Now that I have ranted about the Sharia murders for a bit, I would like to offer you a rant on a slightly different aspect of this case…
THE most popular post I have ever written was about Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow. OK, I have written several, but this one has been to slowed down over the years even though I wrote it up just days after Aisha (or, Aisho, in some spellings) was stoned to death under Sharia, for the crime of having been gang raped. (As I could not find any picture of Aisha, I painted one.)
Clarification: the Shafia murders were not, in any way-shape-or-form, Sharia killings! Quite to the contrary – most pro-Sharia Muslims strictly condemn this ‘honour crime’. What must be understood that ‘honour killings’ are culture-based (or, more accurately, a symptom of the tribal version of collectivist societies where individuals have not just no rights, but no identity of their own – only the clan/tribe has an identity and the people within it are treated as interchangable cogs), not religion based. Indeed, most Muslim organizations in Canada, whether pro-Sharia or not, have condemned these murders as unacceptable – and that is a good thing. However, it should not be misunderstood that under Sharia, these girls and women would have fared much better: the outrage among the pro-Sharia crowd is because the family made the life-and-death decision rather than presenting their case to the Sharia courts and then submitting the children and women to the death sentence once the Sharia court pronounced them. Plus under Sharia, these women and children would have been stoned, not drowned… And, yes, they would not have escaped the death sentence, as one of them actually married without het father’s permission and the other 3 helped her, so under Sharia, they would have been sentenced to death by stoning or lashing. The only disagreement here is between who has the authority to kill them: their imam or their father.
What really, really got me angry was not only what had happened to the poor child, Aisha Ibrahim Dhuhulow (she had reported her rape to the authorities, not realizing that the regular Muslim authorities she had grown up with had been replaced by Al-Shabaab’s radicalized Sharia courts and that reporting she had been raped would earn her the death penalty by stoning), though that was horrific enough.
What added insult to the injury was how it was reported and treated by the ‘Western media’, lead by AP (whose reporter was an eye-witness to the stonitself).
The lead was: WOMAN IS STONED FOR ADULTERY!
WOMAN?!?!?!?
IN WHAT UNIVERSE IS A 13-YEAR-OLD ‘A WOMAN’?!?!?
And now, in the Shafia case, the youngest victim, Geeti, was also 13-years-old…yet the headlines proclaim ‘4 women dead’!
Really?
13-year-old Geeti and 17-year-old Sahar were both minors.
Children.
Not women!!!
Yes, murders of women are vile and despicable – all murders are.
But the murders of children – and murders of children by their parents – murders of children are extra vile.
Consciously or not, whether to minimize the impact for politically correct reasons or because they are having trouble wrapping their brains around the evil of it, by calling two children ‘women’, the crimes committed agains them are downplayed by the media.
Contrast that with how Omar Khadr is being portrayed by the media: in order to whip up inflammatory feelings, the media are calling him a ‘child soldier’ – even though, under UN definitions, Omar Khadr (at 15) was neither a child, nor a soldier.
OK – Sahar was 17 and could be considered to be ‘a woman’ under some rules. But, if the media treats the 15-year-old Khadr as ‘a child’ but treats the 13-year-old Geeti as an adult, I call it a double standard!
One which, I suspect, is strategically adopted by those who simply find suffering of Muslimas to not fit comfortably into their own world view, so they will do all that is in their power to sweep their suffering under the rug, turn a blind eye to and and, most importantly, not permit any objective discussion of it in the public square.
Yes, there is so much more I want to say about this, but I suspect that my rant would only get more ranty…so, let me just leave you with a paraphrased quote from one of my favourite philosophers: a person’s a person, no matter how small, or female, or Muslim!
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