Posted by
Sidney Allen Johnson on Wednesday, August 08, 2007 8:11:50 PM
WOMEN.....WHERE IS YOUR OUTRAGE?
The truth about Islam pt. 1
This
is the first in a series of essays I hope to write leading up to the
release of the fourth Babylon Mystery Orchestra CD, "Axis Of Evil," to
be released early next year.
Rarely do I let things
affect me this much. Ok, that is probably a lie, I do it all the time,
but it does take a lot to motivate me to take the time to research one
of these and write it. That all happened very fast for this one,
causing me to move some others aside, because I wanted to get this one
out. I believe this is important.
This was sparked by
seeing an interview with a woman named Ghazal Omid, the author of a
book called "Living In Hell." The interview, and her book, is about the
treatment of women living in Iran. She went on to tell about some
recent protests in Iran, not the government sponsored (ie. planned and
paid for) protests chanting "death to America and President Bush" that
the media love to show, but instead an apparently un-newsworthy protest
against their own government. This was a gathering in support of
teachers who had not been paid. As should be expected, some of these
women were arrested, which led to still more protests. These were not
small protests either. Apparently 8000 women took to the streets to
protest the arrests of these women. I know what you are thinking, it
sounds hopeful doesn't it? Protests in Iran against their government.
Well it gets ugly from here.
Asu Zaladida was one of these
protesters. This 22 year old woman was subsequently arrested and taken
to jail where, in keeping with a time honored Iranian tradition, she
was brutally raped. Multiple times. Lets speak a little more plainly
here....She was repeatedly anally raped with a baseball bat. After her
family found, and then parted with enough money to convince the
authorities to release her, she was then taken to the hospital. Her
injuries got the best of her and she died. Taking treachery to the next
level, the government would not allow the family to have her body for
burial. Her family was warned not to speak against the government or
they too would be arrested. Considering the arrest of Miss Zaladida led
to her death, it would not be unreasonable to call this a death threat
for the entire family.
As Ghazal Omid told this story, it
was the next words she said that actually meant the most to me; "This
is how women in Iran stand up to their abusers, and you guys don't hear
about them because apparently they're not important." Is this true? Are
these women just not important? She continued: "We need five minutes of
your time per day to show you whats going on inside Iran." Apparently
we can't spare that much time in America for these truly courageius
women. After all we have Anna Nicole Smith, Sanjaya Malakar, Don Imus
and his ghetto basketball commentary and Rosie O'Donnell to consider.
Where can we find the time?
What happened to Asu Zaladida
is NOT an isolated incident. You want another example? Take the case of
Roya Tolouee, a 40 year old woman beaten and raped when she refused to
sign "confessions." They finally coerced her by threatening to burn her
two children to death right in front of her. Strange how she believed
they would actually do it. Let her tell her story:
"Four
armed men and three armed women barged into my house at night and took
me away," she said. "My kids were terrified and crying. I was
questioned all night by different interrogators and then thrown alone
into a cell. When I wouldn't do what they wanted, they slapped me. But
after the sixth night, the routine changed. I was left alone in a small
dark room with two men. One was the assistant prosecutor and called
himself Amiri. The other had a filthy mouth and said terrible things.
They started slapping me again. For the rest of the night they did to
me what no woman should ever experience. Amiri said, 'I'm going to hang
you, but before I hang you, I will make an example of you so that no
woman will dare to open her mouth here again'." He then sexually
assaulted her. When she asked Amiri how he could act like that, he told
her that only Islam and clerical rule were important to him. The attack
left her badly bruised and bleeding internally, but she still refused
to sign the papers they put before her. To further anger her attackers,
she demanded to see a lawyer and cited international treaties on human
rights. The following night they did not sexually assault her because
she was still bleeding from the first assault. According to Islamic
law, this rendered her "unclean" and therefore unfit to rape. So they
told her they would kill her children by setting them on fire before
her eyes.
Mainstream Islam takes a dim view of women's
rights. When Islam reaches a level of authority that enables it to
control and subjugate a population under Islamic law, oppression of
women becomes the norm and these atrocities are NOT the exceptions.
They even use their own belief system to enhance the enthusiasm for
those who perpetrate these atrocities. Many years ago I remember
reading a biography of the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortez (yes, I
really do read those kind of books all the time), and I was interested
to learn that the Spaniards under his command would often "baptize" the
native women before they took them sexually. This was all part of being
a "good" catholic, since having sex with a "heathen" female, consent
notwithstanding, would go against the acceptable church policies of the
time. It appears our Islamic friends take that a step further. Sexual
abuse as an interrogation technique is common. Young women are often
raped BEFORE execution so they cannot reach heaven as virgins!!! This,
as you can imagine, provides a considerable incentive to obey the
Islamic state. This is the truth about Islam.
Meanwhile
here in America, we are blessed with the ever illuminating political
wisdom of Rosie O'Donnell who has recently taken to accusing the Bush
administration of orchestrating the September 11, 2001 attack on the
World Trade Center. She also believes that the kidnapping of the
British Sailors and Marines by Iran was a conspiracy, and a plot to
start a war with Iran by Britain and the United States. She has made
herself one of the biggest detriments to womens rights in the Islamic
world by making such a spectacle of herself. The jihadist puritans of
Islam can point to this loudmouthed lesbian woman speaking against her
own country in a time of war and say "this is what we are fighting
against." You would think she would want to speak up for these women,
but her own anti-christian and anti-American crusade is more important
to her than the plight of women seeking not just freedom, but the
simple dignity of being treated better than a dog. To Ms. Odonnell the
question has been answered. These women are NOT important.
The New York Times, in an article published on May 28, 2006, accused
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being "a proponent of women's
rights." The ever liberal newspaper is interested in portraying him as
a reformer, and Iran as a negotiating partner that we can trust.
Speaking of a "negotiating partner," we also have senator and
presidential candidate Barack Obama, who on a recent lovefest
appearance on David Letterman's program, insisted that the United
States should seek what he called "aggressive negotiations" with the
Islamic regimes in Iran and Syria. Just exactly how do you aggressively
negotiate? The President has chosen a policy of isolating these
governments because decades of negotiations have failed. If these
Islamic fundamentalist regimes will treat their own women as less than
dogs, just what kind of negotiating partners can they be? Appeasement
is in the air, but when has it ever worked? In the 1930's "aggressive
negotiations" were attempted with Nazi Germany even as the world was
well aware of the atrocities already being committed against their
Jewish citizens. Did these aggressive negotiations prevent a war? Did
they improve the conditions of the Jewish people in Germany? No! It
bought the Nazi regime more time, making both the war, and the ultimate
treatment of the Jews, worse by far. In fact, negotiations have never
prevented a war. They only delay the inevitable, to the advantage of
the aggressors. This has the effect of making the wars that follow
worse. Remember that when we get into a shooting war with Iran....and
we will. By negotiating with Iran, or likewise with its sister regime
in Syria, we would be not only displaying weakness in their eyes, but
also tolerating these atrocities committed against women. But I forget,
liberals do preach tolerance don't they? So long as it suits their
short term political needs.
Nancy Pelosi may be the worst
of all. She takes it upon herself to show support for the plight of
women in Islamic countries by going to Syria and offering, essentially,
an alternate foreign policy. One that validates and endorses this
treatment of women. Yes it does validate and endorse it because nowhere
has she called for any human rights reform. You can add to that her
"leadership" in attempting to get the United States to militarily
withdraw from Iraq. Just what do you think will happen to the rights
and wellbeing of the women there if we leave? Do you think women will
be able to retain what rights they have gained after a longstanding 5
year history of them? There was a story on Nightline the other night
where the president of Afghanistan pointed out that, legally, women do
have rights, but that in reality, they may not be allowed to exercise
them. It takes a culture awhile to adjust to change. The American civil
rights movement should have taught us that. How much harder must it be
in countries without a traditional belief in individual liberty and
with violent militias working against them. When the American military
leaves Iraq, so will any and all gains for women. Like it or not,
President Bush has done more for women's rights in the Islamic world
than any president in recent history. You won't find a statement like
that in the media!
Ghazal Omid had this to say: "We need five
minutes of your time per day to show you what's going on inside Iran,
because we don't have podiums. If we don't, this government will not go
anywhere. If you really want to get rid of this Iranian regime, help us
to help you." The trouble is that Miss Omid does not understand how
America works. The media is the podium, and the people who control it
will do anything to oppose this administration and its policies. The
media likes to portray America as unpopular in the Islamic world. Women
represent over half the population in those countries. They don't have
freedom to speak out without fear of reprisals. We are their only hope.
Don't kid yourselves, we are wanted there, and when women are no longer
afraid to speak out, they will tell us just that. If we just have the
resolve to stay.
It amazes me to no end that the feminists
in America refuse to speak out about the mistreatment of women in
Muslim countries. Where is the outrage? Is the alliance with feminism
to the liberal democratic party so important that they would remain
silent just to help them win some more seats in government? Are Muslim
women being sacrificed on the altar of American liberalism? I would say
these women, who would dare to resist their own government in the face
of certain humiliation and death, represent the best of everything we
claim to stand for. In this instance, the president has been taking
exactly the right approach in not negotiating with these governments.
Women's groups, however, not only won't stand with him, they joyously
celebrate their opposition to his administration's policies with their
continued adherence to an outdated alliance with the liberal democratic
party! Their silence on these Islamic atrocities is deafening. In a
word: outrageous!
There is a massive movement by the
American media to be tolerant of Islam. Just be sure what it is you are
tolerating. Islam is not and has never been a religion of peace or
freedom. This is doubly true if you are a woman. There are those who
would have you believe that it is extremist radical Islam and not
mainstream Islam that is the problem. If that is so, where are the
voices of the so called moderates speaking out against this behavior?
Either they are silent on this subject or the media is keeping them
silent by not reporting them. Meanwhile Islamic women, many of them
brave enough to stand against their own government, continue to be
tortured and abused as apart of Islam's continuing policy of
subjugating them and rendering them docile and obedient. This is the
truth about Islam.