"Don't Let Sharia Spread in America" (video)

A former victim of Iranian misogyny tells:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuQZ19Om1JA&fbclid

They Hang Women, Don't They?

Is there any sight more despicably hypocritical than a left-liberal paying obeisance to Islamo-fascism and betraying Western liberal values as a result?

Consider this extract from a letter that 87 faculty members at Brandeis University sent to president Frederick Lawrence, successfully imploring him to overturn the university's commitment to honour one of the most courageous female public figures in the world?

"Please know that, like Ms. Hirsi Ali, we fully recognize the harm of forced marriages; of female genital cutting, which can cause, among other public health problems, increased maternal and infant mortality; and of honor killings. These phenomena are not, however, exclusive to Islam.

The selection of Ms. Hirsi Ali further suggests to the public that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam or the Two-Thirds World, thereby obscuring such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.... We cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali's triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples."

Note, if you will, the neglect in the first quoted sentence to acknowledge the fact that female genital mutilation is a crime against the person of the female herself: note the fact that the signatories, to their shame, consider only the effects of the practice on "public health" in the form of its possible deleterious effects on the mutilated female in childbirth, and upon her infant.

It is almost as if the signatories do not consider a female at risk of that barbaric Third World procedure an individual in her own right, as if by some strange osmosis they are projecting primitive misogynistic Third World attitudes towards women onto the females of such "cultures".

Note, too, the dismissive attitude to "honor" killings (yes, inverted commas around that word "honor" should be de rigueur in all politically correct circles, since malecentric femicide is what these killings represent, based on the concept of women as infantile and inferior chattels of their male relatives.

Ah, but what is that document if not an example of the cultural relativist's sophistry, an insistence that all cultures are as good, or perhaps I should say as bad, as each other? 

In my previous post I mentioned, inter alia, the plight of an Iranian woman who is due to be hanged in that hellhole for the female of the species (see this article on the execution of Iranian women), and now comes word that another women is in danger of the Iranian noose:

'Roya Nobakht, 47, presently being detained as a political prisoner in Iran, may face execution for insulting Islam. She has lived in Stockport, England with her husband for the last six years and holds dual British-Iranian citizenship.

Her husband, Daryoush Taghipoor, has stated that his wife was arrested while visiting a friend at Iran's Shiraz airport last October for comments she had made on a Facebook group calling the government of Iran "too Islamic." According to a copy of her charge sheet seen by the UK's Independent [newspaper]; she was transferred to Tehran and charged with "gathering and participation with intent to commit crimes against national security and insulting Islamic sanctities"-- crimes punishable by death.

In an interview, Mr. Taghipoor told the Manchester Evening News that "his wife is not well at all...she has lost three stones [42 lbs]… and is scared that the government will kill her." He also said that a confession had been extracted from his wife "under duress." As is well documented, torture is systematically used by Iranian authorities to obtain confessions from political dissidents and even from some common prisoners....'

 The report continues:

'Ms. Nobakht's fears are not unfounded. Iran's persecution of expatriates is nothing new. The first known case was that of Ms. Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who died under torture in 2003 while in custody. Ms. Zahara Bahrami, a Dutch-Iranian, was hanged in 2011....

 Ms Zahra Kazemi, a Canadian-Iranian photojournalist who had left Iran in 1974, returned in 2003 to cover a story about Iran. She was soon arrested and detained in Evin prison on charges of espionage. As Iran does not recognize dual citizenships, Ms. Kazemi was not allowed representation by Canadian authorities. She later died in custody. The Iranian officials claimed she had died as a result of a stroke but refused to return her body to Canada. In 2005, however, Dr. Shahram Azam, a doctor with the Iranian security forces who had examined Ms. Kazemi's half-dead body, fled Iran. He testified that the victim's body showed extensive signs of torture administered over a few days. The notes from his medical journal include a crushed toe, broken fingers, missing finger nails, broken ribs, a skull fracture, severe abdominal bruising, marks of flogging on her back and feet, extensive damage to the genitals and peculiar deep scratches on her neck. She was 52 years old and the first victim of the Islamic regime's war of terror on Iranians holding dual citizenship.... '

 Read more here

The last woman to be hanged in Britain went to the gallows in 1956; she was a criminal's moll and had been involved in a murder.  Her name was Ruth Ellis, and the left-liberals of the day were up in arms; their campaign against capital punishment, spearheaded by the Labour MP Sydney Silverman, succeeded in 1965.

I wonder how many of the left-liberal brigade will be up in arms over the fate that in all likelihood  awaits Roya Nobakht.

In the United States opponents of the death penalty (abolished in some states, but not in others) like to say that it is "cruel and unusual punishment".

What, I wonder, do the Brandeis University cultural relativists who signed that despicable faculty letter make of Iran's penchant for sending people to the gallows, including women?

Will they, and others of their ilk, consider it "cruel and unusual punishment"?

Or, seeing as it's based on Islamic injustice justice, will they merely shrug and say:

"We cannot accept [a]triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples"

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Sign the petition

From Washington Free Beacon (see below)

"I stand before you as someone who is fighting for women's and girls' basic rights globally. And I stand before you as someone who is not afraid to ask difficult questions about the role of religion in that fight.

The connection between violence, particularly violence against women, and Islam is too clear to be ignored. We do no favors to students, faculty, nonbelievers and people of faith when we shut our eyes to this link, when we excuse rather than reflect.

So I ask: Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era? Both Christianity and Judaism have had their eras of reform. I would argue that the time has come for a Muslim Reformation.

Is such an argument inadmissible? It surely should not be at a university that was founded in the wake of the Holocaust, at a time when many American universities still imposed quotas on Jews.

The motto of Brandeis University is "Truth even unto its innermost parts." That is my motto too. For it is only through truth, unsparing truth, that your generation can hope to do better than mine in the struggle for peace, freedom and equality of the sexes."

That, inter alia, is what Ayaan Hirsi Ali intended to say at Brandeis University had not president Fred Lawrence's made the unconscionably decision to rescind the planned honorary degree to give a woman who, in the blunt words of Canadian columnist Mark Steyn, campaigns against "the barbarous practice by which Muslim men deny women sexual pleasure by having their clitorises cut off. 

(The procedure, in all its ghastly primitive barbarism, is graphically displayed in the following video from Ethiopia, which readers would probably be wise to skip, although it should perhaps be compulsory viewing for the Fred Lawrences of this world):

Steyn continued, justifiably enough: 

"Lawrence and the other fellows who run Brandeis are in no danger of any equivalent procedure since it seems clear they've nothing down there to chop off anyway. The eunuchs of the American academy are the beneficiaries of western liberty, of the spirit of openness and inquiry that is the principal difference between us and the intellectually stagnant Muslim world. But they will not lift a finger to defend that tradition." 

It was, of course, in response to pressure from CAIR and following receipt of this petition that Dr Lawrence made his disgraceful, dishonourable, dhimmitudinous climbdown.

Now, another petition has been instituted, requesting Lawrence to do the decent thing:

"Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born women's activist whose work focused on the abuse of women in Islamic societies. Hirsi Ali was supposed to be the commencement speaker at the 2014 Brandeis University commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 18, 2014 at the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center. She was also to be given an honorary degree in social justice for her human rights work. However, with little notice she was told by university officials that she would not be getting the degree nor would she be speaking at the ceremony. She didn't ask to be given an honorary degree, and now, the Brandeis' administration has used the honor to dishonor her. We, the people signed below, want it reinstated." [Emphasis added]

As the petition's organiser notes:

"It took more than 6,800 signatures to get Brandeis University to rescind its honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It's going to take that and much more to let the university know Hirsi Ali had many more supporters than the marginal group who wanted her honors stripped. Please share on social media to get the word out."

To sign the petition click here


Incidentally, among the many condemnations of Brandeis president Fred Lawrence's recent cowardly decision are messages on Lawrence's Facebook page.  This one's a corker:

"Dear Dr. Lawrence:

.... I can’t help but think that there’s something desperately pathetic about an institution that advertises itself as a bastion of liberal thinking turning tail and running when a handful of academics squeal about the unbearable intellectual threat posed by a woman who has been on the receiving end of Islam’s generosity (female genital mutilation, a future as a child bride, and an unending barrage of death threats akin to those that her colleague Theo Van Gogh received before his brutal murder), and who is then brave enough to speak out loudly about Islam’s sordid, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-Western element.

Interestingly, you were entirely comfortable inviting (and then not rescinding invitations to) Tony Kushner and Desmond Tutu, both of whom have gone on record repeatedly mouthing grotesquely anti-Semitic statements when they took a break from attacking Israel – which, I might add, is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, one that gives fully rights to people of all races, colors, creeds, sexes, and gender orientations. (Should I also add that Louis Brandeis, the school's namesake, was an ardent Zionist?)

Could it be that you were confident that Israelis and Jews would disparage, but not kill, you for inviting to your campus two such divisive, unpleasant human beings? And could it be that, when you belatedly enlightened yourself about the reality of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s dangerous life as a crusader against the extreme elements of Islam, you suddenly realized that your comfortable little mantra that Islam is a “a religion of peace” is certainly right as to the vast majority of the world’s Muslim, but quite wrong as to a small but deadly cadre that expands its reach by threatening to kill “liberal arts” cowards like yourself, your administration, and your faculty?

Reality bites, doesn’t it? I believe it was Winston Churchill who said “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” You pretended that there was no crocodile or that, if there was, it had no teeth.

The crocodile has teeth, you and your colleagues are fools...."

I think Fred needs tickling up a bit, don't you?

Let's hope that the new petition, whether or not it succeeds in changing his mind, receives all the signatures it can muster, in order to demonstrate a moral truth and achieve at least a moral victory.

Meanwhile, yet another sickening case of Islamic injustice against women is occurring in Iran, the land certain Israel-bashers of this blog's acquaintance seem to love:

Reports the Washington Free Beacon:

"The Iranian regime is slated to hang on Tuesday a 26-year-old woman charged with fatally stabbing her accused rapist ....

Rayhaneh Jabbari, a 26-year-old former interior designer, is scheduled to be hanged this week after serving the last seven years in prison for stabbing a doctor who she claims drugged her and attempted to rape her.

The case has drawn international outrage from human rights activists, who are fighting to stay the execution. These activists have cast a spotlight on Iran’s flawed judicial system, which executed more than 500 people in 2013 and is on pace to kill even more this year.

A petition aimed at pressuring Iran to stop the hanging has already drawn more than 126,700 signatures online, but has not appeared to sway the Iranian judiciary, the head of which recently upheld the execution order and insisted that it be carried out on Tuesday...."

To view that petition, click here

As for the treatment of (Australian) animals in Gaza, here's a report that I can't bear to read (h/t JW)

Protesting A Barbaric Apartheid State (video)

Below is footage of a counter-protest in Toronto against Iran, mastermind of the Al Quds Day demos around the world.  To quote the uploader:

'A group of Jews, Christians, Hindus, Latinos and Iranians for Democracy in Iran came out to counter protest the Al Quds protest in Queen's Park, Toronto, Canada in support of Israel and in support of a Democratic Iran against the hateful "Palestinian", Iranian and Pakistani Islamic groups supporting Terrorism and hate.'

When will the westerners, especially females, who join the Al Quds Day protests and those who feature prominently in the anti-Israel movement, some (when given the chance) venting their spleen in interviews for Press TV, acknowledge that Iran is an apartheid state, recently banning females from over 70 degree courses, and practising a barbaric, misogynistic legal code (administered by judges, all of whom are male) which ensures that judgments are innately weighted against females and holds that the age of criminal responsibility for a girl is nine-years-of-age (it's 15 for a boy)?

Will the westerners, especially females, who so relish demonising Israel join the organisation Safe World for Women's calls upon the international community to put pressure on the odious Iranian regime to abide by international laws and covenants?

Will they support Safe World for Women's calls for worldwide participation in campaigns to stop the export of cranes to Iran (cranes being the favoured means of judicial murder in Iran, for men, women – unless they've been stoned to death, of course – and juveniles alike)?

And if not, why not?

Which Western Women On Press TV Weep For This Dodgy Justice?

What a hellhole the Islamic Republic of Iran is for women.

Especially those who run sufficiently foul of the regime to be arrested, often on the flimsiest grounds.

It's been reported (and confirmed http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4068646,00.html) that among the victims of the Islamic Republic of Iran's draconian laws, which have seen record numbers of prisoners hanged in recent months - 64 of them within one fortnight alone, and six (including two opposition activists) on Monday - were a Jerusalem-born Jewish woman of Iranian origin in her mid-fifties, Adiva Mirza Soleyman Kalimia, and her Armenian Christian husband, Varjan Petrosian.The couple met their deaths, with others (two men and one woman, who remain unidentified), in the courtyard of Teheran's Evin Prison on 14 March.

It's not known what offence they supposedly committed, nor what they were doing in Iran, and although Ms Kalimia's arrest was officially due, it seems, to a charge of adultery, Evin is known for its political prisoners' wing.

Last year, despite a vigorous campaign on her behalf by international human rights groups with well-founded doubts concerning her guilt, Iran hanged yet another woman – something that Britain last did in 1956, when Ruth Ellis went to the gallows for her part in a murder. Forty-year-old Shahla Jahed, whose first trial in 2004 had “procedural errors”, was convicted of the 2002 murder of Laleh Saharkizan, the first wife of her former lover, 1980s football star Nasser Mohammadkhani. Shahla had been in a temporary marriage with him – one of those ploys that Shia Islam permits – and he reportedly was there to see her executed. So was her victim Laleh’s brother (or son, depending on which report you read), who kicked the chair from under Shahla, who after praying burst into tears and screamed for her life to be spared.

In Iran, following imposition of a death sentence, the convicted prisoner’s family is permitted to make a direct appeal to the family of the victim’s family to stop the execution from going ahead. But Shahla's lawyer, Abdol-Samad Khoramshahi, claims that he was given insufficient time properly to make the customary appeal for clemency to the victim’s relatives. "According to the rules I should have been informed 48 hours before the execution so that I can go to the bereaved family asking them to forgive Shahla for the last time," he said. Instead, he had just a few hours. Judiciary officials also joined in the appeals for mercy, reports indicated.

Malcolm Smart, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa, said there were "strong grounds" to believe she had not receive a fair trial."She may have been coerced into making a 'confession' during months of detention in solitary confinement," he said in a statement. “She retracted that confession at her trial but the court chose to accept it as evidence against her."

The Council of Europe said the execution showed that Iran's government had "little respect for human rights". "I am dismayed by this latest execution in Iran and also by the inhumane way in which it was carried out," said the organisation's secretary-general Thorbjorn Jagland. There were numerous strong denunciations of the trial and execution, some by Muslim women in various countries.

And to add insult to injury, of course, Iran had lately attempted to acquire a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women. No wonder that bid was blocked, and a petition, signed by 214 activists and endorsed by over a dozen human rights bodies, was circulated that read:"Iran's discriminatory laws demonstrate that the Islamic Republic does not believe in gender equality. Women lack the ability to choose their husbands, have no independent right to education after marriage, no right to divorce, no right to child custody, have no protection from violent treatment in public spaces, are restricted by quotas for women's admission at universities, and are arrested, beaten, and imprisoned for peacefully seeking change of such laws."

Which western women who receive Ahmadinejad’s shilling - or, rather, rial - by parroting the Iranian line on the propaganda news station Press TV will weep for the “justice system” that convicted, among other members of their sex, Adiva Kalimia and Shahla Jahed?

Alas, I think we all know the answers to that question.

Blondely pimping brand Iran

While Israel has been foolishly neglectful of connecting with a global audience by exploiting satellite television broadcasting to its advantage, the Islamic Republic of Iran has grasped with fervour the chance to showcase the image that it wants the world to see - both of itself and of the Zionist entity.  The state-funded Press TV, Iran's propagandistic news channel, was set up in 2007, and has bureaus in Teheran, Beirut, Damascus, Seoul, Washington - and, inevitably, Londonistan.  Its broadcasts reach most parts of the world, and for most viewers it is free-to-air; it also has a website. 

And it has not been short of western abettors.  Its regular presenters include such "feminists" as journalists Lauren Booth, Tony Blair's embarrassing sister-in-law, and Yvonne Ridley, kidnapped by the Taliban in 2001, who in 2003 converted to Islam. Both women, who also broadcast on London's Islam Channel, are heavily active in the Free Gaza Movement and other anti-Israel initiatives.

 Ms Booth recently addressed an outdoor demo in London, in which to wild cheers she shrilly condemned Mark Regev as "an Israeli killer Zionist" and, in an apparent rallying cry for jihad, exhorted the green, red, black and white-bannered throng to take up arms against Israel, while Ms Ridley has been active in the Respect Party, that curious mixture of radical Muslims and radical Socialists united in their loathing of "Zionists".

On screen, Ms Booth (pictured in a Gaza souvenir shop) appears with a veil not quite covering all of her blonde hair; Ms Ridley's blonde locks are totally concealed beneath a particularly forbidding version of the hijab.  I've always found it intriguing how avowed feminists - who would no doubt rant and rave and scoff and sneer at fundamentalist Christian explanations (you can find them on the web, from strict old Calvinists and others) that wives must cover their heads as a symbol of their subjection to their husbands - meekly don the veil when required to by Islam. 

But it is positively obscene that such people - who are quick to accuse Israel of human rights violations - continue to pimp brand Iran despite the odious Ahmadinejad regime's horrendous oppression of its people. It has now come to light, courtesy of one of its own, that to oblige the Iranian government  members of the ruthless Basij militia  forcibly marry - and rape - virgin prisoners the night before those women's scheduled executions.  This enables the death sentence, forbidden in the case of virgins, to be carried out.  Will this shocking revelation (you won't find it in the leftist press) of a particularly repellent crime against women finally wean these Israel-hating pro-Iran female broadcasters away from their role as handmaidens of Hamas's sponsor?  I wouldn't bank on it.