Second article on the page.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/?page=2

why don't people just copy and paste articles in quotes? I hate searching. sorry, maybe it's just me.

This post has been edited by sleepingladybug: May 14 2008, 10:59 PM

You hate searching? I wrote its the second article on the page. And the page its on is worth reading, for other topics. If clicking and then scrolling 4 inches (10cm) down a screen is a too much effort for you I guess the thread will just have to do without your comment. Bummer.

The article is gone from the page now, but you can find it here:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/05/true_monsters.php

This goes directly to the heart of our other discussion on this topic: The fact that these people are bringing these practices to OUR countries. Look at criminal sentencing in honor killings vs. sentencing in other cases involving the same level of violence and brutality in NON-religious circumstances. We in the West must not tolerate this kind of brutality.

Here's my other theory: We didn't invade Iraq to remove Saddam. We invaded Iraq to prevent Uday and Qusay from taking power. Saddam was moderate compared to a lot of other people, but Uday and Qusay were messed up.

In other news, did you see Bush sucking up to the Saudis? Sickening. Saudi Arabia is one of the most backward, messed up countries in the region. We shouldn't be doing business with them, and we shouldn't be friends with Musharaff in Pakistan.

Well that just seems to be the way of things, doesn't it, Vet? Oppression of women is generally the only thing other countries will not take decisive actions over...let it be women and men and then its cause for a crusade...

Saddams presence would not change this situation, but if his absence helps in years to come a more moderate dare I say it democratic society in IRAQ then it is a starting point. We would not tolerate it without punishment, perhaps in time to come the people of IRAQ will not tolerate it either. This is an Islamic practice isn't it, but hey, Islam is great and peaceful isn't it. We are all entitled to our religious beliefs.
(thats not directed at you btw Vet)

I agree that oppression of women is one of the things not acted on..I dont know if its the "only thing" not acted on. I dont see anything being done about Sudan now (well.. in case some one nit picks..I see extremely LITTLE being done about Sudan).. I didnt see anything done in Rwanda, Congo, etc. In Somalia, pretty much only Ethiopia is stepping in (side note.. how low have you suck when Ethiopia has to intervene in your country?)

Dundee.. go back to when Saddam was present in Iraq. Yes, there were horrible outrages. Im not about to go about defending him. What I will say is that under Saddam religious horrors like that did not happen. They werent tolerated. Iraq was a secular state.

OK fair enough, I can't really comment on that, i thought it was an islamic practice that is carried out wherever possible, even in the west at times?

Don't mistake Saddam's Iraq for a peaceful country. Saddam was mostly moderate, but his sons were psychopaths. They were guilty of heinous crimes against humanity. The world is well-rid of Uday and Qusay: and I don't say that about many people. Even Saddam himself ordered hits on both of them at one time or another, and both them ordered hits on their own father.

"Honor killings" are an Islamic thing in a sense..just like Christendom, Islamic practices vary dramatically from country to country, even within the same sect. Honor killings are not performed (except by far extremists if ever) in countries like Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Jordan, etc. You may VERY VERY occasionally hear of them, but they arent part of the culture.

And Saddams Iraq was not Islamic.. the majority of the people are Muslims..but the country was ruled by Baathists, which believe in modern, secular government.

Again, Im not defending Saddam. He commited many evils. He just didnt give in to ALL evils.

Kirin.. despite the records showing that Saddams sons might have tried for a power play, its far from a definate that they would have succeeded, and ever a further definate that the generals would have let them keep power. That almost would have been interesting to see play out.. a coup by the sons followed by a coup of the generals.. who knows where it would have led us..but maybe not the de facto civil war that erupted maybe.

what he did was not islamic. the problem is, that the society has not moved forward. i think Turkey is the closest to what a westernized muslim country (pop being largelly muslim but still very secular) would look like.

Turkey is a great country with wonderful people, but it still has Hezbollah. Konca Kuris was sadistically and brutally tortured for 35 days by those people.

Every Western country has religious extremists.. however, as Warrior 6 said Turkey is the best example of a Muslim country living under what most of the rest of world would consider modern and secular law. Non-western but fairly secular and modern, predominately Muslim countries are Indonesia and Malaysia.

Yes, I have some Muslim friends from Malaysia and Turkey, and they're wonderful people. One of my favorite people in the world was a guy I knew from Senegal: a perfect example of the best of what a human being can be. My Malaysian friend was one of the most fun-loving people I've known, and the brothers from Turkey are two of the absolute NICEST people I've ever met (and they make GREAT tea).

You're right, Vet. EVERY country has extremists, and they're not just Muslims either. Every religion has extremists as well (though some religions lend themselves more naturally to extremism than others -cough- Bible Belt -cough-) I'm worried about the people trying to institute hard-line fundamentalism in Malaysia, Indonesia and Turkey, but I will agree: they're nice countries with some really nice people. I know Indonesia's had troubles recently, but ... I guess they're are troubles all over.

Indonesia is the most worrisome for me.. its a bit ironic...theyve become democratic.. so in trying to appeal to voters politicians there (and to a lesser degree in Malaysia and Turkey) keep referncing Islamic law or letting sharia cover some legal issues..

But, yes.. extremists are everywhere. The KKK, Neo-Nazis and abortion bombers of the US unfailingly dress their beliefs up in their versions of Christianity, there are Hindu extremists in India who in recent years have gone after both Muslims and Christians, etc..

In as much as Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia are secular, they are all moving backwards.

lol good lord, someone's a little touchy. wah! Now it's a few days later and I finally have time to read the article, but now since it's not copied and pasted I will have to go searching through a million posts to find it, but oh well...I guess you're right and I'm wrong.

Well..just for you, I will update you.. with a whole copy and paste and links and everything. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

"I wondered, incorrectly, if Leila Hussein was a reluctant accomplice in the death of her daughter, Rand Abdel-Qader, the young girl who was murdered by her monstrous father for speaking to a British soldier. Now I feel particularly awful about that; Leila Hussein was devastated by the killing, condemned the act, and left her contemptible husband at grave personal risk.

Leila Hussein has been murdered, gunned down as she tried to escape Iraq.

It was two weeks after Rand's death on 16 March that a grief-stricken Leila, unable to bear living under the same roof as her husband, found the strength to leave him. She had been beaten and had had her arm broken. It was a courageous move. Few women in Iraq would contemplate such a step. Leila told The Observer in April: 'No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed as a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter.'

Her words were to prove prescient. Leila turned to the only place she could, a small organisation in Basra campaigning for the rights of women and against 'honour' killings. Almost immediately she began receiving threats - notes calling her a 'prostitute' and saying she deserved to die like her daughter.

This is an instance of unimaginable fear, hatred, and tragedy…and it's just one example of a climate and pattern of oppression of women. It's a story that's hard to read through the tears."

HERE is the original:

True monsters
Category: Religion
Posted on: May 12, 2008 9:33 AM, by PZ Myers

I have a daughter myself, who I want to grow up to be independent and free and sensible and interesting, so I can't even imagine what it would take to bring a parent to this:

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse.

Yikes. What did she do? Become a mass murderer, a terrorist, a destroyer of entire cultures by acts of destruction?

No, nothing quite so horrific. She was guilty of puppy love.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader Ali is a coward and a monster, the warped product of a bestial 'civilization' that treats half its members as chattel and the other half as little better than junkyard dogs, brutes who will maintain the savage order by denying love and individuality and murdering anyone who does not precisely fit their mandated roles.

Abdel-Qader Ali is not an aberration, not some random psychopath who committed an evil and then, all alone and despised, tries to justify it. No, he's part of a whole culture that favors this violence.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said.

…

It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.

'Death was the least she deserved,' said Abdel-Qader. 'I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,' he said.

They are not men, they are abused dogs. They have no honor; honor is not blind, stupid obedience to a death cult that demands that you murder your children or your sisters for showing signs of humanity.

I count at least three tragedies here.

One is these 'men' who have had their minds corrupted by a foul religion.

The greatest is Rand Abdel-Qader herself, murdered for an infatuation.

The third is one only briefly mentioned: the mother, Leila Hussein. I wonder…does her skin crawl at having to submit to the vile creature who tortured her daughter to death, or is she sufficiently indoctrinated into the evils of her culture that she accepts it? Either way, it's a nightmare.

And finally a link to an article.. dont worry... I will put the whole article here for you as well.. wouldnt want you having to click anything.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/01/iraq

Mother who defied the killers is gunned downFive weeks ago Leila Hussein told The Observer the chilling story of how her husband had killed their 17-year-old daughter over her friendship with a British soldier in Basra. Now Leila, who had been in hiding, has been murdered - gunned down in cold blood. Afif Sarhan in Basra and Caroline Davies report on the final act of a brutal tragedy
Afif Sarhan and Caroline Davies The Observer, Sunday June 1 2008 Article history
Leila Hussein, who was murdered in Iraq. Photograph: Observer

Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband - the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal 'honour' killing for which he has shown no remorse.

Though she feared reprisals for speaking out, she really believed that she would soon be safe. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital after futile attempts to save her.

Her death, on 17 May, is the shocking denouement to a tragedy which had its origins in an innocent friendship between her student daughter, Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, and a blond, 22-year-old British soldier known only as Paul.

The two had met while Rand, an English student at Basra University, was working as a volunteer helping displaced families and he was distributing water. Although their friendship appears to have involved just brief, snatched conversations over four months, Rand had confided her romantic feelings for Paul to her best friend, Zeinab, 19.

She died, still a virgin, four months after she had last seen him when her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, 46, discovered that she had been seen talking 'to the enemy' in public. She had brought shame on his honour, was his defence, and he had to cleanse his family name. Despite openly admitting the murder, he has received no punishment.

It was two weeks after Rand's death on 16 March that a grief-stricken Leila, unable to bear living under the same roof as her husband, found the strength to leave him. She had been beaten and had had her arm broken. It was a courageous move. Few women in Iraq would contemplate such a step. Leila told The Observer in April: 'No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed as a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter.'

Her words were to prove prescient. Leila turned to the only place she could, a small organisation in Basra campaigning for the rights of women and against 'honour' killings. Almost immediately she began receiving threats - notes calling her a 'prostitute' and saying she deserved to die like her daughter.

Even her sons Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, whom she claimed aided their father in their sister's killing, disowned her. Meanwhile, her husband, a former government employee, escaped any charges, and even told The Observer that police had congratulated him on what he had done.

It is not known who killed Leila. All that is known is that she was staying at the house of 'Mariam', one of the women's rights campaigners, whose identity The Observer has agreed not to reveal. On the morning of 17 May, they were joined by another volunteer worker and set off to meet 'a contact' who was to help Leila travel to Amman, where she would be taken in by an Iraqi family.

'Leila was anxious, but she was also happy at having the chance to leave Iraq,' said Mariam. 'Since the death of her daughter, her own life was at serious risk. And this was a great opportunity for her to leave the country and to fight for Iraqi women's rights.

'She had not been able to sleep the night before. I stayed up talking to her about her plans after she arrived in Amman. I gave her some clothes to take with her and she was packing the only bag she had. She was too excited to sleep.'

Mariam said that when she awoke Leila had already prepared breakfast, cleaned her house and even baked a date cake as a thank-you for the help she had been given. After the arrival of 'Faisal', the volunteer (whose identity is also being protected), the three left the house at 10.30am and started walking to the end of the street to get a taxi. They had walked less than 50 metres when they heard a car drive up fast and then gunshots rang out. The attack, said by witnesses to have been carried out by three men, was over in minutes. Leila was hit by three bullets. Mariam was hit in her left arm and Faisal in her left leg. 'I didn't realise I had been shot for a few seconds, because as I heard the gunfire I saw Leila falling to the ground and saw blood pouring from her head,' said Mariam. 'I was so shocked, I didn't immediately feel the pain.'

Two men ran from their homes to help. They rushed Leila to hospital and a passing taxi took the other two. But Leila died at 3.20pm, despite several operations to save her. As she lay in her own hospital bed receiving treatment, Mariam said that she heard someone saying that Leila had been shot in the head. But there were other mutterings that were clearly audible. 'I could hear people talking on the corridors and the only thing that they had to say was that Leila was wrong for defending her daughter's mistakes and that her death was God's punishment.

'In that minute I just had complete hatred in my heart for those who had killed her.'

Police said the incident was a sectarian attack and that there was nothing to link Leila's death to her family. 'Her ex-husband was not in Basra when it happened. We found out he was visiting relatives in Nassiriya with his two sons,' said Hassan Alaa, a senior officer at the local police station in Basra. 'We believe the target was the women activists, rather than Mrs Hussein, and that she was unlucky to be in that place at that time.'

It is plausible. Campaigners for women's' rights are not acceptable to many sections of Iraqi society, especially in Basra where militias have partial control in some districts and impose strict laws on locals, including what clothing they should wear and what religious practice they should follow.

Since February 2006, two other activists from the same women's organisation have been killed in the city. One of them was reportedly raped before being shot. The other, the only man working for the non-governmental organisation (NGO), and a father of five who was responsible for the organisation's finances, was shot five months ago.

There could be many with a grudge against such organisations. However, Mariam believes Leila was targeted, pointing out she had been hit by three bullets. 'When we were shot, they focused on Leila, not us,' she said.

Since the attack the NGO has stopped its work in Basra. 'We daren't answer the phones because we have received so many threats since we gave our support to Leila's case,' said Mariam. 'Most of our members are preparing to leave the city and even Iraq if they can raise the money.'

A single mother since her husband was killed for refusing to join a militia, she too intends to move when she can. Faisal, who also survived her injuries, is still suffering post-surgical infection. She preferred not to speak, but her mother, who wished to remain anonymous, said: 'My daughter is very shocked at what happened, and my two grandsons can't stop crying since they saw her in hospital.'

Leila's burial was arranged within hours of her death by the husband of one of her cousins and Mariam's father.

The Observer visited Rand's father and two brothers at their Basra home, but they refused to talk beyond Hassan proclaiming his father's innocence. When asked if he would be visiting his mother's grave, he shrugged: 'Maybe in the future.'

Leila was an orphan, raised by an uncle who died in the Shia uprising against Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s. Hamida Alaa, 68, a friend of the uncle, said: 'The poor woman was killed and now her name and history is buried with her. No one wants to speak about it. She is just one more woman killed in our country who has already been forgotten by the local society.'

In the last days of her life, Leila was suffering from the pressure of having gone against her husband. 'She was sleeping with the help of sedatives,' said Mariam. 'She would wake up at night with terrible nightmares, even dreaming of being suffocated as her daughter was. She had been threatened so many times and that's why she was so scared. Her indignation over Rand's death is what led her to her own coffin. Their history ends here. But Leila was a hero. A woman who was strong enough to say no to Iraqi men's bad attitudes. Sadly most Iraqi women do not have the same strength and they will stay in their homes.'

Mariam has moved out of her home. But within hours of speaking to The Observer a close friend went to her new address to deliver a message that had been left for her at her front door. It read: 'Death to betrayers of Islam who don't deserve God's forgiveness. Speaking less you will live more.' She believes it was sent by Leila's killers.

'They want this story to be buried with Leila,' she said. 'But I cannot close my eyes to all this.'

The problem is Islam...not a country's degree of westernization. IMO.