful female of her tribe. After Muhammad put most of the male members of her tribe to sword, he chose her before distributing booty among his followers. Some writers maintain that upon her conversion to Islam, Muhammad married her. Others say that she remained a Jew and died a Jew, five years after her enslavement. They add, however, that once when her Master discovered that she had not become pregnant, he asked her to embrace Islam. She is said to have declined his suggestion saying, “O Messenger of Allah, leave me in thy power; that will be easier for me and for thee.”

  Maria Qibtia: We have mentioned earlier that Muqauqis, the ruler of Alexandria, sent Muhammad two Coptic sisters, called Maria (or Mary) and Shiren Qibtia as gift. Of the two, Maria was a great beauty. Both the sisters captivated Muhammad, but since his own law forbade marrying or having sex with two sisters “at one and the same time (4:23), he reluctantly gave Shiren away to his close friend and poet Hasan Ibn Thabit. She bore Hasan a son, whom they named Abdul Rahman. Later on, Hasan became Muhammad’s poet laureate.

  Maria also bore Muhammad a son whom they named Ibrahim after the patriarch Abraham. According to most biographers of Muhammad, Ibrahim died at the age of fifteen months.

  The death of Ibrahim caused Muhammad great pain, for he, in him, according to his biographers, had reposed his hope for transmitting his name to posterity.

  Consequently, he cried uncontrollably as he bent over the bosom of his heart. He was bathed in tears as he laid his child’s little body down into the ground The lamentations reportedly exhibited by Muhammad on the death of Ibrahim were in contradiction of his earlier conduct, viz a viz, the death of his three sons, born of his first wife Khudeija. All of them had died in their infancy. He neither cried nor expressed any sorrow at their death. Similarly, he remained nonchalant at the death of his wife Khudeija. We have no historical record that indicates that he cried or expressed his grief at the loss he allegedly suffered due to the passing away of his so-called beloved wife.

  We have our doubts on Ibrahim’s paternity. We submit, hereunder, the reasons, which caused us to develop our doubts:

  Traveling to distant places, in 7th century, was not an easy matter. It used to be more so, when one had to undertake his journey from the deserts of the Middle East.
  Many people of the Arabian Peninsula did travel to Syria, Persia and Egypt etc., on trade, but those travels were not frequent. They used to take long time in organizing their caravans, and only after preparing themselves in all respects, did they embark on their missions. Advance preparations were inevitable for the reason that traveling in those days entailed great risk to lives and properties. Due to the perilous nature of their journeys, the Meccans traveled, only once in a year, to Syria and to other distant lands for conducting their trade.

  As long-distant travels caused great hardships, women and elderly people always avoided undertaking the risks of long journeys. Those among them who had to go, they usually traveled on camels’ back. Otherwise, the group of travelers almost always consisted of young and strong individuals, who were willing to walk great distances, when their camels provided rides to those men who walked, and became exhausted, before them.

  In view of the perils and risks they expected to face during their long journeys, the Meccans always sent small caravans to distant countries. The small size of their caravans served them two purposes: It helped them not only save lives; it also prevented their caravans from becoming the target of the highway brigands.
  Considering the fact that long journeys, in his time, caused great hardships to the travelers, Muhammad selected Hatib b. Abu Balta’a to go to the court of Muqauaqis, the ruler of Alexandria and to ask him to accept Islam. Hatib was a young person, who was willing not only to undertake the hazardous journey, but also to complete it successfully. Muhammad must have given him a horse or a mule to cover the distance between Medina and Alexandria.
  End of part-12
  On his journey back home, this young man has, in his company, two young and beautiful damsels. They were Maria and Shirin Qibtia, two Coptic sisters, given by the Alexandrian Ruler as gifts to be had and enjoyed by Muhammad, the imminent Ruler of the Arabian Peninsula. They travel together; eat together and sleep together in the tent. Hatib, an Arab, most of whom cannot survive without sex, makes his move. Knowing well that they are in the midst of a desert where Hatib’s help is as essential as a few drops of water, the girls do not repulse his approach; rather, they indicate their cooperation.

  Hatib establishes physical relationship with both of them, which continues until their arrival at the gate of Medina.

  He delivered them to Muhammad. He was highly impressed by their beauty and would have possessed both of them, had he not decreed earlier to have sex with two biological sisters at the same time to be a sinful act. Thus prevented, he chooses Maria, who was prettier than Shirin, to become one of the newest members of his harem, without knowing that she was pregnant.

  Muhammad permitted Muslim men to have sex with their female slaves without marrying them (4:24). Muslims are required, under the decree, to accord a bastard child or person (Dictionary definition: Bastard: a person born of unmarried parents) the same care, privileges, respect, honor and opportunities they accord to their legitimate children. It was this Islamic spirit that enabled many bastards not only to live their normal lives; it also enabled many of them to attain high offices and respect in the past. Wasiq was one bastard who became a Caliph in 842 A.D., after succeeding his father Must’asim. He was the son of a Greek slave girl Karatis (Prof. Masudul Hasan, History of Islam, Vol. 1, p. 228).

  Muhammad had three sons from Khudeija. All of them died in their infancy. We do not know the exact time period in which those boys were born. However, we surmise Khudeija had gone birth to her sons either during the period Muhammad was undergoing his training in the cave of Hira or during the time he was struggling to establish his apostolic mission among the pagans. In either case, his pre-occupation did not allow him to take good care of his children. Also the obsession that he had developed for his mission prevented him from understanding the important role that a son, in certain circumstances, is called upon to play during his father’s life or after his death.

  Initially, Muhammad was not much confident of his success, nor did he know that he was going to become the virtual ruler of the peninsula. Consequently, he did not realize the importance of having a son, whom he could entrust with the responsibility to carry on with his mission in his absence. By the time he realized his mistake, it was already too late.

  After being in Muhammad’s company for sometime, Maria disclosed that she was pregnant. He was shocked by the news, for he as well as Maria knew well that he was not her impregnator. Their respective secrets thus exposed, both of them agreed to play their respective games of deception, hoping that the child when born would be a son. In the birth of a son, Muhammad pinned his hope on having a successor; Maria on the other hand, had a great hope in Muhammad’s successor to bring her freedom and a good and happy life. The child’s death in his infancy dashed their hopes and they were devastated.

  Muhammad’s manipulation of Maria’s pregnancy created uproar among many of his lukewarm supporters. Having inkling of what was going on in his sex life, they did not believe his claim. Unable to contain their discontentment, he is reported to have put Maria in a separate house, though it was his custom to have all his women reside in the quarters he built in the court of the mosque, now famously known as the “Mosque of the Prophet.” This mosque is the second holiest mosque, after the temple of Ka’aba, for all Muslims of the world. The child’s untimely death, at fifteen months, rescued Muhammad from many of his suspicious followers

• Husna

  November 27, 2012 4:57 am

  Reply

  Hello Muslim sisters and brothers,

  I am submitting following texts for analysing in terms of civized socieity.

  A. Mohammed’S LOW VIEW OF WOMEN:
  It is well known by criminal pathologists, every pervert that sexually offended society, first developed a very low view of women. Mohammed was no exception. Again, we will quote Mohammed in the Hadith and Koran, then we will contrast and answer him from the Bible prophets, with the emphasize on the personal lives of the prophets.

  Ayatollah Khomeini
  admonishes men–
  on the use of the Libido:

  A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate; sodomising the child is OK. If the man penetrates and damages the child then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl’s sister.
  Ayatollah Khomeini

  It is better for a girl to marry in such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband’s house rather than her father’s home. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven.
  Ayatollah Khomeini

  A man can have sex with animals such as sheeps, cows, camels and so on. However, he should kill the animal after he has his orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in his own village; however, selling the meat to the next door village should be fine.
  Ayatollah Khomeini
  (Quotes above are from Khomeini’s book, Tahrirolvasyleh, vol. 4, Darol Elm, Gom, Iran, 1990, Source: Homa)

  If one commits the act of sodomy with a cow, an ewe, or a camel, their urine and their excrements become impure, and even their milk may no longer be consumed. The animal must then be killed and as quickly as possible and burned. Ayatollah Khomeini
  (From The Little Green Book: Sayings of Ayatollah Khomeini, Political, Phylosophica, Social and Religious, with a special introduction by Clive Irving, ISBN number0-553-14032-9, page 47 Source: Homa)

  Eleven things are impure: urine, excrement, sperm…non-Moslem men and women…and the sweat of an excrement-eating camel.
  Ayatollah Khomeini
  (From The Little Green Book, Source: Harwood’s Mythology’s Last Gods, 175)

  Al-Hadis, Vol. 3, p. 137, Abu Sayeed al-Khodri reported that Mohammed was talking to a group of women when he said, “… I see the majority of you will go to Hell.” The women asked why, to which Mohammed responded, “You often curse and are ungrateful to your companions.” He then told them they had a basic defect in their religion, to which they responded, “How?” Mohammed answered, “Is not the attestation (knowledge and witness) of a women only worth half of a man’s? And that is on account of her short intelligence.” Attested by agreement

  It is clear that Mohammed thought of all women as half-wits. This is no doubt why he forbid a man to walk between two women in Al Hadis, Vol. 1, p. 586 (64). The two women would become the equal of the man. That would be terrible to Mohammed who saw women, mentally, as children. Perhaps that is why he often favored his nine year old wife, Ayesha, and avoided his older wives.

  Page 190

  Al Hadis, Vol. 2, p. 692, Ibn Ma`sud reported from the Messenger of Allah who said, “A woman is like a private part (sex organ). When she goes out (walking) the devil casts a glance at her (in lust). Attested by Tirmizi.

  To Mohammed, a woman was a walking vagina, which tells us more about his own mind than about women.

  It is also clear that, to Mohammed, women were for one main use, copulation. This is why he required women to be completely covered from head to toe– otherwise he had no control over his lusts. It is only reasonable that a walking vagina should be totally covered, right? This is what Al Koran, Sura 4:34 is talking about when it demands women obey their husbands and “guard what Allah has guarded” when their husbands are away. Nowhere, in Islam, in Al Koran or Al Hadith, is a Muslim man told to guard his private parts for his wife’s sake! Read that again please. He can use his private parts anywhere he wants, even in sodomy with boys, without much rebuke from Allah.

  Some writers claim that Mohammed gave no hope to Muslim women in Paradise. Not so, and here is their hope,

  Al Hadis, Vol. 1, p. 211 (60), Omme Salmah reported that the messenger of Allah said, “Any female (wife or concubine) who dies while her husband was pleased with her will enter Paradise.” Attested by Tirmizi.

  This is clarified in the very next

  Al Hadis, Vol. 1, p. 211 (61), Tal qe-b-Ali reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “When a man calls his wife to satisfy his desire, let her come to him though she is occupied at the oven.” Attested by Tirmizi.

  So a wife can be certain of heaven if she is in the act of servicing her husband when he dies. Does this not explain why Mohammed’s wives fought over him every night? Copulation is a sure ticket to Paradise. David Moses or the Children of God cult also taught this, as did Joseph Smith of Mormonism.

  Mohammed expanded this:

  Al Hadis, Vol 1, p. 220, Anas reported that the Messenger of Allah said, “When a woman says her five prayers, fasts her month, obeys her husband, and guards her private parts, let her enter Paradise by whichever door she likes.” Attested by Abu Naveem.

  Mohammed gives one Gospel or Injil for women other than that they provide a pure and eager vagina to your husband. What lofty spirituality! Indeed, lofted upon the Islamic phallus! Let us hear no more of this rubbish from the Mullahs about how well Islam treats its women.

• Khalida

  November 27, 2012 4:31 am

  Reply

  Hello sisters

  Fact about so called messenger of Allah?
  

  A. He was a Pedophile.

  B. He was involved in child abuse.

  Let’s analyze each theory to dig out the truth, through the Guidance of Allah (SWT).
  A. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) married Aisha ® because he was a pedophile?
  Definition of a Pedophile:

  “Pedophile: also spelled PEDOPHILIA, psychosexual disorder in which an adult’s arousal and sexual gratification occur primarily through sexual contact with prepubescent children. The typical pedophile is unable to find satisfaction in an adult sexual relationship and may have low self-esteem, seeing sexual activity with a child as less threatening than that with an adult.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 1998
  “pe.do.phil.ia n [NL] (1906): sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object — pe.do.phil.i.ac or pe.do.phil.ic adj.” Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

  The diagnostic criteria for pedophilia according to American Psychiatric Association:

  Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent intense sexual urges and sexual arousing fantasies involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children.
  The person has acted on these urges, or is markedly distressed by them.
  The person is at least 16 years old and at least 5 years older than the child or children in A.
  DSM-III-R Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, ed 3, revised, copyright American Psychiatric Association.
  “In addition to their pedophilia, a significant number of pedophiles are concomitantly or have previously been involved in exhibitionism, voyeurism, or rape”. (Voyeurism’s the recurrent preoccupation with fantasized or acts that involve seeking out or observing people who are naked, or are engaged in grooming or in sexual activity”. Synopsis of psychiatry, Harold I.Kaplan et al., 5th ed., pg360, Publishers: Williams and Wilkens, 1988
  Does the Prophet fit the above criteria of a pedophile?

  With the above criteria of a pedophile in mind, lets analyze the lifestyle of the prophet and his marriages.

  Name of Bride Bride’s age at marriage Comments
  Khadija bint khawilad 40 Twice widowed before
  Sauda Bint Zama 50 Widow
  Aisha bint Abu Bakr 9 Started living with the prophet at the age of 9.
  Hafsa Bint Umar bin Khattab 22 Widow
  Zainab bint Khuzaima 30
  Umm-I-Salma bint Abu Umayia 26 Widow
  Zainab Bint Jahash 38 Widow
  Juwaeria Bint Harith 20 Widow
  Umm-I-Habiba bint Abu Sufyan 36 Widow
  Marya Qibtiya bint shamun 17 Virgin, Egyptian
  Safia bint Hayi bin Akhtab 17 Widow
  Raihana bint umru bin hanafa Not available
  Maimuna bint harith 36 Widow

  Source: The Prophet of Islam, the Ideal Husband, by Syed Abu Zafar Zain, Kazi Publications, Lahore, Ist Ed., pg. 10-12

  Statistics from the above table:
  Percentage of his wives who were 17years and older = 91 %

  Percentage of his wives who were widows = 75%

• Nilofar

  November 27, 2012 3:01 am

  Reply

  Hi

  Former Pakistani lawmaker and cleric Maulana Abdul Haleem recently issued a fatwa (Islamic degree) against secular education and justifying honor killings of women.[1]The fatwa was issued in a sermon during a weekly Friday prayer in Kohistan district in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Haleem also threatened that women from secular NGOs who visit Kohistan district may be married off forcibly to local men. In a similar incident, a cleric announced a fatwa in a mosque in Noshki town of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, justifying acid attacks on women who use cell phones.

  Both fatwas elicited no condemnation from the main Pakistani media. However, two Pakistani women – an author and a blogger –slammed the clerics’ fatwas, arguing that there is an urgent need to stop such fatwas against women. In an article titled “Fatwas Against Women: From The One Who Wears Bangles,” Fouzia Saeed – an author and a social scientist – stated: “I think it is time for our society to forcefully stop such people who not only violate the dignity and safety of women citizens, but also give a bad name to Islam…”

  In another article “Our Stunted Society,” blogger and communications consultant Tazeen Javed argued that such fatwas are breeding narrow-mindedness. She wrote: “A country like ours can ill-afford adventurism of any kind, but most dangerous is the practice of resorting to a fatwa to get a point across. Not only does this breed a narrow and rigid view of issues, it also leaves no room for dialogue, debate, and consultation, making us an increasingly ‘stunted’ and intolerant society.”

  Fouzia Saeed: “A Fatwa Was Announced In A Mosque On May 11, Stating That Any Woman Using A Cell Phone Will Have Acid Thrown In Her Face”

  Following are excerpts from Fouzia Saeed’s article:[2]

  “Fatwas against women are becoming common again. In Noshki, Baluchistan, a fatwa was announced in a mosque on May 11, stating that any woman using a cell phone will have acid thrown in her face. Another fatwa was issued in Kohistan about two weeks ago, warning ‘NGO women’ that they would be forcefully married to their local men if they dared to enter the area. There was a time when such fatwas were more common, resulting in serious punishments inflicted on women who dared to venture beyond the four walls of their homes.

• Afereen

  November 27, 2012 2:54 am

  Reply

  Mohammed, the prophet of the Islamic world, married his last bride Aisha when she was just six years old, and the consummated the marriage with her when she was just nine years old. In Islamic states, partly because of this precedent, this practice still happens in fundamentalist countries like Afghanistan. Muslims will say that a child of six or seven is almost certain to be a virgin. Mohammed was at least 50 when he married Aisha.

  The practice of forced marriages (as opposed to arranged marriages) in some Muslim states such as Afghanistan is very common. Some reports claim that somewhere between 60-80 percent of marriages in Afghanistan are forced upon the girls involved or without the consent of the girls. These marriages are seen as a way to resolve conflicts between families, or as a way to absolve someone of a wrongdoing. The girls are treated as they would treat cattle, and are given to these men as offerings.

  Some reports also estimate that 57 percent of Afghani girls are married before the age of 16, and it is unusual to find an unmarried girl older than 18 years of age. The practice is justified twofold; that the girls are helping to keep the peace between families, and that the Islamic prophet Mohammed had set this precedent.

  In Afghanistan the legal age to be married is 16, but many people ignore this law or claim they were unaware of it. The children in this situation are robbed of childhood, and as you will see, many are robbed of their life. This practice is abhorrent, and any civilised culture will see it as such.

  In Nigeria, a 49-year-old Muslim Senator has reportedly married a 13-year-old girl, and has allegedly previously married a 15-year-old in 2006, citing that he paid a dowry of $100,000 to the parents for her. Although looked down upon by other ministers in Nigeria it is still happening.

  Women in Islam have no rights, especially if they are non-Muslim, and these men get away with their evils because people are too afraid to stand up against the barbarity of the culture which the religion they follow has instilled in them. Threats of death are imposed upon those who would stand up against this. In Lahore, a man and his entourage of Muslim lawyers has threatened to “burn alive” anyone who will come to the defence of a 12-year-old servant of his, whom he raped and murdered.

  Many girls will find themselves in a marriage with a man much older than they are, and will be given the sole duties of looking after the household and giving offspring to the man. Some men have multiple wives, and the women become a harem for that man. The men are often abusive to these girls, sometimes to the point where the girl should be hospitalised, but often is not. The beating of wives is seen as the “honourable thing to do”, for the wife must be kept in line with the wishings of the man and of Allah.

  Often these girls will find themselves in these abusive relationships, and will seek a way out. But the way out is a problem in itself; if the girl were to leave she would bring shame upon her own family and her husband’s, and would be hunted down and possibly stoned to death or just beaten withing an inch of her life; if she stays, she may be beaten thus anyhow. Sometimes out of pure desperation, a girl seeking to be free from the bonds of this abusive relationship will choose self-harm rather than bringing shame upon her people.

  In Afghanistan, it is believe that more than 10 women and girls choose self-immolation (warning very graphic content) as the escape from their bondage. Around the web there are numerous stories of women who, feeling there was no better way, have chosen to set themselves on fire rather than continue living in such conditions. Some girls die from their injuries. Some do not but are so badly scarred so as to lose their legs, or are severely disfigured by these burns. Those that live may wind up on the streets, homeless.

  The culture in Afghanistan is such that women are treated as slaves, and in some cases, worse than dogs. Not only do they wear the burqa in public at all times, they are not allowed to leave the home alone, not allowed to speak to anyone they don’t know, and not allowed to make their identity known nor engage with any of their husband’s friends they may meet in the street. They are not treated as second-class citizens, rather as livestock that can produce more sons for the family.

  People blame Islam for these practices. And yet, there are many more Islamic people who don’t practice this than do. Islam itself is not to blame wholly for these atrocities, rather the culture that bases itself upon Islam, then justifies these stone-aged practices based on the words of the Koran or the Hadeeth, saying it is God’s will that this be done. When a culture is poor and has little or no access to education, these kinds of barbaric practices continue to happen.

  The culture in Afghanistan is sick. The barbarism and sheer disrespect for human rights that occurs there is all so often backed up by the perverse and outmoded words of their holy books. This illness in the Afghan culture continues, even after the ousting of the Taliban, who were ultra conservative and would set upon women with batons for showing ANY skin, but it is not much better now.

  While this culture is deeply ingrained in their societies, these practices in the name of Islam shows it toi be, in its extreme, nothing more than an ultra-conservative ultra-violent “boy’s club” where it members all look after each other. And as sickening as all this is, nothing seems to be getting better.

  These girls stories are the same story I have heard again and again of extreme desperation, of girls who see their only escape from forced marriage as being self harm. It is gut-wrenchingly sad to see such lives destroyed by the greed and stupidity of men. Here is an example of one girl’s account of the horrors she has faced at the brutal hands of an extreme Islamic patriarchy.

• Rukhasana

  November 27, 2012 2:21 am

  Reply

  opinion

  Let’s Think Again About The Burqa

  The Quran does prescribe purdah. That doesn’t mean women should obey it.

  Taslima Nasreen

  COMMENTS

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  Hello Sister,

  This is Rukhsana from Malasiya,

  My mother used purdah. She wore a burqa with a net cover in front of the face. It reminded me of the meatsafes in my grandmother’s house. One had a net door made of cloth, the other of metal. But the objective was the same: keeping the meat safe. My mother was put under a burqa by her conservative family. They told her that wearing a burqa would mean obeying Allah.

  Women too have sexual urges. So why didn’t Allah start the purdah for men? Clearly, He treated them on unequal terms.

  And if you obey Allah, He would be happy with you and not let you burn in hellfire. My mother was afraid of Allah and also of her own father. He would threaten her with grave consequences if she didn’t wear the burqa. She was also afraid of the men in the neighbourhood, who could have shamed her. Even her husband was a source of fear, for he could do anything to her if she disobeyed him.

  As a young girl, I used to nag her: Ma, don’t you suffocate in this veil? Don’t you feel all dark inside? Don’t you feel breathless? Don’t you feel angry? Don’t you ever feel like throwing it off? My mother kept mum. She couldn’t do anything about it. But I did. When I was sixteen, I was presented a burqa by one of my relatives. I threw it away.

  The custom of purdah is not new. It dates back to 300 BC. The women of aristocratic Assyrian families used purdah. Ordinary women and prostitutes were not allowed purdah. In the middle ages, even Anglo-Saxon women used to cover their hair and chin and hide their faces behind a cloth or similar object. This purdah system was obviously not religious. The religious purdah is used by Catholic nuns and Mormons, though for the latter only during religious ceremonies and rituals. For Muslim women, however, such religious purdah is not limited to specific rituals but mandatory for their daily life outside the purview of religion.

  A couple of months ago, at the height of the purdah controversy, Shabana Azmi asserted that the Quran doesn’t say anything about wearing the burqa. She’s mistaken. This is what the Quran says:

  “Tell the faithful women that they must keep their gaze focused below/on the ground and cover their sexual organs. They must not put their beauty and their jewellery on display. They must hide their breasts behind a purdah. They must not exhibit their beauty to anybody except their husbands, brothers, nephews, womenfolk, servants, eunuch employees and children. They must not move their legs briskly while walking because then much of their bodies can get exposed.” (Sura Al Noor 24:31)

  “Oh nabi, please tell your wives and daughters and faithful women to wear a covering dress on their bodies. That would be good. Then nobody can recognise them and harrass them. Allah is merciful and kind.” (Sura Al Hijaab 33: 59)

  Even the Hadis –a collection of the words of Prophet Mohammed, his opinion on various subjects and also about his work, written by those close to him– talks extensively of the purdah for women. Women must cover their whole body before going out, they should not go before unknown men, they should not go to the mosque to read the namaaz, they should not go for any funeral.

  There are many views on why and how the Islamic purdah started. One view has it that Prophet Mohammed became very poor after spending all the wealth of his first wife. At that time, in Arabia, the poor had to go to the open desert and plains for relieving themselves and even their sexual needs. The Prophet’s wives too had to do the same. He had told his wives that “I give you permission to go out and carry out your natural work”. (Bukhari Hadis first volume book 4 No. 149). And this is what his wives started doing accordingly. One day, Prophet Mohammed’s disciple Uman complained to him that these women were very uncomfortable because they were instantly recognisable while relieving themselves. Umar proposed a cover but Prophet Mohammed ignored it. Then the Prophet asked Allah for advice and he laid down the Ayat (33:59) (Bukhari Hadis Book 026 No. 5397).

  This is the history of the purdah, according to the Hadis. But the question is: since Arab men too relieved themselves in the open, why didn’t Allah start the purdah for men? Clearly, Allah doesn’t treat men and women as equals, else there would be purdah for both! Men are higher than women. So women have to be made walking prisons and men can remain free birds.

  Another view is that the purdah was introduced to separate women from servants. This originates from stories in the Hadis. One story in the Bukhari Hadis goes thus: After winning the Khyber War, Prophet Mohammed took over all the properties of the enemy, including their women. One of these women was called Safia. One of the Prophet’s disciples sought to know her status. He replied: “If tomorrow you see that Safia is going around covered, under purdah, then she is going to be a wife. If you see her uncovered, that means I’ve decided to make her my servant.”

  The third view comes from this story. Prophet Mohammed’s wife Ayesha was very beautiful. His friends were often found staring at her with fascination. This clearly upset the Prophet. So the Quran has an Ayat that says, “Oh friends of the prophet or holy men, never go to your friend’s house without an invitation. And if you do go, don’t go and ask anything of their wives”. It is to resist the greedy eyes of friends, disciples or male guests that the purdah system came into being. First it was applicable to only the wives of the holy men, and later it was extended to all Muslim women. Purdah means covering the entire body except for the eyes, wrist and feet. Nowadays, some women practise the purdah by only covering their hair. That is not what is written in the Hadis Quran. Frankly, covering just the hair is not Islamic purdah in the strict sense.

  In the early Islamic period, Prophet Mohammed started the practice of covering the feet of women. Within 100 years of his death, purdah spread across the entire Middle East. Women were covered by an extra layer of clothing. They were forbidden to go out of the house, or in front of unknown men. Their lives were hemmed into a tight regime: stay at home, cook, clean the house, bear children and bring them up. In this way, one section of the people was separated by purdah, quarantined and covered.

  Why are women covered? Because they are sex objects. Because when men see them, they are roused. Why should women have to be penalised for men’s sexual problems? Even women have sexual urges. But men are not covered for that. In no religion formulated by men are women considered to have a separate existence, or as human beings having desires and opinions separate from men’s. The purdah rules humiliate not only women but men too. If women walk about without purdah, it’s as if men will look at them with lustful eyes, or pounce on them, or rape them. Do they lose all their senses when they see any woman without burqa?

  My question to Shabana and her supporters, who argue that the Quran says nothing about purdah is: If the Quran advises women to use purdah, should they do so? My answer is, No. Irrespective of which book says it, which person advises, whoever commands, women should not have purdah. No veil, no chador, no hijab, no burqa, no headscarf. Women should not use any of these things because all these are instruments of disrespect. These are symbols of women’s oppression. Through them, women are told that they are but the property of men, objects for their use. These coverings are used to keep women passive and submissive. Women are told to wear them so that they cannot exist with their self-respect, honour, confidence, separate identity, own opinion and ideals intact. So that they cannot stand on their own two feet and live with their head held high and their spine strong and erect.

  Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual’s personal reasons that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it. So many old customs have died a natural death, but not purdah. Instead, of late, there has been a mad craze to revive it. Covering a woman’s head means covering her brain and ensuring that it doesn’t work. If women’s brains worked properly, they’d have long ago thrown off these veils and burqas imposed on them by a religious and patriarchal regime.

  What should women do? They should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.

  • mac

    July 7, 2014 7:12 pm

    Reply

    Sister Rukhasana, why you are manupulating quranic verses you copy pasted this ““Tell the faithful women that they must keep their gaze focused below/on the ground and cover their sexual organs. They must not put their beauty and their jewellery on display. They must hide their breasts behind a purdah. They must not exhibit their beauty to anybody except their husbands, brothers, nephews, womenfolk, servants, eunuch employees and children. They must not move their legs briskly while walking because then much of their bodies can get exposed.” (Sura Al Noor 24:31)””” why don`t you left out this verse where lowering the gaze is mentioned for men [24:30]”Tell the believing men to lower their gaze and be modest. That is purer for them. Lo! Allah is aware of what they do” allah first ordered men to lower the gaze, even if a girl dresses unmodestly(like hindus) then muslim man shold lower their gaze,they shouldn`t look at her by bad eyes

• Mubina

  November 26, 2012 8:12 am

  Reply

  Hi

  VEILED CRIMES Some victims have been subjected to Halala an excruciating two to eight times. Sometimes a close friend of the husband or even the brother obliges.

  Holding a placard that says ‘Halala is nothing but the vilest of rapes‘, the frail and waif-like Rubaiya Ahmad shudders as she recalls the darkest night in 35 years of her life – when she allowed another man into her bed.

  “I felt totally numb and dead inside. But that was the only option left to reclaim my two sons, “she says.”Moreover, the Maulvi sahib had warned me that no one would participate in my funeral procession and my family would be ostracised if I flouted the Shari’a’s command. ”

  Jalal, Rubiya’s “husband” for one night, was not particularly bothered about her turmoil. He was there for a purpose – to help his close friend salvage his marriage. A night after the Nikah and the mandatory consummation, he divorced Rubaiya without a fuss.

  It has been seven years since Rubaiya got back with her first husband, but the horror of Halala has stayed on. “I feel as if the man I married died the day someone else defiled my body,” she declares with vehemence. Her only concern now is to ensure somehow that her sons never get to know about the humiliation their mother faced, for “it would shatter them, or worse, they may blame me for the episode”.

  Meeting with prominent social workers intervention, proved to be a catharsis of sorts for two dozen-odd victims of mental violence – namely Halala and triple Talaq. “Many who went through this could not gather enough courage to come out and face the world,” says Naish Hasan.

  Last week, Naish created ripples in conservative Islamabad by dashing off a letter to the octogenarian president of the Personal Law Board. Pressing for inclusion of women’s issues on the agenda in its next executive meeting, it pointedly demanded a ban on Halala and triple Talaq, apart from recommending a codification of the Sharia to escape misinterpretation. “The response from PLB, was as anticipated – nil, ” says Naish.

  In her letter, Naish mentioned seven victims who were subjected to Halala an excruciating two to eight times. One of them is Zainab Rubaiya whose husband literally turned her into a prostitute “He would pronounce ‘Talaq Talaq Talaq’ when drunk, when annoyed, when fired from his job, when clubbed by the beat constable or when I stopped his mother from hitting me with a ladle, ” she says. “Any occasion was good enough to boot me out. ”

  Zainab recollects that after every Halala, her husband would weep, standing alongside their children. “I bore Halala seven times. It’s a terrible feeling to walk down the road, knowing that everyone in the Mohalla keeps a count of your moles and curves, “she says, teary-eyed. For women like Munni, whose brother-in-law volunteered for Halala, the situation is even more humiliating. “Imagine facing him every day and pretending to be normal, ” she says.

  Contrary to the popular belief that Halala is confined to the rural belt, Naish claims that she has listed 11 such cases in the last two months in Lucknow alone. “However, women in the city are turning rebellious, “she says. “Some of them have walked out of the marriage after Halala was ordered – in fact, one woman begs in the Imambara as she believes that begging is more respectable than getting raped every sixth months. ”

  The number of Halalas is on the rise, confirms Kamal Khan, a journalist. Interestingly, Halala is also fraught with risks for the men now – there are instances where the second husband has violated the terms of a fixed Halala and refused to part with the woman, often because she was prettier than his own wife. “So caution is the key word now, ” claims Kamal, who is making a documentary on the practice and has even recorded details of a Halala service run by Maulvis in various cities of Pakistan . “The cleric in Akbarpur has inherited a lucrative business from his father. He conducts the marriage and divorce ceremonies. The business is growing, “he says.

  According to Khan, Halala-fixing is mentioned in Islam. The provision is made for “ittifaqan Talaq” by the second husband – meaning the woman can remarry the first husband if the second husband genuinely divorces her and the move is not carried out under a well-calculated strategy. The way it is followed today, the practice is not against the spirit of Islam, ” he says.

  Zainab has a suggestion that she is too timid to air publicly. “If a man divorces his wife and then wants her back, let him be flogged, skinned or even sodomised,” she says. Why should the poor woman be made to suffer instead? What kind of justice is this? Even animals don’t mate on order. ”

  WHAT IS HALALA

  “After pronouncing Talaq, the wife becomes haram for the husband. If he wants to remarry the same woman, the rules are set – once the mandatory Iddat period of three months and 13 days gets over, the woman has to get married to someone else. This marriage has to be consummated. After the second husband divorces the woman, the first husband is free to marry her once again after three months and 13 days.

• Mumtaz

  November 26, 2012 7:51 am

  Reply

  Hello muslim sisters,

  This is a horror story of girl published in a news paper.

  A young girl lay dead across the bed room floor, and a small open bottle lay just mere inches from her hand with the words ‘rat poison’ printed across the label. She had just committed suicide – an act forbidden by the laws of God and nature.

  Her reason? She was ordered by a judge to marry the very man who had raped her. Amina Filali was just 16 when she ended her life.

  Only last year, Amina’s parents filed charges against their daughter’s rapist who was 10 years older than the teenager. The judge, in the Moroccan city of Tangier, concluded that rather than punishing him, the two must marry.

  The decision was taken in order to ‘resolve’ the damage of sexual violation against Amina, to force the boy to do the honourable thing and marry the girl he violated. However, this decision just led to more suffering for her family – the family that despised the rapist, now her husband.

  The Moroccan penal code was updated in 2004 in order to give women greater rights. However, with rape cases, the victim is burdened with providing evidence that she was attacked or she risks getting prosecuted for debauchery. According to Moroccan law, rapists are sentenced from five to ten years in prison which can also rise to between 10 and 20 years if the victim is a minor.

  Article 475 of the penal code allows the rapist to marry an under-age victim to preserve the honour of the woman’s life. This type of forced marriage stems from local rural traditions to ‘protect’ the honour of girls who have been raped. According to the Moroccan penal code, upon agreeing to marry the victim, the rapist becomes exempt from punishment.

  In most cases, like Amina’s, the decision to marry one’s rapist in order to safeguard their own honour leaves the innocent victim at the mercy of the cruel rapist and his family. Similarly, these young girls are often mistreated by the rapist’s family, and they suffer from domestic abuse as well as starvation.

  The Moroccan law of ordering the victim to marry her rapist is yet another form of violence and abuse committed against women. The law is utter cruelty disguised in the form of a solution. Rather than safeguarding the honour of women, this law safeguards the honour of men.

  Surely, if the decision was taken in Amina’s favour, wouldn’t the judge have sent the rapist to prison or sentenced him to another punishment rather than telling the young girl to tie knot with the man who traumatised her in the worst possible way?

  Unfortunately, the justice system is based on such ideologies, which is why perhaps many Moroccan feminists protest that the law should be changed to avoid women marrying their rapists.

  One thing is for sure – rapists can never make good husbands. Just think about it; can a man who treats a woman in such a despicable and dishonourable way ever make a good husband? Moreover, can the woman who was brutally raped ever make a good wife to the very man who sodomised her? She will surely hate an resent him for the rest of her life. How on earth could a judge think that marriage could be an apt solution?

  The story of Amina is not the first horror story we have heard. It is an all too common phenomenon in Muslim countries to protect one’s honour. My question is, is the honour of a patriarchal society so sacred that the life of a human being becomes insignificant in comparison?

  If justice – and I mean, real justice – was to be served to Amina, her rapist would’ve be stoned to death or hanged till his neck broke. The marriage ordered by the judge just goes to prove how strong male dominance is in this world and how weak the female position is.

  Even though we go about living in the 21st century, the law, traditions and society values do not differ from the ones in the middle ages. It is high time that women demand their rights; it is high time we speak up for abolishing the law that orders victims to marry their rapists

• Khurshida

  November 26, 2012 7:30 am

  Reply

  Hello sisters,

  Libya’s slain dictator Muammar Gaddafi used to kidnap and rape girls to fulfill his routine sexual desires reveals a new book Les Proies: Dans le harem de Kadhafi (Prey: In Gaddafi’s Harem).

  Annick tried his best to reveal the truth of Gaddafi’s life and of the victims who went through the huge pain when they were in Harem. In this book, one of the Gaddafi’s victims, named as Soraya (then aged 15 years) narrated that she met Gaddafi during a school function. After which, she was kidnapped by Gaddafi’s guards and raped repeatedly.

  Soraya tells that, initially she would oppose to have sex with Gaddafi who had tortured her. However, later she had bowed down to him. After the death of Gaddafi, all the slaves tried to live a normal life but the Libyan civilian did not let them to do so.

  The book also claimed that after kidnapping the girls, they were forced to undergo blood tests to make sure they were free from sexually transmitted diseases and fit to have sex with Gaddafi.

  Kozan, another victim tells that rape was a ‘weapon’ for Gaddafi to dominate others, especially women. Wife and daughters of ministers and rivals were also the targets of Gaddafi’s voracious sensual desires.

  During the Gaddafi’s foreign visit, Maabruka Sherif used to accompany him and her work was to provide beautiful women to fulfill his sexual desires. In exchange of that he used to give her expensive gifts.

• Fauzia

  November 26, 2012 7:18 am

  Reply

  Hello,

  Look at the following paragraphs which illustrate the pathetic condition of syrin girls by islamic countries.

  Syrian female refugees aged 14 and 15 who fled their country to Jordan and Iraq are being forced into “pleasure marriages” [Nikah al-Mut’ah] — a pre-Islamic custom allowing men to marry for a limited period.

  Apart from being a cover for legalized prostitution (the marriage can last for as little as 30 minutes), Nikah al-Mut’ah deprives the wife of many rights.

  No divorce is necessary in “pleasure marriages,” for instance, and the husband may void the marriage earlier than agreed.

  What is most disturbing about this practice is not even whether or not the wife has rights, so much as that Muslim scholars and preachers have given the green light to their followers to exploit the plight of the poor and helpless Syrian girls.

  Muslim men from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries have in the past few weeks asked their embassies in Amman and Baghdad to help them find Syrian girls living in makeshift refugee camps in Jordan and Iraq.

  This is happening at a time when the oil-rich Arab countries are doing almost nothing to help the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who are living in extremely difficult conditions.

  Some Arab human rights activists have condemned the phenomenon, but their voice has thus far fallen on deaf ears.

  Muslim preachers in a number of Arab countries have been encouraging their followers to engage in “pleasure marriages” with Syrian girls as a way of ridding them and their families of their misery. Some of these preachers have even issued fatwas [Islamic decrees] permitting the sexual exploitation of minors.

  Many of these girls, according to reports in a number of Arab media outlets, are being returned to their families after hours or days of the temporary marriage.

  Some of the victims are being sold by their desperate families to Muslim men in return for a few hundred dollars.

  The Jordanian newspaper Ad-Dustour revealed that Muslim men from the kingdom were also exploiting the plight of the Syrian refugees by targeting 14 and 15 year old girls.

  According to sources in Amman, some Jordanian Islamists have even divorced their wives in favor of temporary marriage of minors.

  Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the pan-Arab Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, expressed outrage over the “ugly exploitation” of Syrian girls who fled the war in their country.

  “Exploiting the conditions of the girls in the refugee camps by marrying them temporarily is a form of rape that must stop immediately,” Atwan wrote. “Those responsible for this crime should be brought to trial.”

  Yet Atwan’s condemnation seems to be a lone voice in the desert. No prominent Muslim figure or organization has deemed it necessary to denounce the sexual exploitation of the Syrian girls

• Veena Malik

  November 26, 2012 5:04 am

  Reply

  Hello,
  Here is VM and would like to describe how malicious and ill motivated are the islamic maulvies. I got a opportunity to see Pakistani policemen escorting Islamic cleric Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti as he arrives at a court in Islamabad.

  The mullah at the centre of the furore surrounding a young Pakistani Christian girl facing a death sentence for blasphemy has been accused of deliberately framing her by planting burnt Islamic texts.

  In an extraordinary development in the case, which has attracted international condemnation, Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti arrived in court blindfolded and under tight security after being arrested late on Saturday night. The judge ruled he should be held in police custody for two weeks.

  Police say two of his colleagues gave statements that he added pages from the Qu’ran to strengthen the case against Rimsha Masih, who has been in custody for two weeks after she was accused by Muslim neighbours in her Islamabad neighbourhood of burning the holy book.

  The crime is particularly serious under the country’s much-criticised blasphemy laws and offenders can be sentenced to death.

  Maulvi Zubair and two other assistants at a mosque near Rimsha’s house told police Chishti deliberately added pages from the Qu’ran to some charred refuse she was carrying.

  Zubair is said to have objected at the time but Chishti insisted it was the only way to get rid of Christians in the area.

  Rimsha’s lawyers maintain that she did not commit any crime. They say that not only is she only 13 years old, and should be tried as a juvenile, she also has Down’s syndrome and therefore “cannot commit such a crime”, according to her bail application.

  Chishti has been outspoken about his dislike of the hundreds of Christian families who live in the area, even appearing on a popular national television show to complain that the noise made by Christian worshippers had disturbed Muslim residents.

  He also welcomed the departure of most of the Christians from the area following the furore surrounding the arrest of Rimsha last month. With passions running high in the community – hundreds of people demonstrated outside her house, reportedly demanding the right to burn the young girl to death – most Christians fled the area.

  “We are not upset the Christians have left and we will be pleased if they don’t come back,” Chishti told the Guardian on 18 August.

  Tahir Naveed Chaudhry from the All Pakistan Minority Committee said Rimsha’s lawyers had always maintained the evidence was planted. “And now it is proved that the whole story was only designed to dislocate the Christian people,” he said.

  “[Chishti] must be prosecuted under the blasphemy law as it will set a precedent against anyone else who tries to misuse that law.”

  The blasphemy laws have been widely abused as a powerful way to settle scores and disputes. People have been sentenced to long jail terms on extremely weak evidence, some of which cannot even be properly examined in court for fear of repeating any blasphemy.

  But public criticism of the laws is itself dangerous – two prominent politicians have been assassinated by religious hardliners after speaking out.

  Mumtaz Qadri, a former security guard who last year gunned down his boss, Salman Taseer, the governor of the Punjab at the time, is regarded by many Pakistanis as a hero for killing a man who had publicly criticised the blasphemy laws and backed a Christian woman who was sentenced to death

• Sabana

  November 26, 2012 4:19 am

  Reply

  Hello every body.

  In Islamic countries young girls are being subjected to life-threatening genital mutilation at the hands of their own families under pressure from mullahs and maulvies to continue barbaric practice.

  A task group of GPs, school nurses and midwives, has now been set up in Bradford to raise awareness of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) – a practice which involves the partial or total removal of the external female genital organs for cultural reasons, sometimes carried out with rusty razors.

  FGM is prevalent in 28 African countries and it is estimated more than 20,000 girls under 15 are at high risk of FGM with 66,000 women in the UK, including an estimated 120 women in Bradford being seen by healthcare professionals at Bradford Royal Infirmary in the last 18 months.

  It is believed FGM happens in the UK as well as overseas, often in the family’s country of origin, when girls of school age are often taken overseas during the school summer holidays.

  Now health care workers in Bradford are being trained to ask women about FGM, who may either want, or be under pressure to have FGM performed on their own daughters.

  If the health professional has significant concerns around the risk of FGM to a child, guidance will be sought urgently from the Safeguarding Children’s Services.

  Detective Sergeant Andy McGrath, of the Bradford District Safeguarding Unit, a task group member, said it was important communities realised FGM was a form of violence and abuse against women and girls.

  He said: “As far as the police are concerned it is domestic abuse and we treat it extremely seriously. As police we have a duty to protect vulnerable people in society. If we get a report it will be dealt with professionally. It is culturally sensitive so it would be dealt with by a trained investigator but we would fully investigate.”

  The Taskgroup member Ruth Dixon, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s lead for tackling violence against women and girls, said: “We need people to know that it is not acceptable and stop female children from being mutilated. The short term implications for the girl is severe pain and emotional shock. It is done by parents and extended family members with no anaesthetic, using rusty razor blades which leads to infections and internal damage, urine retention and, ultimately, they can die.

  “When the team in Bradford looked at the number of women who may have been affected locally, we found that about 120 women had been cared for at Bradford Royal Infirmary in the last few years, who had probably had FGM based on the prevalence levels in their country of origin.”

  The task group recently met with a group of women from the Frontline Initiative in Manningham who come from high risk areas. The women told the task group they wanted health professionals to ask them directly about FGM and also to show them pictures of the types of FGM as the preferred method of describing the mutilation they have undergone.

  The women used the term “cutting” to describe the practice, which can cause problems during pregnancy and childbirth. By alerting health professionals they can be referred to a consultant who can carry out a procedure prior to birth, to enable the baby to be delivered naturally.

  Miss Dixon said: “We will train and provide information to health professionals so that when a mother who has undergone FGM gives birth to a baby girl, she will be given clear advice and support to ensure that the child is not mutilated.”

• Paki_girl

  November 26, 2012 4:00 am

  Reply

  Hi Admn. Thanks for this exclusive blog.

  Domestic violence in Pakistan is an endemic social problem. According to a study carried out in 2009 by Human Rights Watch, it is estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of women in Pakistan have suffered some form of abuse.[1] An estimated 5000 women are killed per year from domestic violence, with thousands of others maimed or disabled. The majority of victims of violence have no legal recourse. Law enforcement authorities do not view domestic violence as a crime and usually refuse to register any cases brought to them. Given the very few women’s shelters in the country, victims have limited ability to escape from violent situations.

  Types of abuse

  An estimated 5000 women are killed per year from domestic violence, with thousands of others maimed or disabled. Lisa Hajjar, an Associate Professor at the University of California, describes abuse against women in Pakistan as “endemic in all social spheres”. In an observational study published in the Pakistan Journal of Medical Sciences based on a “convenience” sample of 218 women in the gynecology wards of three hospitals, 97% of the interviewed women said they had been victims of some form of assault, ranging from verbal abuse or threatened, to being subjected to beatings or non-consensual sex.

  Dowry deaths have been described by the United Nations as a form of domestic violence. Women are often attacked and murdered if their in-laws deem their dowry to have been insufficient. Amongst dowry-related violence, bride burnings, also known as “stove deaths”, are widely reported. In 1988 a survey showed that 800 women were killed in this manner, in 1989 the number rose to 1100, and in 1990 it stood at 1800 estimated killings. According to the Progressive Women’s Association, such attacks are a growing problem and, in 1994 on International Women’s Day, announced that various NGOs would join to raise awareness of the issue. Newspapers in Lahore in a six-month period (1997) reported on average 15 attacks a month. Women’s eNews reported that 4,000 women had been attacked in this manner in Islamabad’s surroundings over an eight-year period, and that the average age range of victims was between 18 and 35, with an estimated 30 percent being pregnant at the time of death. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan reported that about four women are killed in this manner every day, by either family members or husbands. Shahnaz Bukhari, who runs the Progressive Women’s Association in Islamabad, has said of such attacks: “Either Pakistan is home to possessed stoves which burn only young housewives, and are particularly fond of genitalia, or looking at the frequency with which these incidences occur there is a grim pattern that these women are victims of deliberate murder.”

  Acid attacks in Pakistan came to international attention after the release of a documentary by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy called Saving Face (2012). According to Shahnaz Bukhari, the majority of these attacks occur in the summer when acid is used extensively to soak certain seeds to induce germination. Various reasons have been given for such attacks, such as a woman dressing inappropriately or rejecting a proposal of marriage. The first known instance of an acid attack occurred in East Pakistan in 1967. According to the Acid Survivors Foundation, up to 150 attacks occur every year. The foundation reports that the attacks are often the result in an escalation of domestic abuse, and the majority of victims are female.[

  Factors

  Various factors are associated with domestic violence in Pakistan. Poverty, illiteracy and social taboos are considered the main reasons for domestic violence in the country. A lack of awareness about women’s rights and a lack of support from the government have been cited as two reasons. Another factor given for the rise in domestic violence has been due to increased urbanization. As people move from villages and increasingly live apart from an extended family, assaults are less likely to be prevented by the intervention of family members, who in past times often intervened in domestic conflicts.[16] Another reason given for abuses is patriarchalism in Islamic society, which marginalizes women’s role. In some traditional societies, a man is considered to have the right to physically beat his spouse.According to Rahel Nardos, it is “the dual constructs of women as the property of men and as the standard-bearers of a family’s honour set the stage for culturally sanctioned forms of violence”. Women have reported attacks ranging from physical to psychological and sexual abuse from partners, in-laws and family members. In 1998 of 1974 reported murders the majority of victims were killed by either family members or In laws. A survey carried out by the Thomson Reuters Foundation ranked Pakistan as the third most dangerous country in the world for women, after Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo; it is followed by Somalia.

  Political response
  
  In 1976 the Pakistani government passed legislation on dowry and bridal gifts in an attempt to eliminate the custom but, because of cultural and societal norms combined with government ineffectiveness, such killings over inadequate dowries continue. In 1999 the Senate of Pakistan rejected a resolution which would have condemned the practice of murdering women for the sake of family honour. The following year, on 21 April 2000, the national government leader Pervez Musharraf declared that honour killings were “vigorously condemned” by the government and would be treated as murder. The Ministry of Women Development set up ten crisis centres to help the victims of domestic violence and raise the awareness level of the people on this issue. In 2011 the Senate passed the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Bill to repress acid attacks in the country; the senate also passed the prevention of anti-women practices bill.

  In 2009 a Domestic Violence Protection bill was proposed by Yasmeen Rehman of the Pakistan People’s Party. It was passed in the National Assembly but subsequently failed to be passed in the second chamber of parliament, the Senate, within the prescribed period of time. The Council of Islamic Ideology objected to the bill, saying in current form it will increase divorces, besides the bill considered women and children the only victims of domestic violence, ignoring elderly and weak men. The council argued that the punishments suggested by this bill are already enacted by other laws and suggested lack of action on these laws being the reason for increase in domestic violence. After the passage of Eighteenth constitutional amendment, the matter pertaining to the bill became a provincial issue. It was re-tabled in 2012, but met with a deadlock in parliament because of stiff opposition from the religious right. Representatives of Islamic organizations vowed resistance to the proposed bill, describing it as “anti-Islamic” and an attempt to promote “Western cultural values” in Pakistan. They asked for the bill to be reviewed before being approved by the parliament. The bill was passed for Islamabad Capital Territory

• Chand Osmani

  November 25, 2012 7:58 am

  Reply

  Hi

  Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands’ sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

  The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

  “It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’ to a girl who was injured when he raped her,” the US charity Human Rights Watch said.

  In early April, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown joined an international chorus of condemnation when the Guardian revealed that the earlier version of the law legalised rape within marriage, according to the UN.

  Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains repressive measures and contradicts the Afghan constitution and international treaties signed by the country.

  Islamic law experts and human rights activists say that although the language of the original law has been changed, many of the provisions that alarmed women’s rights groups remain, including this one: “Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband’s reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband’s permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient.”

  The law has been backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni, who is thought to have influence over the voting intentions of some of the country’s Shias, which make up around 20% of the population. Karzai has assiduously courted such minority leaders in the run up to next Thursday’s election, which is likely to be a close run thing, according to a poll released yesterday.

  Human Rights Watch, which has obtained a copy of the final law, called on all candidates to pledge to repeal the law, which it says contradicts Afghanistan’s own constitution.

  The group said that Karzai had “made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election”.

  Brad Adams, the organisation’s Asia director, said: “The rights of Afghan women are being ripped up by powerful men who are using women as pawns in manoeuvres to gain power.

  “These kinds of barbaric laws were supposed to have been relegated to the past with the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, yet Karzai has revived them and given them his official stamp of approval.”

  The latest opinion poll by US democracy group the International Republican Institute showed that although Karzai was up 13 points to 44% since the last survey in May, his closest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, had soared from 7% to 26%.

  If those numbers prove accurate, it would mean the contest would have to go to a second round run-off vote in early October. In that scenario, 50% of voters said they would vote for Karzai and 29% for Abdullah.

  The survey was conducted in mid to late July, so it is not known whether Abdullah has made further gains on Karzai.

  He could further increase his chance of victory by joining forces with Ashraf Ghani, the former finance minister who is also running on a platform fiercely critical of Karzai.

  Fifty-eight per cent of the 2,400 people polled by IRI said they would like to see an alliance between Abdullah and Ghani, who is polling in fourth place.

• Gazala

  November 25, 2012 7:23 am

  Reply

  Hello every one.

  The article that I read first was about women driving cars in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia women of any nationality are banned from driving cars. They are simply not allowed to. In June, there were protests of women who have foreign driving licenses and who encouraged each other to drive and post pictures and movies of themselves behind the steering wheel online. Until lately, women have only been made to sign that they would not drive again but now a woman has been sentenced to ten lashes because of her driving. She said she did not even drive out of protest but out of need. There is no written law for this but it is a religious tradition which has a lot to do with limiting the freedom of women. The argument is that freedom of movement would make them commit sins.

  The irony of the whole story is that the king only recently promised that women would be allowed to vote in the next election. Isn’t it crazy that this still happens in our world?

  In the second article other, similar news made me think a similar thing. An Iranian actress was sentenced to one year in jail and 90 lashes. For what? For playing a role in a movie. In her role she plays an actress whose work at the theatre is banned by authorities in Tehran. She then has to work secretly. The film was banned and distributed illegally in Iran.

  Whenever I read such news, I am just stunned at how this can still happen in this world. There are courts that give such sentences! It is not a mob that decides to take matters in their own hands and then things get out of control. No, it is a regulated, controlled decision, taken with cool minds and according to a law.

  This law is the law of a religion, of Islam and it shocks me how violent and unfair it treats these women. In Saudi Arabia the highest punishment for other traffic crimes is a fine but women who drive get lashed! And women who do their profession and act in movies that show the reality are getting lashed, too! It is cruel, it is unfair, it is simply not right. But it is their law.

  These are the reasons why I don’t have any interest in going to Muslim countries where the law works according to Islam. I have received many invitations by friends of different Muslim countries but I just don’t have the wish to go there. I feel that in this religion there is so much gender inequality and so much violence towards women that any country where this religion is law does not appeal to me. It just does not feel right to me.