Who Are The Rohingya Of Myanmar?

ISIS kills Iraqi woman activist in Mosul

 

Militants with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group publicly killed a rights lawyer in the Iraqi city of Mosul after their self-styled Islamic court ruled that she had abandoned Islam, the U.N. mission in Iraq said Thursday.

Samira Salih al-Nuaimi was seized from her home on Sept. 17 after allegedly posting messages on Facebook that were critical of the militants' destruction of religious sites in Mosul.

According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, al-Nuaimi was tried in a so-called "Sharia court" for apostasy, after which she was tortured for five days before the militants sentenced her to "public execution."

She was killed on Monday, the U.N. mission said. Her Facebook page appears to have been removed since her death.

"By torturing and executing a female human rights' lawyer and activist, defending in particular the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul, ISIL continues to attest to its infamous nature, combining hatred, nihilism and savagery, as well as its total disregard of human decency," Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, said in a statement, referring to the group by an acronym.

The militant group captured Iraq's second largest city Mosul during its rapid advance across the country's north and west in June, as Iraqi security forces melted away. The extremists now rule a vast, self-declared caliphate straddling the Syria-Iraq border in which they have imposed a harsh version of Islamic law and beheaded and massacred their opponents.

In the once-diverse city of Mosul, the group has forced religious minorities to convert to Islam, pay special taxes or die, causing tens of thousands to flee. The militants have enforced a strict dress code on women, going so far as to veil the faces of female mannequins in store fronts.

In August, the group destroyed a number of historic landmarks in the town, including several mosques and shrines, claiming they promote apostasy and depart from principles of Islam.

Among Muslim hard-liners, apostasy is considered to be not just conversion from Islam to another faith, but also committing actions that are so against the faith that one is considered to have abandoned Islam.

The Gulf Center for Human Rights said Wednesday that al-Nuaimi had worked on detainee rights and poverty. The Bahrain-based rights organization said her death "is solely motivated by her peaceful and legitimate human rights work, in particular defending the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul."

In the nearby town of Sderat, militants on Tuesday broke into the house of a female candidate in the last provincial council elections, killed her and abducted her husband, the UN also said. On the same day, another female politician was abducted from her home in eastern Mosul and remains missing.

The ISIS extremists' blitz eventually prompted the United State to launch airstrikes last month, to aid Kurdish forces and protect religious minorities in Iraq.

This week, the U.S. and five allied Arab states expanded the aerial campaign into Syria, where the militant group is battling President Bashar Assad's forces as well as Western-backed rebels.

Nearly a dozen countries have also provided weapons and training to Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who were strained after months of battling the jihadi group.

In other developments Thursday, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen visited northern Iraq for talks with Kurdish leaders about the fight against ISIS extremists and Berlin's efforts to help with arms deliveries.

Thursday also marked the start of German arms deliveries to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, with the ultimate goal of supplying 10,000 Kurdish fighters with some 70 million euros ($90 million) worth of equipment.
Source

ISIS�s Cruelty Toward Women Gets Scant Attention

 

Tucked away in a recent New York Times story on military operations against ISIS by Iraqi special forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga was a brief description of what these troops discovered when they entered a village in Iraq that had been occupied by ISIS fighters. A naked woman, tied to a tree, who had been repeatedly raped by ISIS fighters. Another woman was discovered in a second village, similarly naked, tied down and repeatedly raped. The fighters, it appears, are �rewarded� by being allowed to have their way with captured women.

 ISIS has received considerable world attention for its savage beheadings, executions of captured soldiers and men in conquered towns and villages, violence against Christians and Shiites, and the destruction of non-Sunni shrines and places of worship. But its barbarity against women has been treated as a side issue. Arab and Muslim governments, vocal on the threat ISIS poses to regional stability, have been virtually silent on ISIS�s systemic degradation, abuse, and humiliation of women. To the men of ISIS, women are an inferior race, to be enjoyed for sex and be discarded, or to be sold off as slaves.

From ISIS-captured territory in Syria, we saw a photograph of a line of women, covered from head to toe and tied to one another by a rope, as they were being led to a makeshift slave market. Little girls, who were going to school and playing with dolls before ISIS fighters arrived at their doorstep, were married off to men many times their age. ISIS set up marriage bureaus in captured Syrian towns to recruit virgins and widows to marry fighters, and also called on fellow jihadists in other countries to recruit brides for the fighters and send them to Syria. It is hardly likely that these �marriages� were based on consent, as is required in Islam. Where women are concerned, consent does not appear to exist in the lexicon of ISIS fighters.

When ISIS moved into Iraq, a similar set of atrocities followed. In ISIS-conquered towns, reports of women and girls having to undergo female genital mutilation spread like wildfire, until denied by ISIS�s savvy social media. Iraqi NGOs reported that scores of women of the Yezidi sect�an amalgam of Zoroastrianism and Islam�were taken captive. The older women were sold off as slaves and the young ones were kept as brides for the ISIS fighters. The nature of these forced marriages remains obscure.

Zakia Hakki, an Iraqi judge and a woman herself, says that the fighters leave behind pregnant women who, as �soiled goods,� are ostracized by their own societies, while their children are treated as illegitimate. These raped women become targets for honor killings in their own families and communities. The governments of Iraq and Syria have also failed to protect these women and give them any assistance; nor have Western NGOs been effective in looking after these abandoned women and children. ISIS�s men not only leave behind dead bodies in their wake but also women and children who are scarred for life.

In its propaganda, ISIS emphasizes women�s modesty and piety. It created the al-Khansaa female brigade to protect the morality of women and to ensure they appear totally veiled in public. The irony will not be lost on anyone.

Volunteer fighters from around the world, including from Western countries, who have joined ISIS are complicit in these crimes against women. These young men who grew up in Western cultures seem to have absorbed nothing regarding the value of human life and respect for women. Why are there are no demonstrations in Western and Muslim societies against this barbaric onslaught on women and girls? How much longer will the Muslim and Arab world watch these horrors against women and children before speaking out and acting forcefully to protect them and rid the region of the ISIS calamity?

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This Group Faces Terrifying Persecution, And You May Have Never Heard About It

Anti-Muslim sentiment has a long history in Myanmar, dating back to the colonial period when large numbers of Indians followed the British into the country, as theCrisis Group details in its report. Many of them were Muslims, although Hindus and members of other religions moved in as well. Tensions between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State became violent for the first time during World War II, when the Rohingya supported the country's colonial rulers and the Buddhists sided with Japanese invaders.

Violence and repression flared in the decades that followed and intensified in earnest in the spring of 2012. The rape of a Buddhist girl by several Muslim men set off a wave of reprisal violence in Rakhine State, and members of both communities took part in attacks.

Months later, in October of 2012, a new wave of violence by ethnic Buddhists against Rohingya Muslims broke out, this time in a much more organized way. Local authorities and extremist Buddhist monks riled up Rakhine's Buddhist majority, releasing pamphlets that demonized the Rohingya and public statements that called for their expulsion. Buddhist mobs responded by razing and torching Muslim villages, forcing the inhabitants to flee for their lives.

More than 200 people were killed in the violence of 2012, and about a hundred thousand people -- mostly Muslims -- were forced to leave their homes. The majority ended up in segregated makeshift camps, where their movements became more restricted than ever before.

The following year, attacks spread to the center of the country and were no longer restricted to the Rohingya community, instead targeting Muslims as a whole. Dozens of people were killed and entire neighborhoods destroyed in two waves of riots in the spring and fall of 2013.

Source

Berlin Wall vs Apartheid wall

The Pious Wife of a Tyrant (Asiya bint Muzahim) - Women of Paradise - Omar Suleiman

This bought tears to my eyes, and touched me so much.

Whose Sharia Is It? by Kecia Ali

It has been a lousy month for Islamic law.

First, there was the kidnapping and threatened sale of Nigerian girls by Boko Haram, which claimed religious acceptability for their acts. As Muslim theologian Jerusha Lamptey opined, this is not my sharia.

Then, the Sultan of Brunei�s horrific new penal code came into effect. Unlike the Nigerian girls, where a social media campaign garnered White House attention, the Brunei law gained visibility because the Sultan�who is dictating law that his track record suggests he does not observe�indirectly owns the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. Hollywood figures have objected to the rules, due to come into effect next year, which would punish proven male-male anal sex with death. (As far as I know, the code does not prescribe any particular punishment for lesbian acts, though the rhetoric has become that the new law prescribes �stoning gays and lesbians.�)

Claims like that of the Sultan or Boko Haram that �Islam� demands implementation of �sharia� ignore the complex reality in which there is not now nor has there ever been a uniform set of identifiable rules that Muslim scholars have agreed on much less that governments in Muslim majority countries have implemented over the centuries. As I wrote elsewhere, so-called sharia laws on the books in Brunei, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Morocco are not directly revealed by God. They are human products with human histories negotiated in human contexts. The pretense that these laws are straightforward implementations of God�s will not only serves to justify these otherwise unjustifiable rules but also feeds the demonization and dehumanization of Muslims. Though happening on two continents and perpetrated by two quite distinct sorts of actors � a multibillionaire monarch enmeshed in global capitalism and a militant anti-Western, anti-government insurgency � the Nigerian kidnapping and the Brunei law became exhibits A and B for the vilification of sharia.

And then I heard an NPR story about Sudan�s intended flogging and execution of Meriam Ibrahim for apostasy and illicit sex. My first response, as someone who writes and teaches about Islamic law and is committed to understanding it in all its historical complexity: how barbaric.

That was followed by resignation. Why bother to advocate for more sophisticated understandings of Islamic law? What is the use in pointing out that the claims of timelessness authenticity are groundless? So what if these versions of Islamic law are selective, partial, implemented by dictators with populist pretensions and monarchs with captive constituencies? They still apply it. And yes, it�s true that Americans generally aren�t interested in threats to Muslim lives or well-being or African lives or well-being except when there is a sensational story to be made (drone attacks don�t cut it). Doesn�t matter; this is still happening, and it�s wrong.

My �what�s the use?� phase shifted into the simmering anger phase once I began to think about why exactly this version of Islamic law holds sway. It�s patriarchy straight down the line.

The charge of apostasy is based on the claim that Ibrahim was born Muslim: her religion follows that of her (Muslim) father, who left her (Christian) mother when Ibrahim was young. She was apparently raised Christian. Patriarchy allows interreligious marriage between a Muslim man and a Christian woman, but not the reverse, and supports the presumption that the child�s religion follows that of its father.

The charge of illicit sex for which Ibrahim has been sentenced to lashes results from the court deeming her marriage to a Christian man void. Since she is considered Muslim (because of her father�s religion), and since, unlike the situation in her parents� marriage, marriage between a Muslim woman and a Christian man cannot be valid, the court determined that she had sex outside of marriage. Her toddler, and the child growing in her belly, prove her offense. Score another one for patriarchy.

According to reports, Ibrahim�s case was brought to the attention of the authorities by some relatives (presumably Muslim ones) who objected to her marriage to a Christian. As far as the charge of illicit sex goes, a premodern court would almost certainly have applied the doubt rule: essentially, if there are anygrounds for exoneration � such as the fact that the woman thought her marriage was valid � avert the punishment. Apostasy, too, seems to have been seldom punished in practice, however strongly the rule was upheld in theory. One can make a case that as with Brunei�s new penal code or the Boko Haram kidnapping, the Sudanese verdict represents a modern and profoundly problematic view of Islamic law.

At the moment, though, I am less interested in insisting on the nuance and variability of traditional Islamic law and more on critiquing its powerful patriarchal presuppositions. However tempered they were in past practice by judicial clemency, they lay the ground for the charges against Ibrahim. Of course we need to remember that context matters: we will not understand these developments in Nigeria or Brunei or the Sudan without reference to national and global politics, economics, and � in the last case � individual family dynamics; Islamic law is only part of the picture. And yet it is a key piece of the picture. Rethinking Islamic law without questioning its basic presumptions about male dominance will not take us nearly far enough.

Whose sharia is this? It is certainly not mine. I cannot believe that it is God�s.

Kecia Ali, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Religion at Boston University where she teaches a range of classes related to Islam. She writes on early Islamic law, women, ethics, and biography. Her books include Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur�an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence (2006), Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam (2010), Imam Shafi�i: Scholar and Saint (2011) and The Lives of Muhammad (due out this fall). She lives in the Boston area with her family.

 Source

"He culturally believed he had the right to hit his wife and discipline his wife.�

 I hope he enjoys the dhal in prison! So disgusted....

A Pakistani immigrant beat his wife to death in their Brooklyn home after she made the mistake of cooking him lentils for dinner instead of the hearty meal of goat meat that he craved, according to court papers.

Noor Hussain, 75, was so outraged over the vegetarian fare that he pummeled his wife, Nazar Hussain, 66, with a stick until she was a �bloody mess,� according to prosecutors and court papers.

�Defendant asked [his wife] to cook goat and [his wife] said she made something else,� the court papers indicated as Hussain�s murder trial opened on Wednesday.

�The conversation got louder and [his wife] disrespected defendant by cursing at defendant and saying motherf-?-ker, and . . . defendant took a wooden stick and hit her with it on her arm and mouth.�

Defense attorney Julie Clark admitted Hussain beat his wife � but argued that he is guilty of only manslaughter because he didn�t intend to kill her. In Pakistan, Clark said, beating one�s wife is customary.

�He comes from a culture where he thinks this is appropriate conduct, where he can hit his wife,� Clark said in her opening statements at the Brooklyn Supreme Court bench trial. �He culturally believed he had the right to hit his wife and discipline his wife.�

Prosecutors, however, said Hussain meant for his wife to die.

�His intentions were to kill his wife,� Assistant District Attorney Sabeeha Madni said in court. �This was not a man who was trying to discipline his wife.�

Madni said that Hussain �brutally attacked his wife as she lay in her bed� � leaving deep lacerations on her head, arms and shoulders, and causing her brain to hemorrhage.

He beat her with a stick that the family had found in the street and used to stir their laundry in a washtub, the court papers state.

He then tried to clean up the blood that had splattered onto their bedroom wall before calling his son for help, Madni said.

�I killed her. Hurry up and come over,� Hussain told his son, according to prosecutors.

Madni also said Pakistani women who lived in the same building as the Hussains would testify about the beatings Nazar received at the hands of her husband.

�They have told us about years of abuse they witnessed,� Madni said.

Hussain met his wife in Pakistan and the couple married before moving to Brooklyn, prosecutors said.

The trial continues Thursday before Judge Matthew D�Emic.

Source

Global outcry as Sudanese woman sentenced to death for renouncing Islam

  

What a disgrace!! A great injustice and an example of oppression and patriarchy is woman was never Muslim her monther is Christian and she raised her Christian her Muslims father was absent!! Yet men decide she must ber Muslims and hasa apostasized! I'm so disgusted.  

A heavily pregnant young woman has been sentenced to death in Sudan for renouncing Islam and marrying a Christian man, in a case which has attracted global condemnation.

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, was told by a court in Khartoum she would be hanged for committing apostasy by leaving Islam and becoming a Christian. She was also sentenced to 100 lashes for marrying a non-Muslim, which constitutes adultery under Sudanese law.
Mrs Ibrahim is eight months pregnant and has been held since February in Omdurman Federal Women�s Prison, north of Khartoum, with her 18-month-old son Martin. On Sunday she was told that she had three days to recant her faith or face death, but appearing in court yesterday she refused, saying she had always been a Christian.

According to human rights organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Mrs Ibrahim was born in western Sudan to Muslim father and a Christian mother. Her father left when she was six, so her mother raised her as a Christian. She married Daniel Wani, a Christian from southern Sudan who has US citizenship, in 2011.
The charity added that three witnesses from western Sudan had travelled to the hearing to testify that Mrs Ibrahim had always been a Christian, but were prevented from giving evidence.

It is understood that the death sentence will not be enacted for two years after she has given birth, but that the punishment of 100 lashes could be carried out as soon as her baby is born. Mrs Ibrahim�s lawyers are intending to launch an appeal, which could take several months.

Full article

The Truth About Islam And Female Circumcision/FGM

I was very disappointed to watch a video from Shaikh Haitham Al-Haddad in which he insists female circumcision is Sunnah and wajib. He mentioned ahadith, but does not elaborate on the fact that they are 'weak' he also mentions any form of female circumcision is illegal in the UK, but then does not tell people to refrain from it in fact encourages it by repeatedly saying its Sunnah. This is highly irresponsible.

Most of all at the end of the video he admits he hasn't done all his research and cannot discuss the degrees of female circumcision or some of its alleged 'benefits'. This makes the video a farce.

I used to respect  this scholar for his pro-voting/political participation stance but now this and his alleged statement  �a man should not be questioned why he hit his wife, because this is something between them" has left me so depressed. It seems more and more men in our community are enemies of our women and advocates of patriarchy. 

I would urge everyone to read this excellent article from my brothers and sisters at the Asharis Assemble blog. It is by far best resource/explanation about female circumcision/FGM from an Islamic perspective I have ever come across.  As is the video posted at the top.

I hope other scholars and community leaders try to educate Shaikh Haitham or at least convince him to be more responsible and compassionate. He has done our community a lot of harm.

No man has the right to mutilate a woman, and to use our faith as justification is a grave sin and error. A woman is more than capable of thinking and acting for herself. I worry that Haitham Al-Haddad has many followers and they will be swayed to hurt their daughters. 

Indeed he is undoing the good work of activist such as Fahma Mohamed. 

How NGOs helped change Moroccan law on rapists marrying their victims

In parts of Morocco, particularly in rural areas, a girl or unmarried woman who is not a virgin, even if she lost her virginity through rape, is seen as bringing dishonour to her family. Marrying the rapist is thought to alleviate this stigma.

 Another horrific consequence of this law was that if a man wanted to wed a woman who was unwilling to be his bride, by raping her he could, in effect, force her into marriage. It took the tragic case of Amina Filali, 16, who was forced into marriage after she was raped, and who killed herself seven months into wedlock, to be the catalyst for action. Her plight caused such outrage across the country it triggered protests in several cities. Last August, several women's rights groups joined forces to tackle child marriage. We organised a so-called peace and white march � "peace" because our protest was non-violent; "white" to represent the colour of doctors' coats.

Our aim was to show how rape and forced and child marriage had a negative impact on women's health. A pair of doctors who work in our clinics joined us on the rally. We waved placards, but fell silent as we marched on the parliament building in the Moroccan capital, Rabat. Many women suffer in silence and we wanted our demonstration to emphasise that. The peace and white march was followed with a pink march � to symbolise women's rights. Each demonstration increased public interest. Victory came last month, in January, when we discovered that the law had been changed, though the clause relating to child marriage has been postponed for further consultation. Source

Syrian refugee girl to marry to pay the rent

Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel on Women's Rights, Islam & KSA

Unite against oppression!

When orthodox Jews joined with Palestinian youths throwing stones at Israeli police.

Look at these two badasses.

Muzaffarnagar riots: Three months on, women worse off

Comment: the country is just a hell-hole for women :(

Hindu women protesting the arrest of their men and the 'false' cases lodged against them; horrified Muslim gang-rape survivors in relief camps; harassment on way to school forcing Hindu girls to stay at home; mass 'panic' marriages of Muslims girls from victim families.

Women have borne the brunt of the September riots in western UP, which were perpetuated in the name of saving their honour. The communal violence, in which 65 people were killed and over 60,000 displaced, only reinforced the region's deep-rooted patriarchy.

Over a dozen women panchayats have taken place in Muzaffarnagar, Meerut and Shamli in the past one month. "Such panchayats are adding to the tension and we cannot stop them because any mishandling of women will only deepen the crisis," says a police officer.

While local leaders justify these 'armed' panchayats, saying the women are only protesting against the injustice being meted out to their men, some dailies have published photographs glorifying the women who brandished countrymade pistols and swords as 'chandis' (goddesses) out to protect their honour.

"Women with weapons standing along with their children not only shows the sense of insecurity among them but also how divisive forces have successfully penetrated into the society," said Manju Bharti, a Muzaffarnagar-based activist. "Communalisation of women means the rift will last for generations."

In sharp contrast to these armed women are the scores of those who were sexually assaulted during the riots and who are now living in relief camps. Activists who visited these camps say rape survivors are devastated and do not want to go back to their native villages, where they were violated and their family members were killed.

Over 600 weddings have taken place in the relief camps so far. People claim, somewhat dubiously, that most of the marriages were fixed before the riots and are being solemnized now. Post-riots, new restrictions have also being imposed on the movements of girls. Attendance of girls in schools has registered a huge drop.

For the past two years, instances of sexual assault and harassment were used selectively to whip up communal passions, eventually leading to the horrific violence.

"Men are constructing 'fear' in the name of 'honour' and then using it to impose their decision on women," says activist Roma Malik, who visited the affected areas recently. "Violence against women is common in both the communities, but this time it has been given a communal colour, making it a double whammy."

Muslim rape survivors are keeping quiet, fearing stigma. Many Hindu women, their men behind bars, fear they may be targeted now. And the fear of something untoward happening is making Hindu girls drop out of schools and forcing Muslim families to marry off their daughters.

"The communal forces which instigated the riots have hijacked the khap panchayats infamous for issuing Talibani diktats against the women," says Madhu Garg, state secretary, All India Democratic Women's Association, who has prepared a report on the riots after visiting the affected areas.

All this does not bode well for the status of women. The sex ratio in Muzaffarnagar is an abysmal 889 females per 1,000 males and the child sex ratio is a pathetic 863. Female literacy is 58.69% against the average of 69.12%. Most girls drop out of school after Class 10. Crimes against women are common in the region.

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